Our Mirror

August 20th 2023

Year A; 12th Pentecost; Proper 15

Genesis 45: 1-15

Psalm 133

Matthew 15: 21-28

Matthew 15:21-28

Jesus left that place and went away to the district of Tyre and Sidon. Just then a Canaanite woman from that region came out and started shouting, “Have mercy on me, Lord, Son of David; my daughter is tormented by a demon.” But he did not answer her at all. And his disciples came and urged him, saying, “Send her away, for she keeps shouting after us.” He answered, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” But she came and knelt before him, saying, “Lord, help me.” He answered, “It is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.” She said, “Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters’ table.” Then Jesus answered her, “Woman, great is your faith! Let it be done for you as you wish.” And her daughter was healed instantly.

Homily by Rev. Megan Limburg

In the name of the Holy Three. Amen.

Our reading from Matthew is one of the most difficult, most puzzling and most disturbing passages in the gospels. A Canaanite woman cries out to Jesus for mercy and help, and his responses seem, well, uncaring, even heartless.

Preachers over the centuries have tried to explain away Jesus’s behavior, and have tried to soften what he said.

Before we take our turn wrestling with this reading, let’s step back for a moment and try to understand what was happening.

Jesus and his disciples have traveled to the far northwest border of Israel, to the cities of Tyre and Sidon. This area is not a Jewish territory, but a Gentile one, hardly a friendly area for Jesus and his disciples to visit as devout Jews.

The woman who shouts to Jesus is a Canaanite, a Gentile, and as a Canaanite, a member of a group that were in fact, old and bitter enemies of Israel.

And there is added tension to this encounter as she is a woman. Women and men did not have casual or spontaneous conversations in those days, and a Canaanite woman would never have approached a Jewish man alone.

So as this encounter begins, the woman is at a triple disadvantage: she has religious, national, and gender differences with Jesus, all impediments to keep her from even approaching him.

But still, she is highly motivated as her daughter is gravely ill, tormented by a demon, as folks said in those days, likely a mental illness that made the child behave in terrifying and destructive ways. The woman is desperate for help, at the end of her rope, and has heard of Jesus and the healing he might do.

So, despite her triple disadvantage, she seeks him out. She shouts to Jesus, shouting perhaps because she wants to get his attention, and because she might well have decided to keep her distance from him, to avoid the trouble that her disadvantages might bring down on her.

“Have mercy on me, Lord, Son of David; my daughter is tormented by a demon.”

Now the way she addresses Jesus is startling, as “Son of David”, as this title implies that he is a messianic figure, a term and understanding that Jesus’s’ own disciples have not yet come to understand. So, it seems, the woman with three disadvantages, can see what others can’t.

Nonetheless, Jesus begins a series of seemingly heartless responses to this desperate and perceptive woman.

First, Jesus ignores her, not answering her shout for mercy; despite its volume, she seems invisible to him.

Second, still not acknowledging the woman, Jesus only replies to his disciples, after they complain about her shouting at them too, saying:

“I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.”

Jesus says this loud enough for the woman to hear. So first he ignored her, and now he refuses to help her, saying his ministry is limited, and not for the Gentiles, there is not enough for her to receive.

The woman does hear what Jesus says and she still dares to come nearer, kneeling now at his feet and simply saying:

“Lord help me.”

She is a mother in overwhelming need for her child, and there is nowhere else to turn.

And Jesus, our brother and savior, seemingly without emotion or care, looks down at her, still kneeling at his feet and says:

“It is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.”

Here Jesus has insulted the woman, referring to her with an ethnic slur. The Jews in that time saw dogs as unclean, so to call her a dog was to draw attention to her identity as a Gentile, a Canaanite, an enemy, and thus one to be scorned, excluded, looked down on, seen as less than human, the other.

So, the Canaanite woman has been ignored, refused, and insulted, but still she persists, she does not walk away.

Her courage is astounding as she breaks through the divides of religious, national and gender differences, and cleverly throws Jesus’s words right back to him:

“Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters’ table.”

And only now does Jesus seem to wake up, to be jolted back into himself, and finally respond in a more familiar, Jesus-like way, complimenting her faith and healing her daughter.

So why, why did our brother and savior first act in these painful and startling ways: responding to a person in great need by first ignoring her, then refusing her, and finally insulting her?

Commentators have tried to help Jesus out for years, offering explanations, like Jesus was testing her faith, or excuses, like Jesus was wrestling at this time with whether he was called to only the Jews or to all the world.

But none of those explanations help us to recognize Jesus as our savior and brother in this passage.

He seems coldhearted, cruel, thoughtless, mean, and strangely a lot like, well, us humans, at times.

Maybe Jesus spoke this way to the Canaanite woman to show his disciples, and us, how WE look when faced with the desperate needs of our fellow humans.

When we hear of yet more desperate needs in our world, another town, country, or people shouting to the world, to us, do we at times respond by:

Ignoring them, pretending we do not hear or know of this need?

Do we respond by saying there are limits on the world’s resources, that we can’t help everyone as individuals, as a state, as a country?

And do we finally respond, when our guilt is perhaps heaviest about what we have and yet others live in poverty without good healthcare or housing, do we bring out our harshest and most effective response, that those in need are less than human, the dogs, the least, and can thus be ignored?

Our angry words of scorn freeing us from responsibility as Christians, as Americans, as humans?

We are uncomfortable with this upsetting story of Jesus acting so differently, so heartlessly.

But perhaps Jesus chose these actions to hold up a mirror to his disciples, to hold up a mirror to us, saying, I know this behavior looks odd coming from me, but it should look odd coming from you too, my followers, my friends, my brothers, my sisters.

So rather than making excuses for Jesus, may we pray for a bit of the courage the Canaanite woman showed when she persisted.

May we persist in looking with honesty in the mirror that Jesus holds up to us, and have the courage to grow and to dare in our faith, to truly be more like our brother and savior.

Amen.