Oftentimes, when I hear this gospel passage, I hear it referred to as the story of the Canaanite woman, which makes sense considering that one of the people involved is a Canaanite woman. The other, since it is a gospel story, is Jesus. Usually, that’s where our consideration of this story ends. We have Jesus talking to a Canaanite woman sounding, at times, pretty harsh, which has always seemed very contrary to the way I’ve imagined Jesus approaching those who have faith in him. So, I’d like to suggest a change in focus for this parable, a third character, if you will, who played a prominent role. It is, oftentimes, overlooked that Jesus is surrounded by and talks to his disciples throughout this story. And, in fact, I think that the disciples are the real ones who learn an important thing or two from today’s gospel.
I’m a Cubs fan. I have a friend who is also a Cubs fan. I remember talking with him a couple of months ago about how this is yet another rebuilding year. That makes 55 years in a row that the Cubs have been trying to rebuild a World Series team. He said that he was watching them one day and that they beat their opponent by eight or nine runs and then lost by two or three the next day. His theory was that they should have stored up some of their runs from the one day in order to win the next, as though the Cubs were the moral equivalent to Grimm fairty tale about the grasshopper who spent all summer singing instead of storing food and went starving to the ants for food during the winter.
I think there is a part of us that thinks in a similar way about God’s love. We say that we know God’s love is all-powerful and all encompassing but then we tend to put limits on it. After all, if God’s love is all-powerful and limitless then that means that we can’t put limits on our own love. That was what the disciples were doing in the gospel today. When the woman comes professing faith in Jesus, they want him to chase her off. This isn’t the only time they will want Jesus to get rid of people who cry out to him in need but it is the first time that Jesus gives in. I don’t think Jesus really wants for this woman to be sent away. I think he wants the disciples to face their biases, to face those times when they exclude people simply because they would rather believe they are outside of God’s love than within it.
So, Jesus communicates to the woman what the disciples would have him do, like a teenager giving into peer pressure. The difference, though, is that Jesus knows that this woman will stand up to him. Any desperate mother who thinks that a cure is possible for her child will be willing to be called names if it means having a healthy child. Because of her humility, her faith, and her love, her daughter is cured and she can walk back and, with her daughter, grow in the faith that was given to her.
The disciples, on the other hand, are left in a bit of a lurch. They have to face their own prejudices and deal with them. In this lesson, Jesus teaches them that racism and discrimination are the seeds of evil, not the way that leads to everlasting life.
This message will need to be quickly learned and implemented by the disciples. After Jesus death, the disciples leave Jerusalem and Israel and go to other countries to spread the gospel. They begin with what is comfortable. They first go to the synagogue if there was one in town. But, they would inevitably find the gentile audience more open to the saving message of Jesus. They find a common longing for meaning in these new believers, a longing that finds expression in Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection and allows these people who were not descendants of Abraham to be grafted onto his vine. This all happened because they learned to not let fear of differences drive them away from spreading the gospel.
That is the message the disciples learned and, perhaps, we disciples need to learn it as well. How do we treat people of other races, gender, political persuasion, theological understanding…? Do we let them go their way and we’ll go our own or do we try to get to know them and love them as Jesus loves us?
No comments:
Post a Comment