Matthew 15:21-28 "The Change" Scott Hoezee

Scattered on various shelves in my study's bookcases are probably a half-dozen or so Time and Newsweek magazines that I've saved over the past dozen years. Each one of these magazines features a cover story about Jesus of Nazareth, and several have some version or another of the question, "Who Was Jesus?" printed on that same cover. No other religious figure seems to have generated so many questions over the millennia. Generally speaking, you don't find a plethora of articles in any given year that ponder the precise nature of Mohammed, Confucius, or Buddha. That's not to say that no one ever wonders about these figures but only that Jesus receives far more critical scrutiny.

And the questions raised about the identity of Jesus have come not just from atheist cynics who want to debunk the Christian faith nor just from Jesus Seminar types who wish to re-tool our image of Jesus. In fact, it is probably fair to say that the majority of questions that have been asked about Jesus--and the most urgent of those same questions--have come from inside the church, posed by very pious people intent on getting things right.

Indeed, for over 400 years in the earliest part of church history, Christian theologians wrestled with questions about Jesus. They wrote books on the subject, held very long conferences at which they debated these issues, made charges and counter-charges of heresy, and just generally carried on like this was the most important matter in the whole wide world (and just maybe it was, too). They simply had to know: Was Jesus fully divine? Was he only divine and so not really human like the rest of us? Was he fully human like the rest of us but then no more divine than the next person? Or was he both divine and human? And if he was both at the same time, how did that work? Did being human dilute his divine power? On the flip side, did being divine supercharge his human side? Could Jesus stub his toe? In the carpentry shop, did he ever very carefully saw a board an inch too short?

On and on the debates raged until finally the matter was settled: Jesus was both divine and human. Mysteriously enough, he was just as human as the next guy even though at the same time he was also God. The church's earliest theologians voted on all this, agreed that they had finally gotten it right, cast it all into the concrete of the Apostles', Nicene, and Athanasian Creeds, and so established the boundaries of orthodoxy once and for all.

But in truth, questions as to the details of all this still crop up. Many times it is the Bible itself that forces us to raise still more questions. Matthew 15 is a premiere case in point. Preachers and theologians can get into trouble very quickly when it comes to parsing Jesus' encounter with this Canaanite woman. The whole incident is only eight verses long, but it takes far more space even to begin addressing the issues raised here.

In the last few years, I have read two articles about this incident, both of which proved to be highly controversial. Each article was written by a woman, and both authors enjoyed this story because it shows clearly, they claimed, how a woman actually became Jesus' teacher. Jesus had been carrying around in his head some incomplete assumptions about who should, or should not, receive his ministry. So this lowly Canaanite woman challenged Jesus, called him on the carpet, and then, amazingly enough, Jesus changed his mind.

Now I could be wrong, but I'd wager that a good many of you understand instantly why that line of interpretation might raise a few eyebrows! Was Jesus capable of really learning something new? Or did being divine make Jesus immune to any real learning? When Jesus was in Kindergarten, did he only pretend to learn his ABCs for the sake of his teacher (when really he already knew every language in the world)? Could he ever really have been startled or surprised? We've all had those times when we've been so lost in thought that when suddenly the phone rings or someone taps you on the shoulder, you about jump out of your skin! Could that ever happen to Jesus? Or did he always know ahead of time when someone was going to knock on the front door or quietly come up from behind?

These are sticky questions! And, of course, we should admit that it's one thing to wonder about whether Jesus really did learn math when he was in school, and it's one thing to ponder whether or not a loud noise could ever make him jump. But it is quite another matter to wonder whether Jesus could have learned a new thing related to something as vital as the very scope of his own ministry. Yet Matthew 15 foists this issue before us this morning, so let's take a good look at what is reported here.

Verse 21 tells us that Jesus, for some unexplained reason, wandered into the area of Tyre and Sidon. To most of Matthew's original readers, that was the equivalent of saying that Jesus had now entered paganland. He was outside of any recognizably religious area and had entered a kind of spiritual slum, a veritable ghetto of unbelief. This was the kind of place "good" folks did not visit. Jesus had just finished offending the Pharisees by telling them that a person does not become spiritually unclean by eating the wrong things but by saying the wrong things. "It's what comes out of your mouth, not what goes into your mouth, that shows whether or not you are a good person," Jesus had just said. Now, almost as a way to further prove the point, Jesus visits a place which the Pharisees avoided because they worried that just being there would contaminate them.

The disciples were probably nervous being there. To their provincial minds, trotting around Tyre and Sidon made them feel similar to how most of us would feel if we found ourselves in a dark alley off Division Avenue around 2am on a Friday night: namely, they were quite uneasy! And it didn't take long before their worst fears are realized. Suddenly a crazy woman (a crazy Canaanite woman) runs up, screaming at the top of her lungs about her demon-possessed daughter. Unwittingly, she probably played right into every stereotype the disciples harbored. She was shrill, overly direct, presumptuous, and her family had a problem with a demon. "Well, don't they all!" Peter no doubt thought to himself.

They all no doubt rolled their eyes. Jesus himself said zip, which probably made the disciples assume he was thinking the same thing they were: how can we get out of his highly uncomfortable situation?! Since Jesus' silence gave the disciples an opening, they say to Jesus, "Let's ditch this woman now! Her screaming is driving us crazy." And Jesus then says, either just to himself or to the disciples, "I was sent only to the lost sheep of Israel." In the ears of the disciples, that was the equivalent of Jesus' saying, "I agree! Let's get rid of her because when it comes to our ministry, this woman doesn't count." We don't know whether or not she heard Jesus say that. Even if she did, it did not deter her in the least. Instead she assumes a posture of worship (the Greek verb for "kneeling" used in verse 25 is the typical word in the Bible for worship), and she then again begs Jesus to help her.

And that's when Jesus says it. In the previous chapter Jesus fed bread to 5,000 people. Immediately following this morning's story he will do something similar, feeding bread to 4,000 people. Jesus is the bread of life. His ministry is a kind of extended heavenly feeding. This woman is asking for a place at the table, but Jesus, chillingly, relegates her to the floor of life. "It's not right to toss perfectly good bread meant to feed children to dogs." Jesus calls her a dog. It's a kind of slur, an epithet, and the disciples no doubt approved.

The woman does not protest her spiritual canine status but instead actually plays on the image once again to press her point. "OK, so I'm a dog, but even they get crumbs and leftovers from the master's table, don't they!?" Jesus then expresses what appears to be surprise. "Woman, you have great faith! You're right, and so your request is granted." And it was. The daughter was released from her demon at that very moment, Matthew says.

However, that is all Matthew says. Tantalizingly enough, there is no follow-up of any kind here. There is no commentary from Matthew, no subsequent discussion between Jesus and the disciples as to why Jesus gave in after all, no hint as to why Jesus acted the way he did. At first Jesus pretended like he didn't even see the woman. In fact, this is the only time in all the gospels when Jesus ignored someone's cry. Then he claimed this woman was outside the scope of his concern. Finally, Jesus went further still by saying that the reason she was outside the scope of his ministry was because she was a lowlife, a dog.

But despite all that, Jesus in the end approves of this same woman. But we have no clue as to the whys and wherefores of any of it! Was Jesus at first merely toying with her (and the disciples), purposely playing into prejudices as a prelude to undermining those same prejudices? Or did Jesus really think at first that it was God's will that he limit himself to Israel? Both options raise questions. What would you think of me if you heard me call a person "an ugly pig" only to hear me say a few minutes later, "Aw, I was just kidding. I was just trying to show that you should never talk that way!" I suspect you'd chide me, telling me that some things should simply never be said, not even to make a point. Then again, we've already pondered the issues that crop up if we say that initially Jesus thought his mission was indeed limited to Israel.

There are no easy answers here. But let me briefly probe a couple of possibilities and then, in conclusion, focus on the main lesson of Matthew 15--a lesson that should not be lost due to focusing on deeper theological issues that we can perhaps not fully understand.

First, is it possible that this encounter did help Jesus to widen his own perspective? Although this specific issue is more weighty, there is a sense in which this question is similar to other questions I raised earlier in terms of Jesus' ability to be surprised or startled. But if so, it is very important to distinguish between those types of things and sin. It is no sin to make an honest mistake, no sin to get startled, and no sin to be unaware of something. So if Jesus really did think at some point that he was supposed to limit himself to Israel, that was no sin. Maybe part of what it meant for Jesus to be fully human was that he had the genuine ability to learn, that he willingly allowed limitations to be placed on his own knowledge even as, for the time he was on this earth, he allowed himself to be limited to being in just one place at a time (instead of being everywhere at once as is normally the case with God).

We know for sure that by becoming human, God's Son introduced possibilities into his existence that had not been there before, chief among which was the possibility of suffering and, finally, even of dying. Jesus shared our sinful situation without himself being sinful. That was true in terms of his vulnerability to suffering, and perhaps it was true also in terms of his ability to learn through experience the same as we all do in life.

But as interesting as all of that may be, the real lesson of this incident--the main reason why Matthew made sure to record this story in the first place--is to challenge all of us in the church to imitate Jesus in being willing to extend the gospel to all people, starting with the ones who, for whatever the reason, we may initially deem beyond the pale. Commentator Dale Bruner allows that Jesus maybe really did learn something through this Canaanite woman, but what is vital to see is that Jesus' heart did not change from stingy to loving. Jesus was always loving. It was more a matter of priorities that got shuffled around. Matthew wants us to see that even though we may think we know exactly what (and who) needs to come first in our ministries, the main thing is to remain open to the people God sends our way. We, too, may think that when it comes to "first things first," taking care of in-house folks has a higher profile than reaching out to the community. But if we, like the Lord Jesus, are going to be open to God's Spirit, then we need to be willing to change everything if that's what it takes to be loving toward everyone we meet.

Bruner points out that in the Greek of this incident, after verse 21 Jesus' name does not occur until verse 28. Until then, Jesus is referred to only as "he" or "him." He said . . . . He answered. But then in verse 28, when he extends love to this woman, suddenly the text says again, "Then Jesus answered." It's almost as if Matthew is saying that when the words of love and inclusion come into this story, that's Jesus talking! Now we are hearing from the true Lord Jesus Christ! Maybe at first Jesus had been mouthing the conventional wisdom of his day--and maybe at first even he thought his ministry needed to fit into that somehow--but when the woman's faith is approved of and healing is granted to her daughter, that's finally Jesus talking for sure!

Scholars think that Matthew was quite probably writing this gospel specifically for a Jewish-Christian audience. If so, then perhaps that community of faith, like so many communities down along the ages, was struggling with questions about who should be included in the church. What is the scope of salvation? Matthew has been pushing his readers outward right from the start. As we have noted before, Matthew opens with what looks like a dry and boring family tree of Jesus, but upon closer examination you notice the startling inclusion in that family history of four foreign women, several of whom had dubious sexual histories, yet each of whom became one of Jesus' great-grandmothers.

Matthew follows that opening surprise very quickly with the New Testament's only record of the visit of the Magi from the East. This, too, was designed to shake readers up. Astrologers like these quacks from Baghdad were despised by Jews, condemned by passages in the Old Testament itself. But Matthew brings these very fellows to the cradle of the Christ as another early gospel hint that the scope of Jesus' work was going to know no ethnic, religious, social, or economic boundaries.

Now in Matthew 15 Jesus himself is pushed outward by God's Spirit. Matthew 15:22 is the only place in the entire New Testament where the word "Canaanite" appears as an adjective. To Jewish ears, the very word "Canaanite" smacked of all that was hostile to Israel, all that they (since the days of Joshua) were supposed to root out and steer clear of if they were to be faithful to God. But like the Magi, here even a Canaanite becomes a beloved character in a story about the Messiah. Certainly for us, and maybe even for Jesus, she becomes an instrument of teaching by reminding us that in the end, the love of God needs to be available to all people.

Unhappily enough, we in the church have too often continued to echo the disciples when it comes to the needy of the world who cry out for help over and over again. We, too, are often tempted to say something like, "Send them away! Their neediness seems to have no end!" Now, it may or may not be understandable that we feel that way initially. We all have our comfort zones. We've all been raised a certain way and have been taught, subtly or overtly, certain attitudes toward certain kinds of folks in this world. That's simply the way it goes for most people, including us.

But Matthew 15 challenges us. No matter what our initial thinking about other people may be, the Spirit who is active in the gospel is not going to leave us the way he found us. Whether or not you think Jesus' own mind changed through this encounter, what is undeniable is the message that when it comes to our own encounters with other people in this world, we must be changed. For then they may be changed, too. Amen.