Hi First Presbyterian Church,
It’s time for our Mid-Week Meet-Up! In today's Lenten daily devotional reading, NT Wright reflects on a controversial passage in Matthew 15:21-28. In this passage, while Jesus is in a Gentile region, a Canaanite (Gentile) woman approaches him and asks him to deliver her demon-possessed daughter. Jesus refuses her, saying that his mission was for Israelites. But she insists. Jesus responds, “It isn’t right to take the children’s bread and throw it to the dogs.” Jews in Jesus’ day sometimes used the disparaging word “dog” to refer to Gentiles.
Wright asks the question that many readers of the Bible have asked of this passage: Why would Jesus use that word to describe her?
I have heard many interpretations of this passage that I think are just flat-out wrong. Some have said that this is an example of Jesus sinning, demonstrating that he was not (as Christians claim) sinless. Some have said that this demonstrates the humanness of Jesus, that he shared an implicit bias of many from his Jewish culture and had to be corrected by the woman. Those are “easy” surface-level interpretations but miss the point of what Jesus is doing here.
We have Jesus on record having other interactions with Gentiles that would have been very scandalous to his Jewish audience. Already in the Gospel of Matthew before this moment with the Canaanite woman, Jesus had healed a Roman centurion’s servant and had delivered a demon-possessed Gentile. Then, of course, there is the time Jesus was found at a well privately teaching a woman (which would have been scandalous enough) who also happened to be a Samaritan. Jesus was obviously very open to Gentiles. While it is true that Jesus came to fulfill the Messianic expectations of the people of Israel, he made it very clear that his ministry was also intended to spread to the Gentile world (Matthew 21:43).
What I think people often miss when reading this passage from Matthew 15:21-28 is that Jesus often used moments when he interacted with individuals in order to also teach onlookers an important lesson. The clearest example of this is when he is raising Lazarus from the dead, he prays to the Father and says, “I have said this for the sake of the crowd standing here, so that they may believe that you sent me” (John 11:43). Jesus was always trying to teach the crowds whenever he performed a miracle publicly.
When Jesus interacted with the Canaanite woman, he knew that his Jewish followers would likely all have agreed with the sentiment, “Gentiles are like dogs.” However, what would have shocked them was when Jesus responded to the genuine faith of the Canaanite woman by healing her daughter. In essence, Jesus was doing something provocative in order to teach his followers a lesson - God responds to the sincere faith of all people, even those that you may consider unworthy or inferior.
Still today Jesus provokes us. Who are the people that are considered unworthy or inferior in our society? Are we susceptible to believing the lie that they are undeserving of God’s grace? Jesus calls all people to a sincere faith in himself in order to experience the grace of God. Do we believe that?
Peace,
Aaron