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Matthew 10:5-8; 15:21-28 CEB Jesus sent these twelve out and commanded them, “Don’t go among the Gentiles or into a Samaritan city. Go instead to the lost sheep, the people of Israel. As you go, make this announcement: ‘The kingdom of heaven has come near.’ Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse those with skin diseases, and throw out demons. You received without having to pay. Therefore, give without demanding payment. From there, Jesus went to the regions of Tyre and Sidon. A Canaanite woman from those territories came out and shouted, “Show me mercy, Son of David. My daughter is suffering terribly from demon possession.” But he didn’t respond to her at all. His disciples came and urged him, “Send her away; she keeps shouting out after us.” Jesus replied, “I’ve been sent only to the lost sheep, the people of Israel.” But she knelt before him and said, “Lord, help me.” He replied, “It is not good to take the children’s bread and toss it to dogs.” She said, “Yes, Lord. But even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall off their masters’ table.” Jesus answered, “Woman, you have great faith. It will be just as you wish.” And right then her daughter was healed. Some of the difficulty from these verses should be obvious as we are sitting here today in a Christian church, followers of the same Jesus who told his disciples “‘Don’t go among the Gentiles.’” Gentiles are non-Jews, and probably most of us are non-Jews but still followers of Jesus. How do we balance our reality with this command of Christ? Further, after restricting the scope of his mission, Jesus seems to stick by it initially in his troubling interaction with the Canaanite woman later in Matthew, even going so far as to call her a dog. How do we respond to a Jesus who is willing to ignore and then belittle a desperate mother seeking healing for her child? Here in this moment, perhaps we find Jesus echoing our human tendency to dismiss others too quickly. We can be especially dismissive of those who are not like us, and so this exchange becomes a learning moment, a moment for meekness, a moment where we see mission coming in second to human need.
We hold our Christian church to be a universal church, a faith that welcomes any and all people. Of course, we have not always lived up to this vision for ourselves, as we have as a church and as Christians excluded others. However, it has not generally been the hope of the church to exclude even going back to the beginning as the church looked to go beyond its humble beginnings in Jerusalem and stretch out to touch every corner of the Gentile world. After all, Matthew’s gospel is full of Gentiles. Matthew mentions Gentiles in Jesus’ genealogy, like Ruth the Moabite and Tamar the Canaanite (Matthew 1:1-15). In Matthew’s birth narrative, it is the “magi [who] came from the east,” Persian astrologers, who recognize and name Jesus as the Christ (Matthew 2:1-7 CEB). Jesus even heals Gentiles in Matthew’s gospel, including the centurion's servant in Matthew 8:5-13 and two demon-possessed Gentile men in Matthew 8:28-34. Even at the end of Matthew’s gospel, the resurrected Jesus tells his disciples to “Therefore, go and make disciples of all nations” (Matthew 28:19 CEB). How do we reconcile this with these words “Nowhere among the Gentiles”? What always bears repeating is that Jesus is the Jewish Messiah, and yes, while this does have implications for all the people of God, it does not change the fact that the Christ has little initial meaning to Gentiles. In Matthew 10, Jesus says don’t go to the Gentiles or the Samaritans, but that almost goes without saying, as none of the disciples would have been tempted to do that.[1] In fact, some of the teachings of Jesus “would have been opaque to Gentiles and inappropriate to Samaritans.”[2] Gentiles were not looking for a Jewish savior, they had their own religions and their own gods. Samaritans, meanwhile, saw themselves as descended from the northern tribes of Israel, complete with their own Torah,[3] with no need for Jesus’ teachings on the Jewish Torah. Jesus’ followers had hope for Christ as someone focusing on helping the people of Israel, and here in the early chapters of Matthew, Jesus seems to agree. You see, Jesus sees his primary mission at this point in Matthew’s Gospel as looking to help “‘the lost sheep, the people of Israel.’” These are the general Jewish population, “misled by their leaders, who in Matthew’s Gospel would be the Pharisees, Sadducees, high priests, Herodians, [...] and the Roman authorities.”[4] They are lost sheep, waylaid by false shepherds, so Jesus seeks to lead them back to good pastures where they can find rest and nourishment. Jesus in Matthew sees this as his goal, to be the good shepherd of the lost sheep, leading them away from the harm and abuse of their bad leadership to God’s good leadership. He will do this through his own leadership, his teachings, and by modeling in his person who and what they should be. Only after Israel is on the right track can God guide the rest of the world, those Gentiles, to a restored Israel, now united under the guidance of Christ. This idea, this missional limit, seems to be in the background of Jesus’ troubling interaction with the Canaanite mother. There is another version of this story in Mark’s gospel where she is a Greek, a Gentile, but here she is specifically named a Canaanite, “part of the earlier population of the land of Israel” and Canaanites were “generally regarded by the Bible as idolaters.”[5] She comes to Jesus crying out, “‘Show me mercy, Son of David. My daughter is suffering terribly from demon possession.’” Here, Jesus ignores her. Now, Jesus is not known for ignoring the plights of others, but here he ignores this woman. Is it because she is a Gentile and worse yet, a Canaanite? Possibly, as when Jesus does finally respond, he says, “‘I’ve been sent only to the lost sheep, the people of Israel.’” Again she cries for help, and here Jesus calls her a dog, saying that to help her would rob the “children,” these lost sheep of Israel of food. Let me be clear, this is not some joke, nor is it a cute nickname, like “puppy” as some commentators have suggested,[6] this is calling her “a Gentile dog [who] should not expect to receive anything.”[7] Jesus insults this woman, shows a complete utter lack of compassion because of what… his mission? We would be left in a low place if this is where our story ended, but the Canaanite woman shows courage to someone she has acknowledged as having all the power, calling Jesus “Son of David” and kyrios, “Lord.” She again pleads, saying that even a dog gets the scraps that fall from the table, and finally, something changes and Jesus heals her daughter. She models what Jesus has preached, she was struck on the cheek, so she turned “the left cheek to them as well” (Matthew 5:39 CEB). She did not return violence for violence, and she did not back down, instead choosing to fight to be heard, to be helped. She stood her ground until she was seen and listened to, and modeled to the rest of us what this kind of resistance looks like. Jesus models something too in this story, something that he lifts up as a must for our kingdom of God living, seeking to be meek. In Matthew, Jesus delivers the Beatitudes, his new Torah– these new guidelines for living in the kingdom of God emerging all around. In it, Jesus says, “‘Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth’” (Matthew 5:5 NRSV). When I say meek, what springs to mind? Who do you imagine? Do you see CEOs, presidents, celebrities, and other leaders and influencers in our modern day? If not, well, you should have them in mind because to be meek is to be “someone with authority and status but who is also willing to listen to those with less social capital.”[8] Jesus has all the status here, he could choose to stick with his mission, his vision of what he is all about, but instead, he listens to and helps this woman. The truth is that we all have people we feel are beneath us or that we do not have time for in our day-to-day lives. Those times we ignore the homeless person asking us for change, and we refuse to make eye contact. Those times we dismiss someone because they are not from around here so they don’t know how things work here in Thermopolis or Wyoming. Those times we say someone is not educated enough or vice-versa doesn’t have enough “street-smarts” from the school of life, so we don’t have to listen to what they have to say. It is seen in the words we say to the people we don’t think matter, those who are so unimportant that they are undeserving of simple courtesies and respect. For us as Christians, it can be dismissing those who see God differently than we do and those who even believe things that we would call unChristian. By dismissing people, we dismiss and even deny the truth that they, even they, are made in the divine image and likeness, the same as us. Jesus does not look good in this story, but maybe that’s the point. Jesus teaches us that being wrong is not the sin here. What is sinful, what separates us from God is when we refuse to listen, refuse to acknowledge the other. We might have good reasons, but these are secondary to human needs, to human realities. I see this in the ways we sometimes will say things like, “The Bible is clear on this issue.” What we really mean is that the Bible is clearly on our side, so anyone who acts or feels differently, well I am justified in ignoring them and being callous to them. We have the power, but we are called on to be meek, to set aside our authority, or sense of being right, because that doesn’t matter as much as a person, a child of God in need of help, of a little compassion and love from you and me. Amen. [1] Amy-Jill Levine, The Difficult Words of Jesus: A Beginner’s Guide to His Most Perplexing Teachings (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2021), 78. [2] Ibid., 79. [3] Ibid., 86. [4] Ibid., 87. [5] Ibid., 90. [6] Ibid., 91. [7] Roger L. Hahn, “Matthew” in Wesley One Volume Commentary, eds. Kenneth J. Collins and Robert W. Wall (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2020), 562-587. [8] Levine 2021, 97.
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