a sermon for the eleventh Sunday after Trinity
Hello, it’s been a while… I’ve moved roles, house, been failing to sleep through a heatwave, etc etc… And learning how to preach in my new place.
Anyway… here’s this past week’s sermon. The readings were Isaiah 56:1, 6-8; Psalm 67 and Matthew 15:21-28
God be gracious to us and bless us, that your way may be known upon earth….
What are you like, when people ask you questions when you don’t want to be answering them. Perhaps you’re tired, perhaps you’re upset. Perhaps you’ve got something else going on and you’re trying to focus. Perhaps you’re hangry. It’s easy to respond grumpily to repeated interruptions and questions—and in our gospel today it feels a bit like we have grumpy Jesus, as he encounters a Canaanite woman who wants him to heal her daughter.
This is a tricky gospel reading because of the way Jesus behaves. The woman is desperate, and she’s not asking for anything beyond what a number of other people have already asked of Jesus. Is it because she’s a gentile? Jesus has previously healed the servant of a Roman centurion.
But he doesn’t seem to want to help this woman.
First he ignores her.
Then he tells the disciples to send her away, telling them that he’s “only been sent to the house of Israel”
And then, when she prostrates herself before him, he compares her and her child to dogs.
It’s not great (to say the least), and it can feel very uncomfortable to see Jesus behave in this way. We expect better of him. At least Jesus changes his tune when the woman answers back, applauding her determination and faith, and healing her daughter.
The passage raises theological questions too: for example, what does it mean that Jesus changes his mind in this conversation.
If he’s God, and knows everything, why doesn’t he know what the woman tells him and so do the right thing straight away?
If he’s God, can he get things wrong? Can he change his mind about a piece of moral teaching?
The Bible and the church talk about Jesus as the only sin-less human—and what does this encounter mean for that? Can a sinless human be grumpy or hangry? A conversation for another day…
But this is clearly an important in encounter, a story told by Matthew, Mark and Luke — something about it was of profound importance as the early church told stories about Jesus and his teaching. So how do we navigate it?
***
One suggestion might be that as fully human as well as fully divine Jesus inhabits our limitations and is able to be challenged and learn and grow, modelling something for us. This can be helpful as we think about how storytelling and examples work, but isn’t always satisfying if you’re philosophically or theologically inclined, in terms of understanding how Jesus’ human and divine natures work in one body.
Another suggestion might be that Jesus, who is repeating the Jewish teaching of his day, does so to allow the challenge to be made and responded to – a little bit like a philosophical dialogue – as a way of enabling his disciples to learn through the back-and-forth. A variant of this might be to suggest that he’s teasing her. These sort-of work—in that they allow Jesus not to be getting something wrong—he’s using teaching methods and knows the right answer.
But they’re also uncomfortable, because the power dynamic feels very off: there’s something a bit mean about him, a rabbi and a man, teasing a woman — a Canaanite, from a people who were, historically, the Israelite’s rivals for their land, and who had lost, first to Israel, and then to every kingdom and empire that defeated Israel and Judah all the way down to the Romans. Jesus holds all the cards.
It feels mean, that he would demand that a woman desperate for the health of her daughter gets into a philosophical and ethical argument with him in order to gain his compassion and help. I’m not sure anyone would like their vicars to take this approach.
Perhaps the most convincing suggestion is that this encounter is about timing. Not just that the woman has bad timing in terms of when she approaches Jesus, who is still grieving his cousin, John the Baptist, and hasn’t managed to get away from the crowds—and who has (in the earlier part of the gospel reading) had to go a couple of rounds with a group of pharisees about food laws, purity and holiness.
But that it’s about God’s timing, in terms of the work that Jesus is doing in his ministry and in his passion. Jesus tells the disciples: “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” And it’s not the first time he’s said something like this in Matthew. When he sends out the disciples in pairs earlier in the gospel he tells them to avoid the Samaritans and the gentiles.
The good news and salvation are for all people – but in Matthew’s account, Jesus’s Jewishness is particularly important, and he speaks first to God’s chosen people and before things expand beyond. There is an order, and a process. The disciples’ commission to make disciples of all the nations comes at the end of Matthew’s gospel, after Jesus’ resurrection.
And the Canaanite woman appears on the scene ‘ahead of schedule’, as it were, interrupting the order of things that Jesus is following in Matthew. She says, no, what you come to offer is for me too, and I want it now. And he, finally, interrupts himself and gives it to her.
***
And beyond any of the discomforts and difficulties and questions we have about the passage and Jesus’ behaviour, this is the key thing that makes this story so important.
Even the dogs eat the crumbs… even the dogs will be fed — and this isn’t endorsing the idea that the Canaanite woman and her daughter are ‘like dogs’.
It is saying that God’s saving power will be known among all nations, in the words of our Psalm.
It’s saying that the foreigners who join themselves to the Lord will be brought to God’s holy mountain and that the outcasts will be gathered, in the words of Isaiah.
And that this will happen even if God’s people regard those people as like dogs.
The book of Isaiah argues strongly for an inclusive Israel – painting a picture of God opening up to all the nations. And this wasn’t a universal view at the time: it’s not the only view that we find within the Old Testament. And within his Jewish context, Jesus was regularly having conversations about the law and about purity and about who God would welcome. Who would be among the righteous.
Matthew’s Jesus may have a timeline and an order of business, but in the end, God’s welcome is always going to be for everyone and especially for those who need it most because they have experienced it least.
***
We live after Jesus’ resurrection — in the time when God’s loving welcome is being extended to all peoples, before we are all, finally called home to God.
This is the expansion of God’s covenant with Israel; the new covenant that Jesus brings into being in his death and resurrection, which we will remember in a moment at the altar, in our eucharist. The promise that we too will be gathered to God’s holy mountain.
We live in a time of interruption and movement. A time that is marked by arguments about inclusion and who belongs, exclusion and who doesn’t belong, and all of the practicalities and daily businesses of this. We see this in our church, the Church of England. And in our nation and its politics – and, of course, beyond.
And yes, practicalities may be challenging and daily realities may be frustrating, and there may be no perfect solutions for how best to enable inclusion well.
But if God is telling us that—no matter what is going on—God’s desire is to welcome all those who love him and want to belong to him, then this is the principle for our lives where these kinds of questions arise. Jesus interrupts himself for the Canaanite woman—and we are asked to interrupt ourselves, too. This is the vision of the world and the future that we are asked to hope for, to trust in, and be faithful for—that should guide our deliberations and shape our desires for our world.
Amen.