Good News for Dogs

GOOD NEWS FOR DOGS

(Matthew 15.21-28)

(Mark 7.24-30)

Our Gospel Reading may be good news for dogs, but it is bad news for Jews.

Let me explain.

At a first glance the gospel story appears to be just another story of Jesus healing someone.

A woman came to Jesus to ask him to heal her daughter. Although the disciples try to shoo her away, and Jesus himself initially is reluctant to help, he does eventually respond to her persistence and heals the daughter from a distance.

Yes, it is a simple story. But wait a minute. Let us look again at the story in greater detail and you will see that there is much more than meets the eye.

We are told that the miracle took place in the district of Tyre and Sidon, which was Gentile country. In fact, it is the only recorded incident of Jesus leaving the Jewish area of Palestine. The location of the story obviously has some significance for Matthew.

Next, the unnamed woman is not Jewish. She is described as being a Canaanite woman. Now, the Canaanites were ancestral enemies of the Jews.

However, although she is not Jewish, she nevertheless recognises Jesus as the long expected Messiah. She shouts, 'Have mercy upon me, Lord, Son of David,'

And now let is look at the response to her, first of the disciples, then of Jesus.

The disciples wanted to send her away, possibly they thought Jesus wanted to be alone. After all, that is the reason given for being there. Maybe they objected to her being a woman, After all, an orthodox male Jew thanked God daily that he had not been born a woman. Or maybe they recognised her as belonging to a nation who were deadly enemies of the Jews.

So much for the disciples. But what about Jesus? His immediate reaction was to ignore her in the hope she would go away, justifying his action by saying that he has been sent, 'to the lost sheep of the House of Israel’. In other words, he was only interested in the Jews.

And then, probably with a twinkle in his eye, to add insult to injury, Jesus called her a 'dog'. He said, 'lt is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs’. Now the word 'dog' was an insulting term of abuse often used to describe non-Jews, in other words, Gentiles.

Then, quick as a flash, the woman replied, 'Yes, Lord, yet even dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their master's table.' In other words, she acknowledges her non-Jewish origins and says she would be content with what is left over from the meal of the Jews.

Jesus was obviously taken aback by her reply and said, 'Woman, great is your faith', and we are told that he then healed the daughter from a distance.

What on earth is all this talk of left over crumbs of food and dogs about?

In order to understand why Matthew has included this healing miracle of Jesus in his gospel narrative, it is important to recall that he wrote his gospel for a Jewish audience sometime between 85 AD and 105 AD.

It was a time of considerable controversy within the life of the early Christian church, between the early Jewish converts to Christianity and the latter Gentile converts.

Those from a Jewish origin had been brought up to believe that they and they alone were God's chosen people. Jesus being a child of his time, obviously accepted this point of view. Hence, his initial reaction towards the Canaanite woman.

However, it was never God's intention that he cared more about those of a Jewish origin than anyone else. Much rather, they had been chosen for a particular purpose, namely to be the means of making God known to the whole world. Hence Jesus did eventually respond to the Canaanite woman's request, and healed her daughter.

In other words, the miracle is an acted parable in which Jesus is the embodiment of Israel's vocation, which is designed to knock down the divisive barriers of race and culture, rather than maintain the status quo. Paul reminds us elsewhere, 'In Christ there is neither Jew nor Greek, but a new creation.'

Hence I said at the beginning, the Gospel is good news for 'dogs', in other words Gentiles, but bad news for the Jews,

The healing of the Canaanite woman's daughter is a symbol of the church's own mission, first to the Jews and then to those who are Gentiles, It is not a mission to a particular segment of the world of which you and I are a part.

And yet we often behave as if we, and only we, are the subject of his love, and close our eyes to the wider needs of the whole world.

While we discuss amongst ourselves who is able to belong to the church, we blind ourselves to our true vocation, and like the Jewish disciples of Our Lord, shoo others away.

Perhaps we need to be reminded of that universal vision of Isaiah in the Old Testament. He writes:

And the foreigners who join themselves to the Lord,

to minister to him, to love the name of the Lord,

and to be his servants....

these I will bring to my holy mountain,

and make them joyful in my house of prayer;...

for my house shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples.

Thus says the Lord God,

who gathers the outcasts of lsrael,

I will gather others to them besides those already gathered.' (Isaiah 56. 6-8)

My friends, let us not live like those disciples who, as Jews, sought to turn other people away and keep God for themselves. Much rather, let us be like Jesus, who eventually sought to include everyone within his loving embrace, even those who are sometimes called ‘dogs'.