Romans 11: 1-2a, 29-32 Matthew 15: 21-28
Jesus is outwitted in today’s gospel lesson in a coup de theatre that makes one rather envious of the Canaanite woman who parries Jesus’s riposte to her petition with a bold humility that makes her, in my opinion at least, one of the golden girls of the gospel.
How often have we been engaged in debate and another participant has pulled the perfect rejoinder out of the hat at the just the right moment and left us reflecting, ‘If only I’d thought of that.’
Jesus says, ‘It is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.’ And the Canaanite woman responds, quick as a flash, ‘Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters’ table.’
She delicately twists to her advantage the very imagery which Jesus uses in the defence of his mission to the lost sheep of the house of Israel – but she twists it to her advantage without arrogance.
It is that bold humility which is so striking and so attractive and so effective and yet which, for our part, is often so elusive or so imbalanced or so misplaced. Bold humility is gospel gold dust because it combines the confidence that comes of resurrection faith while taking into account Jesus’s instruction to love your neighbour as yourself.
The Canaanite woman thus becomes perhaps a role model for the Church today – and not least for its leadership: bold humility.
And two extraordinary things result from her petition to the Lord: she, alone out of every character in St Matthew’s Gospel, is described generously by Jesus as possessing not just faith but ‘great’ faith and she is treated generously when her daughter is healed immediately.
She is accredited and redeemed; she is marked out and saved; she is ordained and immortalised – and yet she a mere woman alone in a man’s world and a Gentile at that – and thus unclean: doubly marginal and yet doubly glorified. There’s hope for us all, as they say.
Before his encounter with the Canaanite woman, Jesus has taught his disciples that it is what comes from within us, our evil intentions, that defile us – because they come from the heart.
The prologue to the gospel story about the Canaanite woman, together with the extract from St Paul’s Epistle to the Romans which was our first lesson this morning, call into question our mistaken belief that we are the right sort of people doing the right sort of thing and there are other people who are the wrong sort of people doing the wrong sort of thing.
There are simply people – in all of their compromised messiness and ambiguous hopefulness – and, as the old school hymn goes, ‘God’s loves everyone and God loves me.’
It reminds me of that cautious advice in the Epistle to the Hebrews that we should not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by doing that some have entertained angels without knowing it.
Jesus attracted many challenging people, and churches – each of which is a manifestation of the Body of Christ – also attract challenging people, and our starting point must be to show hospitality to them in the belief that we may be entertaining angels unawares but, sometimes, challenging people must themselves be challenged because we too need to be loved and not simply bruised as if the challenges with which we also live somehow don’t matter. No one has a monopoly on victimhood.
We are all simply people – in all of our compromised messiness and ambiguous hopefulness – and we’re all in it together with our challenges, bruises and need for love of God and love of neighbour.
Jesus says, ‘It is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.’ And the Canaanite woman responds, quick as a flash, ‘Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters’ table.’
Everyone, the challenging as well as the challenged, needs to find a bold humility that leads to generosity.