Today’s passage from Matthew’s Gospel reminds us that sometimes the most faithful of people are not the ones we would anticipate. Sometimes they are the ones we might label as sinner. The Canaanite woman was not one of the chosen people of God, not of the tribes of Israel. She was part of an ethnic group that had historically been the opponent of Israel. She was a Canaanite – one of THOSE people. Obviously bad. Obviously a sinner. Obviously beyond redemption. She did use a Jewish form of address, calling Jesus the son of David, but that didn’t seem to matter.
Even Jesus did not seem willing at first to help her by healing her daughter. Scripture says that in response to her pleas for help, “Jesus did not answer a word.” At first reading that may seem cold and unfeeling. It may seem, well, unChrist-like of Jesus. But looked at a different way, it can be seen as an opportunity to observe other believers and see how they will respond, as well as testing the faith of the Canaanite woman herself.
The disciples responded right away. “Send her away, for she keeps crying out after us.” It’s as if they were saying, “She’s not like us. She wants to have the benefit of Your ministry, but she is a sinner. She’s not a child of God – she’s obviously a bad person because she doesn’t follow the rules and she doesn’t look or speak or smell or act or live like we do.” In modern times they might even have spoken about how the music she liked wasn’t good church music or how the clothes she wore were not appropriately respectful or how the customs she observed were so strange and unsettling or how she was a foreign interloper on the land they’d been promised and for which their ancestors had fought.
Jesus observed as the disciples reacted. Then He said something interesting that could be understood in several ways. He said, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of Israel.” This seems, on its face, to support the position of the disciples. Jesus was saying He was sent to save the Israelites who had gone astray, not everyone in the world. At least, that’s what it sounds like. Only to the lost sheep of Israel. Yet He doesn’t say His message is only for the lost sheep of Israel. He was sent for them, but as we know from knowing later parts of the story, the lost sheep of Israel were sent to others by Jesus. It is truth that the Lord speaks, but what is left unsaid, as is so often the case, is also important.
The woman is the one whose response we have on record, but that doesn’t mean there was not some response from the disciples. If I had to guess, I would imagine that they reacted with agreement and satisfaction, feeling their position had been affirmed. I can imagine them nodding in self-righteous assent and preparing to chase the woman away. That is not unlike those of us who want to hold onto church the way we’ve always done it, who oppose any change, who are not happy when we must leave the comfort zone of our style of music or the familiarity of the language we know or open our hearts and churches and communities to those whose customs and habits and values seem so unlike ours. We are the ones who built this church and community (well, some of our immigrant ancestors). We are the ones who paid for these pews (some of us, anyway – most of us simply benefitted from what others bestowed). We are the ones following the great traditions of the church and preserving the historical structures, buildings, artifacts, ways of doing things so that the church can survive (the church as we know it today, not the original version or that of fifty or a hundred years ago when people counted church among their top priorities and the church was the only social service anyone knew).
But the Canaanite woman was persistent in pleading her case. She begged the Lord to help her, thereby demonstrating strong faith that He could, in fact, help her. She showed her faith by her refusal to be turned away by harsh words. Would we have done the same? Would we fight so hard for the help of Jesus, or would we simply walk away or seek out a different leader – one whose answers we liked better? Would we drift from the church where we were nurtured in the faith to find someplace more to our liking, more comfortable for us, or would we stay and try harder to adapt to a few new ways of doing things, some new people, some different patterns of community interaction? It’s hard to know until we are as desperate as the woman in the story.
Jesus’ response to the woman’s impassioned plea seems chilling. He replies, “It is not right to take the children’s bread and toss it to the dogs.” Ouch. What kind of response is that coming from our Lord, who was willing to eat with sinners and tax collectors, who offered the water of life to the Samaritan woman at the well, who told the parable of the Good Samaritan, who allowed ex-prostitutes to become disciples? It so doesn’t fit with the Jesus we think we know. Yet He was quoting Himself from an earlier lesson – the one about taking the log out of one’s own eye before trying to pick the speck out of the eye of another. That lesson ends with Matthew 7:6, which we heard earlier, in which we are told not to give dogs what is sacred or cast pearls before swine lest they turn on us and tear us apart. And He even upped the ante by pointing out the effect on future generations by calling the bread the children’s. Jesus was speaking the truth to the woman – saying she was not part of the family, the chosen race, and He was not sent to help her directly. Jesus seemed to be adhering to the rules He set down. Plus He was protecting the future of the children. The disciples must surely have felt victorious at this point. But while they are logical and rational arguments, if we take the story as a whole, we see that Jesus was not really refusing the woman but that He was using a teachable moment to both test the woman’s faith and teach the disciples about the wideness of God’s mercy and love.
The woman was able to look at things logically and draw intelligent conclusions; she did not let that opportunity slip past her. She said to Jesus, “Even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their master’s table.” It is a brilliant and faithful response. The woman is not asking that the rules be changed, nor is she justifying her own lifestyle and choices. She is not trying to take anything away from others, but asking only for what might normally go to waste. The woman takes what is said at face value and applies it to real-world life. She is pointing out that even the lowliest of creatures is still fed by its master, and therefore, even if it is just a crumb to keep her life going, she deserves the healing crumb. She is willing to take on the label of dog – of outcast or misfit or sinner or foreigner. She is not concerned with how she is thought of as much as that someone she loves is helped.
Jesus must have been so happy when He was able to say to her, “Woman, you have great faith! Your request is granted.” We know from Scripture that not only did He say it, but He followed through as we are told her daughter was immediately healed. Jesus did not deny her the help she sought, but gave even more than she asked. He not only immediately saved her daughter, but also called her a woman of great faith. A Canaanite woman – the enemy of the Israelites – He called a woman of great faith. That sinner, that outcast, that foreign interloper – that heathen. Jesus called her a woman of great faith. Interesting notion.
We don’t have any more of this story. We don’t know what the reaction of the disciples was, whether the woman became a convert or at least a God-fearer, as those who practiced the Jewish religion without converting were called. We don’t know if this incident changed the way she lived or how she raised her children. But we do know it was an important enough story to be collected among the Gospels – the sacred writings of Good News. And we know it was recorded by Matthew, who wrote for a primarily Jewish audience. There must be a reason for the preservation of this story.
There are definitely lessons in this story. Lessons for the woman and the disciples and the church. Lessons that tell us it’s not about keeping people out or forcing everyone else to believe and live and worship as we do. Lessons about how great God’s love is and how huge the Kingdom of Heaven must be. Lessons about compassion and generosity of spirit.
But how do we apply this to our own lives? How do we put into practice what we learn from this one story? Do we just throw out the rules we’ve learned to live by and not bother to hold anything sacred? That would leave us nothing of value to pass on to our children and future generations. Do we so adhere to a ‘live and let live’ philosophy that it gets us off the hook when it comes to evangelism, to offering others the hope and grace and mercy and love we’ve found in our faith? That would be failing in our Christian duty and would be selfish. Do we judge who gets to be part of the in crowd and keep records and charts to determine who is good enough? We are told to judge not – in fact shortly before this passage we’re told that the log in our own eye is much greater than the speck in another’s.
I would say one thing we might consider in light of this passage as a way to live out its lesson is by practicing compassion. It’s not easy because we tend to prefer swift justice meted out according to our standards. But compassion is more in line with the lesson we’ve heard today. And compassion provides for fairness in times of strife – being able to walk in the shoes of another helps us see that other as human and frail and flawed and just like us. While there are times our ability to feel compassion is tested to the limit, we are better people when we allow justice to belong to God and focus on doing what we can to alleviate suffering of anyone we meet, even if they are not like us.
I had lunch the other day with Mark Tammen, the new General Presbyter of Long Island Presbytery. I’d told him I wasn’t in favor of him meeting the Session or congregation here until I felt more comfortable with him as I had some reservations about his leadership, so we scheduled lunch together to break down some barriers. As he and I have interacted professionally and as we’ve gotten to know one another, we’ve gained mutual respect and even the possibility of friendship, which is nice. That move from distrust to openness was only the grace of God at work in both of us. We worked to listen to each other, to be open to what the other had to say, and to ask questions instead of making accusations when we were uncertain of what was meant or took it in a way that might not have been intended. We practiced generosity of spirit, even when it set our teeth on edge. As a result, we have been careful with one another, respectful and have come to see that, though we come from very different points of view and opposite ends of the theological spectrum, we both have valuable insights and ideas to offer to the larger church. And that it is truly much better when we work together instead of against one another.
At lunch one of the topics that came up was the plight of small churches on Long Island especially in this section of Suffolk County. We spoke about what the Presbytery’s role should be, about what good might be done with proceeds from properties that could be sold, such as part of the Brookfield property – good that would affirm the intentions and assuage the hurt of those who were such longtime and faithful members of that congregation. Mark made a comment that stuck with me as it caused me to look at things differently. He said that such monies could be used for new church development, but that people would need to understand that new churches were not likely to be Anglo congregations. They might be Korean in closer to the city or Hispanic out toward Riverhead and the agricultural areas. They might be Caribbean or Haitian or anything else in areas where there were large numbers of people belonging to a particular language group. It wasn’t a prejudiced comment about starting churches so that people of different colors and races wouldn’t mix. It was about starting churches that would share the Gospel with people in their own language and provide some connections not only to the historic church as we have it today, but also to local congregations of people not like them – people like us – who seem just as foreign, just as different, just as threatening as the Canaanite woman must have seemed to the disciples.
It’s a different way of thinking, but has excellent possibilities. It takes the story of the faith of the Canaanite woman and puts it into practice. It does what the Gospel has so often done, by providing a path to comfort the afflicted and afflict those of us who are too comfortable. And it is compassionate, just as Jesus was compassionate. Mark’s idea is one good example of how to live out our faith – by reaching out to those who are different from us in a way that actually helps them and provides for their spiritual nurture. It’s just one way, though, a good starting point. In our current church culture, we all need to be open minded, thinking of ways that even crumbs from the Master’s table can be shared with those we might see as less than human to provide deep soul-level healing for all involved. For that is the mission and task of the church – to , in the language of our passage today, provide healing crumbs for dogs.