At that time, Jesus withdrew to the region of Tyre and Sidon. And behold, a Canaanite woman of that district came and called out. “Have pity on me, Lord, Son of David! My daughter is tormented by a demon.” But Jesus did not say a word in answer to her. Jesus’ disciples came and asked him, “Send her away, for she keeps calling out after us.” He said in reply, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” But the woman came and did Jesus homage, saying, “Lord, help me.” He said in reply, “It is not right to take the food of the children and throw it to the dogs.” She said, “Please, Lord, for even the dogs eat the scraps that fall from the table of their masters.” Then Jesus said to her in reply, “O woman, great is your faith! Let it be done for you as you wish.” And the woman’s daughter was healed from that hour. (Matthew 15.21-28)
We find ourselves with another healing story to consider on this Twentieth Sunday in Ordinary Time. That is not unusual in itself simply because healing was a good part of Jesus’ mission. The scriptures make it clear that he often healed sick people, those with physical ailments and those with mental diseases. The story today is concerned with a girl who, as the text says, “is tormented by a demon.” While her behavior is never described for us, we can assume she is exhibiting erratic and destructive behavior that was understood in these times as possession by an evil spirit.
The storyline is so similar to other healings that Jesus performed that nothing stands out about it at first glance. Except for a detail or two. For one, the supplicant is a Canaanite woman living in the region of Tyre and Sidon, an area about fifty miles north of Galilee, largely inhabited by Gentiles or non-Jews. The other detail that differentiates the story from most other healing stories is that Jesus does not immediately respond to the request from the woman for help with her daughter.
Instead–and this is the part of the story that puts a wrinkle in it–Jesus at first responds to the woman with the statement, “It is not right to take the food of the children and throw it to the dogs.” Admittedly, we find it hard to make sense of Jesus’ brutal dismissal of the woman with such ugly words. So how to make sense of it?
Most explanations, in my opinion, get overcomplicated and messy, so I tend to avoid them. It is better to go with a simpler explanation. To arrive at that simpler explanation, we want to remember who Matthew is writing to when he composed his text a half-century or more after Jesus’ life on earth had ended. Everything in this gospel from start to finish is intended for a specific audience. That audience is Jewish-Christian believers.
In other words, Matthew shapes his gospel in a way that makes most sense to Christian believers who have strong Jewish roots. He wants his words to make sense to people coming out of that world. So, he fashions the Sermon on the Mount so that it aligns with Moses going atop Mount Sinai to get the Ten Commandments. Jesus becomes a new Moses and his teachings offer a revised understanding of the Mosaic Law.
Also, in this gospel, Jesus is often addressed as Teacher, that is Rabbi, a title particularly understood by a Jewish audience. Matthew also refers back to the Hebrew Scriptures more often than the other evangelists, wanting to draw a strong connection between the ancient texts and Jesus. Some say there are at least a hundred allusions to the Hebrew scriptures in this gospel. Regardless of the count, it is high. And we know from our study that Matthew likes to use the phrase “this took place to fulfill what was spoken by the prophet” to show a direct line between the present and the past.
In much the same way, it is also well-known that Jews of the time often disparaged Gentiles or non-Jews by referring to them as swine or dogs. So, when Matthew has Jesus say, “It is not right to take the food of the children and throw it to the dogs,” his listeners nod their heads, understanding fully what he is saying. In all likelihood, they’re thinking the same thing, believing outsiders need to stay outside.
At this point, Jesus is simply sticking to the party line. But, as we also know, Jesus is good at turning things inside out and upside down. And that comes a few seconds later after hearing the woman’s answer, “Please, Lord, for even the dogs eat the scraps that fall from the table of their masters.” He heaps the highest praise on her–a Gentile–saying to her, “O woman, great is your faith!” Suddenly, she has become an example to be followed, not an outsider to be cast away.
It is masterful on Matthew’s part to lure his audience into agreement at the start and then to have their assumptions about outsiders thrown on its head. It is much the same as Jesus’ intent when he spoke to the crowds the words, “You have heard it said, but I say to you.” Here, in this story of the Canaanite woman, Matthew again has put before his listeners the identical lesson he has done several times already. We need only recall that the Magi came from the East to visit the baby Jesus, these visitors clearly being Gentiles. And the gospel will end with the great commission, the Risen Jesus telling the eleven to “make disciples of all the nations,” meaning the Gentiles.
So, this story of the Canaanite woman, an outsider in the minds of Jews as well as Matthew’s audience of Jewish Christians, challenges their mindset about who is welcomed at the table. In my mind, this healing story should be studied alongside the story of the healing of the Centurion’s servant that we find in Chapter 8 of Matthew’s text.
The plot of the two stories are told with exact precision. In that earlier story, a Roman centurion approached Jesus and “appealed” to him, “Lord, my servant is lying at home paralyzed, suffering dreadfully.” Jesus answers that he will go and cure him. But the centurion answers back, “Lord, I am not worthy to have you enter under my roof, only say the word and my servant will be healed.”
Hearing the centurion’s words, Jesus responds, “Amen, I say to you, in no one in Israel have I found such faith.” And to highlight the contrast between this non-Jew and the Jews, Jesus goes further, stating, “I say to you, many will come from the east and the west, and will recline with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob at the banquet in the kingdom of heaven, but the children of the kingdom will be driven out into the outer darkness where there will be wailing and grinding of teeth.”
The end of the story is simple. Jesus says to the centurion, “You may go; as you have believed, let it be done for you.” Matthew provides this coda, “And at that very hour his servant was healed.” It is the same end he will put to the story of the Canaanite woman, telling his listeners, “And her daughter was healed from that hour.”
In effect, Jesus has elevated these two outsiders above the insiders, their faith in him having proved to be exemplary while the faith of the Jewish leaders and many of the Jews has been lackluster or non-existent. We would be missing an important point if we failed to see that Jesus’ highest praise is reserved for Gentiles, not Jews.
It is not coincidental that the story of the Canaanite woman immediately follows on the heels of another encounter between Jesus and the Jewish leadership. That encounter begins with the Pharisees and scribes castigating Jesus, demanding an answer to the question, “Why do your disciples break the tradition of the elders? They do not wash their hands when they eat a meal.”
That exchange ends with Jesus calling out the Pharisees and scribes as hypocrites whose “hearts are far from me” and as blind guides “who will fall into a pit.” Matthew transitions from that argument with the Jewish leaders to the story of the Canaanite woman with the phrase “then Jesus went from that place and withdrew to the region of Tyre and Sidon.”
And what does he find when he comes to the region of the Gentiles? He finds someone whose faith is great, the opposite of what he has left behind when he was confronted by the Jewish leaders. Jesus’ reply to the Canaanite woman makes perfect sense, then, when he tells her that he “was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel,” meaning the Jews, and when she responds with “even dogs eat the scraps.” What the Jews have rejected the Gentiles, exemplified in the Canaanite, now embrace.
With the backstory to the exchange between Jesus and the Canaanite woman now understood as providing a contrast between the rejection of Jesus by the Jews, understood as insiders, and the acceptance of his message by the Gentiles, understood as outsiders, we find a lesson for ourselves, being reminded by the two events that we do not want to be like the Jewish leaders whom Jesus rebuked with the words, “You have nullified the word of God for the sake of your tradition,” but instead want to find ourselves in the camp of the Canaanite woman, someone who believes in Jesus so much so that Jesus promises her “let it be done for you as you wish.”
Much the same as Matthew’s audience of Jewish-Christians, we may be overly comfortable in our convictions that we are better than others whom we view as outsiders, convinced of our moral superiority up against those who fall short because we, unlike them, “hold to our traditions,” while Jesus suggests our self-righteousness is no more than a sure sign of blindness and pigheadedness, not proof of our fidelity to Jesus and to his way of living.
As Matthew understood as he wrote to his Jewish-Christian hearers and as we also should understand, it is an easy trap for followers of Jesus to think that we are morally superior or totally unlike those whom we denigrate and disregard because of their difference from us, a trap that makes us more like the Pharisees than like Jesus.
In this way, the story of the Canaanite woman, like the story of the Roman centurion, is a wake-up call, cautioning us against moral high-handedness and country club exclusivity. The moment we believe we are morally superior or we begin to build walls around ourselves to keep out the trash–or dogs to use the image put before us today–we have moved far away from Jesus and have put ourselves in league with the Pharisees, forever after understood as symbols for hypocrisy and for blindness.
The only other significant story that the gospels tell of a dog is found in Luke’s story of the rich man who dined on sumptuous food while the poor man Lazarus starved to death on his door stoop. In that story told by Jesus, he said that dogs sat beside Lazarus and licked his sores, their behavior considered one of comfort and compassion to the poor man left to die outside, in contrast to the blindness and selfishness of the rich man living comfortably inside the house.
It is another of Jesus’ stories of insiders and outsiders, vividly describing those who put themselves above others and those who suffer under the insults and injuries from the smug and proud. As we may recall, that story did not end well for the rich man but ends very well for the poor man. In both stories, the so-called dogs come out the winners, and the dog owners the losers.
–Jeremy Myers
