Scripture Matthew 15:21-28
Jesus left the place [where he had been teaching] and went back to the regions of Tyre and Sidon. Just then a Canaanite woman from that area came out and shouted, “Have mercy on me, Sir, Son of David; my daughter is badly demon-possessed.” But Jesus did not answer her a word. Then his disciples came and implored him, saying, “Send her away, for she keeps shouting after us.” Now Jesus answered, “I was not sent to any except the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” But she came and knelt before Jesus saying, “Rabbi, help me.” Then Jesus said, “It is not good to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.” But she said, “Yes, rabbi, but the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their lord’s table.” Then Jesus answered her, “Woman, great is your faith! Let it be for you as you wish.” And her daughter was healed at that moment.
Translation by the Rev. Dr. Wilda A. Gafney, from her book,
A Women’s Lectionary for the Whole Church, Year W.
Meditation
A couple of weeks ago there was a little brouhaha over the incarnation on Twitter.
This kind of thing happens more than you would think.
Here’s how it started. A member of the clergy wrote, “Christology is about how God related to us as a human being, as Jesus.”
Pretty soon after that, another individual commented: “He just called Jesus a human being!” To be clear, this person believed that to be a mistake.
A chorus of people—Catholic, Protestant, and Orthodox—quickly chimed in…to say, uh, yeah. That’s Christianity 101.
Here’s what the Nicene Creed has to say about it:
For us and for our salvation
he [Jesus Christ] came down from heaven,
was incarnate of the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary
and became truly human.
And here’s what the Presbyterian Church’s “Brief Statement of Faith” has to say about it:
We trust in Jesus Christ,
fully human, fully God.
We don’t claim that Jesus was half God and half human. We don’t claim he was some kind of demigod, sort of God, not quite human. Instead, we claim God’s impossible, confusing math: fully God, fully human. One plus one equals One.
What I’ve found over the years is that most people are much more uncomfortable with Jesus’ humanity than they are with his divinity. Years ago in a book group at another church I found myself in a conversation about what Jesus knew as a child. Scripture is largely silent on this, though there are some gnostic gospels with fanciful stories. My position is that, if he was/ is fully human, if he had to be born to a woman, then he had to grow and learn, just like other human beings. That’s still what I believe. But someone else in that group took the position that Jesus had all the knowledge of God available to him—even as a child. Jesus knew, for example, the quadratic equation, understood quantum theory, string theory. If you read the gospels in chronological order, it seems that they move from a very human Jesus in the earliest gospel (according to Mark) to a very divine, all-knowing Jesus in the latest gospel (according to John.)
And the truth is, we don’t know the inner workings of Jesus’ mind when he walked this earth. But this is what we claim: fully God, fully human.
We meet this Jesus today in the region of Tyre and Sidon, Gentile territory. It’s also seaside-territory—Jesus and his disciples have gone to the shore, perhaps for a little break. But a shouting Canaanite woman greets them: Jesus, Sir, Son of David, have mercy on me! My daughter is badly demon-possessed. The woman has greeted Jesus as royalty—son of David. By calling him that, she has also greeted him as the expected Messiah. She has greeted him with all possible respect, given that she is yelling and also, in distress. Jesus’ response is shocking. Our translation is chilling: Jesus said not a word.
What is going on here?
Maybe it’s that Jesus came to the seashore for the same reasons I go to it: to restore his soul, to bathe in the wonder of God’s beautiful creation. Maybe the idea of working (on what is supposed to be a vacation) is bothering him right now. But I don’t think so. There are loads of examples of Jesus helping people, healing people, even when he is tired, even when he is burned right out.
Maybe it’s that Jesus doesn’t want to bother with a woman? There were fairly strict protocols in place at this time, about public interactions between women and unrelated men. But Jesus has never hesitated to interact with women in other stories, in all the gospels.
That leaves us the Gentile problem. Jesus has mentioned Gentiles several times in Matthew’s gospel by the time we reach chapter 15. All those mentions have been negative, including the one we read last week. In encouraging everyone to love their enemies, Jesus says that loving those who are already friends and family just doesn’t cut it. Even the Gentiles do that, he says.
What comes next confirms it. It’s the Gentile problem.
The disciples encourage Jesus to send the woman packing, because she is making a fuss and yelling and drawing attention to them. Jesus concurs, saying, basically, I wasn’t sent to help people like her. I was sent to my own people.
This woman, whose name we don’t know, is a Canaanite, a Gentile. She has called him “Son of David,” a title that affirms his genealogy—Jesus’ line, according to the first chapter of Matthew’s gospel, goes all the way back to Abraham, via King David. But that genealogy includes this woman, too. By calling Jesus son of David, the woman is invoking a bloodline that contains three different Canaanite women—Rahab, Tamar, and Ruth. The woman has greeted Jesus as king and Messiah. But she has also greeted him as kin. Relation. His family tree is her family tree.
Now, the woman makes a bold move. She gets right in Jesus’ space, kneels in front of him. This is an act of worship, or at the very least, subservience. Think, kissing his hand or ring. Think, lying down on the ground in front of him. The Greek word means all these things at the same time. And at the same time, she makes one more plea: Rabbi, Teacher, help me. She has placed herself in an entirely vulnerable position.
The woman’s bold move is met with a crushing response. Jesus says, “It is not good to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.”
Dr. Gafney, our translator, has this to say about Jesus in this moment: she says it bears “uncomfortable witness to the humanity of Jesus in an unwelcome way.” Jesus shows his bias here—an ethnically-based prejudice, which doesn’t really align with our preconceptions of who and what Jesus is. If he is the Christ, doesn’t that mean he never sins, never does anything harmful or hurtful?
And somewhere, in this moment, somewhere offstage, this woman’s daughter is suffering. We don’t know whether she is a child or an adult. If she is “demon-possessed”—whatever that means—her life is a misery, and so is the life of anyone who loves her, including—maybe, especially—her mother.
Nevertheless, she persists. Jesus says, “It is not good to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.” The woman snaps back: “Yes, rabbi, but the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their lord’s table.”
Fine. Think of us as dogs. But then, treat us at least as well as you treat your dogs.
And that does it. The woman’s persistence—her courage, her quickness, her absolute zeal to advocate on behalf of her daughter breaks whatever spell of prejudice Jesus is laboring under. Never underestimate the zeal of a woman to fight for her daughter, her child, her sister, herself. Never underestimate her determination to make her voice heard.
Now, Jesus’ response is whole-heartedly welcoming. Now, he sees what was annoying and disruptive, and calls it faith. Not just faith, great faith—great is her faithfulness. Now, his healing of her daughter—even from a remote distance—is complete. And he notes that in his healing of the daughter, he is granting this woman her heart’s desire. “Let it be for you as you wish.”
Fully God and fully human. If Jesus is / was fully human, if he had to be born to a woman, doesn’t it stand to reason that he had to grow and learn, just like other human beings? And if Jesus can grow and learn, isn’t that incredibly encouraging? We go through our days so sure of what we know, and then we run, smash into uncomfortable realities that force us to reckon with truths we don’t want to face. No one is immune. Even Jesus changes his mind. Even Jesus learns and grows.
The incarnation is the central feature of our faith, a feature none of us fully understand. It is truly a mystery. But it shows us the essential generosity and goodness of a God who does not leave us orphaned, but who came to be among us—yes, as a human being, perhaps even fallible at times. But one whose love and grace and desire to offer healing flowed out to the world then, and continues to flow out to us now.
Thanks be to God. Amen.