Hilton Head Island, SC – December 23, 2012
The Chapel Without Walls
Luke 8:26-33; Matthew 15:21-28
A Sermon by John M. Miller
Text – She said, “Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their master’s table.” – Matthew 15:27 (RSV)
During Advent I have been preaching a series of sermons called Messianic Parables. The passage you just heard is not exactly a parable, as we shall soon see, but I am considering it to be one, even if it does not fit the normal pattern of Jesus’ parables.
The episode begins with this notation by Matthew: “And Jesus went away from there and withdrew to the region of Tyre and Sidon.” Let us first look at a seemingly unimportant word there, the word “withdrew.” Why would Matthew say that? Or why would Jesus do that?
Jesus’ public ministry was drawing to a close. By that point Jesus sensed how it would end, but apparently the disciples didn’t have a clue. They thought everything was fine, and that Jesus would indefinitely go from one glorious event to another. However, Jesus knew that a cross was looming up ever more ominously before him, and he wanted to get away from the press of events to re-generate his spirit before the approaching catastrophe. In order to do that, he went into Gentile territory. There the people wouldn’t know him, and he could get some vital R&R.
So, we are told, he went “to the district of Tyre and Sidon.” These two cities still exist. They are located in southern Lebanon, just a few miles north of the border with the modern state of Israel. They have been centers of Palestinian and later Hezbollah resistance to Israel. A thousand years before Jesus’ time, Tyre and Sidon would have been considered Canaanite cities. “The Land of Canaan” in Genesis originally was most of the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea, including all of what is now Israel and Lebanon.
But seven or eight hundred years before the time of Jesus, Tyre and Sidon became the primary cities of a Canaanite people who came to be known as Phoenicians. The Phoenicians were great seafarers and traders, and they established colonies all over the Mediterranean, including Libya, Sicily, and Spain. They were master merchants. By the first century, the glory days of Phoenicia had passed, but they still had pride in their many past accomplishments.
William Barclay quotes the Jewish historian Josephus, who lived a generation after Jesus. Josephus said, “Of the Phoenicians, the Tyrians have the most ill-feeling toward us.” We may deduce from this that Jesus deliberately went to the district of Tyre and Sidon because he wanted to withdraw from all kinds of people, both Jews and Gentiles. He would tend to his knitting, and the Phoenicians/Canaanites would tend to theirs, and he could personally regroup for what he was certain lay ahead of him.
No such luck! “And behold, a Canaanite woman from that region came out and cried, ‘Have mercy on me, O Lord, Son of David; my daughter is severely possessed by a demon.” Somehow this mother knew the reputation of Jesus as a healer, and she wanted the “demon” to be cast out of her daughter.
Twenty centuries ago people believed that mental illness was the result of the devil taking possession of people. Sadly, most of us have not improved on that understanding very much. We still treat the mentally ill with fear or disgust or avoidance, and it can result in disastrous consequences. Adam Lanza and the Sandy Hook School of Newtown, CT is a tragic example.
So this lady had heard of Jesus as a miracle worker, and she wanted a miracle for her daughter. And she wanted it now. “Have mercy on me, Son of David; my daughter is severely possessed by a demon.” Sometimes there is no mistaking that mental illness is mental illness.
However, listen to the very next verse: “But Jesus did not answer her a word.” He said nothing! He did nothing! He ignored her!
This mother was used to people ignoring her and her child, but she did not expect this behavior from Jesus. So she clamored all the louder. “Have mercy!” How could Jesus refuse? But refuse he did; he did absolutely nothing. Therefore she started in on the disciples, demanding that they do something to move Jesus to pay attention to her and her daughter. “Send her away,” they implored Jesus in their feeling of total ineptitude, “for she is crying after us!”
And then what seems like a heartless, even cruel, statement from Jesus: “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” Did Jesus truly mean that? Did he care only about Jews? Perhaps many Jews of his time cared only about Jews, but did Jesus feel that way? Or was he so depleted from the rigors of his ministry that he didn’t believe he had enough strength to help another person, no matter how great the need? We don’t know, and Matthew doesn’t say.
Hearing Jesus’ apparently dismissive words, the Canaanite mother came and knelt at Jesus’ feet, exclaiming, “Lord, help me!” When she said “Lord,” she probably didn’t mean what we would mean when we use that word with reference to Jesus, but she did recognize Jesus as the master and her superior and herself as the servant and his inferior. Whatever she had heard about Jesus, it had convinced her that he was somebody who could help her daughter, perhaps the only one who could do so, and she was not about to let this unanticipated opportunity pass her by.
It is the next verse that I am calling a mini-parable. But it sounds so shocking, so out of character with everything else we know of Jesus, that we can hardly believe he said it. “It is not fair to take the children’s bread and throw it to the dogs.” What kind of thing was that for Jesus to say to anyone, but especially to a woman with a daughter who suffered from such a debilitating and isolating illness?
Matthew did not attempt to tell us the tone in which Jesus spoke to the distraught mother. Almost certainly Jesus did not make that statement coldly, or harshly, or imperiously. In my mind I hear him saying, cocking his head with a half-smile on his face and a lilt in his voice, testing the woman by his words, “It isn’t fair to take the children’s bread and feed it to the dogs - - - is it?” In other words, “Do you think a Messiah for the Jews should be granting miracles to the Gentiles; do you?”
Her response is so instantaneous, so spontaneous: “Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from the master’s table!” What an amazing woman this mother is! What a keen mind she has! What spiritual insight! What divinely-inspired chutzpah! “Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs which fall from the master’s table!” I am not asking for everything you might give to Jews, Jesus, she says, but I am begging for crumbs --- not for me, but for my daughter. Please do something to lift from her the terrible burden of her mental demons. “Then Jesus answered her, ‘O woman, great is your faith! Be it done for you as you desire.’ And her daughter was healed instantly.”
What an outstanding, perplexing, wonderful story this is! Nothing is as it seems. It is all indirection and nuance and enigma. The words themselves can’t give the essence of the episode; only the ideas behind the words tell it. Here is a Gentile who sees Jesus of Nazareth as the Messiah of God. She doesn’t know God, at least not the way Jews knew God, she doesn’t really understand what the Messiah is, but she does know that Jesus is someone so special, so unique, that, Carpe diem, she will seize the day, and hope that he will offer to her daughter the divinely-guided help he has offered so many others. She doesn’t comprehend how much it depletes him, how much it takes out of him, but she does understand if she doesn’t plead for his assistance, and do it right now, she will probably never get another chance. “O woman, great is your faith!” said Jesus; “Great is your faith!”
Christian people, here is one of the most astonishing proclamations of all of human history: The Gospel of Jesus Christ is, particularly, Good News for Goyim. It is glad tidings for Gentiles. Jesus spent almost his entire thirty-three years or so on earth with Jews, but it turned out that it was Gentiles who ultimately responded far more fully to Jesus than Jews.
Our first Gospel reading this morning came from the 8th chapter of Luke. As in Matthew this episode had been preceded by some very exhausting ministry on the part of Jesus. It was miracles of healing which seemed to take the greatest amount of energy out of him. Healing of any kind takes considerable energy on somebody’s part, either that of the healer or the healed, or both. So in Luke 8:22 Jesus says to the disciples as he gets into a boat with them, “Let us go across to the other side of the lake.” “The lake,” of course, is what Christians call the Sea of Galilee and what Israelis call “the Kinneret,” the Harp, because its shape looks like a 1st-century harp.
Why would Jesus want to go to the other side of the lake? It’s because that was where the Gentiles lived; it was Syria. And until the Six-Day War in 1967, it was still Syria. The Gentiles in that region, called Gadera or Gergesa, were not likely to demand that Jesus heal their sick. Goyimstan meant relaxation! But as soon as Jesus stepped out onto the shore, a man with a wild look on his face came to Jesus and said, “What have you to do with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? I beseech you, do not torment me.”
Once again we are confronted by a Gentile who somehow knew who Jesus was, but we aren’t told how he knew, and we certainly can’t guess how he knew. In fact, no one else who knew Jesus, 99.9% of whom were Jews, ever called him “the Son of the Most High God.” I don’t know what to make of all this; I’m only telling you what Luke tells us.
Without going into detail, Jesus healed the man, who said he was called Legion, because he had a whole legion of demons which had lodged in his mind. There was a large herd of pigs feeding on the hillside. (If you question whether this was really Gentile country, that passel of pigs should prove it to you.) Jesus sent the demons into the pigs, which raced down the hill into the lake, and all of them drowned. And please don’t ask me whether there are demons in anyone or whether that was an ethical thing to do; you’ll have to ask Jesus the first time you see him.
I want to go back to what I said was, in effect, a parable. It is where Jesus said to Canaanite mother when she first asked for his help for her daughter, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” Then, when she persisted by kneeling at his feet, he said, “It is not fair to take the children’s bread and feed it to the dogs.”
Here is why I think these statements are parabolic. Do you remember Jesus saying in the Sermon on the Mount, “Do not cast your pearls before swine”? (Mt. 7:6). This is like that, except that Jesus is hoping this swine, i.e., this Gentile from Tyre, has the intellectual and spiritual acumen to suggest by her response that she isn’t a swine, and that she knows Jesus has something to offer her, if only he will choose to do it. Seek, and you shall find! Knock, and the door will opened to you! I am deliberately putting up barriers here lady, to see whether you will tear them down! Don’t take No for an answer! “It is not fair to take the children’s bread and feed it to the dogs.” “Says who?” “Touche’, Goyishe Girl! O woman, great is your faith! Be it done for you as you desire.” And her daughter was healed instantly.
Jesus isn’t the way we imagine the Messiah should be. He’s much more circuitous and indirect and playful and probing. He doesn’t zap anybody with the Big Divine Shazamm; instead he demands that everybody think and cogitate and ponder what they want from God and His kingdom. With Jesus it is thrust and parry; thrust and parry. In a fencing match with him, one must be on one’s toes at all times in order not to miss the magic moment when the Gospel pierces into our lives with its soul-wrenching but life-giving touch. He who would save his life must lose it. Ridding anyone of demons is very important, but it isn’t ultimately important. What is ultimately important is to know the power of God and the one whom God sent most clearly to reveal that power.
“You want your daughter to be healed? It is done! But I give you more than you asked; I give you the kingdom of God. There is no greater gift than that. So receive it also, Lady of Tyre. And shalom aleichem; peace be with you.”
Christmas is coming. It’s almost here. Shalom aleichem. May God’s peace be with you and yours, now and forever. Be it done for you as you desire.