Yesterday I had the opportunity to read, for about the
millionth time (“I’ve told you a million times not to exaggerate!” But I digress.) Matthew 15: 21-28. You know the story. A
Canaanite, therefore a Gentile, woman, calls out to Jesus
“Have pity on me,
Lord, Son of David! My daughter is
tormented by a demon.” (Matthew 15, 22)
Jesus replies with a cold, hard-hearted
“I was sent only to
the lost sheep of the house of Israel
To her repeated pleas, Jesus gets even colder and more
hard-hearted, seemingly downright rude and heartless
“It is not right to
take the food of the children and throw it to the dogs.” (Matthew 15, 26)
Then the woman, not to be denied, retorts with something
that I suspect neither you nor I would say.
We’d probably say something unprintable, or at least I know I
would. But she says
“Please, Lord, for
even the dogs eat the scraps that fall from the table of their masters.”
(Matthew 15, 27)
Jesus finally relents
“O woman, how great is
your faith. Let it be done to you as you wish.” And her daughter was healed from that hour. (Matthew 15, 28) (Emphasis mine)
This story has troubled me, and doubtless millions of other
Christians, for years. How could Jesus,
the Son of God to whom we have devoted our lives, the man of such great mercy
and compassion, be such a jerk to this woman?
About twenty years ago, I heard this behavior of Jesus
explained away by a priest I respect as a matter of culture. This was completely unsatisfying, but at
least the guy tried to explain this seeming embarrassment. So I continued to think and pray on this
passage, and I think the answer has finally come to me over the last few years,
perhaps due to my innate slowness.
Jesus acted like such a rude, insolent boor to this woman in
order to show us how we appear, indeed, how we really are, when we determine
that people are not entitled to God’s love and mercy because they don’t think
like we do or don’t go to the same church that we do. When we think we, and only we, have the keys
to the kingdom, we sound like obnoxious, arrogant, self-satisfied
hypocrites…just like Jesus sounded, intentionally, to the Canaanite woman.
Further…
Jesus tells the woman that it is her faith that saved the woman and cured her daughter, not her
belonging to a certain parish or a certain religion and not her somehow earning
His mercy through her good works…as prescribed by her church. It is her faith in Jesus that saved the
woman and her daughter, not her membership in the right ethnic group or
religion.
It is the same with us.
Our faith saves us. Our
certainty that we and only we are right makes us sound like, and be, jerks…and
separates us from the One to whom we purport to want to get closer.
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