“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, The Painted Prayer Book: The Stubborn Blessing)
The Canaanite woman (also known as the Syro-Phonecian woman) is not about to go away quietly. Nor is she about to take the insult tossed at her and shrink from view. No, she will be heard, she will be noticed and she will get her child the healing she needs. Why? Because, to paraphrase an old saying: “Hell hath no fury like a mother scorned.”
Clearly Jesus didn’t realize whom he was messing with that day. Or did he? Perhaps Jesus knew precisely what he was doing and chose to use this encounter as a teaching moment for his hearers. Or perhaps he was simply in a stubborn mood and found himself facing someone who could match him easily, stubborn for stubborn. Either way, the story shows us that when it comes to saving what needs saving, being merely nice and agreeable won’t win the day, or save the life. Sometimes we need to dig in our heels and do some nudging, some bothering and some hollering.
The Canaanite woman, the mother of a daughter in desperate need of healing, should not be approaching Jesus and the disciples. She is an unaccompanied woman and a foreigner. And not just any foreigner, but she’s from Canaan…you remember Canaan don’t you? Yep, the Canaanites were the residents of Canaan, otherwise known to Moses and his followers as The Promised Land. Yes, the Canaanites were Arab and the Israelites were Jewish. The Israelites displaced the Canaanites.
The more things change, the more they stay the same.
Now remember, Jesus has been trying to get a little rest and relaxation for awhile now. First he went up to the mountain to pray, only to be confronted with thousands of hungry followers, then he took off across the lake only to be harassed by a Peter who was so quick to doubt and to debate (and sink). So one can imagine that, travelling into foreign territory, he’s hoping for a little r and r---after all no non-Jew would dare pay him any heed, for he wasn’t “their messiah.” Of course, this attempt at anonymity quickly fails when this desperate mother comes after him, begging him to help her.
But, in one of the most uncomfortable and horrifying exchanges in the Gospels, Jesus harshly dismisses her, saying:
“It is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.”
What???? Has He lost his mind? Can this possibly be the same Jesus who teaches that we must love everyone, no exceptions?
Yes, it can be.
Yes it is.
Jesus is saying, in language not unusual for his culture, that he was the messiah for the Jews and that his work was for those lost sheep, not any other.
But Jesus is wrong. This woman—a desperate and determined mother--helps Jesus see the full scope of his mission, she teaches the Teacher, leaving the ego of the human Jesus tattered and the surety of the divine Jesus, shaken.
The mother teaches and the Messiah, learns.
Even after being horribly insulted by Jesus, this classic outcast, this mother who will not be denied, forges ahead. She accepts where Jesus is at—that he has come for the Jewish people and no one else—and challenges him with the very fact that dogs will eat the crumbs which fall from their master’s table and that all she wants—this unclean, unaccompanied, socially unacceptable person—are the crumbs of his grace. She has such faith in whom Jesus is, and such desperation to help her child, that she’s willing to accept the left-overs, the trash, if it will save her daughter.
Rage must have churned within her. Fury, fear and terror all pulsating through her veins…but she didn’t give in, she didn’t lash out, she didn’t retreat, she didn’t give up. Her daughter was extremely ill and, regardless of the risk, she had to do something, as any parent worth their salt would do.
Mothers, and mother figures across the ages, have tempered their fury, have bridled their rage, and, at times, swallowed their pride….not because they were unworthy, not because they were unclean, not because they were uneducated…but because they’ll put their own needs aside in order to provide for their family. They’ve set aside their own desires and their own dignity in order to provide for those whom they love without reason, those whom they love beyond all measure, those for whom they will lay down their very life…not because they’re super-human, not because they’re heroes, but because they are, plain and simple: mothers.
Sound familiar? God will do anything, God will do everything, to give us what we need.
How Often must God, like the woman portrayed in Jan Richardson’s poem say:
“Don’t tell me no. Don’t start with me, do not push me aside…I will not go away, I will not be denied. Don’t say no!”
The lesson of The Triumphant Canaanite Women and the humbled Jesus is this: No matter how much we say no, no matter how far we go to reject, destroy and ignore it, God’s love will not be denied, because God’s love, like the love of every devoted parent we know, knows no limit, respects no prejudice and will never ever stop. The love God has for us is fierce. And for that we say, Amen. +
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