Going To The Dogs

In communicating with a minister friend this past week
through our mutual blogs,
I read something I’ve often felt:
He wrote,
I always kind of cringe when I read this story
in Matthew chapter 15.
We agreed that it was
challenging to preach about this churlish Jesus.
We know that most people prefer
to keep their images of Jesus
kind and tender – holding lambs and children.
A man clothed usually in white
and gently walking around.

But there are gospel instances
that give us a picture of a fully human Jesus
with all the feelings and foibles that any of us possess.

A Canaanite woman cries out to Jesus to heal her daughter.
By the end of the story, her daughter has been healed –
but between the crying and the healing,
Jesus says some terrible things.



He’s arrogant, racist and just plain mean.
Yes, we believe that Jesus was “truly human,”
but we don’t want him to be too human.
So over the years,
people have tried to clean up this story.
One attempt goes something like this:
Jesus was testing this woman to see if she had enough faith.
When she passed the test, Jesus said, “Woman, great is your faith!
Let it be done for you as you wish.”

But that understanding – which is certainly allowable
has caused plenty of pain – and that makes us want to rethink it.
It’s caused pain because some people have heard Jesus saying,
“If you had more faith your husband or wife,
your mother or father or child would not have died.”
But that really isn’t so;
there’s no need to think the Bible says that.

Matthew doesn’t clean up this story.
And he paints a specific picture of this woman.
She is a Canaanite woman.
She is not one of Jesus’ people.

Jesus has gone into the region of Tyre and Sidon.
This is her home – her neck of the woods.
Matthew’s choice of the word “Canaanite”
seems a bit strange.
By the time of Jesus,
people were no longer called “Canaanites.”
This name was no longer on the map –
it was a bit like calling New York, New Amsterdam!

But it’s likely that Matthew chooses “Canaanite” on purpose:
not only is she the “other,”
but she is part of an enemy people.

She seems to know who Jesus is.
She begs him to heal her daughter
who is tormented by a demon.

She’s desperate and comes out shouting.
Some history scholars claim
that at this time the only women who spoke to men
in public were prostitutes.

Is this what we do to people who are different?
Do we also make them morally suspect?
Maybe Matthew wants us to remember Rahab
the prostitute who is named in Jesus’ genealogy at the beginning of Matthew.
(Matt. 1: 5)
She, too, was a Canaanite who lived in the city of Jericho (Joshua 2).
What’s a Canaanite prostitute doing in Jesus’ family tree?
Bible reading can lead to lots of questions.

The disciples don’t want to think about such questions.
They want nothing to do with this woman:
“Send her away!” they tell Jesus.

That’s what they tried to do not long ago
when faced with more than 5000 hungry people.

“Send the crowds away,” the disciples said.
“You give them something to eat,” said Jesus.

This Canaanite woman isn’t going anywhere.
She may not be Jewish
but she calls out to Jesus in language of the Jewish prayer:
“Have mercy on me, Lord, Son of David.”
But Jesus isn’t swayed by familiar language.
“I was sent only to the lost sheep of Israel,” he tells her.

She won’t give up.
“Lord, help me,” she begs.
This is where Jesus goes to the dogs:
“It is not fair to take the children’s food
and throw it to the dogs.”

But the Canaanite woman persists.
The life of her daughter is at stake.
She picks up Jesus’ words and throws them right back:
“Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs
eat the crumbs that fall from their masters’ table.”

When Jesus hears this, he says, “Woman, great is your faith!”
But she hasn’t made any confession of faith.
There’s no sign she’s been born again.
She simply spoke the truth:
That’s what Jesus finally heard and came to believe.
“For saying that, you may go – the demon has left your daughter.”

Jesus was converted that day
to a larger vision of the Kingdom of God.
Jesus saw and heard a fuller revelation
of God in the voice and in the face of the Canaanite woman.

The woman’s truth is evident in the way
Matthew tells this story.
At the end of this chapter there is another feeding story.
This time 4000 men are fed -- besides women and children –
and there were seven baskets left over.

Seven is the number of wholeness, completeness,
a number encompassing the nations.

Matthew has placed the story of Jesus and the Canaanite woman
between these two feeding stories.

The Canaanite woman taught Jesus
that she and her daughter deserve more than crumbs.

After this encounter
Jesus went on to feed those who had not yet been fed.

If Jesus could be changed, can we?
Every generation sees some people as “other”
and puts them under the table.


We could make a long list of people we see as different –
different race,
different customs,
different religion
different________
well, just fill in the blank.
Barbara Lundblad tells this story:
Not that long ago,
I watched on the news
a white woman who looked a bit like me
speaking through her tears,
“What happened to my America? I want my America back.”

I guess, says Barbara, she meant an America
where people look like her and me.

Over the past ten years,
many in the United States have come to see Muslims as the other.
They are the Canaanites –
not only in this country but in Europe and Scandinavia.

In protests against a proposed Muslim Cultural Center
in lower Manhattan, people carried signs that read:
“All I need to know about Islam I learned on 9/11.”
Really?



What if someone protested outside our church with a sign saying:
“All I need to know about Christianity
I learned from Rev. Terry Jones.”
Or Jim Jones.
Both men are, or were Christians.

Muslims have become Canaanites
to many in our country.

Are we going to act like
Jesus’ disciples?
“Send the Muslims away for they are ruining our country!”

Or maybe we will be
as willing to learn as Jesus was.

Maybe we will catch a larger vision
of the Kingdom of God. Amen.

*Thanks to B. Lundblad for inspiration and words