The Canaanite
Woman, James Tissot
The Sermons At Calvary
By The Reverend Rhonda Lee
“Persistent Humility”
13 Pentecost/Proper 15 Year A
Matthew 15: 21-28
“Send her away, for she keeps
shouting after us.” “It is not right to
take the children's food and throw it to the dogs.” Our gospel reading for today doesn't paint a very flattering
portrait of Jesus or his disciples.
We're used to thinking of the disciples as short-sighted, or
thick-headed, slow to understand what Jesus is telling them and slower still to
live it out. But Jesus is another
matter altogether. He's supposed to get
it, he's supposed to help. He's the one
who heals people, feeds them, comforts them.
He's the one who hugs little children and who raises his friend Lazarus
from the dead.
But then we read the story of the
Canaanite woman – a pagan, a member of an ethnic group that the Israelites
generally despised. Her daughter is
sick and she’s desperate, so when she hears that Jesus has come to town and she
sees him walking down her street she yells out to him for help. She's desperate, but she’s respectful: she
asks for mercy and calls him “Lord” and “Son of David.” So the Canaanite woman approaches Jesus for
help, and what does he do? He tells her
it’s not right to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs. Dogs?
Throw? Is that any way for the
Son of God to speak to a defenceless woman?
When I read this story for the first time as a child, I was stunned and
disappointed. To be honest, I thought
that Jesus came off sounding like a real jerk.
I was especially disappointed when I remembered that just a few chapters
earlier in Matthew's gospel, Jesus had healed the servant of a Roman
soldier. If he would heal one pagan,
why not another? Was Jesus just having
a really bad day? Did he, like Greta
Garbo all those years ago, just want to be left alone?
Eventually I went to seminary and I
discovered that I wasn’t the only one who wondered about Jesus’ behaviour. There are almost as many explanations of the
story of the Canaanite woman as there are people who read it. Some say that Jesus was just testing the
woman’s wit and gave in when she turned out to be better at debating than he
was. That might make sense, but it’s
not a particularly merciful way for the Son of God to treat a woman who is
desperate to heal her demon-possessed daughter. Other scholars focus on Matthew, saying that this story tells us
about his idea of how salvation
works: it was offered first to the Jews, then to the rest of the world. That also makes some sense, but I personally
think that Jesus had an encounter something like this during his earthly life,
or else Matthew wouldn't have written about it.
So what we're left with is, quite
honestly, a mess. We really can’t
explain Jesus’ behaviour. So let’s look
in a different direction instead. Maybe
the fact that this story brings up unanswerable questions tells us that we
should look, not at Jesus, but at the Canaanite woman, first, then maybe at the
disciples, and then at ourselves.
Who is this Canaanite woman? At first glance, we know only three things
about her: her ethnicity, the fact that her daughter is possessed by demons,
and that she asks Jesus for help. But
if we listen to the woman’s words, we learn more about her personality. First, she is persistent. When Jesus calls her and her people dogs,
she doesn’t turn away. She comes and
kneels before him and she repeats her request for help. Second, she is intelligent. She takes Jesus’ words and turns them
around. She knows enough about his
culture to know that to the Israelites, dogs are unclean animals. They might be used to herd sheep, but they live outside, where – as Jesus says
– they get food thrown to them. But the
woman takes Jesus’ words and re-interprets them in her own context, and offers
Jesus a different way to see himself and her.
For the Canaanite woman, dogs are members of the household. They don’t live out in the yard, they sit
near the dinner table and catch the scraps that fall to the floor. Finally, the woman is not only persistent
and intelligent, she is also humble.
She kneels before Jesus. She
doesn’t walk away in a huff because she's been insulted. She knows she has no right to ask anything
of him. She asks only for mercy, not
even for herself but for her daughter.
And Jesus sees her persistence and
her humility, and he calls them “great faith.”
This woman is the first person in Matthew's gospel to be told she has
great faith. In fact, he’s already told
the disciples three times that they have “little faith.” Just last week we heard the story of Jesus
pulling Peter out of the water and asking him, “You of little faith, why did
you doubt?”
The Canaanite woman is persistent
and humble, and frankly, on this particular day the disciples are
short-tempered and cranky. When they
hear the woman loudly asking Jesus to heal her daughter, they say, “Send her
away, for she keeps shouting after us.”
Make her go away. Don't stop and
try to help her, just make her go away.
Why did the disciples respond like that? I can think of a few
possibilities. Maybe they were tired,
or overwhelmed, or frightened by this desperate woman who probably seemed a
little bit out of control. I can
understand any of those reactions. I've
certainly had them all. But Jesus
reacts differently. Even though he
makes a dismissive comment to the woman at first, he doesn't walk away. He stands still long enough for the woman to
come closer to him and plead her case.
He stays present with her, and her pleading moves him. When he calls the woman’s persistence and
humility “great faith,” I think Jesus is doing more than simply praising
her. I think he may be acknowledging
that his first reaction to her was wrong.
And I think he's asking his disciples to move beyond their own first
reaction of fear, or disgust, or simple impatience, and find mercy and
compassion within themselves.
Today we’re celebrating Holy
Eucharist according to Rite I at both services, and so we will say the prayer
of humble access before coming forward to receive communion. When we say that prayer today, it may cross
our minds that we are like the Canaanite woman. We come to the table to receive the gift of Christ’s presence not
because we’re good and deserve it. We
even say we're not worthy to gather up the crumbs from under God's table. We receive the gift of communion because God is good and offers it freely.
Other people, who may not gather
around this table, are also like the Canaanite woman. They are also members of the household of the God who loves the
whole world and whose property is always to have mercy. When I think of the Canaanite woman, I think
of a woman named Vicki who lives on the street in my neighbourhood. I first met Vicki one evening about six
months ago when she came up to me and asked me to buy her some dinner. We went together to the Chinese restaurant
on the corner of Fourth and Oak, but Vicki was too shy to go in so I bought
food and brought it out to her. We
talked a bit about why she was homeless.
She said she had left a husband who beat her. I also suspect she has a drug addiction. I gave her information about shelters in the
area and about the Center for Women and Families, where I used to work. Then Vicki and I held hands and prayed
together, and she kissed me on the cheek.
She went off to eat her dinner, and I went to the Rudyard Kipling to
have a beer with my friends. I've seen
Vicki several times since then, and I pray for her every day. She asked me to. One night she came running up to me and asked me, “Do you go to
church?” When I said yes, she asked,
“Will you ask your pastor to pray for me?”
And I said I would. I didn't
tell her I was clergy myself, but whenever we say the prayers of the people
here at Calvary, I say Vicki's name, and I keep her in my own prayers. She didn't tell me what, exactly, she wanted
me to pray for, but she had the humility and the faith to ask God and a fellow
human being for help. I don't know what
will become of Vicki. I don't know if
she ever will be healed of her own demons.
I don't know what else I might be able to do to help her. But I try to be present with her when I see
her, and I lift her up in prayer to God who is always present with each one of
us whether we can feel it or not.
When I think of the Canaanite woman, I think of Vicki. I also think of other residents of
Louisville: the ones who visit the HELP Ministries office from time to time
because they need food, clothing, or rent assistance. They need food for themselves and their children so badly that
they’re willing to go all the way to the HELP office at Christ Church Cathedral
to get a voucher for a bag of food, and then come back here to pick up the food
itself before returning home, usually on foot.
That shows a lot of persistence and humility. I know one of our regular customers. Like Vicki, she’s my neighbour, and I often see her walking to
work. Her full-time job at a small,
local fast-food place pays her so little that she needs a free bag of food to
make it through the end of the month.
In July, she received one of the 116 bags of food that Margaret and our
faithful volunteers gave out that month.
That food fed 184 people. The
month before that, they distributed 107 bags of food which fed 190 people. On especially hot days, I’ve seen good
ministers of the gospel like Larry Brown give out cups of water and kind words
along with the bags of food, and I know that kindness means a lot to those who
receive it.
Calvary has been supporting HELP
Ministries of Central Louisville and giving out food, water, clothing, and kind
words to people in need, for a long, long time. And sometimes it feels like nothing’s changing, or like things
are only getting worse. And we get
discouraged, because it feels like only a few of us are trying to do anything
to improve the situation, to help homeless people or to address the root causes
of the problem. Sometimes we feel
afraid of the homeless people we meet, who gather around our church and other
houses of worship because they feel safe here.
Homeless persons are often mentally ill, and they are often drunk or
stoned. They often shout, and they can
be frightening. Just like the disciples
2000 years ago with the Canaanite woman, we current-day disciples of Jesus
sometimes want homeless or poor people to go away. At least I do – but I don’t think I’m the only one. It’s not that we don’t care about them. We do care, but we feel powerless to do any
more than we’re already doing.
I hate feeling powerless. But maybe I need to get over wanting to feel
powerful, and learn to be more like the Canaanite woman: persistent and
humble. Humble, in the sense of not
believing that I have to do everything myself, but trusting in the Holy Spirit
to empower our community for ministry, and persistent, in the sense of not
giving up even when a situation seems hopeless. I wonder: Do you and I believe that God has put us in this place
for a reason? After everything Calvary
Church has been through in the last few years, is it possible that this church
is still going strong in downtown Louisville because it has a special mission
to our sisters and brothers in need?
I’ve been wrestling with these questions lately, and as your deacon it’s my job to bring them to you. The Book of Common Prayer says that part of the ministry of a deacon is to “serve all people, particularly the poor, the weak, the sick, and the lonely” in the name of Jesus Christ, and I’m also supposed to “interpret to the Church the needs, concerns, and hopes of the world.” Luckily, I’m working at Calvary Church, where outreach to the world has been an important part of your ministry for a long time. Maybe together we can make that ministry even stronger. These days, I see signs around town that interest in outreach to the poor and homeless is growing. Later today Margaret and Melvin Dickinson will play a benefit recital to help an organization called CHOICES raise money to buy a house for homeless women and children. Susan Baker has put a lot of energy into organizing that recital. Across town at St. Matthews Episcopal Church, a group has been meeting to discuss how Christians can put aside political differences and work together on our common gospel mission to seek and serve Christ in all persons, especially in the poorest and most vulnerable. That group is looking for new members. Maybe some of you have also been feeling called to that kind of work lately. Maybe you’re already feeling overwhelmed: the problems are so big, and we are so few. But maybe if we’re humble and persistent like the Canaanite woman, we’ll be open to the Spirit moving among us and we may hear a word about what to do next. If you get that word, let me and some of the other disciples know, will you?
The Reverend Rhonda Lee