Dog Days (Matthew 15:10-28)

The lectionary is a good thing . . . No, really!  Without the lectionary, some preachers might choose to skip difficult passages like this one altogether.  Even if you choose to preach on one of the other passages suggested for any given Sunday, just the fact that it comes up at all ensures that it at least gets considered.  But, what the lectionary giveth, the lectionary taketh away as well . . . in it’s zeal to chop things into bite-sized chunks, it sometimes cuts a bit too finely, leaving out portions that are important for understanding.  We saw that last week, in our consideration of the feeding of the 5,000: the preceding two stories influenced how we interpreted the one that followed.  And this week, though the main lectionary passage contains just the story of the Canaanite woman, the entire chapter preceding it gives a context for it’s meaning; any interpretation that fails to consider this is headed for trouble.

The whole thing is set off at the beginning of the chapter by a question from some of those Gospel fall-guys par excellence, scribes and Pharisees: “Why do your disciples break the tradition of the elders?” they ask, “For they do not wash their hands before they eat.”  And Jesus, knowing a teachable moment when he sees one, launches into a counter-argument.  He turns the whole thing around on them, accusing them of hypocrisy, of putting their traditions above the commandments of God: “. . . for the sake of your tradition,” he says, “you make void the word of God.”

Then, as the part we read begins, he calls “the crowd” over and begins to teach them.  And notice that the audience of these teachings has changed, from a very particular group—scribes and Pharisees, experts in the law and traditions—to a crowd, presumably of ordinary Jews, including of course his disciples.  As we will see, in the next sequence, his audience shifts once again.

Well.  He tells the crowd—made up of Jews, remember—that “it’s not what goes into the mouth that defiles a person, but it’s what comes out of the mouth that defiles.”  And it’s almost as if he calculated this statement to rile folks up, and sure enough it does: those self-same Pharisees and scribes he just got finished arguing with.  And the reason isn’t hard to understand: it hinges upon the word “defiles.”  The Greek word we translate as “defiles”  is a technical word, and it means making a person ritually unclean, unacceptable for Jewish ceremony or ritual.  Non-Jews were by definition ritually unclean, as were menstruating women, people who had touched a corpse, and—this is what got the Pharisees mad—people who had eaten certain foods, like pork or shellfish.  So Jesus is apparently contradicting centuries of teaching here by saying nothing that goes into the mouth makes one unclean.  And in fact, over in Mark’s version of the story, the author says as much: “Thus he declared all foods clean.”.

After the disciples—no doubt as upset as the religious authorities—ask him what he means, he puts it more forcefully: “Don’t you see that whatever goes into the mouth enters the stomach, and goes out into the sewer?”  And he uses a Greek word here that’s much stronger than “sewer;” think “toilet” or one of its cruder slang terms, and he means that the food that goes into one’s body is of no ultimate consequence, it just goes into the sewer anyway.  But, he continues, “what comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart, and this is what defiles.”  And since “heart” is an ancient way of saying “soul” or “being” or “self,” Jesus is saying that it’s what comes from our innermost being that makes us morally suspect, that separates us from our creator God.  And is there a hint of another meaning here?  Another connotation of the word “defile,” one that is more broad than the strict, technical meaning?  Jesus may be using it in a broader sense, one more of “rightness with God.”  As we’ll see, perhaps that is the case.

So, now we go into the story of the Canaanite woman with a context: Jesus is teaching about the limits of tradition.  First he disses the tradition of the scribes and Pharisees, which is the tradition of the Hebrew religion.  Second, he declares that everything—everything—that comes out of the mouth, which presumably includes that tradition, defiles.  Then he heads off to the Northwest, to the Syrophoenician country of Sidon and Tyre, which was a virtual no-man’s land as far as Jews were concerned.  Although there were a few Jewish settlements, and Jesus may have been headed to one, it is for the most part Gentile country, a land of the ritually unclean.

Which meant, of course, that the Canaanite woman is ritually unclean as well, as the name Canaanite implies. In other words, when Jesus meets her, she is by definition defiled, in the first, technical sense—she is ritually unclean, unwelcome in Jewish households, at Jewish dinners and, especially, in their Temple and synagogues.  And when she shouts to get Jesus’ attention, that just makes it worse, she breaks several taboos . . . which, of course, are tradition embodied.  First, she is defiled, she is ritually unclean, and speaking to a Jewish man. Difference in ethnicity, heritage, and religion marginalize her as far as Judean tradition and social norms are concerned.  Second, she is a woman, and women were supposed to be reserved—we might say “demure”—especially around men.  They did not shout, especially at eminent teachers, which she obviously knows that Jesus is . . . after all, she calls him “Lord” and “Son of David,” although here the name “Lord” is merely a sign of respect.

But because social and religious affronts do not merit consideration, Jesus does what social norms require: he ignores her.  Bur she keeps shouting, and the disciples beg him to send her away.  When they do that, he says that his mission is only for “the lost sheep of Israel,” which is metaphorical language, but it’s also just repeating what he has said earlier in Matthew’s gospel: as he sends his followers out he tells them “Go nowhere among the Gentiles, and enter no town of the Samaritans, but go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.”  His own understanding of his ministry is that it is directed at the Israelites, not Gentiles like the woman and her daughter.

 But she persists: she kneels before him and asks “Lord, help me,” using the same language Peter did when he asked to be rescued from the storm, which happens to come just a few verses before this one.  And when she does, Jesus utters the line that makes this story notorious: “It is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs,” using a slang term for Gentiles that was in vogue at the time.  But at doesn’t phase the woman, she acknowledges her position as a Gentile, saying “Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters' table.”  And only then does Jesus grant her request, and he seems delighted to do so:  “Woman,” he exclaims, “great is your faith!  Let it be done for you as you wish.”  And her daughter is healed.

So.  Let’s recap: Jesus is teaching, in several venues, about the limits of tradition, saying—in essence—that human tradition, what comes out of human brains and mouths, must not trump the will and word of God.  Then, he heads up to one of the areas full of people declared by that tradition to be outside the Jewish pale, perhaps to visit one of the Jewish settlements up there, we really don’t know, but he encounters the stereotypical example of someone whom Jewish tradition has declared out of bounds, has declared defiled.  And, as if that weren’t enough, she behaves in a manner guaranteed to set good Jews’ teeth on edge, which it does for the disciples.  Jesus begins by acting the way tradition demands, by ignoring her, but by the end, he is so astounded by what she says—by what comes out of her mouth—that he grants her request, and the demon is driven from her child.

And just what is it that comes out of the woman’s mouth, what is it that Jesus hears that moves him to break his own missional rule, to give some of God’s grace to one not among the lost sheep of Israel?  “Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs get the crumbs from the master’s table.”  When she hears his rationale—I was sent only to the lost sheep of Israel—she changes her tack and uses the same words as one of those lost sheep, saying “Lord help me,” and falls on her knees, in the attitude of a supplicant, but also—and this is what Matthew’s audience would have picked up on—a member of the tribe, one who acknowledges Jesus as her Lord.  In fact, in her interaction with Jesus, especially from that point forward, she demonstrates her belief that the grace of God, as symbolized by the healing of her daughter, is for her as well, Gentile dog or no.

She doesn’t argue that she is not a dog—she understands that Jesus is using metaphorical language, unfortunate though it may be.  She acknowledges the barriers that separate her from the Israelites.  It is in her interaction with Jesus that she demonstrates her willingness to break through those barriers, her belief that she should receive the mercy of God’s ruling activity on Earth, and that is what Jesus calls faith.  Though what comes out of the mouth defiles, what has come out of the mouth of this woman—already defiled by human tradition—is faith.

And this is the key to what Jesus means—or doesn’t mean—by the word “defiles.”  Though it surely means what the Pharisees and scribes take it to mean, ritual purity, he is speaking in a broader sense as well.  He does not declare the woman “un-defiled,” he doesn’t call her ritually clean as far as the Jewish religion is concerned, nor does she expect him to.  What has come out of her mouth demonstrates that she has faith, and because of that, she is undefiled in the only sense that in the end matters: she is right with God.

She is like a living, breathing sermon illustration, a poster child for someone whom tradition has declared defiled, has declared unclean, and Jesus meets her right after he teaches about the subject (or at least, Matthew places the story there).  And of course, it isn’t a coincidence:  Jesus is shown enacting his teachings, demonstrating his lessons, something that has been shown before in Matthew’s Gospel, and will be again.  And Matthew weaves these threads together to foreshadow the end, when Jesus sends his followers out to all the nations: Canaanites, Greeks and Gentiles of every sort, on what we call the Great Commission.

And what about for us, what about us modern-day followers, us modern-day descendants of God’s chosen people?  We are the heirs of the great commission, the sons and daughters of that expanded ministry—beyond the lost sheep of Israel, that is.  Whatever Jesus learned from or however his ministry changed after his encounter with the Canaanite woman—and he doesn’t declare her ritually clean, and there’s no hint that his ministry was suddenly transformed—whatever Jesus did or didn’t learn or do as a result of the encounter, we know that in the end, God’s transformative mercy is available to us all.

And the first hint of it is here, in this story of the woman whom tradition has declared unclean, but who had the faith that God’s grace is for her, and by extension, for all people, of all races, all colors, all nationalities, genders, and sexualities.  God’s grace is for everyone, no exceptions.  Even middle class Presbyterians from Ohio.  Amen.