Matthew 15.10-28
Today’s gospel ends well enough. A woman is praised for her faith and her daughter is healed. But the encounter between Jesus and the Canaanite woman is difficult to watch. First, he is silent. Then, dismissive. “I was sent only to the lost sheep of Israel,” and she is a Gentile, not from Israel. Finally, there is a cruel twist with Jesus’ word about the woman’s ethnic background. “It is not fair to take the children’s bread and throw it to the dogs.”
Dogs! What do you make of that? The same Jesus who says at the beginning of today’s gospel, “It is not what goes into the mouth that defiles a person, but it is what comes out of the mouth that defiles” says a pretty defiling thing today. We might be a canine loving society; the ancient Middle East was not. Dogs weren’t domesticated family pets. They were more like subway rats: scavengers, wild, rabid. Calling someone ‘a dog’ meant you thought they were untouchable, outcast. What are we to make of this? A woman comes to Jesus in faith on behalf of her daughter in great need and Jesus repeats on an old ethnic insult.
Had the disciples rejected her, we might understand. Students don’t always get what their teacher is teaching. Sometimes a classroom of students—or disciples—needs time to get things right. We do, too. We’ve all been schooled in insults like this Personal attacks, ridicule, and threats have become the grammar of daily life. I suppose there’s a quick bump of self-righteous satisfaction that comes from putting others down. But a social commentator recently observed, it’s “monotonously predictable.” And it’s also a problem.
Jesus’ diagnostic list in today’s gospel of what is in our hearts includes false witness and slander, the words we use. What comes out of the mouth defiles and reveals something about the condition of the very core of our being. “The heart is deceptive above all things,” says the prophet Jeremiah.
The New Testament letter of James knows this, too, knows the power of sin at work in the words we use. “See how a small spark can set large forest ablaze? The tongue is a fire…full of deadly poison…Out of the same mouth come blessings and curses! It should not be this way.” Now the fact that a reprimand like that shows up in one of the earliest letters of the New Testament tells us this is not merely a contemporary problem but as been a problem from the beginning for Jesus’ followers, a symptom of our fallen human condition. Students don’t always get what their teacher is teaching. But then what are we to make of Jesus’ off-putting attitude and reliance on an old ethnic insult?
Biblical commentators have used words like ‘very odd’ and ‘disturbing’ to describe what Jesus says. Some scholars try to take the edge off the insult by saying that the word behind our English translation doesn’t mean a feral street dog but is a term of affection for a house dog. I’m not sure that makes it any better. That, however, strikes me as example of how quickly we try to excuse insulting language by putting responsibility on the one hurt or saying it was all a joke. But it won’t do to hear Jesus says, ‘Only joking. I meant puppy.’
Others suspect that Jesus was simply a person of his time and couldn’t escape ancient prejudices and hatred between Jews and Gentiles but rather reflected them in his life. A writer named Frank Beare believes “These words exhibit the worst kind of chauvinism” and display “incredible insolence.” But that means Jesus was a sinner, not a savior, a sinner that needs a savior.
I have my doubts about it all. I have my doubts that Jesus was caught up in old prejudices. I have my doubts because of how Jesus welcomes Gentiles throughout his ministry. Chapters earlier in Matthew’s gospel, Jesus is in Gentile territory, as he is today. There he heals a Gentile man filled with a multitude of unclean spirits. There’s no sense there that Jesus is caught up in old prejudices toward the nations. He doesn’t try to send the man away; he reaches out to him and cares for him.
So what is Jesus doing today when he repeats an old ethnic insult? A helpful answer for me comes from Kenneth Bailey. Bailey was a biblical scholar who spent decades living and teaching in Lebanon, Israel, and Cyprus; he devoted his life to learning about the culture of Middle East in Jesus’ day. In one of his books, Jesus through Middle Eastern Eyes, Bailey says he doesn’t believe our Lord is caught up in old prejudices. Rather, he believes Jesus’ words are meant to be a mirror that reflects the narrow-mindedness of the people around him. And if we don’t like what we hear, that’s the point. Our Lord’s words are meant to shock us and wake us up to our prejudice.
It’s what satire and parody do: saying certain things in certain ways to expose our hypocrisy and dishonesty. It’s all meant to evoke change. Or maybe it’s like the embarrassment parents feel when they hear their children repeating things the parents themselves have said but are shocked to hear repeated back. ‘Maybe I need to change.’ Jesus’ words bother us because we’ve heard similar things, said similar things, and know it’s not right even when we say and hear them. As Bailey puts it, “It is acutely embarrassing to hear and see one’s deepest prejudices verbalized and demonstrated” by others. If Jesus’ insult of the Canaanite woman shocks us, it’s because we know we are called to live God’s grace, mercy, and blessing in everything we say and do. “Maintain justice and do what is right,” Isaiah says today.
Now we need always to be reminded of this, be reminded of God’s grace and renewed to do what is right. We need to be reminded because we fall short. Students don’t always get what a teacher is teacher. How true is that for us with Jesus? Yet the scriptures also tell us over and over that we are not left to ourselves. One of the gifts of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection for us and for the world is that he dismantles the racial barriers that separate people.
St Paul, in Ephesians, says that through the cross and blood of Jesus Christ, the dividing wall of hostility between people has been broken down; all people belong to God. In another place Paul says that to rebuild those old barriers dividing people one from another is contrary to the life, work, and meaning of Jesus.
There is no room in the church, as the community of Jesus, for prejudice, bigotry, or hatred based on class, creed, color, or any other ways we wall ourselves off from one another. Rather, the mission and task of the church is to be a living sign of the grace of God that brings people together. The catechism of the prayer book says, “The mission of the Church is to restore all people to unity with God and each other in Christ.” To do this, God is at work in you, says the New Testament letter of Hebrews, to “equip you with everything good that you may do his will, working in you that which is pleasing in his sight, through Jesus Christ.”
A life of unity in God, and with each other, is given in today’s scripture readings. In Isaiah, God doesn’t reject anyone but makes all nations joyful is his presence and call us to do what is right. In the Gospel, a Canaanite woman seeks out, and trusts, the welcoming goodness of God given in Jesus. And even as our Lord repeats the insults that we are all schooled in, he turns us a different way, to a life renewed and restored by grace. The same Jesus who heals the Canaanite woman’s daughter, heals us from at the very depths and core of our lives—our heart—so that the words that come out of our mouths, to say nothing of the deeds of our lives, break down the barriers that divide people one from another. Isn’t that what Paul has said today in Romans? “God is merciful to all.”
The life that Jesus gives is the life that we live: forgiveness, mercy, healing, hope. Thet life that Jesus gives is the life we live even in the words we say. “Let your speech always be gracious,” says the New Testament letter of Colossians. And in Ephesians, “Let no evil talk come out of your mouths, but only what is useful for building up…so that your words may give grace to those who hear.” God is at work in you, equipping you “with everything good…working in you that which is pleasing in his sight, through Jesus Christ. The life Jesus gives is the life we live. Today, God’s grace and blessing make us people of resolve to put an end to the insults we are schooled and be a blessing to others, so that everyone around us will know that the grace and mercy of God.
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