Made Whole, By The Grace Of God
Commentary
This is one of those weeks where all three of the scripture readings weave intricately together. Taken as a whole, there is a clear theme: the grace of God is for us. We have no need to impress God. We can do nothing to earn the gift of God. God simply reaches down, into the hearts of those who struggle to keep pace with God and God’s plans for us, and lifts us up, fills us with joy, sustains us when we are afraid. Which is a good deal of the time.
In these three passages, we see that faith is more a matter of holding on, wondering if we can “make it,” as we say. Whether we have brought on our bad situation ourselves or it has been visited on us despite our best efforts, God sees us all as we are -- all our flaws, our self-doubt, our puffery and lies, trying to make ourselves look good -- and smiles as we do when a small child says, “I do it myself!”
Genesis 45:1-15
Our Old Testament story is very familiar: Joseph was an arrogant young man, his father’s favorite son out of 12. His brothers eventually became fed up with his stories of becoming the most outstanding man in his tribe, and they impulsively sold him into slavery, ripping his robe and marking it with blood to convince their father that Joseph was dead.
Meanwhile, Joseph was sold to an Egyptian man whose wife falsely accused Joseph of trying to rape her. He spent years in prison, until he discovered that he had a gift from God: the ability to interpret dreams. One of the men whose dreams he interpreted correctly worked for the Pharaoh. When Pharaoh had a terrifying dream, the man told his master about Joseph.
Joseph was rewarded for his special gift by being given a job as counselor to the Pharaoh, and then a promotion: he was put in charge of the national food supplies. His planning skills were prodigious. He saved the lives of thousands when a devastating seven-year drought hit the Middle East. Joseph’s plans led to him making life-saving moves, storing up food for seven years in order to feed not just the Egyptians but people from other countries as well.
This included the area in which his family still lived. Hearing that food was available in Egypt, Jacob (Israel) sent his sons to Egypt to beg the Pharaoh to give them food. They did so, and who should they meet but their brother Joseph whom they had sold into slavery years before.
They do not recognize their brother, who has become thoroughly Egyptian, probably wearing the head covering of a ruling-class Egyptian, and perhaps even the ceremonial beard affected by Pharaoh and his counselors. However, he recognizes them... and decides to give them a hard time before granting them everything they need to live.
When he finally reveals himself to his brothers, he tells them what he has come to understand: God sent me before you to preserve for you a remnant on earth, and to keep alive for you many survivors. So it was not you who sent me here, but God; he has made me a father to Pharaoh, and lord of all his house and ruler over all the land of Egypt. Hurry and go up to my father and say to him, “Thus says your son Joseph, God has made me lord of all Egypt; come down to me, do not delay.”
Joseph may have challenged his brothers at first, but his anger was fleeting. He had come to such position and lifestyle that he clearly was the chosen savior of his people. This gave him the chance to punish his family, but instead he used the opportunity to save them from starvation, and to bring them to the one place where they would be safe in every way, because they were related to a high-ranking official.
For those who believe that the Old Testament describes a God of wrath and vengeance while Jesus brought a new understanding of a loving parent God, this story stands in stark witness that this is a misunderstanding of both God and scripture. If Joseph has learned anything about God, it clearly was that God would have him be good to his brothers. We can see that not only has he learned that his actions have had consequences for him, but that his release from prison and work for Pharaoh is due to a God-given talent. Instead of nurturing his anger and planning revenge, he has at last reached out a hand of love to his family.
He is not the perfect model of forgiveness either. His statement to his brothers still falls short of any admission of fault on his part that led his brothers to treat him the way they did. As for them, they are terrified when they meet their long-lost brother. In the real world, long feuds usually don’t end well. So they do the only thing they can -- they fall on their faces in a deep bow to his authority. They have every reason to fear him. But he goes to them and raises them up.
This is where we see his understanding of God: the God who kept him from death; the God who freed him from prison; the God who forgave him his own youthful arrogance and led him to a position he could never have reached on his own. His reach and his grasp match, by the power of God.
We are living in dangerous times, where our president and the leader of North Korea are trading insults and sizing up each other. “Is he foolish and arrogant, or does he have the power and will to do what he is threatening?” And we are like the brothers, perhaps, having no power to change the situation, and so must cower and wait to find out what happens next.
There are those who handle their fear in more aggressive ways, flexing their muscles while marching with torches; they aim to make themselves look powerful and unopposable. There will always be those who react this way. They think that if they can frighten others, everything will even out. But as soon as it becomes clear that we know their names and can post that information on social media, there is an immediate breakdown in many of them. Their fearmongering is turned back on them. Will they quail, or decide that they will fight to the death? Again, those of us watching can only wait to see how it all comes out. Will they be Joseph and forgive, or will they wreak havoc on society?
Perhaps we can learn the same lesson Joseph learned -- that swagger only goes just so far, and then we must reach out as God has reached out to us. In the national tension we are currently living through, that lesson might be the only one that will reunite the splintering that we see around us.
Romans 11:1-2a, 29-32
Paul’s letter to the Romans is a declaration of God’s love and provision for those who have decided to follow in the Way of Jesus. Paul’s word for this is “grace.”
My mentor told me that when he went before the board that had the authority to pass on his candidacy for ministry, one of the men turned to him and said: “You’re standing at the door to the church, shaking hands after worship. An eight-year old boy comes out and asks ‘Pastor, what’s grace?’ What do you say?” My mentor said it was a hard moment, because he had no idea what to say. He’s not alone in that, of course. We live in a society steeped in the idea that we have to earn our way through the world. People will work 60+ hours a week in order to be a “success.” In Donald Trump’s book on Success in Business, he says that many men have wives who complain constantly that their husbands are working too many hours, spend too little time with their children, and so on. His advice is that if a man wants success, those ties have to be “broken as soon as possible, because the only way to succeed is to put their work as the centerpiece of their lives.” This is the kind of thinking that is driving our country in general, be it the world of politics or business or the military. How are we to understand and experience the grace of God when performance and concentration on material benefits is the driving force in our society? As Mr. Trump is famous for saying, “In the end, you’re measured not by how much you undertake but by what you finally accomplish.” But in the Realm of God, we are not measured by whatever success we achieve but on how faithful we are, because God’s grace is activated in our lives by our willingness to lean on him.
In vv. 2b-4 of Romans 11 (left out in the lectionary, but essential for our preaching), Paul points to the story in 1 Kings 11, when Elijah went to God to complain about the evil that plagued the land of Israel. Jezebel, the foreign wife of the king, worshiped Baal, who demanded human sacrifice: the firstborn child of every woman was thrown into the fire before the statue of the god. God’s reply is that he has “preserved” 7,000 men who still worship Yahweh rather than Baal; Elijah was by no means alone.
Paul assures his people that that story was about a time in Israel that was much like the one the Christians were experiencing in Rome (not exactly the model of behavior we Christians want to follow either). It was easier to just go along with what the king was allowing his wife to do; to oppose them would bring anyone, even Elijah, to being persecuted. Jezebel had said very plainly that his attack on the priests and temples of Baal had led her to put out word that he should be dead within the day.
Part of the point Paul is making is that God did not abandon his people then and will not under any circumstances, even though we may be disobedient. Even though the Jewish establishment disowned Jesus, turning him over to the Romans to be put to death, their sin did not end the relationship God had started with them thousands of years before.
You and I can take comfort in this. If God did not cast aside the sons and daughters of Abraham and Isaac, then we can be certain that God will not summarily cast us aside because of our sins. We cannot earn salvation. We cannot lose salvation either -- even when we have “backslid” or become discouraged or angry. The man who rages against God for the death of a beloved daughter, and the woman who refuses to talk to God or go to church because her husband, the pastor, died of cancer while serving that church, are not outside of the love of God. And we risk misrepresenting God if we say that they do. They are in grief, and anger is one stage of grief. We may not understand their pain, but God does, and loves them more than they can accept while they are in that state.
We who preach must remember that God is the Merciful One. God is Love. God’s grace is everlasting and permanent. “For God has imprisoned all in disobedience so that he may be merciful to all” [v. 32].
Matthew 15:(10 ? 20) 21-28
The first part of the gospel lesson is in parentheses so that we may choose to speak only about the Canaanite woman’s faith. And that story has more than enough to talk about, to even make the central part of Sunday’s sermon. Furthermore, that first passage doesn’t really relate to most American Christians. It was aimed primarily at the Jewish listeners, especially the Pharisees, who followed very strict dietary laws.
Most of those laws are laid down in Leviticus and Deuteronomy, and they are matters of deep concern, since breaking them was seen as separating oneself from the community of faith. There was a fairly long list of things faithful Jews must not eat, who they may and may not eat with, what kind of clothing they were allowed to wear, even what kind of materials could be woven together to make that clothing.
Jesus wasn’t just taking on the Pharisees, he was also going against the teachings of the Torah. A serious sin, indeed. But very humanitarian. “Nothing you eat can defile you. But what comes out of your mouth absolutely will defile you.” Dirty words. Vile name-calling. Demeaning others by word or deed. These are the things that defile us.
How little attention is paid to this rule laid down by Jesus! We finger-point, calling out those who don’t live as we do. We degrade them. We mock those who are crippled, or who stammer or stutter; we put stumbling blocks in front of the crippled, refusing to make even our churches accessible to all. It’s too expensive. She’s a retard. He’s a d-d-dummie. Old, ugly words. Stereotypes. All these things defile us.
If we remember that this statement by Jesus comes immediately before the gospel words we are invited to concentrate on, the story of the Canaanite woman takes on some importance we may have missed -- that we were allowed to miss in most of the teaching we have ever received on this woman’s encounter with Jesus.
Jesus’ preaching in verses 10-20 happened at someplace other than Tyre and Sidon, where he is accosted by the Canaanite woman. (Did she have a name? We might expect that she did; few people go through life without a name, but women so often walk through the narrative without a face or a name -- Lot’s wife, the woman with an issue of blood, the widow of Nain, and this woman.)
She approaches Jesus first from some short distance away. She is shouting “Have mercy on me, Lord, Son of David!”
Jesus ignores her and keeps on walking.
She shouts again: “Have mercy, Son of David; my daughter is tormented by a demon.”
Jesus doesn’t answer her. He keeps on walking, perhaps avoiding eye contact as well. His disciples come to him and beg him to do something. Even to send her away would be more merciful than ignoring her like this. What is Jesus thinking? Well, apparently, he says what he’s thinking: “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.”
Huh. Really? ONLY to the lost sheep of Israel? But he goes to parties with harlots and tax collectors. Surely, on the ladder that stretches from earth to heaven, they are lower on the rungs than this woman. She’s asking him for help.
She is not easily dismissed, and she is not going to stop until she gets what she wants. She catches up to Jesus and throws herself on the ground in front of him.
“Lord, help me!” She’s begging. Didn’t Jesus have a parable about feeding the beggar at the door?
At this point he says to her: “It is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.”
Okay, now that needs some explanation. Dogs are not beloved pets in the Middle East. They are workers or they do not get fed. They are not perfumed and pampered, made to wear cute little outfits or offered bacon-flavored treats. Because they are not pampered, they will try to hang around the table, hoping that scraps will come their way. They are considered dirty, and they often are, living most of the time outdoors and feeding on rats and other small, troublesome vermin.
I remember my grandmother scraping all the leftovers from the dinner plates into a pan, pouring broth or gravy over it all, and putting it near the back door for the dog who lived in the barnyard and slept in the shed (in summer; in winter, he snuck into the barn and burrowed into the hay). She even put the coffee grounds in that pan, and any bone that would be safe for the dog to chew on. They valued the dog, and he got baths when he really needed one, but he was another farmhand, chasing the cows out of the barn and herding them back in at night, and guarding the hen house.
It’s in this context that we need to hear Jesus. He just called this woman and her daughter “dogs.” It was a common idea among the Jews that the Canaanites were unclean (not literally dirty; they were ritually unclean). They were unfit for the Kingdom of God, outcasts literally, since it was their land before the Israelites came and drove out the people who had been living in Canaan.
Are you shocked? Shocked at Jesus’ words? The woman was not shocked. She was used to it, this business of being shunted to one side, pushed out of the path of any and all men on the road with her. Didn’t he just say, hours or a day ago, “What comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart, and this is what defiles.” Of course, we need to ask, “Did he do this deliberately, a sort of illustrated sermon for the benefit of his disciples?” It is possible.
The woman, undaunted, replies: “Yes, but even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters’ table.” (“I may be a dog, Lord, but even dogs get to eat the scraps and leftovers.”)
She has scored a shot. Maybe Jesus applauds her cleverness of argument. Maybe his disciples gasp in shock at his words, and he is called up short. Maybe his Father in heaven slapped him at the back of his head. Maybe she’s just made his point. Whatever did it, Jesus looks right at her. He answers her: “Woman, great is your faith! Let it be done for you as you wish.”
We know, from other gospel stories, that sometimes Jesus seems to say that a sick person only gets healed if they have enough faith. But Jesus’ own words to his disciples indicate that it is the healer, not the patient, that needs to have faith. What, then, does she have that others lacked?
Outside of the church, people don’t talk about faith every day. But they do talk about gumption, stick-to-it-iveness, determination. “It doesn’t matter how many times you fail and fall; what matters is how many times you get back up and try again.” That exactly matches what Jesus saw in this woman. She would not stop shouting, begging for help. She followed him, even though he would not speak a word to her. She threw herself to her knees right in front of him. She begged him “Lord, help me.” And even when he threw an old stereotype, a degrading word, at her, she said “Yes, but...”
Over and over in his ministry, Jesus points to the women -- bleeding, broken, bent over by arthritis, mourning the death of a son, frantic for her daughter -- and says: “Your faith has saved you.” “Your faith has made you whole.” “Leave her alone, she is doing a beautiful thing for me.” Over and over, he saw that these women would not give up. They followed him, shouting out. They begged. They would not shut up. They persisted.
Until they got what they wanted, what they needed. Until Jesus made them whole again.
Can we do the same?
In these three passages, we see that faith is more a matter of holding on, wondering if we can “make it,” as we say. Whether we have brought on our bad situation ourselves or it has been visited on us despite our best efforts, God sees us all as we are -- all our flaws, our self-doubt, our puffery and lies, trying to make ourselves look good -- and smiles as we do when a small child says, “I do it myself!”
Genesis 45:1-15
Our Old Testament story is very familiar: Joseph was an arrogant young man, his father’s favorite son out of 12. His brothers eventually became fed up with his stories of becoming the most outstanding man in his tribe, and they impulsively sold him into slavery, ripping his robe and marking it with blood to convince their father that Joseph was dead.
Meanwhile, Joseph was sold to an Egyptian man whose wife falsely accused Joseph of trying to rape her. He spent years in prison, until he discovered that he had a gift from God: the ability to interpret dreams. One of the men whose dreams he interpreted correctly worked for the Pharaoh. When Pharaoh had a terrifying dream, the man told his master about Joseph.
Joseph was rewarded for his special gift by being given a job as counselor to the Pharaoh, and then a promotion: he was put in charge of the national food supplies. His planning skills were prodigious. He saved the lives of thousands when a devastating seven-year drought hit the Middle East. Joseph’s plans led to him making life-saving moves, storing up food for seven years in order to feed not just the Egyptians but people from other countries as well.
This included the area in which his family still lived. Hearing that food was available in Egypt, Jacob (Israel) sent his sons to Egypt to beg the Pharaoh to give them food. They did so, and who should they meet but their brother Joseph whom they had sold into slavery years before.
They do not recognize their brother, who has become thoroughly Egyptian, probably wearing the head covering of a ruling-class Egyptian, and perhaps even the ceremonial beard affected by Pharaoh and his counselors. However, he recognizes them... and decides to give them a hard time before granting them everything they need to live.
When he finally reveals himself to his brothers, he tells them what he has come to understand: God sent me before you to preserve for you a remnant on earth, and to keep alive for you many survivors. So it was not you who sent me here, but God; he has made me a father to Pharaoh, and lord of all his house and ruler over all the land of Egypt. Hurry and go up to my father and say to him, “Thus says your son Joseph, God has made me lord of all Egypt; come down to me, do not delay.”
Joseph may have challenged his brothers at first, but his anger was fleeting. He had come to such position and lifestyle that he clearly was the chosen savior of his people. This gave him the chance to punish his family, but instead he used the opportunity to save them from starvation, and to bring them to the one place where they would be safe in every way, because they were related to a high-ranking official.
For those who believe that the Old Testament describes a God of wrath and vengeance while Jesus brought a new understanding of a loving parent God, this story stands in stark witness that this is a misunderstanding of both God and scripture. If Joseph has learned anything about God, it clearly was that God would have him be good to his brothers. We can see that not only has he learned that his actions have had consequences for him, but that his release from prison and work for Pharaoh is due to a God-given talent. Instead of nurturing his anger and planning revenge, he has at last reached out a hand of love to his family.
He is not the perfect model of forgiveness either. His statement to his brothers still falls short of any admission of fault on his part that led his brothers to treat him the way they did. As for them, they are terrified when they meet their long-lost brother. In the real world, long feuds usually don’t end well. So they do the only thing they can -- they fall on their faces in a deep bow to his authority. They have every reason to fear him. But he goes to them and raises them up.
This is where we see his understanding of God: the God who kept him from death; the God who freed him from prison; the God who forgave him his own youthful arrogance and led him to a position he could never have reached on his own. His reach and his grasp match, by the power of God.
We are living in dangerous times, where our president and the leader of North Korea are trading insults and sizing up each other. “Is he foolish and arrogant, or does he have the power and will to do what he is threatening?” And we are like the brothers, perhaps, having no power to change the situation, and so must cower and wait to find out what happens next.
There are those who handle their fear in more aggressive ways, flexing their muscles while marching with torches; they aim to make themselves look powerful and unopposable. There will always be those who react this way. They think that if they can frighten others, everything will even out. But as soon as it becomes clear that we know their names and can post that information on social media, there is an immediate breakdown in many of them. Their fearmongering is turned back on them. Will they quail, or decide that they will fight to the death? Again, those of us watching can only wait to see how it all comes out. Will they be Joseph and forgive, or will they wreak havoc on society?
Perhaps we can learn the same lesson Joseph learned -- that swagger only goes just so far, and then we must reach out as God has reached out to us. In the national tension we are currently living through, that lesson might be the only one that will reunite the splintering that we see around us.
Romans 11:1-2a, 29-32
Paul’s letter to the Romans is a declaration of God’s love and provision for those who have decided to follow in the Way of Jesus. Paul’s word for this is “grace.”
My mentor told me that when he went before the board that had the authority to pass on his candidacy for ministry, one of the men turned to him and said: “You’re standing at the door to the church, shaking hands after worship. An eight-year old boy comes out and asks ‘Pastor, what’s grace?’ What do you say?” My mentor said it was a hard moment, because he had no idea what to say. He’s not alone in that, of course. We live in a society steeped in the idea that we have to earn our way through the world. People will work 60+ hours a week in order to be a “success.” In Donald Trump’s book on Success in Business, he says that many men have wives who complain constantly that their husbands are working too many hours, spend too little time with their children, and so on. His advice is that if a man wants success, those ties have to be “broken as soon as possible, because the only way to succeed is to put their work as the centerpiece of their lives.” This is the kind of thinking that is driving our country in general, be it the world of politics or business or the military. How are we to understand and experience the grace of God when performance and concentration on material benefits is the driving force in our society? As Mr. Trump is famous for saying, “In the end, you’re measured not by how much you undertake but by what you finally accomplish.” But in the Realm of God, we are not measured by whatever success we achieve but on how faithful we are, because God’s grace is activated in our lives by our willingness to lean on him.
In vv. 2b-4 of Romans 11 (left out in the lectionary, but essential for our preaching), Paul points to the story in 1 Kings 11, when Elijah went to God to complain about the evil that plagued the land of Israel. Jezebel, the foreign wife of the king, worshiped Baal, who demanded human sacrifice: the firstborn child of every woman was thrown into the fire before the statue of the god. God’s reply is that he has “preserved” 7,000 men who still worship Yahweh rather than Baal; Elijah was by no means alone.
Paul assures his people that that story was about a time in Israel that was much like the one the Christians were experiencing in Rome (not exactly the model of behavior we Christians want to follow either). It was easier to just go along with what the king was allowing his wife to do; to oppose them would bring anyone, even Elijah, to being persecuted. Jezebel had said very plainly that his attack on the priests and temples of Baal had led her to put out word that he should be dead within the day.
Part of the point Paul is making is that God did not abandon his people then and will not under any circumstances, even though we may be disobedient. Even though the Jewish establishment disowned Jesus, turning him over to the Romans to be put to death, their sin did not end the relationship God had started with them thousands of years before.
You and I can take comfort in this. If God did not cast aside the sons and daughters of Abraham and Isaac, then we can be certain that God will not summarily cast us aside because of our sins. We cannot earn salvation. We cannot lose salvation either -- even when we have “backslid” or become discouraged or angry. The man who rages against God for the death of a beloved daughter, and the woman who refuses to talk to God or go to church because her husband, the pastor, died of cancer while serving that church, are not outside of the love of God. And we risk misrepresenting God if we say that they do. They are in grief, and anger is one stage of grief. We may not understand their pain, but God does, and loves them more than they can accept while they are in that state.
We who preach must remember that God is the Merciful One. God is Love. God’s grace is everlasting and permanent. “For God has imprisoned all in disobedience so that he may be merciful to all” [v. 32].
Matthew 15:(10 ? 20) 21-28
The first part of the gospel lesson is in parentheses so that we may choose to speak only about the Canaanite woman’s faith. And that story has more than enough to talk about, to even make the central part of Sunday’s sermon. Furthermore, that first passage doesn’t really relate to most American Christians. It was aimed primarily at the Jewish listeners, especially the Pharisees, who followed very strict dietary laws.
Most of those laws are laid down in Leviticus and Deuteronomy, and they are matters of deep concern, since breaking them was seen as separating oneself from the community of faith. There was a fairly long list of things faithful Jews must not eat, who they may and may not eat with, what kind of clothing they were allowed to wear, even what kind of materials could be woven together to make that clothing.
Jesus wasn’t just taking on the Pharisees, he was also going against the teachings of the Torah. A serious sin, indeed. But very humanitarian. “Nothing you eat can defile you. But what comes out of your mouth absolutely will defile you.” Dirty words. Vile name-calling. Demeaning others by word or deed. These are the things that defile us.
How little attention is paid to this rule laid down by Jesus! We finger-point, calling out those who don’t live as we do. We degrade them. We mock those who are crippled, or who stammer or stutter; we put stumbling blocks in front of the crippled, refusing to make even our churches accessible to all. It’s too expensive. She’s a retard. He’s a d-d-dummie. Old, ugly words. Stereotypes. All these things defile us.
If we remember that this statement by Jesus comes immediately before the gospel words we are invited to concentrate on, the story of the Canaanite woman takes on some importance we may have missed -- that we were allowed to miss in most of the teaching we have ever received on this woman’s encounter with Jesus.
Jesus’ preaching in verses 10-20 happened at someplace other than Tyre and Sidon, where he is accosted by the Canaanite woman. (Did she have a name? We might expect that she did; few people go through life without a name, but women so often walk through the narrative without a face or a name -- Lot’s wife, the woman with an issue of blood, the widow of Nain, and this woman.)
She approaches Jesus first from some short distance away. She is shouting “Have mercy on me, Lord, Son of David!”
Jesus ignores her and keeps on walking.
She shouts again: “Have mercy, Son of David; my daughter is tormented by a demon.”
Jesus doesn’t answer her. He keeps on walking, perhaps avoiding eye contact as well. His disciples come to him and beg him to do something. Even to send her away would be more merciful than ignoring her like this. What is Jesus thinking? Well, apparently, he says what he’s thinking: “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.”
Huh. Really? ONLY to the lost sheep of Israel? But he goes to parties with harlots and tax collectors. Surely, on the ladder that stretches from earth to heaven, they are lower on the rungs than this woman. She’s asking him for help.
She is not easily dismissed, and she is not going to stop until she gets what she wants. She catches up to Jesus and throws herself on the ground in front of him.
“Lord, help me!” She’s begging. Didn’t Jesus have a parable about feeding the beggar at the door?
At this point he says to her: “It is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.”
Okay, now that needs some explanation. Dogs are not beloved pets in the Middle East. They are workers or they do not get fed. They are not perfumed and pampered, made to wear cute little outfits or offered bacon-flavored treats. Because they are not pampered, they will try to hang around the table, hoping that scraps will come their way. They are considered dirty, and they often are, living most of the time outdoors and feeding on rats and other small, troublesome vermin.
I remember my grandmother scraping all the leftovers from the dinner plates into a pan, pouring broth or gravy over it all, and putting it near the back door for the dog who lived in the barnyard and slept in the shed (in summer; in winter, he snuck into the barn and burrowed into the hay). She even put the coffee grounds in that pan, and any bone that would be safe for the dog to chew on. They valued the dog, and he got baths when he really needed one, but he was another farmhand, chasing the cows out of the barn and herding them back in at night, and guarding the hen house.
It’s in this context that we need to hear Jesus. He just called this woman and her daughter “dogs.” It was a common idea among the Jews that the Canaanites were unclean (not literally dirty; they were ritually unclean). They were unfit for the Kingdom of God, outcasts literally, since it was their land before the Israelites came and drove out the people who had been living in Canaan.
Are you shocked? Shocked at Jesus’ words? The woman was not shocked. She was used to it, this business of being shunted to one side, pushed out of the path of any and all men on the road with her. Didn’t he just say, hours or a day ago, “What comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart, and this is what defiles.” Of course, we need to ask, “Did he do this deliberately, a sort of illustrated sermon for the benefit of his disciples?” It is possible.
The woman, undaunted, replies: “Yes, but even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters’ table.” (“I may be a dog, Lord, but even dogs get to eat the scraps and leftovers.”)
She has scored a shot. Maybe Jesus applauds her cleverness of argument. Maybe his disciples gasp in shock at his words, and he is called up short. Maybe his Father in heaven slapped him at the back of his head. Maybe she’s just made his point. Whatever did it, Jesus looks right at her. He answers her: “Woman, great is your faith! Let it be done for you as you wish.”
We know, from other gospel stories, that sometimes Jesus seems to say that a sick person only gets healed if they have enough faith. But Jesus’ own words to his disciples indicate that it is the healer, not the patient, that needs to have faith. What, then, does she have that others lacked?
Outside of the church, people don’t talk about faith every day. But they do talk about gumption, stick-to-it-iveness, determination. “It doesn’t matter how many times you fail and fall; what matters is how many times you get back up and try again.” That exactly matches what Jesus saw in this woman. She would not stop shouting, begging for help. She followed him, even though he would not speak a word to her. She threw herself to her knees right in front of him. She begged him “Lord, help me.” And even when he threw an old stereotype, a degrading word, at her, she said “Yes, but...”
Over and over in his ministry, Jesus points to the women -- bleeding, broken, bent over by arthritis, mourning the death of a son, frantic for her daughter -- and says: “Your faith has saved you.” “Your faith has made you whole.” “Leave her alone, she is doing a beautiful thing for me.” Over and over, he saw that these women would not give up. They followed him, shouting out. They begged. They would not shut up. They persisted.
Until they got what they wanted, what they needed. Until Jesus made them whole again.
Can we do the same?
