Reaching Out
13th Sunday after Pentecost
August 22, 2010
Rev. Barry W. Szymanski, J.D.
First Congregational Church of Wauwatosa

Matthew 15: 21-28

Jesus left that place and went away to the district of Tyre and Sidon. Just then a Canaanite woman from that region came out and started shouting, ‘Have mercy on me, Lord, Son of David; my daughter is tormented by a demon.’ But he did not answer her at all. And his disciples came and urged him, saying, ‘Send her away, for she keeps shouting after us.’ He answered, ‘I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.’ But she came and knelt before him, saying, ‘Lord, help me.’ He answered, ‘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.’ Then Jesus answered her, ‘Woman, great is your faith! Let it be done for you as you wish.’ And her daughter was healed instantly.

Also read: Jeremiah 1:4-10, Hebrews 12:18-29, Psalm71:1-6

SERMON: [The Canaanite Woman]
This is a difficult passage to understand because Jesus snubs the woman who came to him for help, and then he calls her a dog. This is not easy stuff! When I was in seminary I was taught that the way to prepare for preaching was to first read the passage for the Sunday. Then to pray over it, and reflect on it, and to pray some more.

Once the passage began to seep into one’s consciousness, then, if it was a Gospel passage, to picture Jesus in the passage together with the other persons in it. Then to pray some more! Once you felt you understood the passage, then to apply one’s life experiences, and world and local news, and the congregation’s needs to the practical application of the passage.

The next step was to write an outline, and then a sermon. After the sermon was written, then to look at some commentaries to see what others had said – but only to look at commentaries afterward, because the sermon had to come from one’s heart. If it came from the mind, it was just a lecture. But if it came from the heart, after and with prayer, then one could be confident that the Holy Spirit is present to help deliver the message to the congregation. The preacher has little to do with it. I have found that to be true.

People have told me after many of my sermons that they found a part to be especially meaningful for their lives – and it was a part that I did not think to be that important. The Holy Spirit speaks!! That is one reason that liturgical clothing, like this stole, the yoke of service, is so important. The preacher is not, the Holy Spirit is.

The tests that we graded each other on in seminary were these: did the sermon appeal to the older folk, the younger people, those who are in church for the first time in 15 years, those who attend every Sunday, those who have never opened a Bible, and those who regularly attend Bible classes. If it passed all of those tests, it was probably ok.

Today’s sermon called for a great deal of preparation, a lot of prayer --- and a lot of testing. How does one preach a sermon on the kind and compassion Jesus who snubs a woman calling for help, and calls her a dog? Most people are surprised at this passage.

Only Matthew and Mark record it – Luke and John avoid it. And I learned that most of the early church preachers avoided it. Some people did not want it in the Bible. And there are few commentaries on it! Most people just look the other way at it. It would be interested during coffee to hear how many people remember sermons on this passage.

So, let’s get into it. Unfortunately, we have to get into some history to better understand it – if it can be well understood. Matthew says that she is a Canaanite woman. Mark says she is a Syro-Phoenican by birth. She was probably both, for Canaanite was a racial depiction.

And Syro-Phoenican was an upper-class economic description of her. Poor Jewish Galileans most certainly would have avoided her on both accounts. If you recall the Old Testament, when the Israelites came into the Promised Land, it was occupied by the ancient Canaanites. They were bitter enemies.

Those Canaanites who survived continued to worship pagan gods, and the Old Testament reports that many Israelites left Yahweh to worship the Canaanite gods. That was the first problem. The second was economic. If you recall 6th grade geography, you learned that the Phoenicians were the wealthy traders of the Mediterranean Sea. They would buy at low prices, and then sell at high prices. They bought produce, sheep, wool, goats, and products from the poor Galileans and sold them at high prices throughout the Mediterranean. They were not liked because the Galileans felt that they were taken financial advantage of – sound reasonable? Sound like today’s world?

If you had your Bible open, you say that immediately before this passage, Matthew tells us that Jesus had a run-in with the Pharisees about clean hands and evil thoughts. When this passage begins, Jesus and his disciples had traveled to the territory near the cities of Tyre and Sidon, which was Phoenicia. By the way, that area is present-day Lebanon and Syria, north of Israel. During Jesus’ time, it was Roman territory, and not Israelite land, and that is why he could travel freely to that area. He was taking a short vacation.

By that time in his ministry, his reputation as a holy man, and a healer, and a teacher was well spread by word of mouth. We learn that as he entered that territory, the woman approached Jesus. It was clearer at that time where a person was from and what a person’s economic class was by how they dressed. Today, it is not as clear, but often how a person dresses tells us a lot about where they are from and what their economic status is.

Well, this well-to-do Canaanite woman begins to yell at him. A gentile woman calling out to a Jewish Rabbi. That is a shock in itself. She shouts out and calls him Lord, and Son of David, and cries that he has pity on her because her daughter is full of demons.

The Gospel says that Jesus ignores her and continues walking away from her. That is not the Jesus we know and love. And that is not the Jesus that the disciples knew and loved.

The woman was persistent, for Matthew tells us that she kept following Jesus, and kept shouting at him. But he continued to ignore her. Finally the disciples stopped Jesus and asked him to send her away.

Jesus then turned to his disciples who are wondering why he is ignoring her and trying to walk away from her. Jesus turns to his disciples and tells them that he was sent only to the people of Israel who were like lost sheep. At this point, because they stopped, the plucky woman came closer to Jesus. She then knelt down in front of him and begged him to help her. Then comes that shocking statement that Luke and John avoid in their Gospels, and many preachers try to ignore: Jesus tells the woman: "It isn't right to take food away from children and feed it to dogs." Let’s examine that statement for a bit.

Some Christological theologians, and you can believe them, tell us that people in Canaan had pets, and that Jesus was calling the Jewish people children, and calling her a pet. In other words, he called her a puppy. Still not very nice. Other theologians, and you can believe them as well; say that Jesus had a twinkle in his eye and a smile on his lips when he called her a dog. Let’s go a little further because in ancient times dogs were not pets.

Dogs ate scraps of food, which kept the floors clean. If there was not enough food in a house, and no one would feed a dog like we do now with expensive just-for-them food, the dogs would go to rubbish piles and dig for food.

The best analogy now is to picture a vagrant dumpster diving behind a restaurant. So, what Jesus was calling her was a dumpster diver because she was from a different racial group and an economic class that exploited his fellow Galileans. What was in Jesus’ mind, we do not know, but there is one more explanation I want to give you. C.S. Lewis well defined Jesus as 100% man and 100% god. Jesus had a keen intuition about what was in people’s hearts and minds. The Gospel narrative just before this one tells us that He had just had a serious run-in with the Pharisees of Israel.

Now he had this pest of a foreign woman crying out after him. But what she was yelling was that He was the ‘Son of David’ -- This woman who was a gentile was loudly screaming that he was close-to-God --while the Pharisees of Israel saw him as enemy! So, you can also believe that Jesus was not only testing her, but that his intuition was working to help prepare his disciples for taking his new Movement to the entire world – the great commission was beginning to be taught— perhaps at her expense. And perhaps earlier than Jesus wanted.

Back to the scene: the woman would not give up! There she was kneeling before Jesus –he couldn’t avoid her now. Imagine the crowd surrounding this wealthy foreign woman kneeling before a poor Jewish Rabbi! And what does she say to Jesus who just called her a dog? She agrees with him. She calls him LORD, and then she says, “. . .that's true," She doesn’t really care what he called her. Because she did not want what divine power Jesus had for herself – she wanted her daughter cured. She, a mother, wanted something for her child.

She rebuffs Jesus by telling him, "but even dogs get the crumbs that fall from their owner's table." Imagine the look on both her face and on Jesus’ face when he answers her and tells her, "Dear woman, you really do have a lot of faith, and you will be given what you want." And Matthew and Mark both tell us that at that moment her daughter was healed. Look at the tremendous faith of that woman. She had heard, by word-of-mouth that Jesus healed people. She did not care if he was from Israel or not. She wanted her daughter cured. And she was willing to lose all of her pride to get his holy attention for the sake of her daughter. She took the insult of being called a dumpster diver -- in public – a dog -- because she wanted something more important.

How many of us are willing to lose our pride before God? How many of us, living on the edge of sin, dumpster diving for pieces of pride, anger, laziness, envy, lust, greed, in the dumpsters of life, are willing to shout after Jesus to be healed? How many of us are willing to continue to follow after Jesus after we feel that he has ignored us? That life has given us setbacks: in health? in economics? in relationships? in success? That life has passed us by and that God has not been good to us? Or to our loved ones?

Do we give up? Or do we continue to follow after Jesus when we feel that we have, somehow, been given a name, a label, by culture? Or that God has not given us what we say we want? The woman did not walk away with any benefit for her own health, or an increase in her own prosperity, or her own well-being.

She went to Jesus, and gave up her pride, and took a cultural insult, but her faith answered her prayers for another, her daughter. How many of us would lose our pride, and take an insult, to help other people? This is why the authors of Matthew and Mark included this passage. Even though Jesus may have looked too human, if that is possible,

for remember that the Gospels also tell us that he showed anger, and was often very impatient, the humanity of Jesus, the Galilean, toward those who exploited his people, was overcome by a person of a foreign territory, who recognized who he was: The Son of David, which everyone at that age knew meant, MESSIAH!

One last point, if you listen to classical music, or have ever heard a Latin Mass, you have heard the phrase KYRIAS ELEISON. Those are the Greek words of what that woman cried out: Lord, have mercy on me! What this lady had was NO FEAR. She was not afraid of whatever Jesus could say to her or do to her – she wanted her daughter healed, no matter the cost.

What do we fear?

Let us pray,

Lord, at those times when we see a person different from us, we pray that we follow your example and offer mercy. Lord, at those times when we see a person seemingly better off than we are, we pray that we follow your example and offer mercy.

Lord, at those times when we need you, give us the grace to realize that persistence often is beneficial, and give us the grace to realize that we often need to suppress our pride and kneel before you, for you, Jesus, are God, and it is when we have true realization of what our needs really are that we are open to accept your divine Love.

Hear our prayers, God of power, and through the ministry of your Son free us from the grip of all that entombs us, that we may desire you as the fullness of life and proclaim your saving deeds to all the world. We lift up the prayers of our hearts for those still burdened, those seeking healing, those in need within the church and the world.

Hear our prayers that we may love you with our whole being and willingly share the concerns of our neighbors. We praise your abiding guidance, O God, for you sent us Jesus, our Teacher and Messiah, to model for us the way of love for the whole universe.

We offer these prayers of love on behalf of our neighbors, on behalf of your creation and our fellow creatures and ourselves. Amen.