Matthew 15: (10-20), 21-28
“Have mercy on me, Lord, Son of David; my daughter is tormented by a demon.”
“I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.”
“Lord, help me.”
“It is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.”
When we studied today’s Gospel passage in our Wednesday night Bible study a few months ago, more than one participant shared that this story deeply disturbed them. They said “this just doesn’t sound like my Jesus” and “I don’t like this story” and looked to me for an explanation that might ease the discomfort. Unfortunately, I don’t have one. I wish I did. This sermon would have been easier to write, and maybe some other parts of my calling would be easier too. I spend a lot of my time these days sitting with people who have every reason to believe that the Jesus we see in this passage is the only Jesus there is. I’m sitting with people who have been so hurt and abused by Christians that an exclusionary and dismissive God is the only one they can imagine. A God who would call them dogs, a God who would deny their prayers because of where they come from or the color of their skin or who they love or where they worship. That is the God so many people know, and it is a God that doesn’t sound like my Jesus.
The fact that these words of Jesus do not sit right with us is, whether we like it or not, indicative of this being an actual event in the life of Christ. Historians call it the criterion of embarrassment, the idea that its highly unlikely for an author to falsify a story that makes themselves or their heroes look bad. The Gospels were written a very long time ago, and have undergone many transmissions and translations and it is unrealistic to assume no edges have been softened, no dull moments shined up. For the Gospel of Matthew and the Gospel of Mark to both contain a version of this story in which Jesus denies a supplicant and uses a slur in the process, when Jesus comes off looking like a bit of a jerk at best in both cases, the reality of the occurrence must have been too sure to deny or erase. So unfortunately, I can’t comfort you with assurances that this probably didn’t happen or that it was added in later for some reason.
There are some who would teach that Jesus called this woman a dog to test her, that he planned all along to heal her daughter but first he wanted to see how she would advocate for herself and for her child. There are others who would preach that Jesus is using this exchange as a teaching moment, not for the woman pleading with him but for the disciples who are looking on. They might tell you that Jesus wanted to show them what real faith looks like, and that it can be found in places the Jewish disciples did not expect. Maybe for some people, those explanations are comforting. I am sorry that I’m not one of them, and that a God who would objectify and manipulate a mother in pain for the sake of the audience doesn’t sound like my Jesus either.
All these explanations try to protect the perfection of Jesus. They are well-meaning attempts to prioritize Jesus’s divinity, while apologizing for the moments we catch a glimpse of his humanity. I believe and hold as a fundamental truth that Jesus is God from God, fully divine and fully human, of one being with the Father, creator of all. So I don’t feel the need to protect him, any more than I feel the need to protect God or the Church from the people who are coming to me in pain, looking for answers. When I read this exchange between Jesus and this Canaanite woman, I only see one person in need of protection, and her mother is protecting her in the most faithful way imaginable.
“Have mercy on me Lord, Son of David; my daughter is tormented by a demon.”
“Lord, help me.”
Did you know that this woman has a name? It’s Justa. Her name is never mentioned in scripture, she is referred to only by her ethnicity and her gender. But the disciples remembered her, and the early Church found her story meaningful and instructive enough to call her by her name in their sermons and writings. Justa is a Canaanite woman, an indigenous woman in an invaded and occupied territory. She is a Gentile, a non-Jew, and a woman. Justa is everything she is not supposed to be, according to Jesus’s culture. But above all, she is a mother, and she will move mountains for her child, even if it means shouting in the streets at a Jewish out-of-towner until he cannot ignore her anymore.
When Jesus first hears Justa, he ignores her. He has just performed several miracles over the span of a few days and has taught and argued and preached and healed his way through Galilee, and he is tired. When she keeps calling for him, and the disciples are starting to get uncomfortable, they ask Jesus to deal with her. His response is brief, an echo of sermons and teachings they have heard before. But Justa is a woman on a mission, and she will not stop trying.
There is a poem, by Jan Richardson, that captures the stubborn faithfulness of Justa. I think it fills in the gaps, the painful tense moments between “Lord help me” and “Let it be done.” I think maybe it captures what Jesus heard, what he really saw when he said “Woman, great is your faith!” I can almost hear it in Justa’s voice, strained from shouting but strong nonetheless.
Don’t tell me no.
I have seen you
feed the thousands,
seen miracles spill
from your hands
like water, like wine,
seen you with circles
and circles of crowds
pressed around you
and not one soul
turned away.
Don’t start with me.
I am saying
you can close the door
but I will keep knocking.
You can go silent
but I will keep shouting.
You can tighten the circle
but I will trace a bigger one
around you,
around the life of my child
who will tell you
no one surpasses a mother
for stubbornness.
I am saying
I know what you
can do with crumbs
and I am claiming mine,
every morsel and scrap
you have up your sleeve.
Unclench your hand,
your heart.
Let the scraps fall
like manna,
like mercy
for the life
of my child,
the life of
the world.
Don’t you tell me no. [© Jan Richardson. janrichardson.com]
I can’t solve the problem of Jesus saying something rude and dismissive and utterly human. I can’t explain why he did not answer at first, or why Justa’s child was healed when so many peoples’ babies aren’t. What I can say is that Justa knew who Jesus was. She knew, and she demanded that he live up to the promises God made to his own mother. In this moment when Jesus seems to have forgotten who he was, a mother of a disabled child reminded him. When Jesus lost sight of what kind of company he was born to keep, an indigenous woman reminded him that a place was prepared for her too. Justa is like so many people in our world today, people who have every reason to expect rejection from God and the Church and yet they cry out anyway. They bang on the red doors and kneel at the rail and ask questions for which they fear the answers in coffee shops across from priests and pastors and people of faith like us. They ask for mercy, they ask for help, and most of the time all they see is religion that will not answer them at all, or answers them with insults and advice for how to be less themselves. Will we tell them no? Will we treat them like pets, like outsiders, like sad stories in need of our crumbs of charity but undeserving of our table? Or will we place them at the center and pile their plates high with bread and fill their cup to the brim with love? Now, that sounds like my Jesus.
Mother A Writes 