Does this story make you uncomfortable?
It probably should. It’s full of disruption and bursts with rudeness. It’s probably the most vivid display of insult and incivility in the gospels – and the gospels include a couple of public murders.
It starts with a woman shouting: “Help me! Sir! Help me!”
The woman uses the respectful and religious titles “Lord,” and “Son of David”, but it probably doesn’t sound very respectful at the top of her lungs. We get the feeling she’s chasing them down the street, or elbowing through a crowd for attention.
No wonder the disciples ask Jesus, “Can’t you make her go away?”
First Jesus ignores her, telling the disciples she’s not in his job description.
Then when that doesn’t stop her, he tells her it wouldn’t be right to help her; he calls her a dog.
Even if you can look past that, you have to notice that Jesus is actively refusing to help someone. Not just someone; a woman and her child in real, life-threatening, physical and spiritual need.
Does that make you uncomfortable?
It makes me squirm.
It bothers me every single time, no matter how often I read, hear, study or preach this story.
This is not the Jesus I think I know – generous to a fault, welcoming of the stranger, uplifter of the oppressed, healer of all in need.
What Jesus says and does in this story doesn’t sound very “Christian”, many would say.
Yet in this story it is a very Jesus thing to do.
So somehow, if we want to be Christian, you and I have to wrap ourselves around the fact that loving, generous, Jesus is – on the record and in full view of the disciples who will shape the church – rude and dismissive, rejecting a woman and child in need of life-saving healing.
And is still the God we are called to love and follow.
How do we do that?
Well, we could ignore the problem. Read past this story quickly, assume there must be some reason for it that we don’t understand. Protect our ideals with those scholars or teachers who tell us that Jesus is being affectionate in calling this woman a “puppy,” so we can persuade ourselves that it’s nice, even if it’s weird.
Or we could take comfort in the idea that Jesus has priorities, and won’t bend them just because someone is loud and insistent. That’s good as long as we’re pretty sure Jesus shares our own priorities.
Or we could sit down face to face with our discomfort, and confront the things it stirs in us.
Because it’s not just this story.
The gospel as a whole is clear: Jesus isn’t us, doesn’t follow our norms, and really isn’t a tame or comfortable person to be around.
Jesus didn’t come to invite us to love a nice God, but to challenge us to love and trust a God whose love we won’t always understand – God whose power and priorities are beyond our imagination and not the same as mine.
I want Jesus to welcome everyone, to heal everyone, to be especially caring about the vulnerable and the outsiders.
Because if Jesus won’t take care of everybody, all the tragedy in the world may go unhealed, and that is too heavy a fear and grief to bear.
If Jesus really does deny someone who needs healing, can I still pray for everyone? for myself?
If Jesus excludes people, I might be excluded, too. You might. At least sometimes.
And now it’s hard – it’s a risk I can really feel – to love God who is not like me, and trust Jesus with my self and my life.
One of the most toxic things that can happen to our faith is when we stop trusting God with what matters most to us, or if we refuse to start trusting God at all.
When we believe that God is a generous, indiscriminate healer and giver who shares my priorities and opinions, trust feels easy; the risk is low. But trust that takes no effort often doesn’t go more than skin-deep, and won’t sustain us in crisis or need.
When we wrestle with the God who draws lines and boundaries I don’t expect, God who might say “no”, then bringing my moments – or hours, or years – of weakness to God can be terrifying. Exposing my wounds, neglect and errors that need healing is a tremendous risk. I have to dig deep – very deep – into love and faith and hope to bring my whole self to God without knowing what will happen next.
And maybe that’s why Matthew tells us this story today.
Because the woman who confronts Jesus today does not let that stop her.
No reasonable Caananite woman would expect help from a leader of the people who drove her ancestors out of the promised land long ago.
In her time, like ours, it’s easy to put down, ignore, and insult a woman who makes a little noise, who demands attention, no matter how real the need.
The response she gets from the disciples, and from Jesus himself, makes it really easy to hear and see the lines drawn and walls built to shut her out.
And none of that stops her.
She trusts Jesus so aggressively, relies on God’s mercy so fiercely, that she looks straight into that wall dropped in front of her and says:
Yes, but the dogs still eat the crumbs.
It does not matter what your priorities are, it does not matter if I belong, if I deserve this good thing: there is still salvation here for me.
She trusts Jesus beyond logic and reason. She trusts Jesus more fiercely when Jesus tells her she doesn’t belong.
Her trust hears rejection and still speaks the absolute truth that it is not possible for God to run out of healing. It’s not possible to keep God’s grace from the people never chosen or invited to any table.
That kind of trust is what breaks the power of oppression and division, public or private, and breaks God’s grace through all the barriers put in front of us, and all the barriers we construct. That trust gives back even more spiritual strength than it takes.
“Great is your faith!” Jesus says to this fierce and unnamed woman whose trust and reliance on God cannot be limited or stopped.
Maybe Matthew tells this story so that some day, when you or I need faith that great, for ourselves or others;
when you or I are convinced that God isn’t listening, has no interest in us, and yet we need God so desperately that nothing else will do,
we too can look straight into the walls that separate us,
and declare that the crumbs are enough,
and God’s grace will be more than we need.
I think Matthew might tell us this story to invite you and me to risk that unreasonable, fierce and unquenchable trust that receives God’s healing and salvation before it is even given.
Trust that heals not only us,
but heals God’s own love for the world.
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