Henrietta United Church of Christ

Rev. David Inglis August 14, 2005

Matthew 15:21-28

“ Jesus Learns a Lesson”

Did you feel kind of uncomfortable with Jesus’ treatment of the woman in this story? Could Jesus have really hurled an insult at this poor woman because of her ethnicity? Was Christ acting un-Christ-like? What’s going on here?

It’s interesting that even though this story doesn’t present Jesus in a very flattering way, both Matthew and Mark included this event in their gospels. I think this little story contains an important lesson that Jesus learned, that his disciples learned, and that we can learn and apply to our own life.

But first, let me acknowledge that the whole idea of Jesus learning a lesson sounds like heresy to a lot of Christians. If Jesus was God in the flesh, didn’t he already know everything? Wasn’t he already perfect? That’s the way a lot of people look at Jesus, because that’s the way the Church has often presented him. But it’s not quite the way the gospel writers present him.

The core Christian teaching through the ages has been that Jesus is both fully human and fully divine. The way I understand that is that he was a human being with all the limitations of mortality who was uniquely super-charged with God’s Spirit. Jesus consistently emptied himself of his humanity so he could be filled with God’s wisdom, love and power. And because he was able to do this so fully, when people saw Jesus, they saw God. That same divine spirit that Jesus embodied is alive and present with us today. We call that the Holy Spirit or Christ’s Spirit, and it still teaches us, inspires us, heals us, and empowers us right here at HUCC.

The gospel writers allow us to see Jesus the man struggling to release his human nature so that he can be filled with God’s nature when he was tempted in the wilderness before he began his ministry, and when he struggled with the bitter cup God was asking him to drink at the torturous conclusion of his ministry. And maybe today’s story is about Jesus letting go of something smaller so he can receive something greater. So let’s dig into it to see what’s going on.

The first thing we notice is that Jesus has left Israel and has traveled north of Galilee, which is the northernmost province in Israel, out to the district of Tyre and Sidon. This coastal area is in the northern part of the ancient land called Canaan, beyond the portion of that territory that the Israelites conquered after Moses led them to the Promised Land. It’s interesting that this is the only time that we have any record of Jesus being outside of Israel.

This territory was hostile towards Jews, and Jews despised the Canaanites. So why did Jesus go there? Mark gives us a hint in his account. He writes, “[He] went away to the region of Tyre and Sidon. He entered a house and did not want anyone to know he was there.” So maybe Jesus has left his own country where he is such a celebrity to take a break from the crowds that were always clamoring after him: “Heal me, help me, touch me, bless me.”

But I think there was more going on than just that. I think Jesus had come to a very difficult place in his mission. Jesus knew that God had chosen him to be the Messiah. The Messiah was the special person that God had promised through the prophets to restore Israel and make her a light to the nations. I think Jesus began his work with the intent of transforming the kingdom of Israel into the kingdom of God. He tried to show the Jews how their laws all pointed to two things: loving God with our whole selves, and loving our neighbor as ourselves–no matter who they are. He showed how God’s kingdom can be entered by the simplest, most humble person–through a wide-open faith that places all its trust in God. He awakened in people an eternal hope that God’s light and truth can ultimately prevail against the powers and principalities of this world, against fear, and hatred and evil, and against death itself.

But I think that he was at a difficult place in his mission when today’s story took place. Many people had heard his teaching, but few had committed their lives to it. The religious leaders weren’t turning people toward Jesus; they were trying to figure out how to get rid of him. In fact, this story immediately follows a major conflict with the Pharisees. Jesus’ vision of the kingdom of Israel becoming the kingdom of God must have seemed like a very distant dream at this point in his ministry. So something nudged him outside of Israel’s boundaries, perhaps for the first time in his life, because he needed to get a fresh perspective on what he was about and what he was trying to do.

But as soon as he got there, a local Canaanite woman started following Jesus and his disciples and hounding them with her cries, “Have mercy on me, Lord, Son of David! My daughter is tormented by a demon!” The disciples must have thought, “Can you believe this? We walk for days to come all the way out here and get a little peace, and it’s just like home!”

Jesus tried to ignore her. This was not what he was here for. If he granted her request, pretty soon everybody in town would be dragging the sick, the lame and the blind to him, and he still wouldn’t know how God wanted him to create a new kingdom out of the old one.

But she wouldn’t go away. She just kept making a scene. She was driving the disciples buggy. “Make her go away!” they said. They were probably thinking, “Why don’t you just heal her daughter and be done with it, so we can have a little peace?”

Jesus answered, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” Here we see him defining his mission as he understood it. God had put him in Israel to be their shepherd, their guide, their savior– and even there he didn’t seem to be having much success. If he traveled all over the world ministering to all the lost sheep, he would totally lose his focus and his effectiveness.

But the woman went right up to Jesus, knelt down right in front of him– blocking his way– and begged him to help her. Even though we can understand that Jesus might have been fatigued and annoyed, his answer still takes us aback us with its abruptness. “It is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.” Was Jesus literally calling her a bitch because he saw her as a pushy foreign woman?

We might wonder, “Did calling someone a dog then mean the same as it does now?” The answer is Yes–when the general word for dog was used. Jews often spat out the phrase “Gentile dog” to refer to a foreigner. In Greek, the general word for dog refers to the unclean half-wild dogs that roamed the streets scavenging for food among the garbage. But the word used in this story was the diminutive form of the word, something like our word “doggie.” It means a pet dog. Jesus was taking an insulting expression and turning it around to change its meaning. In effect, he was telling the woman, “You’re like a doggie yapping for my food. But I have my children to tend to, and they are my responsibility. There’s only so much of me, and it’s not fair for me to take from them so I can give to you.” In the Bible’s language, Jesus’ words imply a twinkle in the eye rather than a glare of contempt. But his words are still clear and firm.

But that still doesn’t stop this persistent woman! “Yes, Lord, yet even doggies eat the crumbs that fall from their masters’ table.” She can see how tired he is. But she’s begging for whatever crumbs of divine power he might have left over.

Jesus was used to people sparring with him and trying to outwit him. His quick wit and deep wisdom quickly exposed their error or hypocrisy and force them to drop their sword. Now here was this Canaanite woman taking him on, challenging his wit with hers. But what was her weapon, really? Was it stubbornness or pride? No, it was the love of a mother for her daughter, no matter how much heartache and embarrassment her daughter’s malady had caused. It was an earnest faith based on raw need and trust. It was a ray of hope that refused to be snuffed out.

Could Jesus raise the weapon of his wit against such forces as this mother’s unconditional love, wide-open faith, and inextinguishable hope? How could he–these were the very elements of the kingdom he was trying so hard to create! And here they were in a Canaanite woman in a foreign land. There was no ambivalence at all in Jesus’ response to her retort: “Woman, great is your faith! Let it be done for you as you wish.”

I believe that something happened inside Jesus because of that woman. He saw something he couldn’t see from inside the boundaries of Israel. The kingdom of God he was called to create was not confined to the territory of Israel, but could be created anywhere. The inhabitants of God’s kingdom were not limited to “God’s chosen people;” they could be anyone who chose to put their faith in God. God’s kingdom could become “a light to the nations,” even if the leaders of the kingdom Israel remained in darkness, and even if they had him killed.

Jesus had gotten the perspective he had come for, in a totally unexpected way. We sense a renewed spring in his step and clarity in his eyes as he immediately returned to Israel and plunged right back into healing the sick– Gentiles as well as Jews, challenging the Pharisees, and preparing his disciples for his crucifixion. He knew that in all of these things, he was planting the seeds of a new kingdom, a kingdom that will gradually take root in the consciousness of humanity, a kingdom that would illumine the darkness of the whole world, a kingdom that would invite the whole human race to create a new world based on unconditional love, wide-open faith, inextinguishable hope, as human spirits opened to God’s spirit.

I have no doubt that God sent that Canaanite woman to “interrupt” Jesus’ spiritual retreat. And Jesus learned a crucial lesson about God’s kingdom through that annoying interruption. Jesus’ disciples and followers later got that lesson and took it heart, as they carried the seeds of God’s kingdom of love, faith and hope to the people of every land.

How about us? Is there a lesson here for us too? Think about the purposes large and small that you devote your energies to pursuing–providing for your family, being successful and respected at what you do, working down your to-do list, keeping your kids or grandchildren out of trouble, enjoying life’s gifts. All of these are worthy purposes. But we need to be alert to the “annoying interruptions” God sends us–the person who enters our life with a need that we have the ability to respond to; the hurt that opens to us the lessons of healing, forgiveness and letting go; the challenge or hardship that has the potential to humble us, deepen us, and teach us about the power that comes through powerlessness; the fear that teaches us what it really means to walk in faith.

The kingdoms that we try to create within the boundaries of our wants and expectations are always smaller than what God has in mind for us. That’s often bad news to our wants and expectations. But it’s good news to our souls, who were created for something “abundantly more than anything we could ask or imagine.”

Now, Christ is no longer bound by any of the human limitations of mortality. He calls us still– he’s calling you and he’s calling me– to enter his kingdom right here in the midst of this world. And we find ourselves in that kingdom as we say yes to a love that knows no limits, as we open to a faith that can carry us through every fear, and as we hold onto a hope that no darkness can overcome. Don’t be surprised if your invitation to that kingdom comes in a way you don’t expect or even want. Will you be like Jesus and recognize it when it happens, so you can let go of something smaller and receive something greater?