The Disciples Said What!? ~ Matthew 15:21-28 (Jesus Said What!? Series)

²¹ Leaving that place, Jesus withdrew to the region of Tyre and Sidon. ²² A Canaanite woman from that vicinity came to him, crying out, “Lord, Son of David, have mercy on me! My daughter is demon-possessed and suffering terribly.” ²³ Jesus did not answer a word. So his disciples came to him and urged him, “Send her away, for she keeps crying out after us.” ²⁴ He answered, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of Israel.” ²⁵ The woman came and knelt before him. “Lord, help me!” she said. ²⁶ He replied, “It is not right to take the children’s bread and toss it to the dogs.” ²⁷ “Yes it is, Lord,” she said. “Even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their master’s table.” ²⁸ Then Jesus said to her, “O Woman, you have great faith! Your request is granted.” And her daughter was healed at that moment. ~ Matt. 15:21-28

1.    Who’s your grandmother?

Matthew's usual term for gentiles, sometimes translated “nations,” is not used here. The designation “Canaanite” certainly defines the woman as a gentile, but not just any gentile. Did Matthew chuckle as he wrote “Canaanite”? He did it on purpose, you know. He’s sneaky, playing with us, like a good documentary film maker. It’s easy to miss because we don’t see that the Gospels are not like modern historical biographies exactly but more like documentary films which play with images, metaphors, even chronology in order to make a point. They are depictions of truth with a message.

The term “Canaanite” conveys a deep-seated historical bias that “Syro-Phoenician” (Mark 7) does not. The referent is biblical not contemporary. After the Exodus, you may recall, the Israelites were told to exterminate the Canaanites and others (and the language is important): “ . . . you must utterly destroy them . . . and show them no mercy” (Deut. 7:2).But there were no Canaanites living in the first century, so the label does not describe present-day encounters. It evokes an ancient conflict and thus defines the woman in terms of age-old prejudices a first-century Jewish audience would understand. And this hated one – whom no Jew should show mercy – begs for it. So Matthew is trying to depict the archetype enemy, the consummate outsider, the most hated. Our modern translation might say, “A Red Coat woman came . . .” or “Or a Nazi mother came out of that region . . .” Why would that matter? What’s the joke? What’s Matthew doing? He’s referencing a Biblical context of hatred that Jesus aims to end.
Here we have Canaanite woman begging for mercy from the Messiah, the King of the Jews, who by all rights should show her none And yet this Canaanite recognizes him, she kneels before him. She is the enemy-immigrant that we are to remember could be a relative. That’s right, I said, relative. For Matthew has already given us the genealogy of Jesus through the line of King David. And do you remember anything about the lineage? Three of Jesus’ ancestors we’re

Canaanite women: Rahab, Tamar, and Ruth (Matthew 1:3, 5). Three of the women caught up in his story are the outsiders who should have received no mercy. Matthew is slyly pointing out that the enemy begging for mercy can be your grandmother. The one whom you might despise could be family. His point is that that we belong to one another.
Matthew’s point could be formed into a question: Does my life give any evidence of encountering God? Or does my religion spend much of its time defining who cannot participate? Friends, we must be a people of mercy toward immigrants, foreigners, outsiders, Canaanites. We very well could be related. The immigrant begging for mercy could be our grandmother. It could also be us.
I had a friend who was a Youth Pastor at a church that practiced closed communion, meaning that they only allowed Christians to partake in communion. One Sunday they asked one of their own: a faithful, elderly woman who had come to faith 15 years earlier at the church to share her testimony. She said that she showed up on Sunday having no church background whatsoever, half-drunk, and steeped in non-Christian spirituality and beliefs. It was a communion Sunday and despite being told not to come forward, because she wasn’t a Christian, came forward any way and took Communion. She recounted then how she had a divine encounter with Jesus which changed her life. I asked my friend if the pastor took that to heart and changed his understanding of communion. Nope, he said. Friends, like Jesus, we must allow the Canaanite woman to change our mind.
2. Which cry will you join: eleison or apolyson?
Identified as a foreigner, still this Canaanite woman has all the appropriate language of a true Israelite. She persistently cries out for God's mercy (the Greek imperfect underscores the repetition). We are meant to hear the language of worship and faith. 
So stretch your imaginations to entertain the scene. 

Gathered in one corner are those familiar disciples, the true blue representatives of the faithful “lost sheep of Israel”. Like a gang of watchdogs at the door they are about the checking of IDs and keeping out the foreigner.  On the other side of the fence stands this outsider, a woman no less, one lone representative pleading for mercy. No English translation can capture Matthew's careful orchestration of the painful choral refrain. “Lord, have mercy,” howls the woman. “Get rid of her,” bleat the sheep.
In the Greek their words are a rhyming and ironic echo of each other: eleison/mercy and apolyson/remove).  With dramatic effect Matthew’s film sets before us a Jesus flanked by two competing choruses: on one side one lone woman crying “kyrie eleison,” and on the other a band of bullies shouting her down with their “apolyson.” Which chorus will you join?
Too often we refuse to empathize with people whose experience is different from our own. If the oppression, injustice, or pain is not happening in our house and neighborhood or does not impact our race, gender, class, or sexuality, then we dismiss it as unwelcomed, unjustified noise. Who do you find yourself saying “apolyson” to?

3.    Jesus said, “What?”

a.    Jesus said “dog.”

Jesus’ initial response to her is a lack of one. Was it a refusal

or a test of her faith? Or, was it a hesitation as Jesus wrestles with the dissonance between the compassion awakened by the woman’s plea and the Biblical knowledge of his primary focus on Israel. Jesus then almost seems to affirm their desire to dismiss her: “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel” (Matthew 15:24, NRSV). It only seems to get worse when he says in vs. 26, “It is not right to take the children’s bread and toss it to the dogs.” Does he mean it? Did he raise an eyebrow? Could we dare say he was playing “Devil’s advocate” like any good teacher might? These are hard questions to answer. 

In The Shawshank Redemption. Tommy Williams, an inmate at Shawshank, approaches Andy Dufresne, the protagonist, and asks for help getting his high school equivalency. Andy replies, “I don’t waste time on losers, Tommy.”
We could watch this isolated scene and imagine that Andy is a judgmental jerk, but such a description does not fit the movie’s overall depiction of him. Why then does Andy call Tommy a “loser”?  If we continue the scene, we find that Andy uses the term to test Tommy’s resolve. He wants to weigh his tenacity and the degree of his desire to complete the task ahead. Andy wants to help, but only if Tommy is truly willing to put in the effort. It was a test. Similarly, despite Jesus’ remark, he had already expressed that Gentiles would be included in God’s great banquet (Matt. 8:5-13) and was known to speak strongly to make a point (John 8:7). Will this woman likewise lean in and be tenacious?
If this is a discipleship test, who turns out to be the good disciple? The Canaanite woman who craftily accepts Jesus’ argument with a twist. Yes, she says, even if Gentiles are dogs, the dogs still have a right to be fed, even with the leftovers. In antiquity, Greeks and other Gentiles had a more familiar relationship with household pets, particularly with dogs, than did the average Jewish person, who considered dogs unclean (hence, its use for describing Gentiles). Non-Jews were known to have dogs as pets that they fed from under the table. This cultural difference might explain the woman’s response: “Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters’ table,” (Matthew 15:27).

The Canaanite woman’s cultural context differs from Jesus’ and she uses that to her advantage; they allow their pets to be fed while the children eat. One can feed the children and feed the pets too! You can do both, she says. And thank God for that, friends, because remember - we are Gentile dogs, as well.
I love the turnaround. It reminds me of another turnaround argued by a famous woman, Sojourner Truth who said, “Then that little man in black there, he says women can’t have as much rights as men, ‘cause Christ wasn’t a woman! Where did your Christ come from? Where did your Christ come from? From God and a woman! Man had nothing to do with Him.”
And here’s the point. The Canaanite woman wins. Jesus concedes. Jesus says, “O”

b.    Jesus said Ō

Jesus’ use of the vocative “Oh” in addressing the woman puts to rest any sense or concern about coldness; ō in the Greek is generally “used in contexts where deep emotion is to be found.” But more than mere emotion, . . .

c.     Jesus said “great.”

In Matthew's Gospel, Jesus has elsewhere chastised the “little faith” of the 12 disciples 3 times (8:26; 14:31; 16:8), but here, in the only occurrence in the whole New Testament, Jesus praises the “great faith” of this Gentile woman and commands that her plea be granted. No sooner are the words spoken than it is done. We are told that the woman's daughter is healed instantly. 
And what of us who hear this story? Can it be that its subtle reversals and surprises intend to work some transformation in our lives as well? To open us up to see the wondrously extravagant reaches of God's mercies? For surely this is the gospel's call for all Jesus' followers, confronted with the enemy-immigrant, not to assume the role of greedy bouncers at the door checking IDs, but to take our places on our knees as ones who cry for mercy with that same persistent faith that turns us around and plants us shoulder to shoulder with this woman, side by side with all the outcasts, the wounded, the hungry, the lonely, the homeless, the dogs. She is our grandmother.