Sermon preached at St. Alban's, Spirit Lake, on August 17, 2008
(Fourteenth Sunday after Pentecost, Year A, BCP Lectionary)
by the Rev. Carl D. Mann

Texts:   Isaiah 56:1(2-5)6-7
Psalm 67
Romans 11:13-15,29-32
Matthew 15:21-28

Jesus said to the woman, “It’s not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.” What a snotty thing to say! Here is this woman with an extremely sick child asking for help and our Lord addresses her with an allusion to a pejorative nickname. That doesn’t sound very compassionate, does it? What kind of example is he setting for us? Where’s that ‘Love thy neighbor’ stuff?

At first glance, this is one of those lessons which is easy to ignore because it appears to be so difficult to understand. But in reality, it’s really not that hard.

To set the stage, Jesus is probably getting a little tired of the mobs following him around in Galilee, and he has said enough things in public to keep the Scribes and Pharisees wrapped around the axel for a lifetime. He is rapidly approaching his final march to Jerusalem to die and he has not yet even unfolded this detail to his disciples, who don’t understand most of what he has been saying without a thorough debriefing after he’s said it.

So he is purposely going to where most self-respecting Jews wouldn’t go and that is into Phoenician territory north of Israel. This is the Gentile world. He is not running scared but is rather looking for a place in which to gather himself and to prepare himself for what is about to come.

And then they run into this Canaanite woman, not just a Gentile but a woman of a race of people who have been mortal enemies of Israel since Joshua crossed the River Jordan. She has obviously heard about Jesus and his healing ways and she is constantly badgering the disciples to see Jesus. Jesus has tried to ignore her but she is insistent with her appeal to where the disciples strongly suggest to Jesus that he send her away or perhaps even submits to her request so she’ll stop yelling at them.

But Jesus says to them, “That’s not why I am here! First of all, I’ve been doing nothing but healing people, and I’m a little bushed. Second, I want to think and pray, and cleanse my spiritual senses, which is why I brought us here in the first place so that we wouldn’t be bothered. Third, she’s a Canaanite woman. Listen! My primary mission is to the lost sheep of the house of Israel, and I’m not quite ready yet for the rest of the world.” Now if you remember, just a few chapters back in this Gospel, Jesus had sent the twelve out on their first mission trip and charged them not to go among the Gentiles or to enter the towns of Samaritans but rather to the lost sheep of Israel. So this is a review for the disciples.

Now at this point, the woman, who has obviously been over-hearing this conversation, breaks through the disciples, falls on her knees and prostrates herself before him begging for his help.

Now here is where it gets a little tricky and why it’s important to understand the original Greek. In English, Jesus says, “It’s not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.” To our ears it appears that he is calling her a dog! Not unlike a Pirate calling someone a scurvy dog or when we call someone a dirty, rotten son of a …! And of course because she’s a she it sounds to us more like the ending word of that phrase which means a female dog and somehow that sounds extremely ugly coming from the mouth of Jesus!

In fact, it was common for the Jews to refer to any Gentile, anyone outside of the covenant, as a dog. And it was derogatory because as a rule, dogs were basically scavenger animals whose main function was to eat the garbage that people left behind.

But Jesus was actually being very compassionate with the woman because he used the Greek word not for a common street dog but rather the word for what we would consider to be a small household pet. Something along the line of the Taco Bell Chihuahua as opposed to the wild dogs of the Kalahari.

Jesus was trying to explain to his disciples that he wasn’t just this itinerant doctor who cured everybody and their brother. He had a specific, sequential mission which began by reminding Israel, his own Chosen People, that God was fulfilling His promises to them by His very presence on earth. Jesus was not only the herald to notify them of the coming of the kingdom but he was also the King. Not just in the sense of an earthly king but that he was the Lord of all creation. He was the Messiah who was promised by God in fulfillment of the ancient prophets. And once Israel realized who he was then it was to be their mission to proclaim it to the rest of the world; to the Gentiles; the dogs if you will. Not the feral dogs that lived off the refuse of society but the family dog that lies at the foot of the table waiting for a crumb to fall if not an actual treat. Think about it! We don’t bring home a doggie bag from the restaurant because that’s all we feed our pet but because it’s a treat for them. We do it because we love them! But it’s sequential in that we have to be fed first before there are leftovers to bring home. And in God’s kingdom, at the heavenly banquet, there are plenty of leftovers! Just a few weeks ago during the feeding of the five thousand there were twelve baskets full of leftovers from five loaves of bread and two fish! That is the abundance of God’s love for us!

And the Canaanite woman was astute enough to pick up on this morsel of information because through her faith she comprehended the bigger picture. Not only did she believe that Jesus could heal her daughter but she also recognized Jesus as the Son of David, which was a term for the Jewish Messiah. She realized that she was in the presence of God by calling him Lord and falling to the ground in a posture of worship. And she appealed to his loving compassion, not being offended by his remarks but by completely understanding his words and his mission by converting the prevailing negative cultural label to her favor. As one commentary put it, because of her faith, she “broke through the waiting period; the time in which Jesus would come to Jerusalem as Israel’s Messiah, be killed and raised again, and then send his followers out into all the world.” Jesus hadn’t even revealed to the disciples what would take place at Calvary and she is “already insisting upon Easter.”

For this amazing grasp of knowledge and persistence through faith, Jesus bestowed his grace upon her and her daughter was healed instantly.

As modern day Christians, we need to realize that we are the dogs to which Jesus alluded in this story. It is from this Gospel passage that we devised the clause in the Prayer of Humble Access that reads, “We are not worthy so much as to gather up the crumbs under thy table.” But we also need to give thanks to God Almighty that the early Church, those of God’s Chosen who acknowledged and believed that Jesus was the promised Messiah, shared their “table scraps” with us by proclaiming the Good News to the world. Without them we would not be here today.

So now it’s up to us to willingly share with others what we have graciously been given.

And like the Canaanite woman, by faith and prayer we need to claim for the present that which is promised to us in the future and make it reality. It is to that purpose, that in all of our liturgical services, we pray “Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Gloria Patri