We’ve spent the
past few weeks moving through the life and teachings of Jesus as
recorded in the Gospel of Matthew – lingering on his parables and
thinking about his miracles. Today I’d like to continue that by
taking the next episode in Jesus’ life, the next little pericope –
as Bible students will call it – and treat it as a sort of parable.
I want to tell his earthly story with a heavenly meaning with the
goal of shaping how we live our earthly lives for the purposes of the
kingdom of heaven.
We’ve seen Jesus,
in these past weeks, preaching and teaching the people. We’ve seen
how they followed him for instruction and pursued him for healing.
And now Jesus wants to find someplace to be alone, some place where
he can get away from the seeking, searching, pleading, desperate
crowds. He wants a place to recharge.
So imagine Jesus
going up and down through the towns and villages of Michigan. He’s
been to Ann Arbor and Flint. He’s been up to Port Huron. But now,
when he’s tired and wanting some place to be alone, some place
where they haven’t heard of him, some place where he won’t be
recognized, he and his entourage of disciples head to Dearborn.
But while he is
there a Muslim woman, wearing her hijab and carrying her small
daughter, approaches him on the street and shouts out, “Isa! Isa
al-Masih! Please, take pity and heal my troubled daughter.”
She shouts so
loudly that she is starting to attract unwanted attention, so the
disciples say to Jesus, “Master, please. Give her what she wants so
she’ll shut up and just go away.”
But Jesus says,
“No. I’ve not come for people like them. I’ve been sent only to
care for real Americans. America first.”
And this Muslim
woman in her hijab pleads again. “Please.”
Jesus says, “No.
It is not right to take food from the children to give it to dogs. I
don’t know you.”
But the woman won’t
quit. She says, “As the prophet, peace be upon him, has taught us,
Allah has said, ‘O humanity! Indeed we created you from a male and
a female, and made you into peoples and tribes so that you may get to
know one another. Surely the most noble of you in the sight of God is
the most righteous among you.’”
And Jesus, looking
at this Muslim woman, wearing her hijab and carrying her small
daughter, said, “Woman, you have great faith. Let your wish be
granted and your daughter healed.” And from that moment her
daughter was well.
Or consider again,
German Jesus in Berlin, approached by a Jewish woman, “Bitte.
Bitte. Heal my daughter.” And German Jesus says, “No. I
can’t. I’ve come only for the pure-blooded Aryans.”
Or Jesus in Georgia
in the 1960s still under the Jim Crow laws approached by a Black
woman with her daughter…
Or Jesus in San
Francisco in the 1980s at the height of the AIDS crisis, approached
by a gay man, “Please heal my partner…”
And Jesus replies
to them – “It’s not right to take food for the children and
give it to dogs.” Dismissive and denigrating, he speaks to them as
if they aren’t even human. As if they are animals. Beasts. And this
is ugly and grotesque.
Now I am not saying
that Jesus was an American Christian Nationalist, or a Nazi, or
segregationist, or a homophobe, but in calling the Canaanite woman a
“dog” Jesus was repeating the first century Jewish equivalent of
these groups’ rhetoric, the same kind of ethnic and religious
boundary language that has been used throughout history to exclude
people for one reason or another.
And it is ugly. But
here it is. As I said before, Jesus’ parables are not simple. They
are strange and weird, and sometimes told to deliberately confuse.
It’s up to us to wrestle with them. And the same is true with this
episode in Jesus’ life. It is difficult, and strange, and
horrifying. And we must wrestle with it.
Now the common
explanation, the easy
explanation of this event in
Jesus’ life is that Jesus
is testing her – saying the ugly thing to see if her faith is
strong enough to overcome the objection. But Matthew never says this,
never gives any indication of this. He simply records Jesus calling
her – and her small daughter – dogs.
But
her humble response changes him. Her simple rebuke corrects him. He
learns from her and grows in compassion. Maybe we’re uncomfortable
with the idea of Jesus having to learn compassion. But the letter to
the Hebrews describes Jesus learning obedience through
suffering (Hebrews 5:8) and the Gospel of Luke describes Jesus
growing in wisdom (Luke 2:52). Here we see that growth, that
learning in action. Jesus learns compassion from the Canaanite woman.
And
in that moment of learning and growth Jesus says, “Woman! Your
faith is great!” He is changed and in that change the world is
changed. The child is healed. The gospel is not only proclaimed but
put into action. And the Kingdom of Heaven is expanded.
The
good news, the gospel good news, is that Jesus listens and learns to
love. The good news is that compassion builds the kingdom. The good
news is that faith can break down the barriers between us.
So
we wrestle with this story this morning. And we ask the question: Who
are the dogs? Who are the outsiders? Who are the unwelcomed? Who are
the excluded? Who are the unwanted and unloved?
The
Jew? The black single-mother? The lesbian? The illegal immigrant? The
red-hat MAGA enthusiast? The liberal? The conservative? The
socialist? The atheist? Who is the dog?
And
what will you share with them?
