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.’”1
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?
1Surah 49:13 – Translated by Dr. Mustafa Khattab, 2016
