I love dogs. But I sure don’t want to be called one. Really, who would? Is there a way to make Jesus’ rebuke to the Gentile woman in today’s Gospel acceptable, palatable…ok?
Not really. Jesus was tired, he was cranky, he was confused and, quite possibly he was, in this case, prejudiced.
In other words, he was human.
When we encounter Jesus this morning he’s coming off the extensive debate with the Pharisees over cleanliness practices we heard last Sunday. Yep, he’d JUST said that all the worry about cleanliness and purity meant nothing if you were intolerant, prejudiced and separatist.
Clearly exhausted, worn out and irritable Jesus retreats to the north, way past Nazareth, bordering on Gentile territory. He was a long way from home and, he hoped, a long way from the throngs of people needing this, demanding that, judging this and chastising that. He was looking for a break.
So perhaps he can be excused for being cranky, perhaps we can forgive his lack of couth. But to look this devout and desperate woman in the eyes---although you know what? He probably didn’t look at her, for he was so disgusted and annoyed I doubt he gave her more than a sideways glance.—but, regardless, to say to this woman “Let the children be fed first, for it is not fair to take the children's food and throw it to the dogs," can only be considered crass, rude and hurtful.
Seemingly un-phased, the Syro-Phonecian woman (a fancy word for saying she wasn’t Jewish and she wasn’t from Judea or Galilee) doesn’t back down and calmly, yet firmly, makes her case. She calls Jesus out and he listens. And he learns.
While Jesus was “caught with his compassion down,” this woman was caught with her theology way way up, responding to Jesus’ rebuke by saying, “Sir even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs.” In other words, she says, God has promised God’s Love to all, to everyone, no exceptions. It’s the message you’ve been preaching, Lord; it just isn’t the message you seem to be hearing. And, she goes on to say, I don’t need much, because even a crumb JUST a CRUMB of this Divine Love will be enough. It’s that potent.
This woman, an outcast, a foreigner, is unclean and impure, according to the traditional Jewish faith of Jesus. But, and this is the point Jesus had just made with the Pharisees--this woman is also a God-loving, God-respecting person of faith. A beloved, adored, faithful, child of God.
She’s also a teacher. A very good teacher. And one from whom Jesus learns a vital lesson.
You see Jesus was learning as he went along. The full goal of his mission---of the job he had been given to do----wasn’t clear to him at first. Some would say, and I would agree, that Jesus wasn’t clear about the full breadth of his mission, of his call, until that long and lonely night in the Garden on the Thursday of Holy Week. So when he retreats to the border of the familiar by traveling into Gentile territory, into the unknown, he was still figuring out just who he was and what he was supposed to do. A lot of what he learned didn’t come from ancient scrolls or from other rabbis’. You see, Jesus learned by doing, by living and by listening. Jesus wasn’t able to lay out the steps and stops of his three-year mission at the outset, he needed to grow into his ministry, grow into his role, grow into his tasks.
Just like us. When you turned 21 did you know everything you needed to know to be an adult? For those of you who are parents, did you know everything about child rearing the day your child was born?
Did I know all there was to know about being priest on my ordination day?
No way.
We’re always learning, always growing, always making mistakes, learning from them and moving on.
As long as we’re alive, we’re growing. As long as we’re alive, we’re changing. That’s a fact of the human condition—we’re always changing, we’re always growing, we’re always learning.
Whether we admit it or not.
We all know people who decide on how things out to be and refuse to move from that spot. We all know people who take their opinion and make it the Gospel truth for their life, refusing to budge, refusing to listen to reason, refusing to admit that what was once true for them, may no longer be. We all know people who spend an inordinate amount of energy REFUSING to budge, REFUSING to grow, REFUSING to learn.
These are unhappy, unfulfilled and bitter people. They are people who, although they technically are still alive, stopped “living” a long time ago.
That’s what makes this Gospel reading, for all its jarring language, gorgeous. For in it we see our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, open himself up to growth, we see Jesus the teacher being taught by the “other”, the mother who needed to get help for her daughter. Did she wake up that day determined to have a theological sparring match with the hottest preacher around? I doubt it. More likely this woman woke up that day, looked at her tormented daughter and realized she was out of options. She had done everything she could do in her own power to bring her daughter relief. She had gone to the doctors and the religious leaders of her town. She had taken the advice of her elders, she had prayed to her God for help. And on this day, the day she spars with Jesus, this woman had thrown all caution to the wind because her little girl needed help and she was bound and determined to get her the help. No matter what. Like any parent, she wasn’t going to be ignored, and she certainly wasn’t going to let an insult or two get in the way of her undying, unfailing, unending love for her daughter.
Her insistence, perseverance and wisdom convicted our Lord. She convicted him with his own words and his own teachings. She showed him, she reminded him, she taught him, that God’s love is so overwhelming, so extravagant, so endless that even a crumb of this Love, even a morsel of this Grace, even a mustard seed of faith, will give sight to the blind, sound to the deaf and a lesson to a Savior. Amen.
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