Let me tell you straight: if there’s a portrayal of Jesus I hate reading, it’s this one. The one that makes you squirm, makes you hunt for excuses you know don’t exist (like who could ever excuse the Son of God?), or forces you to wrestle with the truth until you come up with explanations, honest ones, swallowing stuff you never wanted to admit. If nothing else, this story isn’t about Jesus meeting our expectations. It’s about him blowing them up.

Stranger in a Strange Land

Jesus is in a foreign place, away from his home territory of Galilee. In a real way, he was outside his neighborhood, in that part where “good” Jews don’t go. Not his people. Whomever he might meet in that place was surely not of his kind. Canaanites were the “other,” the ones you cross the street to avoid.

A Canaanite woman came begging for help. She knows the score: wrong religion, wrong ethnicity, wrong race, wrong gender. She’s got nothing to recommend her to a Jewish rabbi. Add to it her kid is labeled “demon-possessed”. All good Jews considered such illnesses characterized by mental illness and neurological dysfunction as possibly brought on by a parent’s sin, a spiritual issue carrying a judgement. Why should this rabbi and prophet pay attention to her? She’s walking around with negative credit.

He didn’t. He totally ignored her. Her cries, fueled by desperation, had a decibel level somewhere between croaking and screaming. He acts like she’s invisible. As any behavioralist knows, ignored behavior increases its frequency. The disciples get fed up and tell Jesus to get rid of her.

Supremist Attitude

This is where it gets messy. Jesus tells her he’s only here to help the Israelites, not Gentiles. Gentiles, all non-Jews, the goyim, were the enemy of those who considered themselves the chosen people of God. She was not like them, like him and those of his heritage.

Jesus displays the attitude of someone raised to stay away from those who don’t look like, worship like, or have recent heritage and history like his, like mine, like yours. He’s acting like her pain isn’t his problem and doesn’t even acknowledge her plea to save her daughter. If she had a son, would her value and her child’s have been different to him? Basically, when the oppression and injustice others experience isn’t happening to us or our people, it generally gets dismissed like it doesn’t matter.

Yeah, we’ve heard this before: Why doesn’t she go away? Or, why do they keep bringing up what happened years, decades, centuries ago? Just get over it, for goodness’ sake!

She won’t back down. Throwing herself before him, she begs for succor and help. She relinquishes all dignity, no pride left.  She needs real help. It’s clear this is going to take more than a “I’m sorry, and I’ll pray for you,” kind of response. Evidently the situation is not going to be resolved easily. Jesus has to make it very clear to her.

Demean and Destroy

He does. He does what some people do to segregate their kind from “those kind of people.” Jesus hits her with a slur. “It isn’t right to take food from the children and throw it to the dogs.”

Yeah, Jesus called her a dog. This “love your neighbor” thing apparently had some limits. Women in this period, poor women particularly without resources and protection, were often victims of rape. Add in that intermarriage sometimes happened between Jews and Gentiles, (please don’t romanticize this; usually women didn’t get to choose their husbands). Both would result in mixed-blood births, mongrels, mutts, the Bs of the day. That’s how he talks to her.

Good God! Jesus is racist! What’s going on here? The devil got to him after all. He’s sold out and will only pander to the hometown crowd he’s garnered in Galilee. Yeah, we’ve seen this kind before. Looks like there’s a traitor in the Trinity.

Take a deep breath now. She’s been slammed and takes the punch where it lands. She knows what she’s up against, the world she’s living in, and she knows today is not the day to claim her own full rights. Today she has to fight for justice for her child. Like more mothers than could ever be counted, she swallows disrespect to save her kid. She’ll do what she has to do.

Faith That Fights

She fires back. “Yes, Lord, but even dogs are permitted to eat crumbs that fall beneath the master’s table.” She meets him in his cultural lane. Some dogs were allowed to hang around during the meals, small ones tolerated like pets. He’d seen it and knows what she’s saying.

She’s not asking to change the world and all that’s wrong in it. She only asks something for herself, a crumb of compassion and healing he’d given his own kind, sometimes just by touching the hem of his robe. (Matthew 14:36) She gives him a perspective by which he can consider her.

It pays off. “Woman, your faith is great. Your request is granted.” Healing comes not by laying on hands or calling out the daughter’s demon, but by a mother who refused to quit. Her belief that Jesus was the only hope she had for the life of her daughter fueled her persistence. There was no way she could have given up. Precisely because of her doggedness, Jesus recognized her faith, a faith that demanded she be listened to in her plea for help, a faith that would sacrifice her own dignity and self-worth, a faith that would cross all human boundaries constructed to separate neighbors and enemies. Her faith bulldozed every barrier humans built.

But Why the Drama?

Wonderful. But there remains a question. Why couldn’t Jesus just see her need and heal her daughter? Why did he drag her through such turmoil to get what any person could see?

Was he testing her, seeing if she’d back off, reject him and his power? She didn’t. But why her and not the Roman officer, a man with status, who came asking for healing for his servant? He also had great faith, but Jesus didn’t give him a hard time about it. Or was it because the Roman centurion was male and had power? (Matthew 8:5-13) This woman had no chance with Jesus if that’s what you needed to move him.

Good thinking. But consider this. Did something shift in Jesus in that day? Was Jesus changed in his perspective that he was Messiah and Savior to all peoples of the world, not just God-worshippers? Maybe her cry cracked opened something he needed to see. So if you cry hard and loud enough, you can change God’s mind? But that would imply human justice is above divine justice, and God needs a shaking from time to time.

No, it’s deeper than that.

Was there something here that was inherent in Jesus’ ministry defined by his teaching, preaching and healing? All these expressions are vital in how he brought a new realization of God’s love for the world. He knew how power crushes people, the struggles of the oppressed, the poor, the sick, and the powerless. Yet, Jesus also knew that human desire for power and control over others could only be dismantled by his example. Whereas this Canaanite woman laid at his feet her dignity and worth, Jesus laid down his cultural bias to show what real justice looks like.

Here’s the wild part: Jesus debated with the best of the religious leaders and always came out on top. Yet, it was a woman, a foreign woman, who showed him the flaw in his stance. He listened, accepted it by her appeal to what was right for all persons. He knew it was based in what he could do, not in a dramatic exorcism of a young girl, but in a greater exorcism of injustice in the world, a change and reversal beyond the deep and heartfelt needs of a mother and her little girl.

Matthew 15: 21-28

(Mark 7: 24-29)

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The Trouble with Jesus: Considerations Before You Walk Away by Constance Hastings

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