Back To The Well: The Canaanite Woman

"Back To The Well: The Canaanite Woman"

Matthew 15:21-28 (Part 1 of “Back To The Well” Sermon Series)
June 20, 2010

Jesus left that place and went away to the district of Tyre and Sidon. Just then a
Canaanite woman from that region came out and started shouting, “Have mercy on me,
Lord, Son of David; my daughter is tormented by a demon.” But he did not answer her
at all. And his disciples came and urged him, saying, “Send her away, for she keeps
shouting after us.” He answered, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of
Israel.” But she came and knelt before him, saying, “Lord, help me.” He answered, “It is
not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.” She said, “Yes, Lord, yet
even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters’ table.” Then Jesus answered
her, “Woman, great is your faith! Let it be done for you as you wish.” And her daughter
was healed instantly.

I wanted to begin this sermon, and to some degree, this sermon series, with something I’
ve stolen directly from Frances Taylor Gench’s book Back To The Well, by sort of
exploring the whole concept of what it means to be a feminist. I know it’s probably
pretty odd, even in this day and age, to have a man name himself as a feminist, but I do
consider myself one. Certainly, there is some still lingering debate about whether or
not a man can rightfully call himself a feminist, but that has been mostly been put to
bed, because the label itself has more to do with an orientation towards women rights
as human beings, than it does strictly with the gender of the one who holds that
orientation. I can’t say that I’ve always considered myself one, but being in college, and
hearing those powerful and, frankly, very persuasive voices in my religious studies
classes, it simply made sense to me, the obviousness of what Alan Alda once said, that
“A feminist is someone who believes that women are people.” (Gench xi). Rebecca
West put it more plainly, sharing her experience in these words: “I myself have never
been able to find out precisely what feminism is. I only know that people call me a
feminist whenever I express sentiments that differentiate me from a doormat or a
prostitute.” (Ibid xi).   Certainly there are more academic definitions, but, essentially, the
whole idea of feminism is that equality matters, period, and, furthermore, the equality of
men and women matter in this world, and that if one advocates for that equality, then
one is feminist, whether that advocacy comes from a woman or a man.

For those of us in the Christian tradition, the lens of feminism has been incredibly
useful tool which to look at the world, and the working of the church, and, most
importantly in this context and for our purposes, the tool which to look at our Scripture
texts, and see them through different eyes, and in particular, female eyes. And yes,
even women can see a text through male eyes, in the sense that most of the frames we
have been given to understand this world, the frames with which we carry the particular
lenses we each have, are constructed and molded and crafted by men and their
particular experiences. There is something amazing when you find out that your own
experience, your own way of experiencing and understanding the world, is not the same
as the person sitting next to you, and it becomes even more clear when their
experiences are a source of differentiation in this world—race and religion and gender
and sexual orientation and class—every one of those things carry a different set
lenses. It is a huge moment for most of us, if we are open to that moment, when we
suddenly realize that the assumptions I have about the universe, are NOT the same
ones you have, assumptions about the way the world works, about fairness and
inequality, about the relative safety of this community, this state, this world—when that
“aha” moment happens, it can be a startling thing.

Now, despite the fact that I’ve had a few doors shut in my own face because of my
sexual orientation, I have to admit I don’t think I really got the difficulties women often
experienced in this world, and especially in ministry, until someone told me a story
about their own experience: a United Methodist clergy friend told me the story of her
first appointment in a small Kentucky town right out of seminary. The clergy association
of the small town she lived in had always automatically accepted into membership each
new Methodist pastor that had been appointed there, but this was the first time a
woman had been given the position, and now the all-male clergy group was at a
crossroads—do we break our tradition and deny her a place at the table, because of
our opposition to the ordination of women? Or do we open our doors, despite our
disagreement with her and the policy of the United Methodist Church? Well, their
solution was neither, because, of course, they were men of tradition, and their solution
was to disband and discontinue the clergy association rather than allowing her into the
fold, or breaking with their tradition. I know I must have had my mouth just gaping wide
open when she told me this story, because I was stunned that they would break up an
almost 100 year old clergy association just because they didn’t want her in the
group.

For me, listening to that story and so many other stories, and my own experience of
experiencing some closed doors, helped me to get beyond some of my patriarchal
assumptions, to listen to the witness and words and lives of women, and to look again
and again, at what I wasn’t seeing. That doesn’t mean that I have ascended beyond
those patriarchal assumptions, that I’ve taken those glasses off completely, just as I
haven’t taken off the lenses of my racism, or, ironically enough, my own heterosexism,
but it does mean that I’m willing to listen, and to exchange my lenses, my assumptions,
with someone’s else, in order to see it from their point of view.   This text before us
today, the one where a woman confronts Jesus, almost harasses Jesus, into getting a
miracle for her child, is one where, if we take up the challenge of taking off our old
glasses, and putting on new ones, we can see this text more powerfully, and we can
hear what new and ancient word God might have for us today.

First, though, it needs to be noted that this story has often been used by mostly male
commentators as an example of humility and submissiveness before Jesus, especially
with that image of this woman literally bowing before Jesus, almost blocking his way,
and the Greek word here is the same one that used to denote worship in Matthew’s
word usage (Ibid 8). The belief was that this woman was a good example of someone
who put herself fully before Jesus, submitting herself in worship, bowing before him in
submission, in order to get her miracle. And yet, of course, that ignores so much here,
and frankly, doesn’t even seem to line up with the facts of the story, really, if you are
willing to dig below the surface, which, frankly, not everyone is. The reality is that this
text has been a difficult one to deal with throughout Christian history because the
portrait of Jesus that comes from it seems in such contradiction to the humane and
compassionate one we’ve come to see in the other Gospels. Here is a woman that is
crying out for help with her daughter whose illness this woman traces back to a demon,
and she cannot seem to get Jesus’ attention, all seemingly because she is someone
from outside Jesus’ religious and ethnic background. But it needs to be said that Jesus
has healed others than those from his religious background before this moment, as in
the healing of the centurion’s daughter and some other non-Jews (Matthew 8 & 9), so it
wasn’t as simple as just his pinpoint focus on his mission, this mission to only deal with
the house of Israel. Jesus just ignores her pleas, and even the disciples seem
disturbed this, perhaps encouraging him to do something for her, if only just to shut her
up and get rid of her. But Jesus is focused solely on what he sees as his mission, and
that is his people, his faith, and, frankly, even he only has so much of himself to pass
around, and so he turns her down again, a second time.

But this wonderful, powerful woman won’t give up, and she literally throws herself at his
feet, maybe even blocking his ability to go forward, and she pleads with him, right there,
“help me, please help me.” And Jesus replies with words that seem distant and
disconnected, telling her only, essentially, that his food, his power, is only for those who
have been invited to the table, and those, like her, are not to be fed, at least not yet.
The language he uses is incredibly insulting and nowhere else do you ever see Jesus
ever replying to a sincere person with such harsh language. We don’t quite know why
he seemed so unwilling to help, though again, he seems to point to mission to the Jews,
despite the fact that he actually already healed people from outside the house Israel. I
think the reality is that the fact that it is a woman who is doing the asking has something
to do with his unwillingness to engage and answer her pleas, though perhaps is not the
only reason. I think we mustn’t forget that even Jesus himself is a product of a
patriarchal culture, an andocentric world, where everything is geared towards men, and
their perspective. Frances Gench, again, our guide for this sermon series, tells her
own story of finally getting this fact in her book, this way: “I do not know why this
concept took so long to register fully, because I had long puzzled over Matthew 5:
‘Everyone who looks at a woman with lust has already committed adultery with her in his
heart (5:28). Now I had tried to wrap my head around this thought: ‘If I look at a woman
lustfully I have already committed adultery with her in my heart”—but as a heterosexual
female I was encountering cognitive dissonance. Finally I understood: I am not the
implied reader!” (Ibid xii) Indeed, it is men the Gospel writers are writing to, and whom
Jesus is speaking to, which shows us how even he and the Gospel writers were still
captured by the culture they were born into, like all of us are.

And yet, this woman will not allow him to be enslaved by this falsehood of male
superiority, and so she challenges him, she pushes back, and actually argues with him,
something radical for her time. She outwits Jesus, and surprises him by her reply,
saying that even those with little have a right to what is on the table, even if it is only the
scraps, something said almost in a tongue and cheek manner. Interestingly and
ironically, it is Jesus who speaks out of scarcity—there is not enough for you—and it is
the woman who believes in abundance—of course, there is enough, for the house of
Israel and people like me. And Jesus seems floored by this response, and it so
surprises him that he praises her, this woman he wouldn’t pay attention to earlier, this
woman who had to literally block his path to get his attention—he sees something in her
that startles him: faith, real faith, from a woman, from a woman who is not from the
house of Israel.

Something about that encounter changes Jesus, changes him forever, and changes
him for good. That is what happens when we allow God to move in our lives, to let God
push us backwards when we need to be pushed backwards, and, yes, it can even
happen to the Savior of the world, who saves us as much by being human as he does
by being God, however you understand that. I don’t know why Jesus seems so cold
and distant, so uncaring, but I recognize it—it is me in my worst moments, it is you in
your worst moments. Frankly, sometimes you and I, we are just tired of giving a damn—
sorry, friends, but it’s true. Some just can’t take the idea of Jesus being this human,
this flawed, as humans as you and me, and so they have elaborate explanations about
Jesus testing the woman, etc, etc, and not really being that cold and unfeeling, but just
pretending to be so. But, frankly, its not there in the text, this idea, and we ought not
try to rescue Jesus from this moment, by explaining his bad behavior away. Gerd
Theissen, the German theologian, has asked this question: “Perhaps you will say ‘Can
we still believe in such a Jesus, a Jesus who is not perfect, a Jesus who is put to shame
by a foreign woman towards whom he has behaved inhumanly?’ I think that this is the
only Jesus whom one can trust. We can only trust a Jesus who allows a woman to draw
him out of his prejudices. Only in such a Jesus do we recognize a human face.” (Ibid
23)

Indeed, as I’ve always said, what I love about the stories of Jesus is the humanity that is
so expressed there, the humanity of God, if you will. If God is like this, then this is a
God I can believe in. To be in relationship with God is not to always grovel and beg,
and throw one’s sense of self away—in fact, that is never what it means to be in
relationship with God. Surely, it is important to recognize who is God and who is not—
us—but to be in relationship with God is have a dynamic, powerful, complicated,
sometimes testy, connection with her who created me, much like a daughter to a
mother, a son to a father, any child to any parent. That is what faith looks like, to stay
in the relationship, even when what we get is a bafflingly “no” or no answer at all,
something Job himself lives out in his story, the book we’ll begin in Bible Study after
worship.

To be in relationship with God is to be changed by the relationship, and, for God, in
Christ, to be in relationship with other humans, is to be changed by those relationships.
Of course, we have to be open to that, to those powerful encounters with God, through
others, through unexpected others, and that is a tough thing, to allow God to work with
us and in us that way, as evidenced by even Jesus’ resistance to the power of human
relationships, in this story. But like Jesus in the story, God will not allow us to sit in our
neat, simple world, where our boundaries are like walls, keeping the world out. God will
keep pushing and pushing, and though many and maybe most of us, will spend our
lives resisting that encounter with God, God will keep going at us, like this woman does
with Jesus.   Going back to the story of my United Methodist friend, the woman who was
appointed pastor in that small Kentucky town—I wonder if those other clergy had been
willing to keep the association going, I wonder if God would have done a thing, would
have changed some minds, some hearts, through that relationship with her, that
powerful encounter with this woman so obviously gifted for pastoral ministry? I think it
would have, if they had been willing to let God do that work within them on that
boundary, that barrier, they had put up against another of God’s children. Listen, the
only thing that I know that changes minds and hearts is relationships, something that
even Jesus has to learn, in this encounter with this nameless Canaanite woman, this
woman who changed the mind of the Savior of the world. Amen