“A person who publishes a [blog] willfully appears before the populace with his pants down. If it is a good [blog] nothing can hurt him. If it is a bad [blog] nothing can help him.”- Poet Edna St. Vincent Millay, Born on this Day 1892
Matthew 15:21-28
Who is this Jesus? Is he going to answer this woman's plea? Is he being rude? Wait...did he just call her a dog? What?
I've always been embarrassed by Jesus' behavior toward the Canaanite woman, but I'm more embarrassed by pious attempts to excuse or sanctify Jesus' behavior. For example, take Calvin...please.
Calvin has two problems with this story. First, Jesus is silent. That's not the problem, though. This is the problem: How could this woman have faith and pray if she has never heard the Word of God proclaimed? As Calvin writes in his commentary, "This seems to be contrary to the nature of faith and prayer as Paul describes it in Rom. 10.14—that no-one can pray aright unless the Word of God has led the way." How does Calvin resolve this apparent contradiction? Jesus has been silent, but only outwardly silent. Calvin: "We must note that although He then suppressed His words, He spoke inwardly to the woman's mind and so this secret instinct stood in place of the external preaching." Really. Calvin posits telepathy to excuse Jesus' rude silence and to harmonize this story with Paul. That's embarrassing.
Second, when Jesus does speak, it's not nice talk. Calvin acknowledges that it at least appears this way.* What possible reason could Jesus have had for being so condescendingly rude? It's all for the woman's sake, of course. "Christ's motive...was not to quench the woman's faith but rather to sharpen her zeal and kindle her fervor." "He was chiefly concerned with making a trial of the woman's faith." "And she thinks the door is closed on her, not to drive her away altogether, but rather to make her try faith to get through the cracks in the wood."
OK. Not as bad as telepathy. But it's still an attempt to justify or excuse some plainly derogatory remarks. "Well, you know, I'm sorry I was so hard on you, but, you know, it was for your own good. Your faith is stronger for it."
"Oh. Wow. Thanks. Now, about these splinters...."
I don't know. It's such an unsatisfactory apologetic. And neither Matthew nor Mark offer apology when they tell the story. Why do we feel compelled to defend our precious idea of Jesus? Why do I? Because that's what I'm going to do next.
Where is Jesus? He's in the region of Tyre and Sidon: cosmopolitan, urban seaports, crossroads of the empire, filled with many cultures, many faiths, and no faith, far from Judea and Jerusalem. He's on the edge of his experience, on the edge where the outsiders meet the insiders.
And just here he is confronted by a Canaanite woman—an ultimate type of outsider/Gentile—who calls him Lord, Son of David, and, on that basis, pleas for mercy for herself, healing for her demon-possessed daughter.
Who is Jesus? This is a defining moment. Is he the Son-of-David Messiah that the Jews expect? Is he going to take up the battle against Israel's ancient enemies, including the hated Canaanites who Israel drove out of the land of Canaan, the promised land? Or is he someone else, a different kind of Messiah? Is he only sent to the lost sheep of Israel? Or is he sent for the whole world? Is the bread, his eucharistic body, only for the children of Israel, or is if for all the needy dogs of the world, even for all creation?
Silence. Pondering silence. Prayerful silence. Who am I? Father, who am I?
And when he speaks it's almost as if he were thinking/praying aloud. "I was only sent to the lost sheep of Israel, right, Father? It's not right to take the children's bread and toss it to the dogs, is it, Father?" And, wonder of wonders, the Father speaks to him with the voice of the Canaanite woman! "Even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their master's table."
What then did Jesus do? You know what he did. He granted her plea for mercy and broke the boundary between insiders and outsiders. He praised her faith. He healed her daughter.
What then shall we do? We shall listen to the Canaanite women in our world, for God may speak to us through them, calling us to break boundaries between insiders and outsiders. We'll be in good company if we do.
*And Calvin should know about not nice talk. Earlier in his commentary on this passage he unleashes on "...that dog Servetus" who "was absurd as well as ungodly...." Unlike the Canaanite woman, however, Servetus could not continue the conversation because the absurd and ungodly dog had been burned at the stake. Notice Calvin speaks of Servetus in the past tense.
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