(Editor’s Note: A column that Associated Baptist Press published Feb. 23, written by Miguel De La Torre and offering a novel take on one of the New Testament’s most difficult passages, set off a lively discussion about biblical interpretation in the column’s comments thread as well as across the Baptist blogosphere. We decided to take the opportunity to ask a seminary dean and a local-church pastor to provide their takes on how to interpret difficult passages of Scripture faithfully.)
By James Green Somerville
In the verses that precede Matthew 15:21-28, Jesus goes about his ministry of teaching and healing tirelessly, although he is mobbed by crowds. Then, the Gospel accounts of the story say, he “went away.”
So, while neither Matthew nor Mark say that Jesus was on vacation, they do say that he went away to the Mediterranean coast, that he entered a house, and that he didn’t want anyone to know that he was there. Sounds like a vacation to me. I can imagine a nice pastel-colored beach cottage somewhere on the shores of the Mediterranean, with Jesus sitting on the front porch, gazing out over those deep blue waters, savoring those delicious breezes.
You wouldn’t hold such a thing against him, would you? Everybody needs a break from time to time. But suddenly the silence was broken by the sound of this woman coming up the front steps in her flip-flops, calling for his help.
“Have mercy on me, Lord! I know you’re on vacation. But my daughter is possessed by a demon. I need your help.” And if Jesus had a widow’s mite for every time he had heard that request, he would have been a rich man. He had been surrounded by crowds of people, remember? They had been pressing in against him, begging to touch the fringe of his cloak. He hadn’t even been able to eat.
And now, when he has finally gotten a few minutes’ peace, here comes this Canaanite woman. She’s from another country. She has a different religion. It would be like a Muslim woman coming to me on vacation, asking for help. I might not say it, but I would wonder: “Isn’t there a mosque you could go to? An imam you could ask? Why are you coming to me?”
And so Jesus tells her, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” In other words, “I can’t help you. I’m up here in Gentile territory. I am way out of my jurisdiction.”
But this woman comes and kneels before him, bowing her head to the ground and begging, “Lord, help me.” It is the request Jesus has never been able to refuse, but this time he says, “It isn’t fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.” It is another way — but not a more polite way — of saying, “Go away, woman, you’re bothering me.”
And yet she won’t go away. Jesus is not just her best hope; he is her only hope. She looks up into his face, her eyes searching for some flicker of empathy.
“Yes, Lord,” she says, “yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters’ table.” It’s a good answer. It is such a good answer that Jesus looks into those pleading eyes and feels his resolve crumbling. He can’t help himself. Above the weariness of his human nature and the strength of his divine nature, it is his nature to feel with those who are hurting and want to do something about it.
And so he says to her, “Woman, great is your faith! Let it be done for you as you wish.” Even as he did it he must have known what it would mean. Soon the news would spread, and before long everyone in town would be coming up those front steps, begging for mercy. His vacation would be over. But he did it anyway.
There is a word for what preachers do when they try to explain why bad things happen to good people. It’s called theodicy, and it comes from two Greek words that mean, essentially, “to justify God.” Theodicy is how we try to get God off the hook, how we try to convince people that even though terrible things happen, God is still loving and still powerful.
Today I’ve been doing something that might be called Christodicy — I’ve been trying to get Jesus off the hook. I’ve been trying to convince you that even though he first ignores this woman, and then tells her it’s not his problem, and then calls her a Canaanite dog, he is still loving and compassionate. “He was just worn out,” I’ve been saying. “He needed a break.”
Surely you can sympathize. We have all said or done things we have regretted, and often we have said them or done them when we were tired, when we just weren’t ourselves. That’s the excuse I’ve been trying to make for Jesus today: he was tired; he wasn’t himself.
And that’s true, isn’t it? Follow Jesus through the Gospels and you will see that it is his way, usually, to reach down into the depths of human misery to lift people up. The force that he used was humanizing rather than dehumanizing. And that’s what makes this story so difficult. In it we see Jesus ignoring this woman, dismissing her, and finally insulting her. It isn’t like him at all.
And maybe that’s what we are supposed to learn from this story — that ignoring, dismissing, or insulting a fellow human being is not Christlike behavior. When we see it in him it shocks us; we scramble to explain.
But what about when he sees it in us? Is he shocked by our behavior, or is it just what he has come to expect?
And that’s something I learned from that Canaanite woman. No matter how much Jesus ignored her, dismissed her, insulted her, she never stopped believing that her daughter was worth something — and, eventually, she convinced him that she was worth something too. Instead of seeing her as a Canaanite dog, he came to see her as a woman of great faith.
It may be only a coincidence, but at the end of this Gospel Jesus doesn’t tell his followers to go and make disciples among the lost sheep of the house of Israel. He tells them to go and make disciples of every nation, including that nation where the Canaanite woman lived.
Is it possible that she persuaded him? That, while he was on vacation, Jesus learned that the love of God was big enough not only for the house of Israel, but for the whole human race? Is it possible he learned that among the people of the world there is no one we can ignore, dismiss, or insult, but that all people everywhere — people of every class and race and culture — are the children of God?
It sounds possible to me. It sounds like the truth. In fact, it sounds like the gospel truth.