A Sermon Based on Matthew 15: 21-28 

A Woman of Faith – and Chutzpah!

Rev. Deborah Troester, STHPC, August 13, 2023

Last month racist messages appeared in driveways in Marin County. According to  police, residents found small, clear plastic bags in their driveways that contained leaflets with anti-Semitic and racist language. Similar flyers have been left in driveways in Berkeley, Palo Alto and other cities in the Bay Area. According to a study from the Anti-Defamation League earlier this year, “Antisemitism rose in the U.S. in 2022 and shows little sign of abating worldwide.” According to a recent Washington Post poll, over half of African Americans believe that racism will get worse during their lifetime. This disturbing information seems to be confirmed by the recent incidents in the Bay Area. People may have many reasons why they hate those of different ethnic, religious, or cultural backgrounds, but one thing is certain: this is not the Christian way. Jesus taught us, “Love your neighbor as yourself.”

The gospel we read this morning has to do with loving, accepting and helping those who are different from us. It may be one of the most pertinent stories in the Gospel for us right now, considering what is going on in our country and our world. It’s about prejudice, name-calling, and even demonizing the “other” – the one who is not like us, who is not part of our group, or “tribe” so to speak. It asks the question, “Who is worthy of our help?” It is about healing and inclusiveness, reaching out to those who are not like us and finding common ground.

It takes place in the region of Tyre and Sidon, two wealthy and powerful cities of that time, located on the sea coast in what is now Lebanon. The people of that region worshipped the ancient Canaanite gods Baal and Ishtar, and so were looked down on by the Jews as idol worshippers. Yet Jesus and his disciples were there, preaching and ministering to the people – maybe focusing on Jewish people who had moved there for economic opportunity, but in a Gentile area just the same. The Canaanite woman must have heard about Jesus, so she followed him, begging for him to heal her daughter.

So far, this story parallels many in the gospels – people coming to Jesus, asking for help for themselves or a loved one, but then it takes an unexpected turn. The disciples ask Jesus to send her away. Instead of healing the woman’s daughter, Jesus remarks, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel,” as if to say that this woman was somehow not worthy of his help. Yet, just a few chapters earlier in Matthew, Jesus had healed a Roman centurion’s servant, and had commended his faith. In John’s Gospel, we read of Jesus’ conversation with a Samaritan woman. So obviously, Jesus did not have a problem speaking to Gentiles or healing them. Was Jesus’ remark about being sent only to the lost sheep of Israel intended to test the disciples to see how they would respond?

Then Jesus says something even odder. When the woman asks, “Lord, help me,” he replies, “It is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.” Back in Jesus’ day, calling someone a “dog” was an insult. Dogs were considered to be dirty animals who eat garbage and might be covered with fleas and mange. Calling someone a “dog” was to dehumanize them – to place them on the level of an undesirable animal who could be kicked or mistreated with impunity. Once we call someone a name, we put them into a category and cease to view them as an individual. We make it easier to mistreat or ignore them. We can say to ourselves, “Well, he or she is just stupid.” Or “People that act like that are idiots.” In our minds, categorizing people in a negative way somehow absolves us from being nice to them, or trying to understand them, or maybe even justifies treating them badly – “Well, they got what they deserved,” we might think. I doubt there is anyone here who would use a name-calling to justify violence against a particular group, but it seems that there are those in our country and elsewhere who would justify violence against someone simply because he or she belongs to a different group – whether a different race, religion, political persuasion, gender identity, or so on. I don’t need to tell you that this is wrong and we need to take a stand against it. You wouldn’t think that adults need to be told not to call people names, but here in this country we sometimes seem to have descended to this level.

Back to our story: some have proposed that Jesus, knowing that he would heal the woman’s daughter, is testing her faith. To me, this seems a little insensitive. I would prefer another explanation that some have proposed – that Jesus is simply quoting a popular saying of the time, a saying which he is about to prove wrong. In other words, Jesus is quoting a proverb about helping someone outside one’s own group, “Don’t take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.” We don’t have all the details here – the context, the tone of voice – maybe Jesus said this in an ironic tone, or quizzically, essentially asking the disciples a rhetorical question, “So, what do we do about this woman and her daughter? Do we help them or not?” Maybe his disciples had just asked him something like, “Why are we here, Jesus? After all, these people are pagans, not Jews. They aren’t our people. Why are we helping them?” We don’t know, because the gospels don’t tell us every detail. But it wouldn’t surprise me if one of the disciples had asked Jesus these questions, because I hear it often: “Why should we help people in other countries when there are people suffering here in the U.S.?” or “Why should we help those people – they are [fill in the blank] lazy, cheaters, taking advantage of the system” meaning mainly, that they are not like us. We are deserving. They are not. We have to help our own kind first, then those who are different, or who live far away, if we have anything left over, that is, after we’ve taken care of our own.

I think Jesus is throwing this out to his disciples, asking, “Is it true – do we only help our own kind?” If he gets an answer from them, we don’t know, because the woman is quicker in her reply: “Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters’ table.” We may cringe at this somewhat witty reply, but it shows that the Canaanite woman won’t give up: “Nevertheless, she persisted,” could be said of her. Women in that culture were definitely second-class citizens, but she didn’t let that stop her. Motivated by love for her child, she spoke up, even “talking back” to a respected religious leader. Do we have that kind of faith – the faith that keeps on asking, even when faced with discouragement? She has chutzpah – a Yiddish word meaning audacity – to demand from Jesus what she wants, healing for her daughter. Jesus doesn’t reprimand her – rather he commends her faith and heals her daughter.

Despite the differences of culture, ethnicity, religion, and gender, Jesus helps this woman and her child. If we say that we follow Jesus, we must do likewise. Jesus may have posed his odd questions to test the disciples’ understanding, or the woman’s faith, but finally he heals the girl, not because she has the right religious beliefs, or the right ethnic background or the right citizenship, but simply because she needs healing. That is his only requirement.

When we were in East Africa, there was a lot of ethnic and political violence, which, unfortunately continues. In particular, extremists, such as Al Shabaab, have committed terrorist acts in which they single out Christians to be murdered. You might recall the attack on a shopping mall in Nairobi about ten years ago in which 67 people were killed or the attack at Garissa University in northern Kenya in 2015, which killed 148 people, mostly students. The Kenya Evangelical Lutheran Church decided to respond to these incidents with a peace-building program, designed to bring together Christian and Muslim youth for sporting events and dialog. When they got to know each other, they young people said, “We have a lot more in common than we thought.” The Presbyterian Church of East Africa (PCEA) has also initiated several similar peace building strategies aimed at enhancing inter-ethnic harmony in Kenya. Last year Rev. Julie Kandema, Vice-President of the Presbyterian Church in Rwanda visited us. She told how after the genocide, the churches there worked to bring together groups which had previously been enemies. She said, “As we remember the bloodshed 28 years ago, we recognize that we always have a choice. To choose humanity over hatred; compassion over cruelty; courage over complacency; and reconciliation over rage.” If our partner churches can work in such difficult circumstances to bring about peace and reconciliation, here in the U.S. we, too, can surely put our efforts toward mutual understanding and dialog between persons with opposing ideas, instead of just name-calling. Diana Butler Bass writes, “Love must be our answer — loving God, our neighbors, and creation. But love is far more than good feelings or emotions. Love must be organized, active, and committed to the full dignity and worth of everyone.”

At the end of the gospel story, Jesus heals the woman’s daughter, who, the Bible says, was “tormented by a demon.” Maybe today we would say that she had a mental illness. Yet I think our world is tormented by many demons – demons of hatred, of prejudice, of racism and Anti-Semitism, demons of fear of those not like us. Jesus can cast those out, too, if we come to him in faith. We, too, can ask Jesus for the healing of our world, and ourselves, from these demons that divide us, so that our children may inherit a better world. All of us are healed when we love and accept those who are different from us, find common ground with others who are not like us, and share what we have with those in need, no matter who they are. That would be a miraculous healing indeed. Amen.

© Deborah Troester, 2023