A Dog Named Hoover (Proper 15A)

 

A Dog named Hoover

14 August 2011

Proper 15A

Beijing, China

Genesis 45:1-15; Psalm 133  Romans 11:1-2a, 29-32; Matthew 15: (10-20), 21-28

Jesus left Gennesaret and went away to the district of Tyre and Sidon. Just then a Canaanite woman from that region came out and started shouting, "Have mercy on me, Lord, Son of David; my daughter is tormented by a demon." But he did not answer her at all. And his disciples came and urged him, saying, "Send her away, for she keeps shouting after us." He answered, "I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel." But she came and knelt before him, saying, "Lord, help me." He answered, "It is not fair to take the children's food and throw it to the dogs." She said, "Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters' table." Then Jesus answered her, "Woman, great is your faith! Let it be done for you as you wish." And her daughter was healed instantly. (Matt, 15:21-28; || Mark 7:24-30)

God, take away our hearts of stone, and give us hearts of flesh. Amen

I once had a friend who was facing a pretty horrible situation tell me that he did not feel he could pray and ask for God’s intervention or even sustenance because, as he said, “I’m just too rotten a person.  I’m not even sure there is a God, and if there is, I definitely am not the kind of person he would be interested in helping or listening to.” 

The fact that society at large and religions in particular create and define themselves by establishing boundaries can be a real burden to those who find themselves outside of those boundaries.  My friend had a hard time believing in God, and clearly rejected many of the rules and moral strictures he thought were taught by the Church, but curiously had let these seep into his heart and sprout into a sense of guilt and shame that made it hard for him to approach God in prayer. 

In today’s Gospel, Jesus encounters a person who by all standards is outside the boundaries of the right and proper—he is traveling near the primarily Gentile territory of what is now Southern Lebanon, and a woman approaches.  Strike One—women were not supposed to directly engage with strangers who were men.  She is a Canaanite.  Matthew’s use of the Old Testament word Canaanite is deliberate, and against the common usage of the period:  she is thus portrayed as an unclean pagan who might be engaging in idolatrous worship possibly involving sexual rites or child sacrifice.  Strike Two.   In Mark’s version of the story, she is a Greek, of mixed Syrian and Phoenician heritage.  A half-breed pagan to boot, coming from the two great oppressors of the Jewish people before the Romans arrived.  Strike Three.  In the telling of the story, she might as well be wearing a bell and calling out before her, unclean, unclean. 

But this gentile woman is worried about her daughter, whose abnormal behavior appears to result from possession by something or someone outside of herself.  The woman has heard that this Jewish wonder-worker Jesus can expel such spirits.  So she approaches and loudly begs him to heal her daughter, using language that is more Jewish than pagan, “O Lord, Son of David, have mercy on me and my daughter.”  The reference is probably to an inter-testamental belief that King Solomon, literally the “Son of David,” could heal the ill and cure such possession.  She has heard that Jesus is perhaps a descendant of David and has some of Solomon’s legendary power to heal. 

Now the way Jesus reacts is quite offensive to us of modern sensibilities.  It was also offensive to ancient sensibilities, and that is the reason that Luke drops this story from those he borrows from Mark’s Gospel. 

Jesus ignores her.  It is almost like he cannot hear her.  

She only gets louder. 

In the Creed, we say that we believe that God became incarnate of the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary and became truly human in the person of Jesus.  But we usually don’t like to see Jesus as quite this human.  Here he seems to be cold and unfeeling. As she gets louder, he ignores her all the more.  

His reaction is strange, given the fact that he has already in this Gospel healed a gentile in gentile territory,  that the verses preceding this story tell of Jesus breaking down barriers of clean and unclean in Jewish Law, and that the gist of many of his parables seems to be the overflowing abundance of God's goodness and grace.  But he remains silent. 

When the disciples just can’t bear the commotion any longer and ask Jesus to break his silence and just send the woman away, his reply is that is he is focused on his work in calling his fellow Jews to change their hearts and ways, and can’t take the time for this woman.  She begs him directly, “Lord, help me.” 

His reply here is no longer simply cold and unfeeling: “I can’t take food set aside for the children and throw it away for dogs to eat.”  The slur implied by the word dogs, seems downright racist and rooted in religious bigotry.  

Christians have tried to explain away the slur, or take it off of Jesus’ lips ever since:  As I said before, Luke simply deletes the story and does not include it in his Gospel.  Some of the Church Fathers say that Jesus was simply testing the woman’s faith by using the slur ironically to see if she would persist (as if this makes the slur all that less offensive!)  Others have tried to take the sting out of the phrase by noting that the Greek word used in the text is a diminutive kynarios “little dog,” instead of the more common kynos “dog.”   So Jesus presumably would be saying,  “It’s wrong to take babies’ food and give it to puppies.”   But again, I don’t think this necessarily makes the slur less offensive.  

Again, Jesus' talk here about the economy of divine blessing almost as if it were a zero sum game is strange.  In his previous feeding of the crowd (including children), there was a ridiculous overabundance of leftovers.  But the point appears to be that Jesus is so focused on his mission to fellow Jews that he cannot hear the woman.  Matthew, with his concern for keeping Jewish Law and portraying Jesus as the new Moses, does not appear to notice the ugliness of the scene as it unfolds.  

My friend, with his fear to pray to God because he was somehow unworthy, or beyond the bounds of grace, would feel right at home with this portrayal of a Jesus wholly consumed by boundaries and limits. 

But the Canaanite woman persists. She takes Jesus’ harsh word and turns it on its head with a bit of wit and chutzpah:  “Oh, but dogs under the table can eat the crumbs that fall, can’t they?”  It is as if he had said, "this food is too good for you, you dogs," and she had replied, "So I'm a dog.  Don't call me Rover, call me Hoover.  'Cuz I can hoover up all those scraps just as they fall from your table!"   This kind of “battle of the wits” exchange is seen in Middle Eastern and Arab literature regularly, and is akin to the Rap world’s commonplace of a contest of insult and replying insult (“Yo’ momma is so fat that…..” “Oh yeah?  Well yo’ momma…”)

Jesus’ reply is amazing.  “Great is your faith, woman!”  The rhetoric and word order stresses GREAT.  “You are a GIANT in faith, lady.  Finally, I find someone who gets it, and surprise, surprise, she’s a gentile!  She’s a Canaanite! She’s a she!”

The exorcism is performed at a distance, almost by divine remote control, just like in the two other stories of  Jesus healing at a distance, the healing of the centurion’s servant (Matt. 8:5-13) and of the royal official’s son (John 4:46-54).   Note in all cases, the healing at a distance is done for people seen as beyond the pale.  These are stories about the far reach of Jesus’ grace, not about the worthiness or lack thereof of the recipients. 

Reading this story as if the Canaanite woman is a model of faith for us to follow misses the point:  this is not a story trying to say that if only your faith were great enough, God will hear your prayers and grant you your wishes.  Faith here is not a magic trick.   In such magical thinking lies only pain—because when bad things happen to people, whether they are good people or bad people, this way of thinking chalks it up as the fault of those who did not get their way with God.  And if good things happen, then it is the result of the successful use of the trick.  Such a view reduces the Lord’s Book of Blessings to simply a Book of Spells.  

Put bluntly, this story isn’t about you, and about whether you are worthy or faithful enough for God’s blessings.  The focus of the story is Jesus, not the woman.   In this scene, Jesus, who loves  a good joke and regularly tells parables with brutally witty edges, is bested in a contest of wit by the wise-cracking woman who is desperate for her child’s health.  She takes the callous slur Jesus has unthinkingly adopted from his upbringing and how he has been taught about what is right, and turns it on its head.  Jesus in response, instead of glowering and shouting  “BLASHPEMY, OFF WITH YOU, PAGAN WOMAN!” and blasting her right then and there, he laughs out loud, sees he has been had, and recognizes the faith, the trust, in the woman’s heart that drives her persistence and audacity. 

And so he turns back from—repents, as it were—of the casual callousness that his focus on his mission and on the boundaries his religion has set.  To be sure, we believe that Jesus was like us in all things but sin.  He is not so much turning from sin here as he is opening himself further to the unexplored country to which God is leading him.  This scene anticipates the great shift in the Christian faith from mission only to Jews to mission to all.  It anticipates the great vision of St. Paul where “In Christ, there is no Jew nor Gentile, no slave nor free, no woman nor man.”

To me it is very comforting to think that Jesus could be shamed by a joke into changing his view and learn thereby to spread God’s grace more widely than he previously had thought appropriate. 

To me it is very comforting to think that a Canaanite half-breed pushy woman talking out of turn and beyond the bounds of propriety could get the best of Jesus and as a result Jesus would bless her simply because of who and what he was, and would bless her despite, not because of, who and what she was. 

None of us should feel like my friend, afraid and ashamed to approach God when we need God.  Maybe a little bit of pushy persistence on our part is in order, a bit more witty and humorous audacity.    The woman was desperate and willing to go all out on the off chance that what she heard about Jesus as a healer was true.  When God appears forbidding and unwelcoming to us, that is precisely the time we need to remember the words of the prayer, “O God, whose nature is always to have mercy” and that, despite whatever it may be we think separates us from his grace.  That is precisely the time that we, like this Canaanite woman, this dog named Hoover, need to focus on the Mercy of God rather than on the boundaries that exclude us, or what people say about God's judgment. 

In the name of God, Amen