JESUS AND THE CANAANITE WOMAN
Matthew 15:21-28
August 17, 2008 -
Rev. Janet Robertson Duggins
(This sermon was originally
presented in a conversation format.)
What
is your initial reaction to this story?
If you find it confusing,
surprising, difficult, challenging, disturbing, or even shocking, you are not
alone.
What makes this story so challenging
is mostly Jesus’ reaction to the woman who asks for his help, isn’t it? First, he ignores here. Then, when he does talk to her, what he says
seems rather harsh, insensitive, and perhaps even prejudiced.
(Even when you realize that
it was fairly common to refer to non-Jews as “dogs” it’s hardly what we expect
of Jesus.)
But then (and this is just
as strange and surprising) by the end of the story Jesus seems to have done an
about-face and changed his attitude toward the woman completely. We don’t expect Jesus’ behavior to be so changeable.
Let’s take a closer look at
the story, by looking at the people involved.
Let’s begin with the woman
herself:
What
do we know, what can we surmise about this woman?
She’s Canaanite – not Jewish,
but also not a part of the Greco-Roman culture either. You might call her a Palestinian.
She’s a mother who loves her
daughter.
She’s courageous,
determined, persistent.
She knows or intuits enough
about Jesus to believe he can help her.
She has faith.
In the early church, this
woman (nameless in Matthew’s account) was given the name “Justa”
– perhaps to signify that through persistence and faith she achieved the
justice she needed for herself and her daughter.
And
then there are the disciples. What’s
going on with them?
They want Justa to go away!
And the ask Jesus to send her
away.
What do you suppose they are
thinking?
Simply
that she’s a pest? Or crazy?
That she’s not important
because she’s not a Jew? Because she’s a Canaanite?
an outsider?
A woman?
Are they just trying to
encourage Jesus to stay focused on his mission and not get distracted by every
little request?
And
what is Jesus like here?
At first he seems not to be
the loving Jesus we expect, open and caring toward everyone, and ready to help. He’s not “nice” It seems like he might not be inclined to
help this woman just because she’s of a different ethnic group and religious! In fact, he seems rather disparaging to here.
But remember: He has come deliberately into a non-Jewish
area, leaving the places where he and his friends usually travelled, places
where the crowds would be largely made up of his own people. He has put himself in a place to have contact
with this woman.
So what can be going on
here? Why do you think Jesus behaves the
way he does, at first, toward this woman?
He doesn’t pay attention to
her at first; maybe he doesn’t know if her request for help is sincere or if
she’s just trying to annoy him.
Is he testing her faith,
challenging her to really understand who she’s approaching and what she’s
asking?
Another possibility: this is one of those places where we see
Jesus’ mission and identity being defined.
NT Wright (in Matthew for Everyone)
says that “Jesus wasn’t simply a travelling doctor whose task was to heal every
sick person he met; he had a very specific calling….” He was fulfilling God’s promises to
Nevertheless, throughout
Jesus’ ministry, we do see little glimpses of the future direction of God’s
kingdom… opening up to non-Jews and to the whole world, even to very unexpected people.
Remember that anytime we
read the gospels we are looking at two “layers” of meaning at the same time:
We ask “what’s Jesus doing?”
and “what does Jesus mean by what he says?”
We also ask “what’s Matthew
up to here? Why does he tell us this
story, and why does he tell it this way?”
Matthew is always concerned
about connecting Jesus to Jewish tradition and prophecy – showing him as the fulfillment
of expectations for a messiah. So it
could be that Matthew is wanting to stress that idea
here.
Matthew wrote for an
audience of mostly Gentile but also including some Jewish Christians – so questions
about the relationship of Judaism to this new faith of the Christians are
important to him: What defines or
includes someone in God’s people?
The context of this
conversation between Jesus and Justa is interesting
and relevant. Jesus had a little dispute
with some of the strictly religious Jews who wondered why his disciples didn’t
follow the traditional rituals of handwashing before
meals, which was part of being ritually “clean” or pure.
Jesus response is that they
have placed those traditional rituals above more important commandments. Then he goes on to give a speech about what “cleanness”
or purity really means: it’s not what
you touch or eat that defiles; it’s what you say and do. Then Jesus leave the region of the Sea of
Galilee – an area of communities of observant Jews - and comes into the region of
It’s possible that Jesus is
quoting a familiar saying when he says, “It’s not fair to take the children’s
food and give it to the dogs” – laying out the stereotype before he rejects it. Perhaps he lets the situation unfold
according to expectations at first, in order to create the opportunity for
those expectations to be overturned.
You know, in Matthew only
two people are praised by Jesus for their faith, and both of them are
Gentiles: a Roman soldier (in chapter 8)
and this Canaanite woman. In both cases, they cames with a request
for healing for someone else.
(The woman in our story comes for her daughter and the soldier comes for
his servant.) In each case, the request
is granted with an instantaneous healing, at a distance. And (as someone else has said) “the
boundaries of Jesus’ mission open up to non-Jews precisely because of the faith
of the Gentiles.”
It may be that these stories
are intended as encouragement to faith for Matthew’s first readers, most of
whom were themselves Gentile Christians.
So what happens in the
course of our story? What changes?
The woman – Justa, if you like – stands her ground. She is firm in her conviction that there is
something of God’s blessings and mercy for everyone.
(This
is very different from most Jesus stories, isn’t it? Usually it’s Jesus who says the wise
thing that either convinces or confounds those he’s talking to. Here the woman wins the argument. I love that Jesus allows her – and Matthew
allows her! – to have the punch line.)
So
Jesus praises her faith, and promises that her request will be granted. (We are told that it was.)
I
don’t know why this story goes the way it goes, or exactly why Jesus interacts
with this woman as he does.
But
I do think that if Jesus had simply been the nice guy we expect here, nobody
would have learned quite so much. It’s
almost as if he lifts up into prominence the barriers that stand between him
and this woman – makes them really
obvious – so that everybody – the woman, his disciples, the bystanders, and
eventually Matthew’s readers – can see those barriers melt away.
But
before that happens, we get the unvarnished truth about how serious those
barriers are.
If
we don’t recognize the magnitude of those barriers, we can’t appreciate the
courage and faith it took for this woman to make the effort to bridge
them. We can’t appreciate the courage
and faith Jesus’ followers will be called to exercise in doing likewise with
the barriers they encounter between people.
And that’s important because (in hindsight) we know – and somehow this
Canaanite woman did, too! – that’s where Jesus’
ministry is headed. You will remember
that Matthew’s gospel concludes with Jesus telling his friend to go into all
the world and make disciples of all nations.
The story of the Canaanite woman – Justa – is a
little preview of the God’s kingdom, and of our calling.