Isaiah 56.1,6-8, Matthew 15.21-28
The Tenth Sunday after Trinity, 16th August 2020
Clapham, Eldroth - and online
You know, we live in an age of intemperate speech. I won’t list any examples, because you know: from presidents to people in the post office queue, folk can be very rude. Maybe someone’s been rude to you and it still rankles; or maybe you’ve said something hurtful which you now regret. So you’d expect me to preach a sermon saying, let’s show we follow Jesus by not talking intemperately, let’s share the love of God by not being rude to others. But hold on - what’s happening here? - in today’s gospel reading Jesus is very rude to people.
Jesus was rude to the Pharisees. He’d called them 'hypocrites'; quoting God saying, ’This people honours me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me’. He’d seen the difference between their holy words and their ungodly actions, how they preached to people their rules about food purity and cleanliness, whilst forcing these poor people to pay their temple taxes, meaning days of hard dirty work out in the fields where eating with clean hands was impossible. So perhaps we can see why Jesus offended them when he challenged them. And why they walked away angry with him.
Jesus was rude to a Canaanite woman too. Rude to her not once, not twice, but three times. When she first shouted for help to heal her daughter, Jesus didn't answer her at all. How rude was that, ignoring her cries for help. And then he was rude to her again, saying, 'I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.' Which was another way of telling this woman to go away, because she didn't come from Israel, she came from Canaan. So, sick daughter or not, he wouldn't have anything to do with her. How rude was that....?
But this woman wasn't put off by Jesus's rudeness. She didn't walk away offended like the Pharisees had. She was determined to get something out of Jesus, however offhand he was being with her. So she knelt in front of him, saying, 'Lord, help me.' And Jesus was rude to her again. Very rude to her this time. He said, 'It is not fair to take the children's food and throw it to the dogs.'
Did we hear that right? Did Matthew write that down in his gospel correctly? This woman, asking his help for her daughter - did Jesus really call her a dog??? There's no getting away from it - and many writers and theologians and preachers have tried to get away from it over the years - but you really can't: yes, Jesus was calling her a dog. This insulted her, and all her people.It was tantamount to him saying 'It is not fair on the Israelites I've come to save, for me to waste my time on a Canaanite like you.' How very, very rude was that....! You can imagine the reaction if they’d had Twitter in those days: Hey! Watch your mouth, Preacher Man! hashtag: #CaananiteLivesMatter.
This woman wasn't a hypocritical religious type. She just wanted Jesus to heal her suffering daughter. And even after all his insults, she didn't take offence and walk away like the Pharisees had. Instead she replied, ‘Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their master’s table.’
And stayed to see how Jesus would react to that.
That put an end to Jesus’ insults. Realising that this woman had seen through his rudeness, to believe that even if he'd come to save the lost sheep of the house of Israel, his power, his holiness, his grace, his healing, is large enough to extend to others too - to Canaanites, to people like her.
After all, Jesus had just fed five thousand people and there were twelve baskets left over. It looks like this woman had understood the symbolic meaning in that miracle: that Jesus has enough to share with everyone, even those usually not included, even the enemy, the rejected ones; the dogs eating the crumbs. No wonder, then, that she rode all Jesus' rudeness and demanded the crumbs from his table. Recognising that she had got his message, Jesus answered her, 'Woman, great is your faith! Let it be done for you as you wish.' Her daughter was healed instantly. And everyone who witnessed this incident learned what was then an astonishing new truth - that God is for all people, not just one nation.
But what of Jesus’ intemperate speech? Why would he be so rude, what was he thinking? After all, he’d just been lecturing the Pharisees on watching how they spoke! Well, let’s recall that in Matthew 11.6 Jesus said to John the Baptist's disciples: 'Blessed is anyone who takes no offence at me.' And let’s note that here, when Jesus is rude to the Pharisees and then to the Canaanite woman, the Pharisees are offended; the Canaanite woman is not offended. This all reveals to us that the opposite of offence is faith. The pious and law-abiding Pharisees lacked faith, and a Gentile ‘dog’ has great faith.
Jesus was pushing it with the Canaanite woman, but his rude remarks created a rude awakening - she passed the test of faith. But when he pushed it with the Pharisees, they failed that test and, offended, set off to do away with him. Part of me thinks Jesus was being playful with them; you can imagine it in his tone: using harsh words teasingly, in the same way he had teased the woman at the well about her husbands, and goaded the rich young man about giving his money away.
The message here is that if we take our faith seriously we should expect to find that Jesus will push it with us. He will tease out difficult demands which intrude into our lives. He’ll tell us to love our enemies, for instance, to pray for those who persecute us. How rude and ridiculous is that? He’ll tell us to do things with our wealth which our accountants wouldn’t. He’ll tell us to do things with our time which our spouses wouldn’t. He’ll raise questions about our motivations and desires which might discomfort us.
If we listen to these demands of his then we may either walk away offended, or embrace them as the positive challenges to our faith they’re intended to be, ways to help us grow as his disciples.
So the message from the Pharisees and the Canaanite woman is this: when Jesus provokes us with his hard words and difficult demands, let’s not take offence; but instead, keep faith, keep prayerfully working on these things with Jesus. He will help you do this; he will teach you; he will open up to you whole new worlds of blessing. Let’s be ready for a rude awakening.
Notes
[1] A rewrite of Matthew 15: Jesus is rude, preached in Liverpool, 2008.
[2] This paragraph based on quotations from David McCracken, The Scandal of the Gospels: Jesus, Story, and Offense cited in Paul Nuechterlein, Girardian Lectionary: Notes on Proper 15A.
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