Matthew 15:21-28<\/p>\n\n\n\n
August 14, 2005<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Sermon preached by Rev. Donald Ng at the First Chinese Baptist Church in San Francisco.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We might not admit this but there are certain passages that pastors avoid preaching from. There are plenty in the Old Testament but when it comes to the New Testament, the gospel of our faith; it\u2019s hard to avoid any of the 27 books out of the 66 books in the Bible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In today\u2019s Scripture text, it is hard to deny that this is one of the most disturbing and unusual portrayals of Jesus in the gospels. When Jesus encountered an unnamed distraught foreign woman who was seeking only a blessing for her daughter, he exhibited behavior and mouthed words that are uncharacteristic to the Jesus we know. He is xenophobic, chauvinistic, prejudicial and downright rude! The language in this text is the crude language of the streets where people refer to each other as \u201cdogs.\u201d We don\u2019t want to read or study this text because it doesn\u2019t match the description of the Jesus that we like to have.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But we also know that the things that we are afraid to deal with the most are the very things that we need to face. By looking more closely at this uncharacteristic Jesus, it can teach us something about God and about us. We see an uncharacteristic Jesus.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Canaanite Woman<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n When Jesus was in the district of Tyre and Sidon, an area that was outside of Israel, a Canaanite woman whose daughter was tormented by a demon shouted at Jesus to have mercy on her. But uncharacteristic to Jesus, he walked by silently without even making eye contact with her. We have done that!<\/p>\n\n\n\n But the woman persisted as with any mother whose love for her daughter is stronger than any love that human beings can have continued to shout and cry out to Jesus and the disciples. The disciples felt so harassed by this woman that they asked Jesus to tell her to go away. And uncharacteristic of Jesus, he said, \u201cI was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.\u201d Basically, he said I can\u2019t help you because you are a Canaanite from Tyre and Sidon. His compassion is only for Israel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Again, the woman pleaded to Jesus, calling him \u201cLord\u201d again. She knelt down before him like as if she was a dog and asked him to help her. And uncharacteristic of Jesus, he said, \u201cIt is not fair to take the children\u2019s food and throw it to the dogs.\u201d Ouch! What did he say? You heard it right! Jesus called this woman whose only desire is to have Jesus heal her daughter, called her a \u201cdog!\u201d This is uncharacteristic of Jesus, the Christ that we know. Jesus denigrates her, implying that she was different and that difference made her and her daughter unworthy of his attention.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Perhaps unwittingly, the woman desperate for her daughter\u2019s life didn\u2019t reject Jesus\u2019 prejudicial labeling of her as a \u201cdog\u201d said, \u201cYes, Lord, yet even dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters\u2019 table.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Prejudicial Jesus<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Jesus\u2019 behavior in Matthew 15 in the field of psychology is that he had internalized prejudice\u2014prejudice that is learned so early and runs so deep that it is not even regarded as prejudice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Certainly Jesus was an enemy of such prejudice. He ate with tax collectors and sinners. He treated women and children with unusual regard. He defended prostitutes. He touched and healed people who were considered unclean, unsafe and somehow to blame for their infirmities. Jesus challenged firmly held prejudices often, publicly and at considerable risk to his own safety. There seemed to be no boundary too bold to cross for justice\u2019s sake when it comes to Jesus.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Then along came this Canaanite woman and a harder boundary had to be met. Here was a boundary of racial division\u2014the boundary that says our kind is different from their kind; our kind does not mix with their kind; our kind is better. Our kind is God\u2019s \u201cchosen\u201d kind. Such were the attitudes perhaps that even Jesus inherited from his family, religion, and culture and which initially caused him to ignore the cries of this \u201cout of place\u201d woman.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Her ethnicity must have been immediately apparent. Something in the color of the skin, the structure of her face, her scent, her accent, or her clothes made her different in Jesus\u2019 eyes. The disciples wanted her sent away and Jesus initially rebuffed her.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But the woman would not go away. Her plight was no different from that of any other suffering person in the crowd. The same demons attack Jews, Canaanites, Christians, and atheists. The same calamities strike every kind of family. The same diseases afflict the strong and the weak, the rich and the poor, the fair skinned and the dark skinned, the \u201chigh\u201d and the \u201clow.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cLord, help me!\u201d means the same in any dialect and Jesus would not ignore it for long. He stopped to speak with this woman, and at that point, we see the very heart of faith revealed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The woman said, \u201cYes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters\u2019 table.\u201d She did not think to challenge the offense in his reply. She had internalized her inferiority the way victims of prejudice often do. Still, she believed in Jesus somehow. Somehow, she believed his gospel was even for her and her daughter, and that they would get the help they needed. This is great faith!<\/p>\n\n\n\n Jesus was moved by the woman\u2019s faith that he faced and beat back his own demons of internalized prejudice and racism. \u201cLet it be done for you as you wish, Woman, great is your faith.\u201d Her daughter was healed instantly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Human Prejudice<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n From this troublesome text, we see the roots of human prejudice run very deep. If even Jesus had to struggle with racism, no one is immune.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The tendency to fear and hate the stranger, the \u201cother,\u201d is in all of us. It\u2019s call xenophobia. So is the tendency to see \u201cthem\u201d as the root cause somehow of all that makes the world a frightening or difficult place for us. That\u2019s why it\u2019s so easy to lose our empathy and to treat the \u201cother\u201d as sub-human.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Human prejudice must be struggled with to be overcome. We must face it in ourselves before any real hope of defeating it in the world. The story of Jesus and the Canaanite woman is meant to awaken and inspire us for that struggle. It teaches us that Jesus knew firsthand the difficulty of that struggle. Jesus came in part to break the power of human prejudice and destructiveness. But he could not do this by remaining silent and not be involved.<\/p>\n\n\n\n When we say that Jesus was fully human we are saying that he has to contend with all the temptations, all the external and internal demons any of us is subject to. To break the power of prejudice he had to first face it in himself. Just as to break the ultimate fear of death, Jesus had to face the cross.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It is hard to look into our own hearts and see the blindness, intolerance, and cruelty others sometimes see in us. It is hard to take responsibility for our blind spots and our prejudices. It is easier to accuse others before accusing ourselves. Jesus warned good-intentioned people from trying to remove the speck in another\u2019s eye before getting rid of the beam in their own. In this story he showed the courage to take his own advice. The Canaanite woman became for a time the beam in Jesus\u2019 eye\u2014until somehow in the truth of their encounter that beam was shattered.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The big miracle in this story is not the healing of the woman\u2019s daughter, but the healing of two people\u2019s soul from the deep wounds of racial prejudice. Jesus was able to change.<\/p>\n\n\n\n If prejudice is to be overcome the only way it can be done is at the boundary of risk-taking encounters like the one described in this story. We have to have real risk interactions with people we may be least ready to meet. We have to go outside our comfort zone, reveal ourselves, and find out about others. We have to risk being embarrassed by saying the wrong thing or finding out that we have thought wrong things. We can\u2019t give in to fears of appearing awkward, feeling stupid, being rejected, or finding ourselves in difficult conversations. We can\u2019t overcome prejudice by living in gated communities or spending most of our time with people like us. It just doesn\u2019t work that way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n You might know that for some time now, the corner of Waverly and Sacramento where our church is located has become the home for community youth to hang out. I have spoken about this in the past few weeks in my sermons because of the need for prayer and to determine our role in ministering to these youth. They might look like us but they are not like us. They don\u2019t have the proper language or manners that we are used to. And since we suspect they have caused some vandalism, it has made us frightened by their presence. But if we are to beat back the prejudice and fear that we have, we must undergo the same kind of struggle and encounter that Jesus went through with the Canaanite woman. The only way we will come to know these community youth is to get out of our safe and locked church building and meet them face to face.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The renowned psychologist, William James in 1890 said \u201cthe most fiendish punishment that could be inflicted on a person is to turn a person loose in society but to have this person be absolutely unnoticed by everyone around him.\u201d If no one care or notice these community youth spending time at the corner of our building, we would in fact causing the cruelest torture that anyone could be made to suffer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Great Faith<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n At the end, Jesus praises the Canaanite woman with great faith. Her faithful act can be seen as her willingness to redefine her identity assuming the humble station of a dog in order to save her dying child. In spite of our reaction to her acceptance of this identity, we should not quickly dismiss her example.<\/p>\n\n\n\n There is an aspect of self-humility to faith, leading a faithful person to empty herself of conceit and self-confidence and wholly depend on God\u2019s unmerited favor. Faith in God requires us to admit to ourselves that we are not worthy of anything because of who we are. It is only because of whose we are that we can gain the favor we seek. It is only when we fully accept this fact, only when we put our status, class, racial baggage aside, only when we \u201cget over ourselves\u201d that we can fully appreciate the importance of God\u2019s grace in our lives.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Canaanite woman had a tremendous impact on Jesus; changing his prejudices to accepting the fact that Canaanite people are also worthy of God\u2019s love. Only three times in the gospel of Matthew does Jesus interact with a Gentile and yet the conclusion of the Gospel commands the disciples of Jesus to move out: \u201cGo therefore and make disciples of all nations\u2026\u201d (Mt. 28:19). If Jesus can change, we can too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The story of Jesus and the Canaanite woman reminds us that God\u2019s grace is not dependent on nationality or skin color. It depends only on our response in faith, the same kind of faith which Jesus responded to in this Gentile woman.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Let us pray.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Lord God, have mercy on us when we have prejudices toward people who are different from us. Forgive us when we have sinned against our sisters and brothers. Teach us to face those whom we fear knowing that your love extends beyond our limited understanding. And like the Canaanite woman, we pray that our faith can be that great. In the name of Christ Jesus we pray. Amen.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Matthew 15:21-28 August 14, 2005 Sermon preached by Rev. Donald Ng at the First Chinese Baptist Church in San Francisco. We might not admit this but there are certain passages