Charlottesville, Jesus, and the Canaanite woman

Matthew 15:10-28

In Charlottesville, Virginia on August 12th we were reminded that racism is far from dead. Some of us are privileged enough to tell ourselves that it is a thing of the past, but when we are confronted with young white men waving swastikas that becomes an impossible story to believe. They shouted slogans like “blood and soil” which is a translation of a German phrase having to do with racial national identity that became particularly popular just before the Nazis rose to power in Germany. There were a number of white supremacist groups represented in Charlottesville protesting the removal of a confederate statue. People were seen doing the Nazi salute. These people were not hooded. They showed their faces and came with protective armor, and shields.

In case we think this is something that is only in the United States. Alberta has been called the center of the white supremacist movement in Canada. I remember being 20 years old in Red Deer and making a new friend who showed me his Nazi flag and box of Nazi propaganda. As a teenager I knew people who were skinheads. This stuff is around us.

Ask anyone who is aboriginal and they will tell you that racism is a reality they live with. That community is often stereotyped with the same kinds of things the African American community is labelled with.

This stuff is sneaky. I don’t think any of us want to think of ourselves as racists, but it sneaks in if we aren’t careful to keep it out. If we have to introduce a statement by saying, “I’m not racist but…” then it has probably snuck into our minds. The phrase “I’m not racist but…” has become a phrase we use to introduce a racist statement without feeling racist about it.

I would like to look at the Gospel today and see what it might have to say about all this. It is worth pointing out that Jesus and all his disciples were Jewish and that should confront any anti-Semitic notions right there. We can never ignore Jesus’ human nature without becoming heretics. So we should beware of any interpretation that tries to undo the incarnation and take away Jesus’ humanity in favor of some kind of more “spiritual” Christ. Paul writes in his letter to the Romans, 

"has God rejected [the Jewish people]? By no means!" (Rom 11:1).

In our Gospel today Jesus is confronted by a Canaanite woman. She asks for help for her daughter and in response Jesus says, 

"It is not fair to take the children's food and throw it to the dogs." 

Gentiles would sometimes be called dogs. There was no such thing as racial sensitivity at this time and this kind of attitude was rampant in the attitudes of the region on all sides. But it is a surprising thing to hear Jesus say. Sure Jesus was called to the children of Israel first, and then to the Gentiles next, but did Jesus really just call this woman a dog because she’s not Jewish?

This is why it is important to look at biblical readings in context. We have to see what is said before and after an incident if we want to understand it. Right before Jesus encounters this woman Jesus is teaching about defilement. For the Jewish people of Jesus’ time there were ways to become ritually unclean. For example, if you touched a dead body, or if you entered the home of a Gentile (a non-Jewish person), or you ate food that wasn’t kosher, you would be defiled for a certain amount of time. During that time you were forbidden to participate in certain rituals especially in the temple.

What Jesus says would shock his community- 

“it is not what goes into the mouth that defiles a person, but it is what comes out of the mouth that defiles.”

 This confronts the whole kosher system. The Pharisees, in particular, were very particular about being careful to eat in a way that didn’t allow them to come close to breaking one of the food laws. They even invented new rules to prevent them from getting even close to breaking the kosher laws  Jesus is basically telling them that they are wasting their time. It is not what goes into the mouth that matters. What you eat doesn’t matter- Not in terms of spiritual defilement anyway. This was something that divided Gentiles and Jews and usually prevented them from eating together, which was a big deal.

Jesus isn’t saying there is no such thing as defilement. He says there is actually such a thing as defilement, but you are defiled by what comes out of your mouth. Jesus says, 

“Do you not see that whatever goes into the mouth enters the stomach, and goes out into the sewer? But what comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart, and this is what defiles. For out of the heart come evil intentions, murder, adultery, fornication, theft, false witness, slander. These are what defile a person, but to eat with unwashed hands does not defile."

 So at this moment we are told to be on the lookout for the words, actions, and intentions of a person if we want to determine how defiled or clean they are. We are not to look superficially at what a person eats. It is not a stretch here to say that this teaching implies that we are not to look at superficial things like skin colour, since food was often related to an ethnic identity.

It is at this moment the Canaanite woman comes along asking for help for her demon-tormented daughter. Jesus doesn’t answer her shouts and his disciples tell Jesus to send her away. I have a very hard time believing that this isn’t some sort of test for the disciples regarding the teaching he just gave regarding defilement. If that is the case then we should be careful to consider her words and actions in relation to her supposed defilement.

She calls out asking for mercy. She does not believe she is entitled to his help. She approached him with humility even while being persistent. She calls Jesus “Lord” and uses the messianic title “son of David”.

Jesus says he was only sent to the lost sheep of Israel, meaning the Jewish people.

She then kneels before him, but in the Greek the word to “kneel before” and to “worship” are the same, so we could even say she knelt in worship before Jesus.

And this is where we meet the phrase we mentioned at the beginning, 

"It is not fair to take the children's food and throw it to the dogs."

She responds with faith, even to this. 

"Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters' table."

 Notice all through this passage, the disciples don’t even call Jesus “Lord”. They don’t kneel in worship before him. They even tell him what to do by telling him to send her away. When we look at her words and actions we can see if she is defiled or not. She calls Jesus the “Lord” multiple times. She uses the title of the messiah for him. She is persistent, humble, and worshipful. These are the qualities Jesus desires in a disciple. She has showed that she is not defiled. Her heart is full of faith.

And so Jesus responds, 

“Woman, great is your faith! Let it be done for you as you wish.”

 And her daughter was healed instantly.

The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. once said, 

“I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character”.

 Where did King learn this? I believe it is something he learned from Jesus.

Right from the beginning the Bible speaks about one human family with common ancestors, Adam and Eve. The Bible assures us that we are one human family created by one God. 

We don't have time to go through all of the bible this way, but there are many instructions in the Bible like we find in Leviticus 19:34 

"You shall treat the stranger who sojourns with you as the native among you, and you shall love him as yourself, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt". 

Jesus confronts racism when he answers the question, “who is my neighbour?” The hero of his parable was a Samaritan (Lk 10). In Jesus’ day this was a hated group of people that were considered both Heretics and a people with an impure bloodline. To a first century Jew a “good Samaritan” was an oxymoron. You might also remember Jesus and the Samaritan woman at the well (Jn 4). Jesus asks the woman for a drink from her bucket, but she is shocked because Samaritan and Jews don’t share dishes because of defilement issues. And yet, Jesus doesn’t have an issue with her being a Samaritan.

And we can also look at the legacy of Jesus’ disciples. The Christian movement quickly became an incredibly diverse group embracing all peoples who wanted to put their faith in Christ. Religions of the past were often tied to race, nationality, and geography, but Christianity broke past all those barriers. Paul taught the Galatians, 

“For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. And if you are Christ's, then you are Abraham's offspring, heirs according to promise” (Gal 3:27-29).

 For Paul Christ transcends all those identities and unites us across them. There is neither Jew nor Geek in Christ. It is not a barrier that divides them. I think Paul would be horrified to see what we have done in the church by making Scottish Presbyterian churches, and German Lutheran churches, and Dutch Reformed churches, and English Anglican churches. And we see this still happening with Korean Presbyterian Churches, and Egyptian Coptic churches, and Russian Orthodox churches. It would have been easy for the ancient Church to have a Jewish Christian Church and a Gentile Christian Church, but Paul would not have it. We are supposed to be transcending these barriers in Christ’s name. But we seem to be going back to that pre-Christian practice of having a God connected to an ethnic identity and a national geography. As if that matters more than our identity in Christ.    

Jesus taught his disciples that, 

“out of the heart come evil intentions, murder, adultery, fornication, theft, false witness, slander. These are what defile a person…”.

 Racism is at best slander and false witness. At its worst it becomes murder, which we saw in Charlottesville, but which we all know is only the most resent in a long line of horrifying crimes that have plague human beings. It is not the superficial that defiles. It is what comes out of our hearts. Let our hearts be full of a faith that transcends all prejudice.