Can we imagine what it feels like to have a pressing need or a
significant request ignored and met with silence? Just think about it for a moment. For me,
the question and my own personal memories are brought home by the plight of the Canaanite woman. (Matthew 15:21-28). This Gospel has always made me uncomfortable. In years
passed whenever it rolled around as our assigned reading, I wrote around the
story, not wanting to address it; not fully understanding it as it was so
contrary to Jesus’ nature and earlier events in Matthew’s Gospels. Even Mark in
his corresponding account of the story (Mark 7:24-35), chickened out and did
not include Jesus’ somewhat callous response in Matthew: “I was sent only to
the lost sheep of Israel.” (I still am chickening out as I had to change the blog's title from the last sentence.)
Admittedly, even today, women’s words are too often met with silence or are
interrupted or disrespected, by men and sometimes by other women. Those times
in my life when I asked for information or help and received nothing but
silence, were hurtful. No one immediately responds to the Canaanite woman or
gives the impression that they will respond. The disciples urge Jesus to send
her away because, it appears, they are annoyed by her continued shouting and her
refusal to take silence for an answer. Too often we either cannot or refuse to
empathize with people whose experience is different from ours. If we are not at
the receiving end of oppression or injustice we find it easy to dismiss it as
unwelcomed noise. If our common humanity and our relatedness does not move us,
what will? The Canaanite woman’s blood ran through Jesus’ veins and for that
matter, ours…but it didn’t seem to move Jesus!
So many disenfranchised people in history like the
Canaanite woman have persisted as lone minority voices among a majority of
authoritative and powerful men. She persisted! She didn’t go away; she would
not be dismissed. Her plea for help was met with the language of societal indifference:
“It is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.”
In the end, Matthew’s Jesus responds by commending the woman for
her faith. (In Mark’s version, Jesus commends the woman with no mention of
faith.} Matthew calls what this woman does an act of faith. Yet, Jesus does not
perform an exorcism; he simply says, “Let it be done for you as you wish.” He
does not say let it be done as you believed but as you will. The woman’s strong
will manifested by her persistence, identified as faith, led to her daughter’s
healing.
While Jesus doesn’t tell us, we are told that the woman’s daughter
was healed instantly. Perhaps faith engenders persistence or maybe persistence
feeds faith. Either way, persistence and faith make a powerful pair. While we
can never underestimate the power of a
persistent woman and the God in whom she believes, we still wonder why Jesus
hesitated and initially responded as he did? For me, the answer lies in the
fact that Jesus was as fully human as he was divine. I wonder if this was a
teachable moment for him and that this woman at this precise moment in time,
was the vessel for this powerful education? While I feel a little better, I
still have difficulty with this Gospel. You see, it’s so easy to relate to the
loving, compassionate, Jesus who is “above it all,” but when I encounter Jesus
who in this case, behaves as I might have, it makes me uncomfortable. Maybe
that’s the lesson for us; we’re are trying; we’re still learning. We are only
human.
Remember man, presume not God to scan, the proper study of mankind
in man. Alexander Pope
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