Summary: This is a story depicting faith -- faith that reaches across borders, leaps over boundaries, faith which will draw forth a response from even a reluctant Messiah.
"Somewhere on the borders of Galilee and the predominantly Gentile cities of Tyre and Sidon ... Jesus meets the unnamed woman, a Canaanite ...." So says a note on this scripture passage in a popular study Bible.1
This is not the only time we find Jesus operating on the border, in all the connotations that that phrase can imply: literal borders between nations and cultures or metaphorical borders of risk and challenge -- on the edge; at the precipice, and so on. In Luke 17 we find Jesus traversing the borderland between Israel and Samaria, where he cures ten men of a skin disease -- and only one, a Gentile, a foreigner, an outsider -- returns to say thank you.
And so we find him in today's passage, traveling, presumably by choice, in "the district of Tyre and Sidon," along the border between Jewish and Gentile territories. And this border is a sometimes hostile one. He is confronted there by someone from the "wrong" side of that border: a Gentile woman, a Canaanite. Canaanites were not only foreigners and outsiders, but Israel's traditional enemies, the native inhabitants of the land displaced by Israel's occupation centuries earlier.
He is confronted by a Canaanite woman, who is shouting at him. She doesn't take him to the side and quietly beg his pardon or try to persuade him. She is shouting, demanding healing for her daughter, who is possessed by a demon.
Jesus is not oblivious to her. He can't be! He surely can't ignore her: She's shouting. But for all that, he doesn't, at least at first, say a word to her.
His disciples urge him to send her away. What is it, exactly, that they want to see him do? Do they expect him just to run her off, and let her and her daughter suffer? We can't know for sure, for the text doesn't tell us, but perhaps they want him simply to give her what she wants, albeit not out of any compassion for her suffering, but as a passive-aggressive way of getting rid of her. Otherwise, Jesus would not have answered them the way he does. When Jesus says, "I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel," he is talking to the disciples, explaining to them exactly why he doesn't just heal the woman's daughter. His mission, at this point, anyway, is to Israel, and not to foreigners, Gentiles, outsiders.
But, bless her heart, she won't go away. She comes up close and kneels before him, calling him "Lord," and straightforwardly asking for help. Jesus gives her face-to-face the rationale he gave to his disciples -- only more forcefully, concluding it with an insult: "It is not fair to take the children's food and throw it to the dogs."
Ouch!
That word!
Dogs. Literally small dogs, like puppies or house dogs, but still an uncomplimentary term often used for gentiles or enemies.
The woman, undaunted, comes back with a yes-but!
Wouldn't you know! Whataboutism! We are shown in this confrontation that there is now and always has been a yes-but, a whatabout -- even with the Messiah, the Savior of the world! Yes, but... "Lord ... even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters' table."
And Jesus changes his mind.
What does he change his mind about? What leads him to change his mind? One commentary points out that it is the woman's great faith, more than anything else, that leads Jesus to change his stance at this point in a ministry, where he is in the borderlands, the human-made dividing lines between Gentile and Jew, Samaritan and Jew, outsider and insider, foreigner and native, "Us" and "Them." We see here before us, in Jesus, whom we call "Lord," a reversal brought about by the woman's persistent faith."
The Gospels demonstrate over and over that, to Jesus, faith is everything. The hemorrhaging woman, in Matthew 9 is told, "your faith has made you well." The centurion in Matthew 8. whose servant (or son) is mortally ill, is told, "let it be done to you according to your faith." A paralytic in Matthew 9 on a stretcher is healed when Jesus sees the faith of the friends who knocked a hole in the roof and lowered his stretcher down on ropes because the crowd was too thick for them to get him in by the door. Two blind men, also in Matthew 9, are told, "According to your faith, let it be done to you." In John 4, a man who believed the word that Jesus spoke to him, headed home to find his little boy, who was sick to the point of death, healed when he arrived home.
It is faith which draws a positive response from Jesus. It is almost as if the Messiah, be he "very God of very God," as our creeds have it, and hence unchanging, is nevertheless pliable when confronted by faith. It is almost as if he cannot help but respond affirmatively when he is approached, in faith, by anybody! The specific role of faith is underlined whether the healing is transacted from a distance, as it is here, with the Canaanite woman who won't take no for an answer, or with the Roman Centurion in Capernaum whom we also meet in Matthew 8.
In the case before us today, the Canaanite woman's persistent faith leads Jesus to rethink and redefine his mission on the spot. Some might think he is only making an exception here, in the face of her shouting, her persistence and her refusal to go away, But the numerous other instances of healing, whether from afar or up close and personal, shows this to be the rule, not the exception. Do you want healing from the Messiah? Come to him, in faith. Call him, in faith. Shout at him, in faith! He will respond. He can't help but respond!
So, then, how will we respond? Our "status," if we dare call it that, as regular churchgoers, will not necessarily draw forth Jesus' healing. Our "status," if we dare call it that, as disciples, is not necessarily a guaranteed path to the faith that heals. Note well the contrast between Jesus' response to the Canaanite woman -- "Woman, great is your faith!" -- and to the sinking Peter, during the walking on water scene -- "You of little faith, why did you doubt?"2
What becomes of this woman? We know that "her daughter was healed from that moment." Beyond that, we know nothing. She disappears from history.
Peter, however, does not, as we all know, disappear. He keeps showing up, he of little faith, from the Gospels' beginnings until now. We have twin models of faith, here: Peter, he of little faith, and this shouting Canaanite woman: she of great faith.
The point of all this is faith. It is faith that gets Jesus' attention, faith that draws forth his healing power -- be it the little faith of Peter, or the great faith of this unknown, unnamed Canaanite woman.
Where are we in all this? Where are you? Do you find yourself on some kind of border between doubt and faith? Are you confronted by an ailment you can't seem to shake? It is faith that will give you release, be it the little faith of Peter or the great faith of the Canaanite woman. One does not have to be a bold and persistent shouter. There can be a persistence in regular church attendance, whether we are shouting as we go or plodding along just because it's what we do. Where, buried in all that brings you here, week after week, is the faith that saves, the faith that heals? What pushes you to seek Jesus, be ye shouting or timid?
May we not be afraid of our own needs. With this Canaanite woman, this foreigner, this outsider as our guide, may we not be put off by the outsiders -- the homeless, the poor, the immigrants, who come through our doors uninvited, shouting their need, demanding the stuff that we think is only meant for us! What would we have Jesus do? And what might we do? Run them off? Or offer to them -- even if in spite of ourselves and our consciousness of our "borders" -- the healing that they need?