Sermon:  "Give a Dog a Bone"
Date:   August 14, 2011
Minister:  The Rev. Charles Ensley

Lesson: Matthew 15:21-28

As today’s Gospel passage from Matthew begins, Jesus leaves the shores of the Sea of Galilee and travels to a region that is considered to be unclean in Jewish eyes.  Tyre and Sidon, or Phoenicia (what today is part of Lebanon), was outside the established boundaries of Israel, and was an area rife with pagans and other suspect characters.  Yet Jesus walks boldly into it, and it doesn’t take long for one of the locals to discover his presence and start making a scene.  Matthew defines this person as a ‘Canaanite woman’—emphasizing her heritage as among the earliest inhabitants of this region.  Canaanite meant a long-hardened pagan and a longtime enemy of Jewish monotheistic faith and commitment. 

Jesus’ encounter with a Canaanite is daring, but with a Canaanite woman, it is doubly defiling.  The strict behavioral codes of decency in Near Eastern culture sternly frowned on women and men socializing.  The brazen approach of this lone woman to Jesus and his disciples makes her character especially questionable.  Remember the Samaritan woman at the well?  Even she was surprised that Jesus would ask her for a drink of water.  Finally, not only is this stranger an unescorted Canaanite woman, she has a daughter who is possessed by a demon.  In an age in which it was a commonly held conviction that all diseases—but especially demonic possession—resulted from past sinfulness, this woman’s character rating slips even further.  What has she done in her life to have earned such a curse on her daughter?

In doing my research for this sermon, I was intrigued to read in one commentary that “this is another text that only the most intrepid preacher will want to address.”  Gee, I’ve preached on it before, and I didn’t know I was being ‘intrepid’!

The likely reason preachers want to avoid this difficult passage is that it depicts Jesus in a far different manner from the one we see in other settings, such as, for example, calling the little children to come to him; or telling the weary and heavy laden to come unto him; or weeping at the grief of Mary and Martha over the death of their brother Lazarus; or returning satisfied that he had found the one lost sheep.  Here Jesus seems rude and responds with what sounds like a racial slur. 

The woman had come respectfully before this Jewish teacher, although shouting, perhaps out of desperation.  She called him “Lord, Son of David” and asked him to have mercy on her, for her daughter was tormented by a demon.  The Gospels are full of healing stories; some were healed by Jesus by him taking the initiative; they didn’t even have to ask.  But this woman asks, “but he did not answer her at all.”

The protective disciples—the same ones who wanted to send the 5,000 into neighboring villages to eat when they had only five loaves and two fishes; the same ones who wanted to turn the little children away from Jesus as children were considered of no value or consequence—these same disciples told Jesus to get rid of her, for she relentlessly kept shouting after them.  Jesus’ reply is that he came only to save “the lost sheep of the house of Israel.”

The woman then kneels as if a supplicant in Christian worship and begs, “Lord, help me.”  Jesus replies, “It is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.”  In other words, he is saying his message is for the Jews to hear; it is not to be wasted on Gentiles, pagans, foreigners and other non-believers.  This is consistent with Matthew’s mission; it is the most Jewish of the Gospels, with the purpose of converting Jews to Christianity.

The woman, seemingly unresentful of the analogy, persists, and within the framework of Jesus’ statement continues to plead her case—not that the “dogs” can eat later, but that they receive “crumbs” dropped from the table even as the “children” are being fed.

As I said a bit ago, I guess I’ve been ‘intrepid’ enough to preach on this passage before, but for the first time this came to my mind as I looked at the text.  Do you remember this old English folk song?  I had to Google it—it’s been so long since I heard it:

This old man, he played one, He played knick-knack on my thumb,

With a knick-knack patty-whack, give a dog a bone,

This old man came rolling home.

Comparing Jews to children of the house of Israel, and Gentiles to dogs was a fairly common Jewish way in that day to refer to Gentiles.  The crudeness of the analogy cannot be overlooked by presuming Jesus was speaking in a half-humorous tenderness of manner.  Scholars say none of the Greek text of Matthew would support such a notion.  So this appears to truly be a put-down that Jesus uttered.

Undeterred, the Canaanite woman responds to Jesus’ dog analogy by saying “even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters’ table.”  In other words, she acknowledged that Jesus was the Messiah, and that she and her ailing daughter deserved as much as anyone to receive a healing message.  With that, Jesus proclaimed her faith was great, and her daughter was healed instantly.

Now we’ve just walked through a verse-by-verse exposition of today’s text, which is found both in Matthew’s Gospel, and Mark’s—the earliest.  So we might assume there is some authenticity to this first century story.  Yet what is its message for 21st century Christians?

As Christians, we, too, sometimes have trouble inviting certain classes or races to enjoy the same benefits of God’s grace and mercy as we claim or expect for ourselves.  There is an old saying that 11 o’clock Sunday mornings in America is the most segregated hour of the week.  I believe the Christian church has come a long way from that in the past half century, but the church has, in the past, been guilty of exclusivism, and Jesus gives us, in his initial responses, some clues as to the type of exclusion we’ve practiced.  If this woman and all she represents can be given a seat at the table, then there’s hope for the rest of us.  For we, too, were once outsiders before we came to believe, but now are recipients of God’s mercy.  So who is it we’d like to “send away,” as the disciples said, referring to this woman?  Is it those who come into our churches not as clean or well-dressed or as financially stable as we are?  Are we guilty of exclusion today?  Jesus noted her faith.  So should we.

In today’s encounter with the faithful, forceful Canaanite woman, Jesus is able to take the new information and new insights she provides and apply them to his existing premises and perceptions.  Because Jesus is fully human and fully divine, he can change, grow and adapt to the people, environments and challenges he encounters. 

But it is the living, lively faith that the Canaanite woman and Jesus share that makes possible Jesus’ change of mind about the status of Gentiles in his mission.  Yet, in changing his perspective, Jesus does not compromise the special nature of his relationship with Israel.  Jesus changes his mind, but he “keeps the change.”

Equally important, we are challenged to perceive the faith of our neighbors, even if their trust is raw and unrefined.  True believers are found not only in groups like the twelve disciples, insiders who are convinced that they have a corner on spirituality.  No, sincere faith is found among Canaanite women, people who ride Harleys, recovering alcohol and drug addicts, recent immigrants and all the other people we tend to label as outsiders.  Authentic trust is found among twenty-somethings who have never darkened a church door, but might come to an alternate style of worship; scientists who scratch their heads when confronted with organized religion; and professionals at midlife who are wondering about the meaning of it all.  We miss an important connection point if we fail to sense the presence of faith in these lives, and to see this faith as a potential foundation for a relationship with Jesus Christ.

All of them deserve not only the crumbs that fall from the table, but a seat at the table as well.