It’s good that we hear this story today (Matthew 15: 21-28) because it fits well with some of what we’ve been talking about over the last few weeks. These last few weeks, we’ve been looking at the stories of Abraham and his descendants and God’s promise to them. Each time, that promise comes in three parts: that God will be their god, that their descendants will be numerous and powerful, and that they will inherit the land of Canaan. Over the coming weeks, we’ll start looking at the stories of how the nation of Israel comes to claim that land known as Canaan.
But for today, we get a gospel story about a Canaanite woman, who comes to Jesus calling him, “Son of David”. Now in Mark’s gospel, the story is a little bit different. In Mark’s gospel, she’s a Syrophoenician woman, who comes to Jesus, begging for help. But Matthew takes that story and changes it a bit.
In the time of Jesus, there’s no such thing as a Canaanite. Canaanites no longer exist as a particular culture or race by then. The land of Canaan was long ago conquered by Israel, so it’s weird to refer to someone as a Canaanite. I suspect that Matthew is inviting his readers to think in terms of their history, where the people of Canaan where their enemies, the ones who stood in the way of Israel inheriting the promised land.
So, on one side of the story is a woman whom Matthew describes as a Canaanite, an ancient enemy. And on the other side is Jesus, whom she refers to as “Son of David,” son of the great warrior king of Israel. In 1 Samuel, David is attributed with killing his enemies by the tens of thousands, in order to claim and protect the promised land, the land of Canaan.
Matthew takes this story from Mark’s gospel, and he changes the story a bit; he takes a story about a Gentile woman who comes seeking help from Jesus, and he turns it into an adversarial relationship, between a Canaanite and a son of David. He sets the story as a story between ancient enemies.
In Matthew’s version of the story then, it doesn’t feel that surprising for this son of David to talk about the importance of the people of Israel, of how he was sent primarily for Israel’s lost, that he is the salvation for Israel, just as much as King David was in a much earlier time. In Matthew’s version of the story, Jesus even goes so far as to suggest that the people of Israel are God’s children, whereas the Gentiles are the dogs beneath their feet.
But this woman turns that conversation around. She points out that the dogs still eat the food that falls from the master’s table, that the children and the dogs are both reliant on the master’s graciousness and generosity. She points not to their ancient division but she points to what they have in common: that they both rely on God’s grace.
It’s at this point in Matthew’s gospel that the ministry of Jesus starts to change. In Matthew’s story of Jesus, when we get to this point, Jesus has very much been there for the Jewish people. But at this halfway point in the gospel, things start to change. Earlier in the chapter, Jesus just been challenging the Pharisees and teachers about how they define clean and unclean. He says it’s not what goes into a person’s mouth but what comes out that makes them unclean. Their rules around eating and their other rules about what’s clean and unclean define who they are as Jews, they inform their understanding of where they sit with God, of who they are as God’s people. And Jesus has just challenged that way of thinking.
From there, Matthew then uses this story of a Canaanite woman to further challenge his readers’ understanding of what it means to be part of God’s family, of their defining of themselves as God’s people set apart. Matthew tells a story where the people they saw as enemies, as different, are also understood to be part of the family, just as reliant on God as they are.
In fact, by the end of Matthew’s gospel, when we get to the very last paragraph, the last thing Matthew has Jesus saying to his disciples is for them to go out, baptising, teaching, making disciples of all nations. In other words, Jesus’ mission is not just for the Jews but for all people. We start to see this story today as a turning point for that greater narrative, where the story of Jesus turns from the salvation of Israel to the salvation of the whole world.
But so what? This story was written for Matthew’s Jewish readers, to challenge them to think about Jesus as being bigger than their old ideas, to challenge their idea of being special in God’s eyes just because they’re Jews. But we already see Jesus as our saviour, even though we’re not Jews. So does this story matter for us today?
I think it matters a lot. I think we can learn a lot from this story, because I think there are times when we also make assumptions about people based on their circumstances, their age, their clothes, the colour of their skin, their accent, and so on.
It’s only natural that we enjoy the company of people who are similar to us. And yet this story, like so many stories of Jesus, calls us to look outside our comfort zone, to recognise and value people who might be different to us.
It’s a bit scary that, as the church, as what should be the body of Christ, we sometimes use this as a source of separation. We sometimes have a tendency to differentiate those within the church from those without, to draw some sort of distinction in the way we relate to people. Just last week I was talking to another minister who told me that his congregation only charges for weddings and funerals when it’s not a member of the congregation. Is this because members of the congregation are more deserving of the church’s grace?
Indeed, I sometimes hear the sentiment, not necessarily from this congregation, that it’s important to look after our own members first. Do we think of ourselves as God’s special children while people who aren’t members of the church can eat the crumbs that fall from our table?
When we look at this story in Matthew’s gospel, it definitely starts that way but by the end of it, we see Jesus listening to what this woman has to say, being prepared to be challenged in his own prejudices, treating her like an equal. In fact, the way Matthew shapes his gospel, it’s only in the previous chapter that Jesus calls Peter, “You of little faith”. This is the first of the disciples, the one on whom Jesus will found his church: , and Jesus calls him, “You of little faith.” By contrast, when we get to this story only a chapter later, when it comes to this Canaanite woman, this woman who should be the enemy, who should be considered less than, Jesus says to her “Woman, you have great faith.”
It’s not until we get past the stereotypes, until we get past our preconceptions about people, until we actually get alongside people and get to know those who might seem different to us, that we start to understand just how much God is already in their lives, and how much we might have to learn from their experience of life and of God.
God is at work in different people’s lives in all sorts of marvellous ways, but there’s no way for us to encounter that unless we get past our prejudices and our stereotypes.
Amen.