The Stories We Tell Ourselves

Part 1 - Jesus and the Canaanite Woman

Matthew 15:21-28

If you haven’t already figured this out about me, I enjoy a theological challenge. So we’re gonna talk today about one of the most challenging passages in the New Testament of the Christian Bible. It’s a passage that has caused more than one person to check out of Christianity entirely, because they couldn’t see any way to square Jesus’ behavior with the idea of a loving God.

We’re in Matthew today, and in chapter 15 we encounter the story of a Canaanite woman who begs Jesus to heal her demon-possessed daughter, and it seems like a really obvious and easy scenario for the Son of God. I mean, the only acceptable answer is to heal the suffering child, right? The ONLY acceptable answer! We know that in our bones! But instead, Jesus first ignores her and then appears (to our contemporary eyes) to call this desperate woman a bitch.

Excuse me…? I don’t blame anyone who can’t square that answer with a loving God. I’m glad if you can’t square that answer with a loving God; it tells me your radar for injustice is working. Good!

But I want to unpack this passage more deeply because I don’t think Jesus is slinging insults here. That would be incompatible with his character across the entire rest of the New Testament, for starters. So I’m willing, in this one instance of weirdness, to question my first assumption and dig deeper for a picture that feels more consistent, more true.

Let’s begin with reading the passage. We’re in Matthew chapter 15 verses 21-28; hear the Word of the Lord:

“After going out from there, Jesus went to the region of Tyre and Sidon. A Canaanite woman from that area came and cried out, “Have mercy on me, Lord, Son of David! My daughter is horribly demon-possessed!” But he did not answer her a word.

Then his disciples came and begged him, “Send her away, because she keeps on crying out after us.” So [Jesus] answered, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” But she came and bowed down before him and said, “Lord, help me!”

“It is not right to take the children’s bread and throw it to the dogs,” he said.

“Yes, Lord,” she replied, “but even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters’ table.”

Then Jesus answered her, “Woman, your faith is great! Let what you want be done for you.” And her daughter was healed from that hour.”

I’m going to paint us a picture, here, because I think it’s important to bring this story into a more familiar context before we can understand some of the subtlety of what Jesus is doing. The only compassionate answer to the news that a child is suffering is to help the child, so why isn’t that Jesus’ answer? Why ignore the woman? Why compare her to a dog?

I propose it’s because Jesus isn’t satisfied with saving only the child. Jesus is here to save everybody.

Now this picture isn’t going to be an exact 1:1 comparison with the text, so bear with me on some slight poetic license. There’s a lot of complexity happening in this short passage and we need a scene that helps us picture that. So imagine with me an ICE detention center. The place has been packed to the gills with immigrants and refugees detained by Immigration & Customs Enforcement. Children have been separated from their families and kept in cages; parents have been deported back to violence-ravaged countries of origin without their children. This is a place of despair and trauma.

But the good news is, this facility is being shut down. Everyone who’s been held prisoner here is being set free – Jesus and his disciples have arrived on the scene, maybe with some help from the Red Cross. Imagine they’ve got a tent outside and they’re making sure every single detainee is given food and medical treatment and reunited with their family. Everyone’s tired and hurting but for the first time in a long time – maybe for the first time in a lifetime, for some of these folks – there’s a treacherous little spark of hope. There’s a sense that finally, finally, someone has shown up who seems like he’s really here for the vulnerable. He’s really about liberating the oppressed. He’s not just talking a good game from an emperor’s throne, he’s boots on the ground doing something to help.

So everyone’s lining up to see Jesus, and that line is LONG, it goes all the way down the block and around the building and just keeps going. And Jesus is working tirelessly, and his disciples are helping him make sure people get bandaged up and fed, and they’re just working their butts off to take care of these people who’ve been held captive for so long.

And into this scene walks a woman. And this white woman cuts the line, she elbows her way past all these liberated detainees who need Jesus’ immediate attention, she shoves her way to the front of that queue and asks Jesus to help her child…

…and it’s Melania Trump asking for help for Barron.

What is the right thing to do, in that situation? Because of course, the only right thing to do is still to heal the child who is suffering. That’s it, full stop. And yet, if Jesus drops everything he’s doing for those captives and helps her, what’s the ultimate outcome? What’s going on in the minds & hearts of those detainees when they see Jesus helping the wife of one of the people who’s arguably most responsible for their pain and mistreatment?

The Canaanites had a long history of conflict with the Israelites. After God led Israel into the promised land, the Canaanites kept trying to steal the land back. As far as they were concerned, Israel were colonizers who’d stolen the land to begin with. The writer of the Gospel of Matthew is deliberately pointing to this deep and dire conflict, with the figure of this woman asking Jesus for help.

So what is Jesus to do, here? He knows Melania needs help. He knows Barron needs help. But I think he also knows that IF he helps them, hundreds and maybe thousands of onlookers are going to lose their faith in what God is doing to rescue them. The Jews look at this Canaanite woman and they see an enemy. What’s the effect on a wounded and oppressed people if they see their supposed savior drop them, with hundreds still to help, in order to assist a woman with wealth and social privilege enough to afford literally any doctor on the planet?

You can hear the stories that might come up for them, can’t you? “So much for the Messiah,” they start saying to themselves. “Yeah, sure, he set some people free, but in the end he showed his true colors, eh? He was on their side all along. That boy he healed is just going to grow up to lock more of our kids in cages. Forget that Jesus guy.” And the next thing you know, the familiar bitter story of their own trauma has caused them to walk away from literal salvation. They might leave those walls behind but they are carrying the cage around inside their hearts. Talk about a tragedy.

But Jesus doesn’t settle for this. Jesus isn’t interested in saving only the child.

Jesus is here to save everybody.

So when our imaginary Melania elbows her way to the front of that line and cries out for help, Jesus doesn’t say anything at first. He just looks at her, like really? You’re really gonna stand there and ask my help ahead of alllllll these people? Really?

I have to confess here to all of you that right about this point in the story, that B-word would be occurring to me. I’m not proud of that, but I gotta own it.

But Jesus waits. He says nothing. And before long his disciples are coming to him and asking him to help her. She’s demanding, she’s imperious, they’re tired of her attitude, they just want her out of their hair, so they’re like, “Look, could you just do the thing already?”

It’s worth noting here that the English words are translated as “send her away”, and that sounds really cold to us as contemporary readers, but the particular Greek word used here is a legal term for a release – from prison, from debt, from a painful condition. So they’re not asking him merely to dismiss her; they’re asking him to do the thing she wants in order to get her to shut up and go away. Their reasons are crummy, but at least they’re asking for the right thing now, they’re asking for the child of their enemy to be healed. It’s now their idea – they suggest it to Jesus.

But Jesus says to them, “I didn’t come for the wealthy and privileged. I came for the vulnerable. I came for the needy. I’m here for Israel.”

And our Melania in this story says, “I know. I know who you are. You are the Lord. You are the Son of David. You are their messiah. And, I’m asking because I need your help too.”

So Jesus says, “It wouldn’t be right to take what’s meant for these vulnerable people and give it to one who put them there.” When he says the children’s food shouldn’t be thrown to the dogs, I think maybe he’s reiterating and emphasizing something he said earlier in Matthew, in his Sermon on the Mount: “Do not give what is holy to dogs, and do not throw your pearls before swine, or they will trample them under foot and turn and maul you” (Matt. 7:6 NRSV).

I don’t think Jesus is calling her names, in the sense that we think about them. I do think he’s highlighting the reality that she has been part of something harmful that has done his people damage.

She’s standing in front of people who feel personally oppressed by her people.

But our Canaanite Melania, in this scene, she says the most amazing thing. She’s had to drop her ego in order to show up here and ask for his help. She’s had to face her own helplessness: no matter how much wealth & privilege society says she has, she has NO POWER against the demons afflicting her child. In this moment, she’s every bit as much in need as the people with whom she’s standing. So she’s not defensive when Jesus calls her on the reality of the harm that’s been done. She doesn’t deny his classification of her. She doesn’t make excuses for the history of harm.

She says simply, “Yes, Lord. That is who I’ve been. But I trust implicitly that your power and grace is so abundant that nothing you give me will take anything away from them. Even if all I deserve is the scraps left over after they’ve been fed, that will be more than enough. I am not here to steal what’s theirs. I’m just asking for the grace I trust you want to give.”

Now that is a powerful statement all by itself but can you imagine the effect of those words on the liberated prisoners who are standing around listening?

Can you imagine these vulnerable people, who just saw an enemy cut the line and ask their savior for help, who are telling themselves all kinds of stories about what it means if Jesus helps her – it means they’re not really loved, it means God doesn’t really care about their suffering, it means worldly privilege is all that matters in the end after all. Can you imagine how it changes their internal story to hear Melania Trump say out loud, “I don’t want to take anything away from them”?

Imagine the validation for generations of suffering, the spaciousness and possibility that might be opening up for the first time, when these people hear their oppressor acknowledge what they’ve suffered. When they hear her admit their needs deserve to be met. When they see that in this moment she’s in just as much need as they are. Can you imagine how their hearts might soften? How they might be able to put down some of that bitter story they’ve believed all their lives?

None of this transformation would have been possible if Jesus had just said “yes” the minute she walked up and asked. But by the end of this passage, not only is the woman’s child miraculously healed, but so are the people who witnessed it.

That is God’s justice, made manifest through faith.

By relinquishing any desire to defend herself, by allowing herself to be publicly honest & vulnerable and trusting that Jesus wants to help her not because she deserves it but because that’s just who he is, this Canaanite Melania becomes a doorway through which Jesus’ miracle is able to work healing in hearts and lives far beyond her own.

Jesus isn’t willing to settle for only saving the child. He does want to save the child, believe that! The rescue of a suffering child and a desperate mother is the just outcome and Jesus delivers. But Jesus wants an even bigger justice than that. He wants everyone saved, and that means rescuing us not only from the circumstances we’re in, but from the stories we’re telling ourselves about what those circumstances mean.

So here’s what I want us to take from this story today.

I want us to think about how Jesus demonstrates power.

As Christians we proclaim that Jesus is the incarnation of God on earth. We proclaim that anything God can do, Jesus can do. What do we see Jesus modeling when it comes to the exercise of power?

Do we see him using it to control? No. Does he whip us into his idea of shape like some commanding general? No. The church does that all too often! But Jesus uses power gently. Sideways. He waits for consent. He opens space for people to ask him for help before performing miracles on them.

We don’t see him force anything on anyone, in the Gospels. Father Richard Rohr makes the point that we often talk about God being all powerful. But Jesus shows us a God who is all vulnerable. What can that tell us about the true nature of power?

The power of God is not a power of control the way that we usually think about that word. It’s not coercion, it’s not a trap. The power of God is in expansion, and invitation. Rather than reducing our options to a handful of rigid “shoulds” pressed onto us from up high, God steps right down next to us in the person of Jesus Christ and shows us the options from here. Not merely the options from where he’s standing, in perfect love and perfect sinlessness. But the options from where we’re standing, right now, in all our messy imperfect humanity.

He shows us new ways to look at the world. Shows us we have choices and freedom we never realized were right there. Shows us that more is possible than we believed. Shows us, ultimately, that the real story – the story of God’s grace – is much bigger than the story we’ve been telling ourselves.

For the next week, I want to invite you to a prayerful practice of noticing. Try noticing the stories you tell yourself about the people you encounter. See if you can articulate some of the judgy thoughts you have about them. “That person shouldn’t drive like that.” “She should be more generous.” “That kid shouldn’t behave that way.”

There’s no need to berate yourself for having these thoughts. Just notice the thought when it comes up, get curious about it like it’s a particularly intriguing wildflower you spotted on the sidewalk. Try repeating it to yourself a few times and notice what, if anything, you feel – what emotions come up in response to that thought? How does your body react, does your posture or your breathing change? How do you treat that person when you have that thought about them? How do you treat yourself?

Just notice. No judging.

And then try this: try reframing that thought just a tiny bit and saying, “I notice myself having the thought that that person shouldn’t drive like that.” “I notice myself having the thought that she should be more generous.” “I notice myself having the thought that that kid shouldn’t behave that way.”

Try repeating this version a time or few and just notice if anything changes. What, if anything, feels different? How does your body respond to this frame? What changes in the way you treat that person when you have just that little bit of distance between yourself and the story? What changes in the way you treat yourself?

And finally, notice if one version of the story feels more liberating than the other.

Notice if something feels lighter or gentler, when you say it one way versus another way. Consider inviting God into that spaciousness. God’s already there – there’s no place we are that God isn’t – but something changes when we come intentionally into relationship in that way.

It’s like sharing a challenge you’re facing with a spouse or a best friend and asking for their perspective. Ask Jesus, in that moment of lightness, what story Jesus is telling about that person. And then simply get quiet and listen for an answer.

Notice where you hear God inviting you into a bigger, more inclusive story.