Wednesday in the Eighteenth Week of Ordinary Time, August 9, 2023

Matthew 15, 21-28

At that time Jesus withdrew to the region of Tyre and Sidon. And behold, a Canaanite woman of that district came and called out, “Have pity on me, Lord, Son of David! My daughter is tormented by a demon!” But he did not say a word in answer to her. His disciples came and asked him, “Send her away, for she keeps calling out after us.” He said in reply, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” But the woman came and did him homage, saying, “Lord, help me.” He said in reply, “It is not right to take the food of the children and throw it to the dogs.” She said, “Please, Lord, for even the dogs eat the scraps that fall from the table of their masters.”  Then Jesus said to her in reply, “O woman, great is your faith! Let it be done for you as you wish.” And her daughter was healed from that hour.

“At that time Jesus withdrew to the region of Tyre and Sidon.”  The Lord Jesus had lately fed the five thousand, walked on the Sea of Galilee, healed the sick at Gennesaret, and prevailed over accusation made by scribes and Pharisees sent from Jerusalem.  All of those occurred around the Sea of Galilee.  Now the Lord chooses to withdraw into present-day Lebanon, at that time a province of the Roman Empire.  This would appear a surprising move since he was not going to preach there.  The Apostles, who at this time thought Jesus to be the Messiah who would lead them to victory over the Romans, would have wondered at this.  They had seen his miracles and teachings as preliminary to calling the people to rebellion by establishing his authority among them.

“And behold, a Canaanite woman of that district.”  The name “Canaanite” was no longer used at that time to describe inhabitants of Israel, but the people living in “the region of Tyre and Sidon” used the word for themselves and St. Matthew simply transfers and transliterates the name from the Phoenician language the people there spoke to the Greek of his original audience.  His use of their name for themselves shows his first-hand knowledge of the people and the accuracy of his account.  Matthew’s use of the name “Canaanite” (rather than merely saying “a native of that district”) also serves to emphasize that the woman is a pagan who worshipped the very gods that the ancestors of the Israelites sometimes worshipped — to their misfortune — from the time of the Judges until the destruction of Jerusalem and its Temple.  The early Jewish Christian reader who did not already know the story might have anticipated that the Lord Jesus, the one true God, might take this opportunity to destroy the worship of Baal once and for all by rebuking this woman and telling her to go back to her gods and ask them where there help was.  But he destroys their worship in a quite different way: through his singular act of mercy.

“Have pity on me, Lord, Son of David! My daughter is tormented by a demon!”  Matthew does not explain how this pagan woman from a land outside of Israel recognized Jesus.  We might surmise that since his fame had gone out far and wide, as Matthew himself tells us, “His fame went throughout all Syria” (Matthew 4, 24) that she had heard about him, but the question remains as to how she recognized him.  It is possible that the appearance in that place of this small group of Jews aroused curiosity, and that merchants selling food to the Apostles had asked who they were and from where they had come and the news had spread.  It is also possible that the Lord himself was marked in some way by a feature of his appearance that set him apart from all others.  Some Church Fathers had on a tradition that this was so (we will return to this matter in a future reflection).  At any rate, she does recognize the Lord and she addresses him both as “Lord” and as “son of David”.  It is as though she had thrown her lot in with him as the Messiah of the Jews, for “son of David” had a strongly political meaning.  It is not yet belief in Christ as the Son of God, but it is a beginning, and makes her an equal in faith, at this point, to the Apostles.  

“But he did not say a word in answer to her.”  The Lord draws out her faith and causes it to grow but giving the appearance that he wants nothing to do with her, the lowly Canaanite woman.  It is the attitude of the conqueror over the conquered.  “Send her away, for she keeps calling out after us.”  The Apostles want the Lord to publicly rebuke the woman either out of their contempt for her or because they do not want to attract undue attention from her fellow Canaanites, which might lead to hostilities in which they would be woefully outnumbered.  

“I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.”  We might wonder about this, for the Lord was “the Lamb of God . . . who takes away the sin of the world” (John 1, 29) and not merely the sin of Israel.  How, then, does he say that he has been sent only “to the lost sheep of the house of Israel”?  In fact, the Lord is playing a role here in order to draw the woman out.  He plays the role of the merely Jewish Messiah in order to show that this is not, in fact, what he is.  He does this to teach the Apostles, and also to lay the foundation for their later preaching in that land.  “But the woman came and did him homage.”  Her faith grows, and with it, her expression of faith.  Her little prayer, “Lord, help me”, pleases him more than all the elaborate and eloquent prayers anyone would ever make to him, and she shows us today exactly how we are to pray.  She does not lay down conditions, make extravagant arguments, or promise impossible gifts.  She does not tell the Lord how to help her, she merely and humbly asks that he do so.

“It is not right to take the food of the children and throw it to the dogs.”  He continues to play the role, and refers to the Gentiles by the derogatory term the Jews used for them.  At this point, the woman might have given up.  She has been ignored, treated with disdain, and now insulted.  But she does not.  She persists.  This teaches us that when it most seems that Jesus will not answer our prayers, he is on the verge of doing so.  What he wants from us is our perseverance in prayer, which leads to a growth in our faith in him.  And this she does: “Please, Lord, for even the dogs eat the scraps that fall from the table of their masters.”  She does everything the Lord wants us to do in prayer: he ask simply and in humility, to persevere in asking, and to grow in our faith: “O woman, great is your faith! Let it be done for you as you wish.”  The Apostles must have wondered at his doing this favor for this woman for a long time.  It went against what they understood of the Jewish Messiah.  He what not what they thought.  He was more than they thought.

We pray once and expect that to be enough, or we do not pray and expect the Lord to aid us without our asking, or we think we can make deals with him.  But this pagan woman shows us how we ought to pray to Jesus.