Transcript
She came and knelt before him, saying, “Lord, help me. Please be seated.”
My family has always been dog people. Yes, there were those few hamsters and guinea pigs and hermit crabs of childhood, but we have always been dog people. My best friend growing up was Chester, or Sir Winchester of Fairfax, registered AKC, although never shown, a0 pound yellow Labrador. Sometimes the poor dog got dressed up like a hoola dancer or a bride, but also slept every night in my bed with me, often with his head next to mine on the pillow.
After Chester, my parents got Palmer, a chocolate lab coming in at 120 lbs. They got bigger. And then Bronx, they finally decided to downsize to a 30 lb Cavalier King Charles mix. And of course, I had Betty for 17 and 1/2 years, my peanese. And now I have Marlo, a Pomeranian mix coming in at all of 11B.
Summers and weekends as dogs in my family are spent running on the beach and swimming in the ocean. And now that my parents are retired, Bronx gets to do that every day. There are sunset boat rides and hikes in mountains. And because who wouldn’t, when my dad goes out to buy tuna steaks for the family for dinner, you know, Bronx gets his own tuna steak, too. Sometimes we’ve been known to even get them their own donut.
So, when I hear things about dogs eating crumbs that fall from their master’s table, I have a very different image of what that means. And even if my dogs are actually under the table, they’re still very much part of the family. And the scraps that they get are very good quality.
In today’s gospel reading, we hear more about dogs under tables. This passage takes place in Tyra and Siden to the disciples that would have been something like a spiritual ghetto or slum somewhere Israelites would be scared to go. In this passage about a Canaanite woman, it’s actually found in Matthew, the version we heard today, and Mark. And in Mark, she’s a Sarah Phoenician woman, which is a precise contemporary geopolitical label. However, in Matthew, she’s a Canaanite woman, which is an archaic theological label, a definitely not one of us kind of labels. She’s socially powerless, and she’s not even named. She’s so unwanted that the disciples tell Jesus to send her away and yet she comes to Jesus anyway and she ends up literally at his feet.
Side note, Greek word used in today’s gospel to mean knelt as in she knelt before him. It’s typically used to mean worship. So she knelt before Jesus and then Jesus uses the image of dogs under the table and scraps but her response turns the image around because even the dogs receive what comes from the table. She refuses the assumption that her position determines her worth not just physically on her knees even socio geo and politically.
But then that brings us to the uncomfortable question of what is Jesus doing? This is where we have to resist that easy interpretation. Jesus was wrong. Done and fine. That’s too easy and frankly doesn’t take Jesus seriously enough. But we also shouldn’t immediately explain away the encounter by saying something like Jesus was secretly omnisient and therefore knew what was happening, was testing this unnamed woman, was showing off to the disciples, and was simply just excluding.
The story gives us a genuine human Jesus encountering a genuine human instead. Jesus is fully God and fully human. We know that. We say that all the time and the math doesn’t add up. But that means Jesus is 100% divine and 100% human.
So if Jesus is generally genuinely God that means Jesus is omnisient, omnipotent and omni benevolent, all knowing, all powerful and all loving in everything he does. But if Jesus is 100% human, then he has to learn things and he has to have a human culture and background and upbringing and he inhabits a particular place and time. He encounters people as a human being, which means, in case you were wondering, yes, Jesus would have had to learn algebra in high school. And yet, he’s also God.
There’s a quote in Aladdin. The genie says it, and every time I think of Jesus, I think of this quote. The genie says phenomenal cosmic powers. Itty bitty living space. It’s just that the itty bitty living space is not a lamp. It’s a human life. So we don’t have to make Jesus’s humanity less real to protect his divinity.
So, what does this mean to the Canaanite woman in today’s gospel reading? Well, perhaps the point isn’t that Jesus made a mistake. Perhaps the point is that the encounter is real, a human being with assumptions and culture and limited encounters another human being. And this woman will not disappear beneath the assumptions made about her.
Instead, her voice matters. Her humanity matters. Her position does not determine her worth. So much so that two different gospels preserved her voice for the church. The woman may be beneath the table physically or at Jesus’s feet physically, but she is not beneath the dignity of God.
Perhaps this is part of the astonishing mystery of the gospel. The whole gospel, capital G, as in the good news of Christ. The one with all power places himself in a position of human limitation. The one who is above all puts himself among us. The one who sits at the center of the divine table comes down to the feet of humanity literally washes the feet of the disciples. The God revealed in Jesus is not a God who remains safely above, separated, unknown. God comes down to us and to the smallest vulnerable, limited and messy life of being human. And there in life, God meets us.
Maybe we feel like this Canaanite woman, unheard, unseen, unworthy of anything but to kneel at God’s feet. Maybe we feel like we should be sitting at the table with Jesus like the disciples who argued about who would be at the right hand of God when the time comes in heaven. Or maybe we feel somewhere in between. Serving Jesus like Martha, listening to Jesus, like Mary, even reaching out to Jesus like the hemorrhaging woman. Wherever we put ourselves in our relationship with Jesus, Jesus is there with us experiencing what we experience. Be it smallalness, be it vulnerability, be it limitations, be it messiness, Jesus is with us experiencing what we experience as only humans created in the image of God can experience. No matter what you’re going through this day, this time, this season, Jesus is with you.
Amen.