“Have mercy on me, Lord, Son of David; my daughter is tormented by a demon,” the woman yelled. Cried. Pleaded.
But Jesus did not answer her at all.
And his disciples came and urged him, saying, “Send her away, for she keeps shouting after us.”
Jesus tells his disciples: “I was sent only to the lost sheep of Israel.”
The woman came and knelt before him and said, “Lord, help me.”
He said, “It is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.”
She said, “Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters’ table.”
He said, “Woman, great is your faith!” And he healed her daughter.
This is another of those really difficult Gospel stories, depending on how you read it. One of those stories where we see what appears to be the uncomfortable humanity of Jesus. A woman comes to him for help and the compassionate, kind, gentle Jesus we think we know has disappeared. He’s rude. We look at today’s collect and realize that Jesus is not showing a “Godly example” to his disciples. His disciples are annoyed, and Jesus appears to be annoyed too. He seems to be practicing what I’ve heard called “benign neglect.” Maybe, he seems to be thinking, if I ignore her, she’ll just go away.
And his disciples are begging him – Send her away. Heal her and get it over with so she stops bothering us. And Jesus says…No. She’s not my problem. I’m only supposed to be here for the Jewish people, not the Gentiles, much less a Canaanite, much less a Canaanite woman. (He’s conveniently forgetting that some of his own ancestors, including Ruth, were Canaanite women.)
We never know the name of this Canaanite woman. We do know she doesn’t give up or give in. She comes up to Jesus, and she calls him Son of David. She kneels at his feet and begs him for mercy, because she knows that his God, that her God, is a God of mercy, a God who heals, a God who loves. And she is grieving, terrified of losing her daughter to a demon. She is doing the only thing she can think of: She has come to beg for help from the man she believes can heal her daughter.
It’s hard to keep ignoring a woman who’s kneeling at your feet and asking for help. So Jesus finally has to say something; he can’t continue to ignore her. But instead of relenting and listening to her patiently and kindly, he insults her, saying, “It is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.” Jesus is calling this woman a dog, which at the time was a common insult directed toward Gentiles.
And yet the Canaanite woman persists. And there are two ways to read what she says in response to Jesus. One is the translation we’ve just heard: “Yes, Lord, it isn’t fair, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters’ table.”
Yes, Lord, you’re right, but at the same time, could you heal my daughter anyway? I believe you can heal her. Isn’t that enough? I have faith in you.
And that is a powerful reading of her words. She accepts this inequality that society has placed on her, this idea that she is not as important, not as deserving of God’s mercy as other people might be, but she asks for it anyway, because she has faith in Jesus, no matter how rude he is on this particular day.
Some theologians say there’s another way of reading the woman’s response to Jesus. It can be argued that the original Greek text leaves out one small but important word, or intends it differently, and that word is translated in many versions as “yet.”
“Yes, Lord, it isn’t fair, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters’ table.”
So their conversation might have instead sounded something like this:
Jesus: “It’s not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.”
The Canaanite woman: “Yes, it is fair. The dogs deserve food just as much as the children do. Jesus, you’re wrong.” It’s a fairly blunt accusation to the Son of David.
In a sense, either way you read it, Jesus gets the message. And perhaps he got the message all along. He might have been playing “devil’s advocate” is another way to read this passage – being intentionally impatient, intentionally insulting, pushing the woman to challenge him, in order to teach a greater truth. We don’t know, and we can’t know, but in any case, after this uncomfortable conversation, Jesus takes a breath, sees her, and speaks to her in kindness and mercy and maybe even in admiration, telling her, “Woman, great is your faith!” and he heals her daughter.
As I was reading this week’s Gospel, imagining this woman following Jesus and his disciples, yelling at them, insisting on being heard, arguing with Jesus, telling him he’s wrong – a sentence from a somewhat later century came to mind:
Well-behaved women never make history.
The Canaanite woman in today’s reading from Matthew is not well-behaved.
I looked up that phrase: It’s one of those sentences that seems to show up on greeting cards and bookmarks and mugs; and in my hazy memory I thought someone historic and historically not well behaved must have said it. But it turns out it was written not by a historic woman, but by a woman who is still alive, and who studies history – named Laurel Thatcher Ulrich. Originally from Idaho, she co-founded a Mormon feminist newspaper, finished a master’s and a Ph.D. while raising her children, became a professor at Harvard and wrote a lot of things, including a journal article that included the phrase “Well-behaved women never make history.” And then she wrote a book with the same title, exploring the idea that centuries of women who did all the things that society expected of them (raise families, stay at home, be polite, not rock the boat) have been overlooked by history. It’s the women who have broken the social rules, stepped outside the expectations of society, who are remembered in the history books – the Rosa Parks, the Elizabeth Cady Stantons, the Virginia Woolfs, the Amelia Earharts.
But history is not just made up of major events and significant dates. It is also all the stories in between, often overlooked, the fabric that holds us together as human beings.
Laurel Ulrich’s point is that the women who are supposedly “well-behaved,” the women who live quieter lives than those who have books written about them, also make history. They change the world in their own ways, even if those ways are quieter, less visible, less dramatic.
And the Canaanite woman in today’s Gospel is perhaps somewhere in between. To the disciples and the crowds around her, she is not well-behaved. She is loud; she is rude; she pushes her way in where she is not welcome; she refuses to accept the social order that makes her an outsider in the world in which Jesus and his disciples have grown up. She is a Gentile, a woman, and has a daughter who is possessed by a demon, and yet dares to challenge Jesus’ sense of his own mission.
And at the same time, the Canaanite woman is also a woman of her society. She is not powerful; she is not a politician or a ruler. She is a mother desperate to save her child, and like many mothers we know, she will go to whatever lengths she must. And in being a mother, in seeking help for her daughter, seeking out this person everyone says can heal miraculously, and pushing her way to kneel in front of him and tell him the truth, she makes history.
We never know her name or the name of her daughter. We never learn what happens to them after this day. But the Gospel, this history, part of the history of our faith, preserves the words she spoke and the truth she reminded Jesus and his disciples about.
The message in the end is clear: The Canaanite woman, a Gentile, and her daughter, possessed by a demon, were also beloved by God and deserving of mercy. And the mission of Jesus and his disciples was to preach the good news of the coming kingdom to everyone, including those whom society saw as outsiders. Their work was to spread the word of God’s love to the corners of the earth. That day’s conversation, that uncomfortable meeting with the unnamed Canaanite woman, changed the course of Jesus’ ministry, clarified his purpose, and made clear the universal love of God for all of God’s creation. And those truths change the course of our lives as well, reminding us that we too are assured of God’s mercy and of God’s healing and of God’s love, and that same mercy, healing, and love are given to everyone, expressed through us every day and everywhere. Amen.
— The Rev. Cara Ellen Modisett, Curate, Trinity Episcopal Church of Staunton
Twelfth Sunday After Pentecost, August 20, 2023
Reading: Matthew 15:21-28
