A CAUTIONARY TALE OF DOGS, CRUMBS AND FAITH

In Chapter 15 of Matthew’s gospel, we learn of a problem Jesus soon comes up against in His short 3 year ministry.

After His baptism and His fasting retreat, He starts His missionary work and begins to wonder if He is just the Jewish Messiah or if His remit is far larger - to show the love of God to the whole world and to invite the entire human race to participate in the heavenly kingdom.

At first He tries to ignore the importuning of a foreign (Canaanite) woman who asks for mercy and for the healing of her daughter. He maintains a frosty silence.

Then when His disciples say what a nuisance she is being, He trots out what He first assumed His brief to be: I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.

Then she stops beating about the bush and simply cries out “Lord, help me”and His response is It is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.

Charming. Not only is He not helping her but He’s insulting her for good measure. Not very “woke”.

Well, they did call a spade a spade in those days and we have to remember that Matthew is framing His gospel and writing the dialogue for it at a time when there was a great feud between the Christian Jews and the Orthodox Jews. Not only did the Jews call all Gentiles “dogs” but the Christians called the other Jews who rejected Christ “dogs”.

definitely a case of “dog eat dog”. ( It’s still an insult in the Middle East  to call someone a dog, akin to throwing a shoe at them.)

And what does the desperate woman do - she turns His insult round with a brave flash of humour: So I’m a dog, am I? Well, even the dogs get the crumbs under the table!

OK, says Jesus. You win. And her daughter is healed.

Read on in the gospels and see how His message is rejected by so many of His own race. And how the spiritual thirst of so many other foreigners becomes apparent to Him. No wonder His perception of His own purpose on earth radically changes.

But even more important is what underlies His actions. He starts by turning her away but in the end He just can’t. He is moved by compassion. In the end, with God, it is always love that wins.

And  look closely in this case at what He actually says when He gives in to the woman’s insistence:  WOMAN, YOU HAVE GREAT FAITH. LET YOUR  WISH BE GRANTED.

Like the episode with the Roman centurion – “just say the word and my servant shall be healed”. And Jesus’s reaction : “I have never met such faith in Israel”. And the tenth leper, again a foreigner (a Samaritan) the only one who comes back to give thanks for being healed. “Your faith has made you whole” says Jesus.

The simple and inescapable truth is that Faith is the key to life, whoever you are and wherever you come from.

So let us ask ourselves unflinchingly:  How strong is our faith and what sort of faith is it? What can we learn from the Canaanite woman about our own discipleship?

She cries to Him for mercy for her sick daughter, calling Him “Son of David”, and so acknowledging the religious and racial divide between herself and a Jew of reputed royal descent.

He says nothing and His followers complain that she is a nuisance and should be sent packing.

But she persists. There is our first lesson. Humility (asking Him to have mercy on her) coupled with Persistence. So don’t be too proud to throw yourself on God’s mercy but don’t be too shy either to hammer on God’s door if you are in trouble. Knock and it shall be opened unto you.

Then she comes forward and kneels at His feet, saying LORD HELP ME.

LORD, HELP ME!  A little arrow prayer of desperation. When the chips are down, forget the script, the formulae, the prayers learnt by rote at public worship. Just cry out LORD HELP ME, like you do when you’re scared, like I did the time when my car was spinning out of control on the M25 in the path of oncoming traffic.

There is our second lesson. Cut the cackle and clutch at the sleeve of the Almighty.

But still He seems to turn a deaf ear. Or, even worse, to spurn her.  It isn’t right to give the children’s bread to the dogs. Ouch.

You know, I’d love to get inside her head at this point. I suppose she might have half expected such rejection, like so many people  who are discriminated against for their race. Canaanite lives matter!

But she doesn’t slink away,beaten and resigned. She comes up with a cheeky riposte. I may be a dog but even the dogs get the crumbs.

There is our third lesson. Not only must faith be humble, brave, persistent and to the point. We need a sense of humour. God loves a cheerful giver and He loves a cheerful pray-er. Cheerful humour in the face of rejection or insult is so much better for your soul than righteous indignation or passive surrender.

And by the way, the dog and the crumbs bit should ring a bell.

“We are not worthy so much as to gather the crumbs from under thy table.” The hallowed words of the Book of Common Prayer entitled the prayer of humble access - or “humble crumble” as it is irreverently nicknamed by the clergy.

It quotes from this gospel story but, with respect to Archbishop Cranmer, the quotation is not apt - it misses the whole point.

This Canaanite woman is not offering a grovelling apology in the tradition of Uriah Heep. She is standing up for herself. In all humility she is saying, “Come on, Lord, that’s not good enough. I may be only be a woman. I may be only be a Canaanite. But I am a human being and my daughter’s in trouble and I don't know what to do and I trust you and I don’t want to be fobbed off. Only you can do something about it.”

And at last God’s love bursts through, cuts loose all the prejudices and the preconceptions which hung around Jesus at the start of His ministry. WOMAN, YOU HAVE GREAT FAITH. LET YOUR WISH BE GRANTED.

Hers is the kind of faith which can move mountains. Let it be an inspiration to us.