“Lord”, the Canaanite woman said, “help me.” Jesus replied: “It is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the house-dogs.” She retorted: “Ah yes, Sir; but even house-dogs can eat the scraps that fall from their master’s table.” Matthew 15: 21-28
Way back in the early 1950s during my days in Primary/Grade School, it was compulsory to learn by heart the questions and answers in the Catholic Catechism. I still remember that the Catechism definition of prayer was “the raising up of the mind and heart to God.” The implication of that is that we pray in order to develop our relationship with God rather than to ask for a change of mind on God’s part, in order to convince God to grant our requests. That means that we may need to be careful about rushing to conclude that today’s gospel-reading is simply about a persistent mother harassing a reluctant Jesus for her daughter’s restoration to health.
Once again, context is a guide for helping us to understand the significance of this story of a foreigner’s badgering Jesus for a favour. Jesus had just finished reprimanding a group of Pharisees for their narrow-minded and self-serving interpretation of God’s Law. He ended by labelling them as hypocrites. Leaving them in a state of shock, he headed for the pagan territory of Tyre and Sidon, suggesting, perhaps, that he might experience some open-mindedness there.
The Gospels have so many accounts of the healing miracles which Jesus performed that we can list today’s story as another of Jesus’ healings. Maybe today’s gospel story can be seen as an addendum to the reprimand Jesus had directed at the Pharisees. We have all seen how religious rituals and regulations can be used to control people. It was that kind of control for which Jesus had criticised the Pharisees. Today’s gospel-story is an object lesson on the need for flexibility in our application of religious rules and regulations. The Canaanites had been dispossessed of their land by the wandering people of Israel about 1000 years before the time of Jesus. For centuries, the two peoples had treated one another with bitterness, suspicion and derogatory name-calling. Yet, in Deuteronomy followers of God’s Law were expected to show kindness and respect not only to orphans and widows but to foreigners as well: “Do not violate the right of the foreigner, or the orphan, or take as pledge the clothing of a widow. Remember that you were slaves and foreigners in Egypt, and God rescued you. Therefore, I command you to do this” (Deuteronomy 24: 17-18).
Matthew’s Gospel had been written for a community which was made up largely of Jewish people who had come to accept Jesus and his teaching. So, this story of the Canaanite woman who had come intentionally in search of Jesus served as the Gospel writer’s reminder to the members of his community to let go of long-held prejudices against Canaanites and other foreigners. What’s more, the story embodies an invitation to dare to cross boundaries that imprison rather than open the way to life.
Whether or not this story is factual is irrelevant. Matthew was using it as a teaching device for the members of his community. We know from the Gospels that Jesus had often accused Pharisees of hypocrisy and criticised them for their nit-picking approach to religious practice. The Jewish Law’s rules and regulations about Sabbath observance were designed to point people towards God. The Pharisees had turned their observance into an end in itself, thereby defeating it of the purpose for which it had been designed. Jesus’ reprimand of the Pharisees was the prelude to the story which unfolded.
The first boundary across which the Canaanite woman stepped was to address a man in public, worst of all a Jewish man. She clearly knew of Jesus’ reputation for healing and was clever enough to address Jesus by the flattering title of “Son of David”. Matthew knew that Jesus had grown up in a culture that regarded Canaanite people as inferior and that his understanding of his vocation needed, at some time, to be expanded from being exclusively for the people of his own nation. The Canaanite woman’s encounter with Jesus was the force that opened his eyes to his own limited view of his mission. The woman’s expert repartee exploded the prejudice underneath his calling her a “dog “and opened his eyes to the realisation that his God-given mission was for people of every nation.
That story embodied a message to the members of Matthew’s community to break free from the prejudice with which they categorised gentile people of their own city and of neighbouring nations. Moreover, there is in that story a challenge for all of us to pause and identify the boundaries and categories within which we may be tempted to hide. What are the boundaries, the rules and regulations, the pet theories and beliefs we allow to stunt our freedom and growth as followers of Jesus and his message of God’s love for all of humanity?
In the very act of criticising the Pharisees, Jesus had tried to shake them out of their narrow and confined thinking. It would seem that he was unsuccessful. In contrast, the woman’s quick repartee and her intense focus on her daughter’s need shook Jesus into giving his attention to a bigger picture. It is too simplistic to see this story as pointing to the fact that Jesus, like every other human being, had limitations. The story also credits him for having the courage and the openness to learn, even from one least expected to be a source of wisdom. His acceptance of the woman’s perspective underlines the fact that he was open to grow, to change and to accept that he, too, could be infected with prejudice.
And let’s not forget that, in the world in which Jesus lived and pursued his mission, women were regarded as unreliable witnesses and lacking in wisdom and constructive thinking. However, we surely cannot ignore the fact that the only times when Jesus was recorded by the writers of the Gospels as having changed his mind were in response to comments directed to him by women: by his mother at the wedding feast of Cana and by this Canaanite woman. (This latter story is also recorded in Mark’s Gospel 7: 24-30, where the woman is identified as Syrophoenician.)
Today’s other readings from Isaiah and Romans also remind us that God often works in unexpected ways. Isaiah was not slow to tell the people of Israel that their fidelity to what God had called them would one day lead to foreigners taking up roles in the Temple. In Paul’s Letter to the Romans we learn of his surprise at the sad reality that gentiles had found Jesus and his message much more appealing than his fellow Jews had. If we take nothing else from today’s readings, let’s remember that God sometimes works in surprisingly unexpected ways, for which we have to be ever ready.