Thursday 12 June 2014

Meditation on the Text of the Week

Children, Dogs, and Crumbs

For many years we have both loved and identified with the woman spoken of in Matthew 15: 21--28.  In the first place she was a rank outsider, a truly inferior person.  She was a woman, and Pharisaic Judaism stipulated that a man ought not to talk to a woman in public.  It was sinful and shameful.  Some rabbis even said this stricture must extend even to one's wife. 

Secondly, she was a Gentile--one of the hated ones.  But, this means nothing. we hear you say.  Our Lord did not care whether one was a Gentile or a Jew--He was without such carnal prejudices.  Did He not declare that He came to call the Gentiles; did He not bring salvation to the Samaritan woman at the well?  True, but in the Gospel of Matthew our Lord is constantly referring to the Gentiles as evil people, whose contemptible practices were to be avoided at all costs. (Matthew 6:7, 32, for example).

Jesus had withdrawn and taken His disciples north, towards the coastal cities of Tyre and Sidon.  There they encountered this Canaanite woman, possibly of Philistine descent, a member of a cursed race and culture.
  She cried to our Lord for help, not for herself, but for her daughter who had become a plaything of demons.  Her terms of address to the Christ imply that she understood something of the significance of the One before her.  He calls Him, "Lord", and "Son of David".  Moreover, she utters the "magic word".  She asks for mercy.

In almost every other case recorded in the Gospels, when someone came up to Jesus and besought His mercy--no matter who they were--our Lord gave them His full, undivided attention and ministered to them.  But not this time.  He ignored her.  He had taken on the demeanour of a Pharisaic Jew.  Had not his father, David been a great friend and ally to the people of Tyre and Sidon?  But not the son.  This strange story is unexpected and perplexing.

The disciples immediately sided with their Lord.  They quickly became fed up with her following and crying out.  So irritating. So shameful.  They also besought the Lord, but their request was that He got rid of the noisome annoyance.  Jesus' response is perplexing.  He appears to side with the disciples, confirming their prejudices.  "I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel," He said--in a voice sufficiently loud that the woman overheard.  But what subsequently transpired shows that all along He was watching her, wanting to know how she would respond to the humiliating threefold rejection she had already suffered at their hands.

In the mind's eye, we imagine our Saviour speaking to the disciples, but out of the corner of His eye, keenly watching what this nameless, insignificant, nothing-person would do.   Well, clothed in humility and lowliness she came directly to Him and knelt before Him, and begged simply and directly, "Lord, help me."  Now, we tell ourselves, now, for sure, our merciful Lord will respond and help her.  Not so.  Instead, Jesus refuses, but He does so in the most insulting way.  He said, "It is not right to take the children's bread and throw it to the dogs." 

The "children" were the lost sheep of the house of Israel; the "dogs" were the Gentiles, like this woman.  Yet, four times rejected and refused, this wonderful lady persisted and pressed her case.  She humbly accepted His rebuke, but would not let it rest, instead, turning the rebuke into an argument for His help.  "Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters' table." 

This was not a mere clever, cheeky response.  She extended the metaphor and turned it to her favour.  Does not God send the rain upon the just and the unjust.  Does He not ceaselessly extend His good gifts and mercies to all mankind, including the grossest sinners.  "I may not be numbered amongst God's chosen people," she is saying, "but God also gives us Gentiles some of His kindness and love."  That's the profound general theological point that she was making, specifically applying it to her situation.  It was an argument that turned upon a deep faith in the goodness of God towards all men, even the most undeserving.

Our Lord had elicited what He sought. "O woman, great is your faith!  Be it done for you as your desire."  The daughter was immediately healed. 

In the broadest context of redemptive history, this wonderful woman stands as a signal of the coming Kingdom of God.  Soon the Gospel of God's saving mercy would extend and flow to all men, all nations, all tribes and peoples.  She was an avatar, a sign, a forerunner of what was about to unfold.  For those of us of Gentile stock, she is one of our great fore-runners in mercy, our mother in faith and salvation, as it were.  She entered the Kingdom before us, and her entrance showed us the way.  Even as she came and was accepted, so we have come. 

But this encounter also tells us much of how our Lord deals with us in our distresses.  The obstacles to securing relief are often many and persistent.  Many of these obstacles are even numbered in His Word: our pride, our lack of faith, our infidelity, our insignificance in the general scheme of things.  But, what is clear from this text is that whenever our Lord puts obstacles and objections to our receiving His help and mercy in our way, He is keenly watching us.  How will we respond?  He is looking for us to counter-argue with Him--naming before Him the greater promises of God, the greater mercies of God.  In fact, the more useless and pathetic we are, the more powerful our appeals to His mercy become.  This blessed woman shows us the way.  She used her weaknesses, her lack of entitlement to anything, to become a powerful argument, pleasing to our Lord.  The poor and the weak God does not despise.  That is written everywhere in Scripture.

Most gladly, says the apostle, I will glorify in my weaknesses that the power of Christ might rest upon me.  He may well have had this Canaanite woman in mind when he penned those words to the believers in Corinth and to us. 

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