Out of Bounds
Matthew 15
Jesus left that place and went away to the district of Tyre and Sidon. Just then a Canaanite woman from that region came out and started shouting, ‘Have mercy on me, Lord, Son of David; my daughter is tormented by a demon.’ But he did not answer her at all. And his disciples came and urged him, saying, ‘Send her away, for she keeps shouting after us.’ He answered, ‘I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.’ But she came and knelt before him, saying, ‘Lord, help me.’ He answered, ‘It is not fair to take the children’s food 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, ‘Woman, great is your faith! Let it be done for you as you wish.’ And her daughter was healed instantly.
How do we make sense of this story? Was this the Jesus we thought we knew? Everything about it seemed so wrong to us at the time, and if you are a careful student of scripture, I am certain that you will agree.
All I can tell you is that this is how it really happened. How do I know? I was there, with Jesus, traveling outside the recognized boundaries of Galilee, into the territory of the Canaanites, a people historically hostile to Israel.
You should know that this excursion was preceded by a very testy argument between Jesus and some Pharisees. They had traveled all the way from Jerusalem to interrogate Jesus, asking very pointed questions, for example, “Why do your disciples break the tradition of the elders? For they do not wash their hands before they eat.” This prompted an exchange between them and Jesus, in which he called them “hypocrites.”
He then quoted Isaiah:
“This people honors me with their lips,
but their hearts are far from me;
in vain do they worship me,
teaching human precepts as doctrines.”
I have to add that according to Jesus, hypocrisy was just about the worst sin of all. Why do I say that? Because that was usually how he responded or accused his opponents (see Matthew 23).
In any case, Jesus elected to depart, not only from the location of this confrontation, but to exit Galilee altogether. Did he need to cool off after an argument? Or did he leave to avoid further escalation with the Pharisees? I don’t know, but all I can tell you is that we quickly left, going outside our normal area, into the territory of Gentiles. In our opinion, we were out of bounds.
Jesus exorcising the Canaanite Woman's daughter from Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry, 15th century.
Out of bounds? Yes, that’s right, out of bounds, and in Jesus’ own words!
You may remember that when Jesus sent us twelve out on our own, he told us to “Go nowhere among the Gentiles.” On the other hand, you may also remember that we did accompany him across the Sea of Galilee to the land of the Gadarenes (Matthew 8), and that we also traveled with him through Samaria (John 4). And you may also recall his healing of another Gentile, the servant of the Roman centurion.
Can you make any sense of all of this? Why would Jesus exclaim ,“I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel” while he himself was literally standing outside its traditional border?
Well, as you might imagine, I have some theories about this.
For those of us who witnessed this exchange between Jesus and the woman, I must say that it was pretty shocking. After all, he at first ignored her, and then he insulted her. He explained that helping her was not fair. And then, inexplicably, Jesus did just as she begged him to do.
Was this the Jesus that we knew? It certainly didn’t sound like him.
Let’s focus on the woman for a moment. She was persistent, to be sure, shouting at Jesus to “have mercy.” She would not take no for an answer, even after he insulted her, implying that she and her kind were “dogs.” You must understand that calling her a dog was, in fact, typical street vernacular for Jews of our day. But we’d never before heard Jesus use such language.
In any case, she did not give up. She persisted in her shouting. So, did the woman, in fact, change the mind of Jesus? Or, was he playing with her, intending all along to heal her daughter? Was he testing her faith?
I don’t believe any of that. Here’s what I believe:
In the previous exchange with the Pharisees, Jesus was, in essence, telling them (and us) that he was bigger than the traditions that they so treasured. While they would never accept that fact, it was, nevertheless, true. Jesus was so much more than the law and our traditions. His life and what he stood for proved it, and that’s why we followed him.
But there was more. He was also bigger than any gender boundaries too, just as he had been with others, like Mary Magdalene, and the Samaritan woman at the well. He was bigger than the norms of temple practice. Our brother Matthew recorded his claims in Matthew 12. And he was bigger than the wisdom of Solomon. Bigger than the prophecy of Jonah.
And in this instance, I believe, Jesus was telling us that he was bigger than the idea that Canaanites were our enemies, and that he was Lord only of the Jewish people. He was bigger than any notion that we must look down on other cultures and populations and that they were excluded from God’s love and God’s promises. He was bigger than the thought that we could cast others aside, considering them as “dogs.” And Jesus was, in his great mercy, bigger than our very human perception of fairness.
So, despite all of the appearances, Jesus healed the woman’s daughter. And his words of exclusion and insult marked the boundaries that most of us had freely accepted, and which he then destroyed by healing her daughter. Healing, in the mind of Jesus, didn’t need to be fair. Jesus, you see, considered mercy over anyone’s concept of fairness.
So, let me ask again: was Jesus testing her faith?
No. In reality, he was testing ours. Remember that we, all of us, urged Jesus to “send her away.” Yes, we did. In our minds, this encounter was totally out of bounds: by our location outside the normal borders of our nation, and by engaging with an unclean Gentile, even a woman!
So, what did Jesus do? He ignored her, he excluded her and he insulted her. His behavior at first was what we expected, except that we also wanted him to send her away, which he did not. Then Jesus proceeded to break every boundary that our culture assumed, showing the mercy that surprised us all.
There are no boundaries for Jesus. And we can go anywhere, into any hostile territory, just as long as we take Jesus with us.