When Jesus turns his back on us
Matthew 15:21-28
This is a shocking story
Jesus has gone to Gentile territory. And a Gentile woman – she was not a Jew – comes to him in great need.
This is a shocking story
Jesus has gone to Gentile territory. And a Gentile woman – she was not a Jew – comes to him in great need.
The audio of this talk can be found here
And she meets with silence, rejection and theological dogmatism. I love C15th image from the Duc of Richy’s Book of Hours (his prayer book) and put in the email and notice sheet. Jesus stands with his back to her.
So what is going on here?
1. This woman is desperate
Her daughter is gripped by a demon
In our culture we have lost the language of demons.
We have replaced it with the language of psychology or medicine.
It makes us feel that even if we cannot heal a mind now, we will be able to heal it as our knowledge increases.
But the language of demons brings us up against the reality of evil and that there are some things that cannot be healed or restored by any medication or psychotherapy or education.
Literally they are out of our control, and God’s direct intervention is the only answer.
This mother knew that. She will have tried everything for her daughter, and nothing worked
And she meets with silence, rejection and theological dogmatism. I love C15th image from the Duc of Richy’s Book of Hours (his prayer book) and put in the email and notice sheet. Jesus stands with his back to her.
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| The Canaanite woman. Miniature from the Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry. Folio 164r. Conde museum, Chantilly, France |
So what is going on here?
1. This woman is desperate
Her daughter is gripped by a demon
In our culture we have lost the language of demons.
We have replaced it with the language of psychology or medicine.
It makes us feel that even if we cannot heal a mind now, we will be able to heal it as our knowledge increases.
But the language of demons brings us up against the reality of evil and that there are some things that cannot be healed or restored by any medication or psychotherapy or education.
Literally they are out of our control, and God’s direct intervention is the only answer.
This mother knew that. She will have tried everything for her daughter, and nothing worked
And she is desperate. She is prepared to make a public scene. She started shouting.
And she is so desperate that she turns to a Jewish rabbi – even though she knows that she will be rejected.
But not any rabbi. The title that she gives Jesus is significant, ‘Lord, Son of David’.
She sees something that many of the Jews of Jesus’ time could not see.
She is persuaded that this rabbi is the promised leader who the Jewish people were waiting for: their king. And that he did God king stuff, like casting out demons and setting people free.
So she comes to Jesus and she says: this is interesting – ‘Lord, Son of David, have mercy on me. My daughter is tormented by a demon’.
She asks Jesus to have mercy ‘on me’ for the sake of her daughter.
She so loves her daughter that the pain she sees in her daughter is her pain.
It is very special when prayer can become like that. When we are so identified with the one for whom we pour out our hearts to God, that in praying for them we are not asking him only to have mercy on them, but to have mercy ‘on me’.
But this woman is desperate
2. She is persistent
She perseveres and overcomes
She overcomes the silence of God.
She cries out to Jesus, and she is met with silence. ‘But he did not answer her at all’.
It was not as if God did not exist. It was as if she did not exist.
That praying and meeting with the silence of God is a common experience!
Jesus himself speaks of a widow who wants a judge to give her justice. He simply cannot be bothered. He ignores her. But she does not give up. She keeps on coming to him and pleading with him for justice. And finally, Jesus says, the judge gives her justice in order to get some peace and quiet back in his life.
Listen says Jesus. God is not like that. But real faith is like that of the woman. It will persevere in the silence.
She overcomes the rejection of the disciples.
There are many times when people come to church and they are ignored or met with rejection or even hostility.
That is not a good thing.
And she is so desperate that she turns to a Jewish rabbi – even though she knows that she will be rejected.
But not any rabbi. The title that she gives Jesus is significant, ‘Lord, Son of David’.
She sees something that many of the Jews of Jesus’ time could not see.
She is persuaded that this rabbi is the promised leader who the Jewish people were waiting for: their king. And that he did God king stuff, like casting out demons and setting people free.
So she comes to Jesus and she says: this is interesting – ‘Lord, Son of David, have mercy on me. My daughter is tormented by a demon’.
She asks Jesus to have mercy ‘on me’ for the sake of her daughter.
She so loves her daughter that the pain she sees in her daughter is her pain.
It is very special when prayer can become like that. When we are so identified with the one for whom we pour out our hearts to God, that in praying for them we are not asking him only to have mercy on them, but to have mercy ‘on me’.
But this woman is desperate
2. She is persistent
She perseveres and overcomes
She overcomes the silence of God.
She cries out to Jesus, and she is met with silence. ‘But he did not answer her at all’.
It was not as if God did not exist. It was as if she did not exist.
That praying and meeting with the silence of God is a common experience!
Jesus himself speaks of a widow who wants a judge to give her justice. He simply cannot be bothered. He ignores her. But she does not give up. She keeps on coming to him and pleading with him for justice. And finally, Jesus says, the judge gives her justice in order to get some peace and quiet back in his life.
Listen says Jesus. God is not like that. But real faith is like that of the woman. It will persevere in the silence.
She overcomes the rejection of the disciples.
There are many times when people come to church and they are ignored or met with rejection or even hostility.
That is not a good thing.
And here the disciples say, ‘Send her away’.
But Jesus does not.
I note here that there will be times when we come to Jesus and he seems to be silent, but he will never send us away.
Jesus says, ‘Everything that the Father gives me will come to me, and anyone who comes to me I will never drive away’. John 6:3
And I notice that this woman does not give up in the face of the disciples’ hostility. She doesn't go away and say, ‘Those people are hypocrites. They rejected me. They did not treat me as I think that I should be treated, as I have the right to be treated. They treated me like a piece of dirt’.
She doesn’t say that. She perseveres. She continues to cry out to Jesus
She overcomes despite encountering a theological truth, God-fact, that she found difficult.
Jesus finally speaks to her and says ‘I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel’.
And then we have that even clearer statement of Jesus, ‘It is not right to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs’.
Commentaries point out that the word that Jesus uses for dogs is not the usual word for the wild dogs, but the word used for a household dog.
But there is a huge theology behind this.
It is the idea of election: that God chooses some to be his people. He chose the descendants of Abraham, the Jewish people, and she happens to not be of the Jewish people.
She does not rail against that teaching. She does not say, ‘It is so unfair’. Instead, she accepts it and receives it. And she works with it.
‘But Lord, she says, ‘even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their master’s table’.
She begins to see a deeper God truth, which is that when God chooses someone, he does not choose them instead of another person. He chose them for the sake of the other person, to be a blessing to them.
So Abraham and his descendants were chosen by God, but they are chosen so that blessing will come to all people.
And God has called you and me to be his people. Not instead of your sister or your child or your neighbour or your friend or your enemy, but to be a blessing to them.
So often we, in our pride, have a knee jerk reaction to something we read in the Bible that we do not like. We reject it and turn our back on Jesus.
In our liberal rights based individualistic culture it is particularly the biblical teaching and the understanding of Christian tradition on sexual intimacy, or for respect for those in authority or for beginning and end of life issues. They clash with what we perceive as our rights.
Or if we are more to the right, it is the teaching about justice, about God’s commitment to the poor, and about how we treat the stranger, the migrant among us.
But this woman does not reject the hard teaching. Instead, she perseveres, she looks harder at what Jesus is saying, and she discovers a truth that both liberates her and leads to the healing of her daughter.
The silence of Jesus, the rejection of the disciples and the hard teaching of Jesus could have driven her away.
But they didn’t. Instead they deepened her conviction in Jesus. They drew her on, closer to Jesus, so that one who begins shouting at a distance, becomes one who kneels before him and prays the very simple prayer, ‘Lord help me’, and then talks with Jesus.
3. This woman does not give up on hope.
I was speaking with someone last week who told me of a daughter who had lost her husband. And, she said, her daughter had given up her faith. She could not cope with the silence of Jesus.
Sometimes it can be a good thing to give up faith in god – when the god we put our faith in is an imaginary god who exists to make us happy and to do what we want. Because that is not the real God.
And if giving up faith in that sort of God makes us look deeper, then it is a good thing. It might be the beginning of a real encounter with the living God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ: a god who – because he is real will at times be silent and will at times challenge us.
But if we give up faith in the God who exists, who is beyond us, then we are giving up all hope. We are effectively saying that the final word in this world we live in is death. There is no ultimate reason for anything, and there is no hope.
This woman calls Jesus the ‘Son of David’.
I note here that there will be times when we come to Jesus and he seems to be silent, but he will never send us away.
Jesus says, ‘Everything that the Father gives me will come to me, and anyone who comes to me I will never drive away’. John 6:3
And I notice that this woman does not give up in the face of the disciples’ hostility. She doesn't go away and say, ‘Those people are hypocrites. They rejected me. They did not treat me as I think that I should be treated, as I have the right to be treated. They treated me like a piece of dirt’.
She doesn’t say that. She perseveres. She continues to cry out to Jesus
She overcomes despite encountering a theological truth, God-fact, that she found difficult.
Jesus finally speaks to her and says ‘I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel’.
And then we have that even clearer statement of Jesus, ‘It is not right to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs’.
Commentaries point out that the word that Jesus uses for dogs is not the usual word for the wild dogs, but the word used for a household dog.
But there is a huge theology behind this.
It is the idea of election: that God chooses some to be his people. He chose the descendants of Abraham, the Jewish people, and she happens to not be of the Jewish people.
She does not rail against that teaching. She does not say, ‘It is so unfair’. Instead, she accepts it and receives it. And she works with it.
‘But Lord, she says, ‘even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their master’s table’.
She begins to see a deeper God truth, which is that when God chooses someone, he does not choose them instead of another person. He chose them for the sake of the other person, to be a blessing to them.
So Abraham and his descendants were chosen by God, but they are chosen so that blessing will come to all people.
And God has called you and me to be his people. Not instead of your sister or your child or your neighbour or your friend or your enemy, but to be a blessing to them.
So often we, in our pride, have a knee jerk reaction to something we read in the Bible that we do not like. We reject it and turn our back on Jesus.
In our liberal rights based individualistic culture it is particularly the biblical teaching and the understanding of Christian tradition on sexual intimacy, or for respect for those in authority or for beginning and end of life issues. They clash with what we perceive as our rights.
Or if we are more to the right, it is the teaching about justice, about God’s commitment to the poor, and about how we treat the stranger, the migrant among us.
But this woman does not reject the hard teaching. Instead, she perseveres, she looks harder at what Jesus is saying, and she discovers a truth that both liberates her and leads to the healing of her daughter.
The silence of Jesus, the rejection of the disciples and the hard teaching of Jesus could have driven her away.
But they didn’t. Instead they deepened her conviction in Jesus. They drew her on, closer to Jesus, so that one who begins shouting at a distance, becomes one who kneels before him and prays the very simple prayer, ‘Lord help me’, and then talks with Jesus.
3. This woman does not give up on hope.
I was speaking with someone last week who told me of a daughter who had lost her husband. And, she said, her daughter had given up her faith. She could not cope with the silence of Jesus.
Sometimes it can be a good thing to give up faith in god – when the god we put our faith in is an imaginary god who exists to make us happy and to do what we want. Because that is not the real God.
And if giving up faith in that sort of God makes us look deeper, then it is a good thing. It might be the beginning of a real encounter with the living God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ: a god who – because he is real will at times be silent and will at times challenge us.
But if we give up faith in the God who exists, who is beyond us, then we are giving up all hope. We are effectively saying that the final word in this world we live in is death. There is no ultimate reason for anything, and there is no hope.
This woman calls Jesus the ‘Son of David’.
We can go one step further and with the disciples in the boat when Jesus gets into the boat and the winds and wave stop and call him ‘Son of God’. And despite the silence and rejection she does not give up on her conviction that Jesus has the power to heal her daughter.
And she also, despite the silence and rejection, does not give up on her conviction of the compassion and love of Jesus.
And she also, despite the silence and rejection, does not give up on her conviction of the compassion and love of Jesus.
That he will look on her, a Gentile woman, yes, a dog, and have mercy on her.
She refuses to give up hope.
The image from the Duc de Richy’s prayer book shows Jesus with his back to the woman. There is a lower scene on the same page where Jesus turns to her and welcomes her.
She refuses to give up hope.
The image from the Duc de Richy’s prayer book shows Jesus with his back to the woman. There is a lower scene on the same page where Jesus turns to her and welcomes her.
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