Proper 15 -- Isaiah
56: 1-7; Psalm
67; Romans 11:
13–15, 29-32; Matthew 15:
21-28
A homily by Fr. Gene
Tucker, given at The
Cathedral Church of St. Paul, Springfield, Illinois, on Sunday, August 17, 2014.
“IS THIS A TEST?”
(Homily text: Matthew 15: 21-28)
Is this a
test?
Is Jesus’
give-and-take with the Canaanite woman in our gospel reading for this morning a
test of her faith? Did Jesus respond so
harshly to her in order to see if she would persist in her request that her
daughter be healed, or if she would turn away?
Perhaps
this is one way to regard Jesus’ encounter with the woman. We don’t know exactly from the text itself
why He responded to her as He did.
However, it does seem that Jesus’ response could easily have caused her
to turn around and leave. But she
didn’t, she offered a creative response to Jesus’ statement about “throwing the
children’s food to the dogs.”
However,
it’s possible that I am getting ahead of myself.
Let’s take
a few moments to examine some details about the text and the setting for this
incident, before coming to some conclusions about its importance.
As we look
at the text, the first thing that prompts our attention is the region of Tyre
and Sidon. These are two cities which
are located on the coast of the Mediterranean Sea, in the area known as
Lebanon. They are northwest of the area
around Galilee, where Jesus had been working prior to this incident. Some scholars posit the idea that Jesus headed
in the direction of these two cities in order to get away from the pressure of
the crowds who were beginning to follow Him.
Matthew does not tell us why Jesus decided to leave the area around
Galilee, although we do know from the preceding chapters in Matthew that Jesus
had begun to attract more and more interest among the people in the area.
Next, we
notice that Matthew tells us that the woman is a Canaanite. The significance in telling us about her
racial background is that she is a Gentile, not a Jew. If we are to take Matthew’s characterization
literally, her identity would lead us to believe that she was a descendent of
the peoples who inhabited the Holy Land before the Israelites came into the
land after leaving Egypt, some 1,400 years earlier.
A detail in
the interchange between Jesus and the woman does not normally emerge in
translation (unfortunately). It has to
do with the word which is usually translated as “dog”. The better translation would be “puppy dog”,
for the diminutive form of the word is used in the Greek. So Jesus’ statement would be better
translated as “It is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the
puppies.” The use of this word seems to
indicate that Jesus is referring to puppy dogs who might be members of a
family’s household, not to the semi-wild, stray dogs which were regarded as
unclean animals in Jewish culture. If
this analysis is correct, Jesus seems to affirm the idea that a relationship
exists between the human and animal members of a household. The Canaanite woman seizes on this
distinction in making her quick-witted response, as she says, “Yes, Lord, but
even the puppies eat the crumbs that fall from their master’s table.”[1]
As we look
at the shape of this encounter, we see a picture emerging of a woman who was in
deep, deep need: Her daughter was very
ill. But obstacles lay in her path to
Jesus, obstacles that she met persevered in meeting, one-by-one: The Lord’s silence when she first asked Him
to heal her daughter, the disciples’ suggestion that the Lord dismiss her, and
the Lord’s apparent rebuke when she knelt before Him.
She didn’t
give up, didn’t walk away. She met each
difficulty and kept on asking for help.
In the end,
the Lord commends her faith, saying, “Woman, great is your faith, let it be
done for you as you wish.”
Where the
disciples failed to show faith (as in last week’s gospel lesson about Peter’s
falling into the water), this foreign-born woman succeeded in showing her
faith. No doubt, to the original
disciples, the woman’s background as a Canaanite must have been surprising, for
she emerges as the one who does what is right.
After all, wasn’t God’s wisdom given the Jews, and not to Gentiles? Yet the spread of the good news of Jesus
Christ will soon go forth from the Jews into all the world, even spreading to
Gentiles. (See Matthew 28: 20) The event we are considering this morning is
a harbinger of the great things that are to come, as the Gentiles overcome obstacles in coming to faith in the
Lord.
Whenever we
ask the Lord for something, we can be assured that we will get an answer to our
prayer. The answer will generally fall
into one of three categories:
“Yes”: Our request receives an affirmative answer
from the Lord.
“No”: The Lord denies our request. Oftentimes, this answer comes because the
Lord sees a better response than the one we are able to imagine. After all, the Lord, whose knowledge is
beyond our comprehension, is able to see things that we cannot see.
“Not
now”: Sometimes, the timing of an answer
suits God’s purposes better than it suits ours.
But God’s time is always the best time to receive an answer.
Sometimes,
in our faith walk, the Lord’s “No” answer is designed to test our faith. When we receive a “No” answer, there are
generally three ways in which we can respond:
1. We can accept the answer,
knowing that God’s will and God’s way is best;
2. We can bring our request to
the Lord again and again until an answer is received; or 3. We can turn away from God.
Accepting
option 1 allow us to live most completely within God’s will.
But
exercising option 2 might prompt us to reflect on the wisdom of our
request. It might allow us to put into a
better perspective just what it is we are asking the Lord to do, and how
important (or unimportant) that request really is. The Canaanite woman’s quick and witty
response to the Lord’s comment shows that she was listening intently to what He
said, for she seized on the idea that a relationship existed between the master
and the puppies who shared the same household.
In the end,
this incident gives us room to be able to wrestle with our prayer requests, and
to engage in give-and-take with the Lord as we present our needs to Him. To be able to do so allows us to reflect on
what we are asking for, and to keep our focus on the Lord as the one who can
answer our prayers, as we listen intently for His answer.
AMEN.
[1] It is worth noting that the woman’s allusion
to crumbs falling from their master’s table finds its way into our liturgy, for
in the Prayer of Humble Access (page 337 in the Book of Common Prayer, 1979),
we pray that “we are not worthy so much as to gather up the crumbs under thy
table.”
