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August 14, 2005
Reversal of Fortune
Matthew 15:21-28
The truth is, the more I study the Bible, the more I understand why other people do not. There are hard teachings in this book, things that are more troubling than comforting. Sometimes I think people don't read the Bible because they prefer their imagined version of Jesus to the Jesus of the Gospels. Unlike our sanitized and sentimental imaginations, the Jesus described in the gospels is complex; sometimes he says, "Come to me all you who are weary and heavy-laden and I will give you rest" and sometimes he is more like the Jesus in this morning's Gospel reading.
Even with my experience of Bible study, I am not accustomed to thinking that Jesus behaved like…well…a jerk. A heel. Uncaring, insensitive. When we ask the question, "What would Jesus do?" this is not the answer we expect! And yet that is exactly the way Jesus can come across to us in the lesson from Matthew.
Which puts me right back at understanding just how important Bible study is, precisely because so much of what is in there can leave us uncomfortable and confused.
The first step in making sense of today's lesson is to remember that the Gospels are not a diary or a public record of events. Each Gospel took sayings and events from Jesus' life and arranged them in such a way that the whole supported the ideas about Jesus they wished to emphasize, the ways their community experienced Christ in significant ways. In fact, it is fair to say that the writers of the Gospels were in no way objective, but very much biased.
The second step in making sense of today's lesson is by looking at the way Matthew tells the story.
Two of the gospels tell this story, Matthew and Mark. Most scholars believe that Mark was written first and that Matthew and Luke both used Mark as a source while they wrote, adding some material from additional sources. If you'd like to read Mark's account of Jesus' encounter with the Canaanite woman (Mark calls her the Syrophoenician woman), you can find it in Mark 7:24-30. Matthew and Mark tell basically the same story, but the details are slightly and significantly different.
Part of figuring out Matthew's point is by looking at how any given story fits with the surrounding material. Immediately before this story, Jesus had an exchange with the scribes and Pharisees about tradition and authority, and what is clean and what is not clean. The religious authorities got after Jesus because his disciples did not wash before they ate. Jesus told them, "it is not what goes into the mouth that defiles a person, but it is what comes out of the mouth that defiles." (Mt. 15:11) What he means, of course, is that outward appearances mean nothing; it is what comes out of the heart of a person that truly matters.
Naturally, the scribes and Pharisees took offense at this teaching, and it may be part of the reason for the beginning of our text: "Jesus left and went away to the district of Tyre and Sidon (v. 21)." Jesus and the disciples went just to the north and west of Galilee, along the sea. This was Gentile territory, a fact that is brought home when Matthew tells us that a "Canaanite woman from that region came out and started shouting, "Have mercy on me, Lord, Son of David; my daughter is tormented by a demon." (v. 22)
Remember that the Canaanites were the Old Testament enemies of the Israelites. And relations between Jews and Gentiles were strained at best.
This woman is not only a Canaanite, but she is lone female daring—or desperate!—enough to approach a group of foreign men without a male family member. This is odd and risky behavior to be sure.
She is an outsider on multiple accounts, but she knows what she needs, and she knows who can give it to her, so outsider or not, the woman begs Jesus to have mercy on her. She is LOUD about it. Tom Long says, 'the word that is translated as "shouting" here can also mean "scream" or "shriek" and is used in Revelation 12:2 to describe the cries of a woman in labor. 1
Not only that, but in spite of being a Gentile, she addresses Jesus as the Jewish messiah, calling him, "Lord, Son of David." There are a couple of things that are notable about this. First, in Mark's account, the woman does not address Jesus this way. Second, Matthew's Canaanite woman seems to recognize what the scribes and the Pharisees and sometimes the disciples do not. Remember how last week we heard the story of the disciples in a boat in a storm, and Peter telling Jesus, "IF it is you, command me to come to you on the water." (14.28 ff.) Peter still wasn't quite sure that Jesus was the Son of God. And yet, this foreign woman who is not a Jew and has presumably never met Jesus before immediately recognizes him as the Son of God, and addresses him by this title at the top of her lungs.
So how does Jesus react to this eyebrow-raising scene? He doesn't. He remains silent, not answering her at all. (v. 23)
The disciples, on the other hand, can hardly stand the shouting and screaming and wailing: "Send her away, for she keeps shouting at us." (v. 23) They plead with Jesus to do something to make the woman stop.
Jesus responds, "I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel." It seems Jesus dismisses the woman and her situation because it is not in his job description.
Callous though it may seem to be, this is a very important part of Matthew's account; it does not appear in Mark. But in Matthew, Jesus' response here echoes his instructions when he commissioned the twelve disciples and instructed them, "Go nowhere among the Gentiles, and enter no town of the Samaraitans, but go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel." (10.5-6) In Matthew, there is a fundamental focus on telling the good news to the Jews, and the urgency of getting the word out to God's chosen people that the promised kingdom of God is at hand in the person of Jesus the Christ. This is so urgent for Jesus that not even a woman in need can deter him from this important task, indeed the entire reason for his being.
But the woman is not deterred. She kneels in front of him and begs again, "Lord, help me."
This time, Jesus rebuffs her: "It is not fair to take the children's food and throw it to the dogs." (v. 26) The lost sheep of Israel are now the children, and the dogs are the Gentile outsiders, unwelcome and unwanted, trying to get at something that is not theirs. Jesus does not just try to discourage the woman, he insults her, and this is the part that is troubling for many. We can chalk it up to single-mindedness of purpose. Or, some scholars suggest that Jesus' response is intended to test the woman. Others believe that Jesus was simply a product of his culture, and Canaanites were old enemies, so it would have been natural for Jesus as a Jew to insult the woman. One thing is certain-we cannot simply and easily explain the insult away.
But what is perhaps more important and more to the point is the way the woman answers this insult: "Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters' table." What a brilliant response! She accepts the insult, accepts the scenario that she and her people are the outsiders and not the intended recipients, and then turns it around into a situation where there is still a place for her. With this response, she allows a reversal of fortune.
The woman's courage, cunning, and persistence pay off. Jesus answered her, "Woman, great is your faith! Let it be done for you as you wish." And her daughter was healed instantly. (v. 28) In spite of being a Gentile, an outsider, and because of her faith Jesus responds to the woman's need. He reverses his previous position, and the daughter is healed.
The story has a happy ending. It has an echo with Jesus' encounter with the scribes and Pharisees over what is clean and what defiles. By outward appearances, the Canaanite woman because of her ethnicity was unclean, and yet out of her came great faith. This in contrast with the faith of the religious authorities who are more interested in "doing the right thing" than being the right way.
And it is a breakthrough moment. We've already looked at how Matthew's Jesus is very much focused on the task of spreading the good news to the Jews. God has a plan for salvation history in which salvation is offered first to the Jews, and then ultimately, after the resurrection, to every nation (28.16-20). This passage was a foretaste of what was to come, what has come. You could almost think of this as a story of our forebearers.
It's possible that Matthew changed the details of this story to make a pointed comment to his original audience, the early church in which Jews and Gentiles were learning how to get along and form a community of faith after years of deliberate separation and mistrust. This was not an easy transition for them to make, and they needed all the help they could get. It could be a pointed comment for us, too, as we consider and reconsider who we are as a community of faith at First Presbyterian Church, and who God calls us to be and to include as we look toward the future. Just something to think about.
And I think there is a lesson about persistence and tenacity of faith that looks to and works for a hoped-for future that is not yet here. Scholar Tom Wright uses the example of those Christians in the 19th century who knew that slavery was wrong, but were not content to simply wait until it went away. They worked and prayed for slavery's end. 2
There are many such imagined futures across the theological and political church spectrum. One that everyone can agree on is a desire to end global poverty, and a world where 30,000 children no longer die each day because of lack of food or basic health care. Christian groups such as Bread for the World, World Vision, and the ONE campaign to make poverty history are working hard toward that goal, and if you would like to support that, talk to any member of the Presbyterian Mission Committee.
There are other more personal, more local issues of justice to be worked on, too, like the Canaanite woman's concern for her daughter. Perhaps some of you have situations like that in your lives—a friend or family member in need of help, a concern over safety or injustice in our community. It may even be something that you feel strongly this congregation needs to be doing.
If you have internal stirrings along any of these lines, if you feel passionately about something, consider this — it may be God nudging you to act. There is no promise that it will be easy, or that the right people will listen, at least not at first. But there is a promise that persistence pays off, that the longed—for future will arrive—sometimes sooner than expected—and that God continues to move in surprising ways.
Thanks be to God for that. Amen.
1 Long, Thomas G., Matthew, Westminster Bible Companion. Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1997. pp. 174-175 go back
2 Tom Wright, Matthew for Everyone. Louisville: SPCK and Westminster John Knox Press, 2004. p. 201go back
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