This piece was originally delivered as a sermon at Little River United Church of Christ in Annandale, VA, where I serve as senior pastor. It was given on the occasion of students and teachers headed back to school (Aug 20, 2023).
Well, it’s not often that Jesus—our teacher, our guide, our spiritual brother— insults people in the bible, but we see him doing that in Matthew 15:21-28. In this text, Jesus refuses to help someone in need, and he even calls her a dog when she asks him for help. Let that sink in for a moment.
This scripture passage begins as Jesus makes his way to Tyre and Sidon. These are cities that are rebuked in Isaiah and Ezekiel for their extravagant wealth, and Jesus condemns them in chapter 11. When a Canaanite woman comes out from that region, she is coming out of a region associated with Baal worship. Canaan is one of Israel’s traditional enemies. And so the woman came out from Canaan, and Jesus was on his way, and they seem to be meeting at the border between Israel and this Gentile district.
The woman starts shouting to Jesus, “have mercy on me, Son of David.” When she uses these words, she is using Jesus’s Jewish messianic title. And for the gospel writer, as she does so, she is foreshadowing the conversion of the Gentiles. But Jesus didn’t answer.
And so the disciples said, Jesus, you’ve got to send this woman away. She’s shouting at us. Jesus explains his silence by saying that he was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. He wasn’t sent to the Gentiles, and especially not to Canaanites, the enemies of Israel.
But the Canaanite woman persisted. She came and knelt before him, saying, “Lord, help me.” And Jesus answered, “It is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.” Now this wasn’t an ethnic slur, but it was a general insult. Jesus insulted this woman to her face, saying that he would not heal her daughter because he was only concerned about his own Jewish people.
Now most of us, if we were put in the Canaanite woman’s shoes, probably would have let it go. Having been insulted and turned away, perhaps we would have accepted that this Jesus guy wasn’t who we thought he was. We thought he was a good person, a healer, a prophet who wanted to help people. We thought he was a spiritual teacher and an ethical person we could look up to. But no – if he refused to help and then insulted us, we would likely give up.
But here comes the persistence of a woman who will not give up, who will not leave until she finds help for her daughter. Here comes a woman who is not afraid of this Jesus, who calls him “Lord,” but who nevertheless does not cower in his presence. She shouts at him until he responds. And then when he insults her, what does she do, but talk back.
She said, “Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters’ table.”
Here we have the privilege of witnessing a moment in which Jesus the Christ learns. Where he grows. Where his mind and heart are expanded. Where Jesus comes closer to more perfectly manifesting the love of God. Jesus answered her, “Woman, great is your faith!”
I can’t help but be reminded of Jesus’ parable of the persistence of the widow in Luke 18. In this parable, Jesus says there was a woman, a widow, who wanted justice against her adversary. The judge in her case, however, neither feared God nor cared what people thought. But the woman persisted. She went to the judge repeatedly, and for some time he refused. But finally he said to himself, ‘Even though I don’t fear God or care what people think, yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will see that she gets justice, so that she won’t eventually come and attack me.’
Jesus tells this story of the persistent widow, and the gospel of Luke interprets it as a parable to show Jesus’ followers that they should always pray and not give up. “Will God not bring about justice for those who cry out day and night,” he says? “Will God keep putting them off? I tell you, God will see that they get justice, and quickly. But when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on the earth?”
Now I don’t know which came first – the gospel according to Matthew or the gospel according to Luke. But it certainly seems plausible that these two stories are linked: the story of Jesus learning from the persistent Canaanite woman of great faith, and the story of the unjust judge relenting in response to the persistent widow.
This morning I have to ask, are we comfortable with saying that Jesus learns? Are we comfortable with admitting what seems very plain here in the gospel of Matthew, that Jesus was sometimes in the wrong, and that he learned from others, that he learned how to include others, that he learned about the great faith of Gentiles through his encounter with this woman? Are we comfortable, in other words, with admitting that Jesus was fully human – and had to learn and grow in wisdom along with stature? This is a story that reminds us that our teacher, our guide, our spiritual brother, is our brother—our human sibling, who we believe was indwelt by the divine being—but who nonetheless had to learn like the rest of us.
I give thanks for that learning. Because for me, it means that we can be wrong, and still be followers of Jesus. It means that we can make mistakes, we can be ignorant, we can be exclusionary at times, and still be disciples. Because discipleship is not about being right all the time. Discipleship is not about knowing everything. Discipleship is not avoiding all failures or mistakes. Discipleship is in the learning. The discipline is in the hearing of the perspectives of others. The discipline is the practice of being constantly open to what others are saying. And the willingness to be surprised by their faith. To be surprised by their love. To be surprised by their truth. The discipline is to listen, and then to change our behavior. That is how we follow Christ, our Jesus who as a human being also made mistakes. But who learned in encounters with others, and who changed his ways.
Jesus answered her, “Woman, great is your faith! Let it be done for you as you wish.” And her daughter was healed from that moment.
This week, when I arrived on our grounds on Monday morning, I was the first to see that our banners, declaring that Black Lives Matter and that we need to Reject Racism, had been ripped down. Someone came to our grounds last Sunday night and tried to remove Jesus’ message of love and justice from Little River Turnpike. They attempted to silence us – to remove our witness to the 40 thousand people who drive by those banners each day – that God loves black people.
We don’t know who did it. We don’t have any video cameras out there by our banners. But I do know that it was someone who was fearful, or hateful, or angry – which are usually bound up together. It was someone who has not yet learned, like Jesus did, that when we exclude others on the basis of their ethnic group, when we exclude people because of the color of their skin or the way they talk or the culture they’re proud of, or their sexual orientation or identity, when we exclude people, when we call them dogs or simply refuse to talk to them, we are in the wrong. The good news is that just as Jesus learned, so can we. And so can they.
My prayer this week is for whoever ripped down our banners: that they would be moved by the divine spirit to listen to their human siblings – to those people of color who are living under oppressive conditions. That they would listen to those people of color whose family members have been killed in their homes and on the streets. That they would listen to those women who cry out on behalf of their daughters and sons. And that they would learn as Jesus learned, that God’s love belongs to all. And that God’s love includes justice – a beloved community where all are safe, welcome, and cherished. Where black lives matter.
My prayer is also for us: that we would not grow weary. That we would not become timid. That we would not live in fear. That we, too, would learn from the Canaanite woman, who was so bold as to talk back to Jesus. That we would learn how to persist in our faith, and to persist even in the face of what seems to be an insurmountable power in this country – the power of racism and white supremacy.
God, give us the faith of this woman, our ancestor, give us her persistence – so that we might shout, march, and talk back to whoever we need to, in order to receive justice for our siblings of color. In the faith of this Canaanite woman, and in the name of her student, Jesus of Nazareth, we pray. Amen
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