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A Sermon Preached at St. Christopher's Episcopal Church, Oak Park, IL
on the Fourteenth Sunday after Pentecost: August 17, 2008 (Proper 15, Year A)
by the Rev. Paris Coffey

Jesus left Gennesaret and went away to the district of Tyre and Sidon. Just then a Canaanite woman from that region came out and started shouting, "Have mercy on me, Lord, Son of David; my daughter is tormented by a demon." . . . He answered, "I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel." But she came and knelt before him, saying, "Lord, help me." - Matthew 15:21-22, 24-25

What in heaven's name is wrong with Jesus? Did he get up on the wrong side of the bed this morning? Did he never go to bed at all, partying all night so that when the Canaanite woman arrives, shouting at him to cure her daughter, he has a headache the size of Mount Sinai? Maybe he's just a jerk and we never realized it until now; or is there something else going on in this scandalous story in today's reading from the Gospel of Matthew?

Perhaps. But before we let Jesus off the hook too easily, let's examine what he's been doing up until now. Two Sundays ago, you may remember, Jesus was feeding a crowd of 5,000-plus hungry people, while last Sunday he was walking on water. Since then, though, he's covered more ground than you might think. He's rowed back to shore with his disciples, healed all who've come to him, and argued with Pharisees about purity rules - what's clean or unclean.

In fact, Jesus has rather brashly accused the Pharisees of using their rules to play fast and loose with God's commands; of saying the right things while holding evil in their hearts (Mt 15:8-9). Not surprisingly, the Pharisees are offended by this, but when the disciples reveal that they don't quite get it either, Jesus snaps, "Are you being willfully stupid (Mt 15:16, The Message)? It's not what goes into the mouth that make a person unclean but what comes out, for what comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart (Mt 15:18)."

It seems Jesus is getting testier by the minute, all of which happens before leaving the supposedly "clean" shores of Gennesaret for the ritually "unclean" region of Tyre and Sidon. Why shouldn't he, then, be equally testy there, when approached with yet another demand by a woman who's an alleged enemy of Israel. Canaanites, after all, had been Israel's enemy since Old Testament times, which Matthew highlights when he uses the phrase "Canaanite woman." Mark, for example, calls this woman a "Syro-Phoenician" (Mk 7:26), while neither Luke nor John mention her at all. Matthew, in contrast, uses a word found nowhere else in the New Testament, suggesting he intends to evoke a somewhat racist Old Testament image.

This image, several scholars point out¹, spotlights a people Israel had long considered to be NOT just their enemy but God's, for as Moses had once said to God's people, "When the LORD your God brings you into the land you are about to enter and occupy, and clears away many nations before you - Hittites, Girgashites, Amorites, CANAANITES, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites . . . and when the LORD your God gives them over to you and you defeat them, then . . . Make no covenant with them, and show them no mercy (Deut 7:1-2)."

This Old Testament history lingers into the New - as old history often does - and so when Jesus, or Matthew, refers in today's Gospel to the "Canaanite woman" he highlights her as the worst of outsiders. She's not just from the wrong side of the tracks, or in this case the wrong side of the lake; not just a "South Sider" if you're a North Shore elitist, a "Shiite" if you're a "Sunni," or a "Pentecostal" if you're a snooty Episcopalian. She's the lowest of the low - an Islamic extremist to a victim of the World Trade Center, Hitler to a survivor of the Holocaust, or whatever other monster we deem irredeemable in the face of our own old history.

It's no wonder Jesus refers to her or to her people as dogs - the Jew's derogatory slang for Canaanite; no wonder, too, that the disciples want to dismiss her altogether, demanding, "Send her away, for she keeps shouting after us." They want the bouncer to do his job, which when you think about it is actually rather odd, for despite the fact that the woman is a Canaanite, she's obviously a woman of faith. "Have mercy on me, Lord, Son of David," she shouts, placing her first plea for help before Jesus, but Jesus ignores her. Nevertheless, she continues to shout, putting the disciples on edge.

Of course, it may be that it's not her shouting that puts them on edge at all, but the depth of her faith, for without doubt this woman is a force to be reckoned with. Indeed, in the face of indifference, rejection and flat-out insult she refuses to slink away like some scolded pup but begs - demands even - the restoration of her daughter's health. She has no intention of leaving until her faith has been justified, prayer answered and God's mercy shown, for she doesn't care about old history/old wounds. She cares about only about the now, and about the daughter she loves more than life itself.

And we empathize. We feel her desperation, for many of us know, too, what it's like to love so deeply and long so urgently for the healing or wholeness of a loved one - a child, parent, partner or friend - that we are driven to bang on the doors of heaven until our pleas are heard. Sadly, though, we also know what it's like to get discouraged, feel rejected and slink away in shame, our tails between our legs. "Who were we to think God cared?" we murmur in defeat. "Who are we to even think such power exists?" Desperation turns so easily to doubt, and yet this woman - this ancient ancient enemy of Israel - shows us something different, shows us that dogged faith is indeed a force to be reckoned with.

Consequently, her prayer pierces the darkness of doubt like the howl of a dog in the night, compelling the disciples of Jesus to beg him to silence her shouts as she cries a second time, "Lord help me." And this time Jesus responds, not answering her prayer, but explaining to the Canaanite woman that his mission is to the Jews/to the lost sheep of Israel. "It's not fair to take the children's food and throw it do the dogs," he says, using the common Jewish slur . . . and his response shocks us. It shocks us as it has shocked scholars, preachers and students of the Bible for generations, for although we may understand the history behind this racial slur, it shocks us to hear it from the mouth of one whose words come from the heart. It does not, though, shock the Canaanite woman who, without missing a beat, argues in her third prayer, "Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters' table."

She wastes no time nursing insults, feeling indignant or arguing the metaphor of Gentiles as dogs and Jews as God's children. She doesn't even argue her own history, the ethnic cleansing of Canaanites forced from their land. Instead she reminds Jesus, with the self-deprecating humor of a member of a conquered race, that mercy is not about who she is, but who God claims to be. To be sure, she may not be among the chosen ones of Israel, but she is more authentically faithful - in the tradition of Abraham and Moses who were not afraid to confront God - than the scribes, Pharisees and even disciples she has encountered. And Jesus recognizes it. "Woman, great is your faith!" he says, granting mercy to a woman/a people of whom God was believed to have said, "Show no mercy."

"Let it be done for you as you wish." And instantly the Canaanite woman's daughter is healed. It seems the woman's third prayer is a charm. Old history is forgotten - or remembered - making Jesus' mission more radical than he had previously thought, or at least than he had let on. Certainly it's more radical than WE think, embracing not only those we have excluded, but the enemies who, in the face of our own old histories, we have deemed irredeemable. Did we MIS-understand? Probably. Whatever the case, though, what we are to understand now is that THIS is a God of redemption. THIS is a God of love, not hate - life, not death. All we have to do is claim it - with faith, boldness, and a moderately thick-skin - praying that bad mood or not, wrong-side-of-the-bed or not, testy attitude or not . . . God will grant mercy to those who seek it.

Amen.

1. Grant LeMarquand, "The Canaanite Conquest of Jesus" (Trinity Episcopal School for Ministry Online) and Glenna Jackson, "Have Mercy on Me": The Story of the Canaanite Woman in Matthew 15:21-28 (JSNT Sup 228; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2002), 61.