Fourteenth Sunday after Pentecost
Proper 15a
August 17, 2008 Matthew 15:21-28
I love this passage from the Gospel of Matthew. I used to read it to my dog, who I’m sure always loved it. She and I were convinced that this is a Scriptural basis for feeding dogs scraps from the table, no matter what veterinarians may say.
That being said, this is a difficult reading – it is a story that I’ve always struggled with, and I invited you to struggle along with me this morning.
Jesus is walking with his friends up north, out of his normal range, visiting an area that has another faith tradition and always has resisted the call of God. Jesus even uses Tyre and Sidon as an example of hard-heartedness. But there he is, and he runs up on this Canaanite woman out in the middle of the day – someone he by tradition ought to ignore. Yet he stops and talks with her.
Here, the story is full of promise – we expect a kind word from Jesus. But no matter how we read this story, we can’t get around the fact that, at least on the face of it, Jesus decides to insult the Canaanite woman.
She asks for help for her sick daughter. But he says, “It is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.” In other words, Jesus has been sent to the chosen people – not to Gentiles. But he doesn’t say Gentiles, he says “dogs.”
There are a couple of different ways of looking at this, two main approaches. The first is, that Jesus didn’t mean it – he was testing her, drawing her out Socratically. He intends to heal her all along. The second is that Jesus did mean what he said – his ministry was only to the Israelites. He didn’t intend to heal her, but she convinces him through clever argument.
Either way: His language is not respectful. But the question remains: Was it offensive? Again, there are several theories, several ways of approaching this question.
First, perhaps it was not offensive – this sort of energetic, caustic back and forth is said by some to have been common in the cultures of that area in that time. Think back to the Old Testament stories of Abraham bargaining with God and of Jonah arguing with God. Think of the confrontations of Jesus with some of the religious leaders of his time – he was not afraid of offending them, saying things like, “Woe to you … Woe to you,!” He was not afraid tell it like it is to his opponents.
But here, even though the words seem harsh and offensive to our modern ears, perhaps they were delivered with a smile – maybe Jesus was letting her know that while he understood the historic antipathy of Jew and Gentile, he was about to show its undoing. Unfortunately, the spare language of the Gospels don’t tell us for sure.
So we have to consider that perhaps this was an offensive exchange – that Jesus was simply stating the facts: “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” In this interpretation, Jesus does not mean to heal her but is moved by her plea. “Lord, help me,” she says, and he ultimately is moved by her plea. If you think about it, why Jesus would be all the way up in Tyre and Sidon, if he did not intend to teach and heal among the Gentiles? The fact is, we just don’t know, and while this is a hard interpretation, it is one that has to be considered.
And then, there is the possibility that even if Jesus meant to heal her all along, that he used this language to emphasize his point in dramatic fashion.
It happens elsewhere in the Gospels. In the next chapter in Matthew, he uses some pretty horrible language to one of his disciples. He turns to Peter and says, “Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to me.” [16:23] Clearly, you had to have a thick skin to be one of the 12 disciples. The Good Shepherd was always good, but he wasn’t always gentle with those closest to him.
No question, Peter’s feelings must have been hurt when Jesus calls him Satan – but this came at a moment when Peter was trying to talk Jesus out of going to Jerusalem and being killed, something that Jesus had to do; something that Jesus had to do for our salvation. So, perhaps it’s a case of strong language for a strong message. The good news is that Peter got over it. And the Canaanite woman clearly got over it. She went nose-to-nose with Jesus and gets what she came for: the healing of her daughter.
She comes away with something she doesn’t ask for: She comes away with salvation for herself, I am sure. Jesus recognizes and commends her faith.
And we all came away with something else – this was the opening of Jesus’ ministry to the Gentiles. That is the point of this story, the reason this healing – out of the many, many healings – the reason that the story of this healing is told again in Matthew’s Gospel. The Canaanite woman opens the door and all of humanity is invited through.
Now I wonder about this unnamed Gentile woman. She leaves this encounter with Jesus and goes home to see her daughter, who now healed. I’m sure she is joyous, ecstatic. Does she become a follower of Christ? I imagine so. Does she resent the language Jesus used? I doubt it.
Like Peter, there was so much at stake that a momentary rebuke – perhaps one used as a rhetorical device – a potentially hurtful word is probably forgotten or, perhaps even, understood for what it was.
But let me say this – these are dangerous devices, these hard words used by Jesus. They’re sort of like mini-miracles – words that would be poison in our mouths become soothing balm from his.
And because the church has been run by mortals since the death of Jesus, there has been plenty opportunity for us to get it wrong, to use words that hurt, to confront others awkwardly, to make our case in self-righteous and hurtful ways.
You look over our history and you see so many times the church got it wrong – persecuting Jews, persecuting other Christians who happened to differ on doctrine, backing unjust wars, covering up abuse. Such a long, sad litany.
You probably know someone who has been hurt by the church or by someone acting in the name of the church. You may have been hurt by the church. I’ve known people who have been divorced and then run off by their congregations – either through official policy or by longstanding hurtful custom. I’ve known people who have been ostracized because they’re somehow too conservative or too liberal. I’ve known people who have been let down by pastors, and I know my name surely will be involved in such stories.
But of course, there is good news. The church is so much bigger than its problems. Jesus Christ is so much more powerful than any human institution. That is why we’re here. Sometimes we’re here because, like the Canaanite woman, our faith in our church defies all logic. But we have faith and we come back, hoping to meet Jesus.
This is why we have corporate confession – why we get on our knees in this weekly service to ask forgiveness for things done and left undone. This is why we have individual confession with a priest or deacon, we call it the sacramental rite of reconciliation – there we admit to our weaknesses and failings so that we may be filled with the Holy Spirit and touched by the forgiveness promised by Christ through His church.
We need confession because sometimes we are the stumbling blocks to our brothers and sisters. Sometimes we let others be stumbling blocks to us. We let the weaknesses of our humanness get between us and Christ.
This is why we have the sacrament of unction – our healing service in which we ask for healing – perhaps physical, but many times for the emotional pain and hurts that have inflicted upon us by others. And perhaps, just perhaps, for the pain of knowing that we have caused pain to others.
And of course, this is why we have the Eucharist – it’s why we gather every week to share in the body and blood of Christ because the only name given for healing and for salvation is Jesus Christ our Lord.
We are going to be hurt in this life, sometimes at the hands of those who claim to speak for Jesus. And we always run the risk of hurting others.
But that’s never the end of the story. It wasn’t the end of the story for the Canaanite woman, who had so much faith that she just barreled through what she could have seen as hurtful, who kept after Jesus for healing because she knew it was his to give.
So pain and hurt do not make the end of our story. When the next words from our hearts are, “Lord, help me,” we already are rewriting that story. It becomes a story that ends with the words of Christ, “My child, great is your faith. Let it be done for you as you wish.”
Amen.
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