This morning’s Gospel reading is one that I know a good number of people have some difficulty with. For one thing, Jesus appears at first to be reluctant to help the woman who’s come to him with her troubles; initially he seems to completely ignore her, in fact. And then there’s the language that Jesus uses when he does speak to her. To us, in our culture, calling someone a ‘dog’ is not a very nice thing to do. When we call someone a dog, we usually mean it as an insult and we’re saying that person is morally or ethically a bad person. We might use it to imply that a woman is unattractive too. So Jesus’ behaviour and language in this Gospel story seems quite out of keeping with our image of him as the Good Shepherd, the loving, caring Saviour of the world.
But, as with so many things that Jesus said, we can’t take this story at face value, have to read between the lines, and if we’re not going to be offended by Jesus’ behaviour and language in this story, the first thing we have to understand is that, when he speaks about not giving the children’s food to the dogs, Jesus is speaking metaphorically. The clue is in his statement,
“I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.”
So when Jesus then goes on to say,
“It is not right to take the children’s bread and throw it to the dogs.”,
he’s not insulting the woman, and nor by extension is he implying that non-Jews, that we, are dogs in any derogatory sense; he’s simply using metaphors to make a point. The house of Israel, the people of Israel are God’s children. The woman was a Canaanite and so she wasn’t one of God’s children, at least in the sense that she wasn’t of the house of Israel. So all Jesus is really saying here is that his mission was to seek out and save the lost children of Israel, not to seek out and save those who weren’t of the house of Israel, and he had to stick to his priorities.
And once we understand that, we shouldn’t have any difficulty with the language Jesus uses because, actually, it’s a very good way of making his point because it’s a situation that most people can relate to from their own experience. Lots of people have dogs don’t they? People love their dogs and often even regard their dogs more as members of their family rather than pets. It’s also quite common in homes where there’s a pet dog, for the dog, or dogs, to sit by the dining table at meal times in the hope, or perhaps the knowledge, that they’ll be given some food. But I don’t think even the most ardent dog lover would dream of snatching a child’s plate, a child’s food, from in front of them on the table and putting it down on the floor for the dog to eat would they? It just wouldn’t be right to take a child’s food away and give it to even the most beloved pet dog. It’s a matter of priorities. The dogs can have some food, but they can have what the children don’t want, or what they leave after they’ve eaten. The children come first; the dogs come after. So all Jesus is really doing here is using a very common real-life situation to make his point.
But once we get over our discomfort at Jesus’ language, there’s still the question of why the lost sheep of the house of Israel came first and to answer that question, we have to look at what’s sometimes called the history of salvation, God’s plan for how the world was going to be saved. And in answer to that question, the simplest thing we can say is that the Jews came first because that’s the way God chose to do things.
The Scriptures tell us that salvation comes from the Jews; Jesus himself said this in another encounter with a non-Jewish woman, the Samaritan woman at the well whom we read about in St John’s Gospel. But really, it’s quite obvious that it does. God chose Abraham to be the ‘father of many nations’ and promised that, because of his faithfulness to God, all nations would be blessed through Abraham’s descendants. In other words, all people would be blessed through the Jews, the people of Israel. Later, through Moses, God gave the law to the people of Israel so that they’d know how to be his people, how to live as his children should live. But as we know, the people didn’t keep the law and so the law became something of a double-edged sword.
One of the most puzzling phrases we find in all the Scriptures is St Paul’s term, the ‘curse of the law’. We’re not quite certain of what St Paul really meant by this but it seems to have something to do with the law bringing an awareness of sin. Of course there is sin even where there is no law because sin is sin, but without the law, how can people know that they’re sinners? So even where there is no law people still sin, but they don’t necessarily know that they sin and so they can’t be punished under the law. The people of Israel though, can’t plead ignorance of sin. They have the law, and they know that they’re sinners and so they can be punished under the law. These are some of the arguments that St Paul uses when he’s trying to explain the relationship between law and faith and how the Gentiles, who don’t have the law, can be saved through faith in Christ. We find them especially in his letters to the Galatians and the Romans and they are quite complicated at times.
So as the law and the awareness of sin that goes with it were given to the Jews, and because they can be punished for their sins in a way that Gentile sinners can’t, it’s quite obvious that the problem of sin under the law had to be dealt with first. So saving the lost sheep of the house of Israel had to come before the salvation of the Gentiles. Let me put it this way. If a school is getting consistently bad exam results year on year, there’s no point in blaming the pupils every year, you have to sort out the teaching and the staff first before you turn your attention to the pupils. One Forrest Gump in a class doesn’t mean everyone in that class will underachieve; one Forrest Gump stood at the front of a class trying to teach something they can’t really do or understand themselves, probably will mean everyone in the class will underachieve. It’s a matter of priorities, and common sense too if we’re honest. You deal with the root cause of a problem first, not the symptoms the root problem causes. God’s blessing was given first to the Jews so that, through them, all people would be blessed, but the Jews had got things wrong so how could they tell or show anyone else how things should be done?
And this is what we see in Jesus’ ministry and especially in his Passion and Cross, him dealing with the root of the problem. How often do we read that something Jesus said or did or something that happened to him was said or done so that Scripture may be fulfilled? But the Scriptures that are being referred to in every instance are the Hebrew Scriptures, the sacred writings of the Jews. There were no Christian Scriptures at this time, they wouldn’t start to be written until after Jesus’ Resurrection. Jesus came to fulfil the Scriptures of the people of Israel, to fulfil the law and the message of the prophets and he came to do that, first to save the Jews themselves, and then, so that the blessing that God had promised to all people through the Jews, through Abraham’s descendants, could finally be given to them. Jesus’ message and ministry and his death and Resurrection confirmed him as the Messiah of the Jewish people. But it was his Resurrection that brought the Gentile world to faith. So he had to be the Jewish Messiah first before he could be the Saviour of the world. He had to save the people of Israel by dealing with the curse of the law before the Gentiles could be saved through faith.
In this morning’s Gospel, the Canaanite woman finally gets what she wants from Jesus because of her faith. And this is something we find a few times in the Gospels, Jesus granting the wishes of Gentiles on account of their faith, individual cases if you like of God’s promised blessing being given to non-Jews through the Jews in the person of Jesus. And we stand in that same tradition.
We’re non-Jews who’ve been given God’s promised blessing through the Jews in the person of Jesus and through our faith in him. The difference for us is that now Jesus’ ministry to the lost sheep of the house of Israel has been carried out. The children have been fed and we’re no longer dogs who have to wait for the scraps to fall from their table. By faith we’re God’s children too so we don’t have to wait for others to finish eating before we can be fed, we’ve got our own seat at the Lord’s table where we can sit and eat together with all God’s children whether they are Jews or Gentiles.
Amen.
Propers for the 20th Sunday in Ordinary Time (Trinity 11) 20th August 2023
Entrance Antiphon
God, our protector, keep us in mind.
Always give strength to your people, for if we can be with you even one day,
it is better than a thousand with out you.
The Collect
O God,
you declare your almighty power most chiefly in showing mercy and pity:
mercifully grant to us such a measure of your grace,
that we, running the way of your commandments,
may receive your gracious promises,
and be made partakers of your heavenly treasure;
through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.
Amen.
The Readings
Missal (St Mark’s)
Isaiah 56:1, 6-7
Psalm 67:2-3, 5-6, 8
Romans 11:13-15, 29-32
Matthew 15:21-28
RCL (St Gabriel’s)
Isaiah 56:1, 6-8
Psalm 67
Romans 11:1-2, 29-32
Matthew 15:21-28
Parish Church of St Mark Chadderton 