“Who Are You Calling a Dog?!”                   Dr. Julie Adkins

                   Text: Matthew 15:21-28

 

SERMON

 

It seems to me that, more so than usual,

          I have found myself week after week

                   shaking my head over all the weird Bible stories

                             that the lectionary editors have put in front of me these past weeks.

I wondered if maybe they didn’t try

          to put a whole bunch of weird ones in the summer,

                   figuring that lots of people would be taking vacation,

                   so they would only hear a few of the odd stories at a time.

Or maybe they did it

          because so many preachers take vacation during the summer,

                   and this is a sort of widespread joke on supply preachers.

However, I don’t really believe either of those theories!

What I am coming to realize, more and more,

          is that the Bible is full of weird stories.

We don’t always realize it,

          because many of us have heard them so often

                   that they don’t sound weird to us any longer.

This one may even overcome that obstacle, however.

We are not used to stories about Jesus

          ignoring pleas for healing from anyone …

                   much less stooping so low as to call someone a dog!

Even though it’s the word for a pet dog, not a wild dog …

          even so, rarely in any culture is it considered a compliment

                   to call somebody a dog.

And it certainly wasn’t meant as one here!

What is going on with Jesus?

 

Take just a minute with me

          to look at what has just happened before this.

At the beginning of chapter 14,

          Herod has John the Baptist murdered;

                   and when Jesus hears about it,

                             he withdraws to a deserted place by himself.

Remember that John and Jesus weren’t just preachin’ colleagues;

          they were cousins.

So what Jesus needed was perhaps some time alone to grieve,

          even perhaps to re-think and recommit himself to his calling,

          knowing already that he stood a good chance of meeting the same fate as John.

But what happens when he gets to that deserted place?

The crowd has already guessed where he was headed,

          so they hurry along on foot, and,

                   when Jesus arrives in the boat, there they are,

                             needy, sick, hungry for what he has to say.

No time for grieving now.

He heals the sick, and feeds five thousand people

          with no more than a box lunch from Long John Silver’s,

                   and right after that comes the episode with

                             the disciples in the boat in a storm,

                             and Jesus walking to them on the water,

                             and Peter also walking a few steps on the water

                                      before losing faith and starting to sink.

And they land at Gennesaret,

          and there are more people waiting for Jesus there,

                   touching him, seeking healing.

And the Pharisees have also come,

          pressuring him,

          asking him why he and his disciples

                   seem to think of themselves as being above the Law,

                             and he gets into a debate with them …

And finally, as we reach the section we just heard read,

          Jesus is once again withdrawing, trying to get away from the crowds for just a bit.

This time, we are told,

          he goes “to the district of Tyre and Sidon” …

                   that is, into Phoenicia, away from his own people,

                   away from the demands being placed on him,

                   away from the need constantly to defend himself or prove himself,

                             or get sidetracked by other people’s agendas.

But even there, he can’t escape.

Even there, in the midst of outsiders,

          a “foreign” woman recognizes who he is,

                   or at least, what he is,

          and insists on healing for her daughter, who is tormented by a demon.

 

A non-stop pace for days on end,

          and still no chance to grieve for his cousin

                   or even just to catch his own breath.

Perhaps we can begin to understand why Jesus

          was just a little short on patience

                   when the Canaanite woman approached him.

Even so, it remains a strange story.

 

Scholars suggest to us that what’s really going on in this little encounter

          is that Jesus’ own understanding of his calling is being challenged and changed.

It’s interesting, isn’t it,

          that he seems to have wanted to “get away from it all”

                   in order to think and pray through those questions,

          whereas what he got was

                   a specific human situation that forced him to make a decision.

He has to have been not only tired, and grieving,

          but also frustrated.

At the beginning of the story,

          Jesus still understands his mission or his calling

                   to be to “the lost sheep of the house of Israel.”

But he doesn’t seem to be making a lot of progress with them.

The crowds are more interested in getting healed or cured or exorcised

          than in what he has to say …

The religious leaders like the Pharisees

          will gladly listen to what he has to say,

                   but only for the purpose of trying to trip him up.

          They have their own agenda, and it doesn’t match his.

And the disciples listen carefully to Jesus when he teaches them,

          but over and over they just don’t get it.

Many of the “lost sheep,” it appears,

          aren’t interested in getting “found.”

The lost children want to stay lost,

          and so into the midst of Jesus’ puzzlement and grief over those lost children,

                   along comes the family dog,

                             wanting the children’s dinner.

At least, at that moment in his thought processes,

          that’s how she seems.

How can he possibly offer help to everyone who needs it,

          when even his own people

                   are proving to be such a difficult case?

It’s too much.

 

And yet, somehow, she gets to him.

Something that she says breaks through

          his frustration, his grief, his exhaustion.

Perhaps all of a sudden it sinks in that she, a Canaanite,

          an outsider, nevertheless called him “Lord, Son of David.”

She sees and acknowledges something about him

          that way too many of his own people

                   haven’t even “got” yet.

Perhaps it’s her persistence:

          here, he has dismissed her almost rudely by implying that she’s a dog;

                   and she doesn’t let that stop her.

Incidentally, I think that her response about

          even the dogs being allowed to eat the crumbs that fall from the table

                   is indicative of a delicious sense of humor on her part,

                   not of humiliation and abasement.

It’s as if she says, “Okay, Jesus, let’s say I am a dog …

          well, even dogs have to eat, don’t they?”

And it’s like a switch gets flipped in Jesus’ head:

          Woman, great is your faith!

          You may be a Canaanite, someone that my people think of as a dog,

                   but great is your faith!

          It’s as if the neighbors’ beagle were suddenly to kneel and start praying,

                   but great is your faith!

Oh my God – literally –

          faith is to be found outside of the chosen people as well.

Even among Canaanites – and remember,

          “Canaanite,” like “Samaritan,” is a code-word in the Bible

                   for way-outsiders.

There is faith beyond the chosen people, beyond the house of Israel.

Which means that the word of Jesus, the word of God,

          is not limited.

And what’s really radical about this story is that here, anyway,

          it is the outsider to the covenant story

                   showing the ultimate insider what the covenant is really about.

Until this moment,

          Jesus apparently had not yet realized

                   that his message was universal,

                   and his mission was global.

It took a Canaanite – and a woman, at that –

          to open his eyes.

 

Now I know that, as we think about Jesus being both human and God,

          it’s hard for us to accept the notion

                   that he might not have understood at first

                             what his entire calling was to be about.

But even if you have trouble with that,

          back off one step and look at it from Matthew’s point of view.

Matthew, you may recall, is a Jewish Christian,

          writing his gospel to instruct a congregation of Jewish Christians;

                   that is, Jews who became Christians after hearing of Jesus.

These are not Gentile converts, as were many of Paul’s congregations.

Matthew’s gang were Jews.

          Trained in the Law from childhood.

                   Well-versed in the prophets.

          And for those who weren’t, Matthew is careful throughout his writing

                   to show how events in the life of Jesus

                             seem to be predicted in the ancient language of the prophets.

So the “audience” of Matthew’s gospel

          is people who were indeed the lost sheep of the house of Israel.

People who have been “insiders” to the covenant their whole lives long.

So it was vitally important that Matthew include this story in his gospel –

          notice a couple of things, incidentally –

Mark also tells this story,

          but he identifies the woman differently.

He describes her as Syro-Phoenician,

          which is simply a geographic reference,

                   like saying “a woman from west Texas.”

It just tells you where she was from;

 it doesn’t imply anything about her except, perhaps, that she’s probably not a Jew.

Matthew, on the other hand, calls her a Canaanite.

An outsider.

It might be the equivalent, today,

          of calling her a “Palestinian.”

Well, she wasn’t necessarily an enemy,

          but she was definitely one of the not-chosen.

It’s as if Matthew knew that his own congregation

          was a little too certain about their own insider status

                   and needed to hear a story about an outsider who had faith.

And not only an outsider who had faith,

          but an outsider who had the courage and the grace

                   to come face-to-face with the insider,

                             and remind him of his calling.

One wonders if Matthew’s congregation or community

          had a few outsiders hanging around,

                   trying to speak to the insiders,

                             and being brushed off as if they were the family pet

                             instead of a child and an equal before God.

Matthew nudges his people to recognize that

          not only did Jesus listen to and grant the request of an outsider –

                   suggesting that they, too, might need to be more attentive –

          but that Jesus also learned from this outsider,

                   and himself received insight that he had not had before.

 

Friends, who are the “outsiders” who would like to speak with us?

          Would like to speak with our Lord?

Do we see them as pesky puppies, biting at our ankles and distracting us?

          Or do we understand them as God’s children, just as we are?

What are they trying to get us to hear?

What do they know about us, that we don’t know?

Will we recognize how great their faith is,

          and how much we need them?

Lord help us if we don’t.

 

Amen.

 

© 2002 Julie Adkins (e-mail: DrJAdkins@trinitypresdallas.org)