PENTECOST 12

May my words and my thoughts be acceptable to you, O Lord, my refuge and my redeemer. (Psalm 19:14)

SEASON: PENTECOST 12
PROPER: 15A
PLACE: St. John's Parish, Kingsville
DATE: August 12, 1999

TEXT: Matthew 15:21-28 - The Healing of the Canaanite Woman's Daughter - "Jesus 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.'"

ISSUE: What do we do? What do we do? . . . . Today's gospel reading is a real challenge. Jesus comes across extraordinarily harsh condemning the Canaanite woman as a dog. The story indicates that Jesus gets converted by the woman who is so loyal to him. It tells of the early church that was sometimes exclusive and felt, like the disciple Peter, that the mission of the church was exclusively for the Jews. It challenges the church today in its exclusivity to an awareness that we sometimes must make shifts in our thinking as Jesus, symbolizing the early church, had to do. We must be extraordinarily conscious that we do not exclude those who desire to by loyal to Christ.

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The passage today from the gospel account of Matthew is certainly a very challenging one. we see Jesus in something of a very different light. He is certainly not the sweet gentle accepting Jesus in this passage. A woman follows after him pleading for the healing of her demon tormented daughter. The disciples want her sent away. Jesus replies after a significantly long period of completely ignoring her: "It is not fair to take the children's food and throw it to the dogs." What in the world is going on in this passage? What a contrast this Jesus in Matthew is from say, the Gospel account of Luke. Something is going on that is peculiar to the gospel account of Matthew. Earlier in the 10:6, Jesus sends his disciples out to preach and to heal, but in Matthew he clearly tells them to stay out of Gentile and Samaritan territory. Their ministry is to be exclusively for the lost sheep of Israel. Matthew's account of the gospel, it should be remembered, was a gospel largely directed to a Jewish community. Matthew is forever telling how Jesus is a fulfillment of Hebrew Scripture. We are also getting the real impression that it was felt by a significant faction of the early church that Matthew addressed that Jesus and that early church had a very limited view of its mission, to the lost people of Israel alone, i.e. the Jewish peasants.
In this period, Gentiles and Samaritans (half-breed Jews) were seen as unclean and impure people. They were the dogs. Good Jewish men and women did not associate with dogs, Gentiles and Samaritans. Be careful here not to say weren't those Jews awful. Understand that this was the culture of the period, and Samaritans and Gentiles were every bit has hateful. The Romans were brutal (bastards), and were responsible for the crucifixion of Jesus. So much of all of this was cultural.
In the story Jesus has traveled into Canananite territory around Tyre and Sidon. A dirty polluted woman comes chasing after him, pleading for mercy and healing because she has a daughter possessed by demons, somehow mentally disturbed. Jesus and the disciples ignore her. Jewish men regularly talk with strange woman, not to mention foreign unclean women. But she is persistant and annoying, demanding mercy. Incidentally, "mercy" did not mean compassion. It meant "you owe me." So the pleading is Jesus you owe me the healing. The disciples want her sent away. Finally, as a result of frustration, Jesus stops to hear her out. He condescends to her, which was a challenge to his honor and status, because he has already taught his disciples earlier that their mission is not to the Gentiles and Samaritans. But the woman kneels before him, prostrating herself before him, she honors him with humility before him. She honors him with the title, "Lord, son of David," help me. She gives him a royal title. Jesus says to her just what you might expect a good Jewish man to say to a impure Canaanite woman who challenges him: "It is not right to take the children's food, [- or bread which is a symbol of salvation - ] and throw it to the dogs.[you Gentile women.] Now, mind you, there would have been a crowd of people around observing Jesus and this exchange, for it was very public as was most of Jesus' ministry. Another aspect of this time was that people challenged one another. The Pharisees were forever challenging Jesus, and Jesus was so good at combacks, retorts, riposte which enabled him to maintain his status and honor. Not this time! The Caananite woman responds: "Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters' table." She, the Canaanite bitch, won the game!
Jesus then says, "Woman great is your faith, i.e. loyalty. Let it be done as you wish." The child is healed, pulled into the community, restored, with her mother. But what is really profound is that in this story JESUS IS CONVERTED!
Do you see what is happening here? We know from Markan, Lukan, and Johannine accounts of the Gospel that Jesus was assuredly inclusive in this thinking. There are parables told by Jesus like the Good Samaritan, and the Ten Lepers where Jesus held Samaritans and Gentiles in good standing. However in Matthew's community there were still many good Jews who were still holding on to the fact that this new Way of Jesus was intended only for the "lost sheep of the house of Israel." Matthew is telling this story to these "exclusivity lovers" that loved and Honored Jesus, if Jesus who was himself a good Jew, a very good Jew could himself be converted, changed, to be accepting, than so could they! You get the distinct impression from Matthew's story that Jesus, a symbol (?) here of the early church, really had to struggle in these days when the church was growing fast with these kinds of significant issues as to who could be the members of the church. It would seem that it was not so much an issue of who was moral, pure, impure, immoral, or unclean. It seems the issue was who is first and foremost faithful and loyal to the way of Jesus Christ.
This story may well have reminded the exlusive Israelites of their beloved Elijah who had the Gentile widow of Zarephath in Sidon bake bread for him, and who brought her back to life. Jesus too is the Elijah who condescends to embracing the impure. But the conversion of the early church did not come easy; it was a struggle. The disciple Peter in the Christian scriptures for the longest time was a real hold out, demanding that Christians had to first become good Jews. It was St. Paul who challenged that and began his significant ministry to the so called impure Gentiles requiring of them only loyalty, faith. Paul knew his Hebrew Scriptures of which we read a significant passage from Isaiah 56:1-7, which concluded:
"And the foreigners who join themselves to the Lord, to ministre to him, to love the name of the Lord, and to be his servants, all who keep the sabbath, and do not profane it, and hold fast my covenant - these I will bring to my holy mountain, and make them joyful in my house of prayer; their brunt offers and their sacrifices will be accepted on my altar; for my house shal be called a house of prayer for all peoples."
In the life of the church today and in our recent history we have still struggled and wrestled with the issues of who belongs, and is worthy of the blessings of the church which is the body of Christ in the world. There are those whom we have looked down upon. For a very long time, and still today, the Jewish people have been looked down upon by Christians as less than godly people. We have seen black people as inferior and unclean, lacking purity. Even though some have condescended to saying we accept black people, that acceptance was compromised by equal but so long as they were separate from the white race.
The church in terms of its people have not been exempt from looking down on the poor and the homeless as distinctly excluded from the church because of class distinctions.
We have not been welcoming to the physically challenged, which the structures of our churches sometimes well bear witness too, through very short-sighted building and planning. The elderly people who contributed for years to the very temples in which we worship are often tragically forgotten in their senior years. The terminally ill are often forgotten because of the challenge that they present to us in the facing of our own mortality.
We have often established what we to be morrally right and pass judgment on others as if we had the be all and end all in what God has to say. We become God's judge and jury, without recognizing that times and thinking, and the ongoing compassion and understanding of God has and does go through significant changes. For extended periods of time the church has, still does in some instances, exclude by beliefs those who have been divorced.
Many people today are spiritually yearning and seeking admission to the presence of God. Many seek Christ, and desire to be loyal and committed. Who are they? Can the church truly be a house of prayer for all people?
A woman considered to be impure by the standards of the time came pleading with Jesus for mercy. She believed that if he was what the early church believed him to be than he owed her acceptance and healing. At the same time she was loyal to him, insistent, and persistant. If Jesus, Lord and Son of David, could be changed, what are we to say of ourselves? What are we to do in our world and time? Can we be true to our mission as the people of God, the extention of Jesus Christ in the world? What are we to do with the issues that face us as Christians in the world today?