25.01 | Offence or Wonder?
Matthew 15:21-39
“But she came and knelt before him, saying, “Lord, help me.” And he answered, “It is not right to take the children’s bread and throw it to the dogs.” She said, “Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters’ table.” Then Jesus answered her, “O woman, great is your faith! Be it done for you as you desire.” And her daughter was healed instantly.”
Matthew 15:25-28
Hang on.
Did Jesus really just call that woman a dog?
In case you’re wondering if I’m going to sweep it away as ‘it was different in the context’, it wasn’t complimentary in the First Century Jewish context either. Go to any part of the Middle East today, and you’ll still find ‘dog’ to be one of the lowest insults that can be given.
Scholars will (correctly) still tell you that it’s a softened form of the usual word for dog. The word Jesus uses is the word for ‘house dog’ or ‘puppy,’ and is only used in this story across the whole New Testament. In every single instance in the New Testament where ‘dog’ is used in an explicitly derogatory way, the other dog word is used.
That’s better, for sure. The emphasis here isn’t the immediate put down we feared.
But still, it’s not exactly comfortable. The house dog, in the woman’s description, is still under the table eating what falls to the floor, while the children get the meal. Our family dog would get this, but I doubt the woman would want to join her down there.
So how do we square this with the Jesus we’re getting to know?
We could draw out Jesus’ specific strategy for His ministry. The long term vision was always the whole world—in biblical wording, Jews and Gentiles.1 This is the promise of the prophets, the book of Acts, and the content of many of the New Testament letters. This is the reality of the global Church today. But the immediate strategy of Jesus, in our passage today, is the Jews. This is not a question of awkward exclusivism, but of intentional empowerment. Jesus came to restore Jewish followers of the Jewish Messiah, who in turn are called to take the Good News of His inbreaking reign to every nation on the earth. The methodology honoured the promises of the past whilst unleashing the intercultural vision of God into the future through the people chosen by God in the present.
We could land here. It’s a beautiful picture. It reminds us that this is how Jesus works. That He didn’t merely come to save us, but He came to mobilise us into joining in His work in the world.
But there’s somewhere else that some of us may need to look today. Another itch we need to scratch. Because this second thing digs a little deeper beneath the layers of our easily-offended sensibilities.
I wonder what the woman went away having experienced? Did she, like many of us, leave this story offended? Or did she leave the story filled with joyful wonder that her daughter was set free from her spiritual oppression?
Offence, or wonder?
The answer is obvious: the wonder outstrips the offence (which she shows no sign of) by a country mile. But the question can expose something in us.
Because many of us, steeped in a culture where deconstruction, criticism, and scepticism is the norm, leave more offended by Jesus’ language than filled with wonder at His healing. It exposes our tendency to come to the Scriptures ready to judge Jesus, rather than allowing His goodness to judge us. It exposes us as critics rather than creatives, Pharisees rather than followers, intellectual grown-ups who theorise away the Kingdom, rather than children who receive it with joy and wonder.
We need to let the woman tell us her story, rather than us take offence on her behalf.
And my guess is that, were she to sit us down and tell us this story in her own words, she would tell the story not of a house dog eating scraps, but as an outsider who found herself unexpectedly welcomed as a beloved child at the banquet of her King.
Reflect:
How do I receive this?
Does it affirm me? Disturb me? Challenge me? Change me?
How might this lady be an example for me today?
Pray:
Lord Jesus,
Where I come to the Scriptures to criticise rather than to be changed,
I’m sorry.
I see that this uptightness makes me a Pharisee and a judge,
Rather than a child and a disciple,
And that it makes me more rigid, serious, and controlling,
Than free, joyful, and full of wonder.
Today, help me to receive you afresh,
In the beauty and challenge of who you truly are.
Disturb me out of my sensibilities;
Humble me out of my skeptical self-importance;
And lead me to walk simply and joyfully again as a child of heaven.
And Lord,
From this place of simple obedience,
I give you my hands.
And as I look at what you have put into them,
Though it be humble and small,
I choose to give it away,
That it may be miraculously multiplied,
That the excluded may find themselves welcome at the banquet of your endless welcome
In the ever-expanding beauty of your ever-beautiful Kingdom.
In Your Name,
Amen.
Old Testament:
For those also reading the Old Testament this year, your additional readings are here:
Exodus 1-3 | Psalm 15
Gentiles being the biblical term for everyone not Jewish
Profound and deeply meaningful
This is so beautiful.