Matthew 15:21-28
The passage from Matthew about the Canaanite woman is difficult, to say the least. It is a passage that even the most seasoned theologians have trouble with. It is a passage that seminary students, like myself, have nightmares about having to preach before a congregation. Passages like this make me want to rethink about my decision to become a pasror. But truthfully, if someone does not have a problem with the interpretation of this scripture, with what it means, then they are not reading the Bible with as much attention as it deserves.
The difficulty is not that Jesus, in a somewhat direct way, calls the Canaanite woman a dog. The problem, as I understand it, is that Jesus at first refuses to help a desperate woman in need, and then to add insult to injury, calls her a dog. It is obviously mean and callous. The dialogue seems to show another side of Jesus. It seems in direct contrast to what the rest of the Gospels show his character to be, and in direct contrast to what we have learned in church and Sunday School. Luckily and gratefully we already know how the encounter ends, for if Christ just left the woman still in need and insulted, without any offering any sort of help, we might have to completely rethink our perception of Christ as we know it. We might have to change the lyrics of “Jesus loves me” to include “unless I am a Canaanite woman in desperate need, then I will get called a dog.”
I think part of the problem with getting to why Jesus acted in such a way does not have to do so much with the gospel as it does with our own understanding of the person of Christ. In the Nicene Creed, we affirm that Jesus was not only fully God, but also fully human. Yet, for some reason, we fail to apply certain human characteristics when talking about Christ and interpreting his words and actions in the Gospels. We neglect to see in Christ what we assume and admire in other people, whether we realize it or not. And one of these aspects that we really do not consider Christ to have is a sense of humor. We are quick to point out his feelings of love and compassion, his feelings of sadness and agony, his anger, his feeling of disappointment (often with the disciples). But, for some reason, the thought of Christ having a sense of humor is somehow beneath him.
Think about it for a minute. Ever since Christians have been taking up artistic pusuits, all of the famous paintings of Christ portray him as either sad and sorrowful, or solemn and serious. To be fair, the depictions of Jesus as sad and sorrowful are usually during some scene from the Passion, so that is understandable. But the rest of the portrayals, either depicting a scene from the gospels, or just a regular painting as if Jesus was posing for a self-portrait, Christ has a grim, grave look on his face, or at the very best, an earnest expression, similar to what you might see on the face of a teacher watching over some unruly students, or a prison guard watching over prisoners. The expression is meant to show the how serious the Jesus really is. These faces of Christ peering at us through pictures hanging in our churches or in our homes seem to say, “I mean business!!!” And so for roughly the last 2000 years or so, the image in our minds is that Christ is sad and gloomy, and there has not been a lot of room for anything else. So then, at the very worst, Christ did not joke, laugh, engage in humorous banter, etc, etc. To that I have this to say: if Christ did not have a sense of humor, if Christ did not have the ability to laugh at life and the situations that came with it, then the Passion of Christ would have begun long before his triumphant entry into Jerusalem.
To the best of my knowledge, it has only been recently that we have pictures and drawings of Christ smiling and (heaven forbid) even laughing, and as far as I have seen, “happy” Jesus is a very blue-eyed, blonde-headed, somewhat in-shape man, with very German features. Anywho, it is good to show these different emotions of Jesus, and it has taken us almost two millennia to acknowledge it. But still, even when we acknowledge that Christ did indeed smile, most likely did laugh, probably told a joke or two, when we do a study of the Gospels, those traits tend to get trumped by the solemnity and the serious aspect of Christ. We tend to think Jesus' humor has no place in the gospel accounts. So at the very best, we affirm that Christ did have a sense of humor, but that sense of humor does not show up in the gospel. Christ and his sense of humor must have existed in the aspects of his life that were not handed down to us in the gospels; the Gospel writers failed to make note of them.
I have read the numerous commentaries on the Matthew passage, and unfortunately for me, most of them do not agree on anything, except for one point. That point is that Jesus was testing the faith of the woman at the well. That may very well be, but for some reason I do not completely agree. Based on the Reformed tradition and Calvinist theology, faith is a gift from God. So if it was a test of faith, basically Jesus is testing the faith of a woman whom he should have known already had enough faith. In my mind, it amounts to calling on a rocket scientist, with his or her knowledge of complex mathematical formulas, the expertise in the understanding of the laws of physics, and then giving him or her an exam on simple addition and subtraction. You already know they are going to pass, so what's the point of giving the exam in the first place? Maybe Jesus was testing her, not for his benefit to see how much faith she had, but for her own benefit to she how much faith she actually possessed. But if that is so, then her social status remains the same. The social hierarchy went something like this: on the top, you had the high priest. Below that, you had the other priests. Below that, you had Jewish men, followed by Jewish women. Then finally below them, there were Gentile men, and at the very bottom were Gentile women. So basically, if it was a just a test of faith, the whole dialogue could be interpreted as the following: Jesus tests and acknowledges that the woman possesses great faith, but in spite of her great faith, she is still a dog. This dialogue, although it may have been a test of faith, goes beyond just a mere exhibit of how much faith the woman possessed.
Verse 24 states, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” Who Christ is saying this to is not really clear. He could be saying it to the apostles, or he could be saying it to the woman, or he could just be saying it to himself, as a reminder of his own mission. We really do not know for certain, and each of the commentaries say different things on exactly who Christ was addressing, and they all make good arguments. I would like to think that Christ was addressing both the disciples and the woman. The disciples seem to want Christ to grant the request of the woman, to send her on her way. For the disciples though, it was not a matter of compassion or love for the woman that they wanted Christ to grant her plea; they wanted Christ to grant her plea because she was an annoying them. I believe Christ's response to the disciples had a bit of irony to it. Now, as we know, the disciples were Jews, and as Jews, the Law was important to their religion. Gentiles did not have the Law of Moses, and in the social structure of the day, they were considered somewhat beneath the Jews. Basically, the disciples were asking Jesus, “Justify her, make her right, have mercy on her, so she will leave us alone.” Many of the Jewish people of that time believed the only ones that can be justified before God were fellow Jews, and of those, only the ones that followed the Law. His statement could be an ironic remark to the disciples, possibly to remind them of their own preconceived notions of Jew and Gentile, as if to say, “If this woman was not being so annoying, you would have completely ignored her, because she is a Gentile. But since she is being so bothersome, you want me to help her, just so she will leave you alone.” The woman, on the other hand, may have taken it as a somewhat sarcastic remark. If Jesus was serious, he could have sent the woman away, but for some reason does not. Maybe she saw something in his body language, or heard something in tone of his voice that gave her a clue to his real meaning, because even after this apparent slight, the woman kept persisting. Then Jesus says the famous line, or rather, infamous line, “It is not fair to take the children's food and through it to the dogs.”
Now, where is the humor in this? It all depends on the type of connection they had. There are certain things you can say to certain people, like close friends, that you could not and would not say to others. The is a certain teacher here at Bishop Moore that I often call Katuwa Ma'am ("Katuwa" means tiger). I call her that, because it seems like every time I pass by a class room she is teaching in, she is yelling at the children to be quiet, sit down, pay attention, etc, and she always has a mean look on her face. I can get away with calling her that because she can see that I am joking. And for her part, she always says something insulting back to me. But neither of us take it as an insult, because we can see each others friendly character. Now, if one of the students calls her Katuwa Ma'am, I don't think she would be too happy with that, and might even be offended and angered by it. Elton Trueblood in his book The Humor of Christ sums my point up beautifully: “There are numerous words, especially during a period of racial strife, which cannot be said seriously without arousing anger or resentment, but which can be said jokingly, with no harm at all, between those who understand one another's friendly spirit.” I would not go up to a random person and make a joke about his or her ethnicity, or physical features, or appearance, mainly because I am afraid of getting punched. But I can do that with someone whom I have a certain bond with, who understands my friendly nature and of whom I understand theirs, and we both perceive the other on the same level.
Now, when Jesus calls the woman a dog, he is basically utilizing a term used by the Israelites of the Old Testament to refer to their enemies and others outside of their group whom they did not have a high regard for. If Jesus was deadly serious, it could be, and most certainly would be, taken as an insult. But I think the woman saw the friendly spirit in Jesus, and instead of going away in despair and empty handed, she responds with her own wisecrack: “Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters' table.” And I believe this is where the miracle happens. As I have said before, Jews of Jesus' time did not have a high regard for Gentiles; Gentiles were at the bottom of the social ladder. And the fact that she was a woman put her even further at the bottom. The miracle is that to have such an exchange of words, Jesus helps the woman rise up from her lowly social status, a status that neither Jesus nor the woman created, but something that the societies they were in created, that both she and Jesus acknowledged. Jesus deals with her and treats her, not just as a human being, but on a more personal and intimate level. Jesus was using what we would consider an insult, if it is to be taken at face value, to show his friendly and personal nature to the woman. And the woman responds to Jesus in the same way. This type of dialogue is only possible if both recipients can see the amicable character in each other. By engaging in such a dialogue, the woman transcended boundaries of ethnicity and social class, even if just for a moment, and was not treated as an unworthy Gentile, but was treated as if she were a dear friend. I believe this is the best evidence that Jesus had a sense of humor. One can often tell a lot about a person's character by how they respond to another person's wit, and Jesus responds positively to the woman: her daughter is healed that very hour. To sum up, I will end with another quote from Elton Trueblood: “If Christ's words in the dialogue are wholly serious, they are a permanent stumbling block to the Gospel. But, if they represent a form of banter, which is consistent with deep compassion, they give us one of the most delightful pictures of our Lord which we possess.... [T]hey shed light on His character we otherwise miss entirely.”
The passage from Matthew about the Canaanite woman is difficult, to say the least. It is a passage that even the most seasoned theologians have trouble with. It is a passage that seminary students, like myself, have nightmares about having to preach before a congregation. Passages like this make me want to rethink about my decision to become a pasror. But truthfully, if someone does not have a problem with the interpretation of this scripture, with what it means, then they are not reading the Bible with as much attention as it deserves.
The difficulty is not that Jesus, in a somewhat direct way, calls the Canaanite woman a dog. The problem, as I understand it, is that Jesus at first refuses to help a desperate woman in need, and then to add insult to injury, calls her a dog. It is obviously mean and callous. The dialogue seems to show another side of Jesus. It seems in direct contrast to what the rest of the Gospels show his character to be, and in direct contrast to what we have learned in church and Sunday School. Luckily and gratefully we already know how the encounter ends, for if Christ just left the woman still in need and insulted, without any offering any sort of help, we might have to completely rethink our perception of Christ as we know it. We might have to change the lyrics of “Jesus loves me” to include “unless I am a Canaanite woman in desperate need, then I will get called a dog.”
I think part of the problem with getting to why Jesus acted in such a way does not have to do so much with the gospel as it does with our own understanding of the person of Christ. In the Nicene Creed, we affirm that Jesus was not only fully God, but also fully human. Yet, for some reason, we fail to apply certain human characteristics when talking about Christ and interpreting his words and actions in the Gospels. We neglect to see in Christ what we assume and admire in other people, whether we realize it or not. And one of these aspects that we really do not consider Christ to have is a sense of humor. We are quick to point out his feelings of love and compassion, his feelings of sadness and agony, his anger, his feeling of disappointment (often with the disciples). But, for some reason, the thought of Christ having a sense of humor is somehow beneath him.
Think about it for a minute. Ever since Christians have been taking up artistic pusuits, all of the famous paintings of Christ portray him as either sad and sorrowful, or solemn and serious. To be fair, the depictions of Jesus as sad and sorrowful are usually during some scene from the Passion, so that is understandable. But the rest of the portrayals, either depicting a scene from the gospels, or just a regular painting as if Jesus was posing for a self-portrait, Christ has a grim, grave look on his face, or at the very best, an earnest expression, similar to what you might see on the face of a teacher watching over some unruly students, or a prison guard watching over prisoners. The expression is meant to show the how serious the Jesus really is. These faces of Christ peering at us through pictures hanging in our churches or in our homes seem to say, “I mean business!!!” And so for roughly the last 2000 years or so, the image in our minds is that Christ is sad and gloomy, and there has not been a lot of room for anything else. So then, at the very worst, Christ did not joke, laugh, engage in humorous banter, etc, etc. To that I have this to say: if Christ did not have a sense of humor, if Christ did not have the ability to laugh at life and the situations that came with it, then the Passion of Christ would have begun long before his triumphant entry into Jerusalem.
To the best of my knowledge, it has only been recently that we have pictures and drawings of Christ smiling and (heaven forbid) even laughing, and as far as I have seen, “happy” Jesus is a very blue-eyed, blonde-headed, somewhat in-shape man, with very German features. Anywho, it is good to show these different emotions of Jesus, and it has taken us almost two millennia to acknowledge it. But still, even when we acknowledge that Christ did indeed smile, most likely did laugh, probably told a joke or two, when we do a study of the Gospels, those traits tend to get trumped by the solemnity and the serious aspect of Christ. We tend to think Jesus' humor has no place in the gospel accounts. So at the very best, we affirm that Christ did have a sense of humor, but that sense of humor does not show up in the gospel. Christ and his sense of humor must have existed in the aspects of his life that were not handed down to us in the gospels; the Gospel writers failed to make note of them.
I have read the numerous commentaries on the Matthew passage, and unfortunately for me, most of them do not agree on anything, except for one point. That point is that Jesus was testing the faith of the woman at the well. That may very well be, but for some reason I do not completely agree. Based on the Reformed tradition and Calvinist theology, faith is a gift from God. So if it was a test of faith, basically Jesus is testing the faith of a woman whom he should have known already had enough faith. In my mind, it amounts to calling on a rocket scientist, with his or her knowledge of complex mathematical formulas, the expertise in the understanding of the laws of physics, and then giving him or her an exam on simple addition and subtraction. You already know they are going to pass, so what's the point of giving the exam in the first place? Maybe Jesus was testing her, not for his benefit to see how much faith she had, but for her own benefit to she how much faith she actually possessed. But if that is so, then her social status remains the same. The social hierarchy went something like this: on the top, you had the high priest. Below that, you had the other priests. Below that, you had Jewish men, followed by Jewish women. Then finally below them, there were Gentile men, and at the very bottom were Gentile women. So basically, if it was a just a test of faith, the whole dialogue could be interpreted as the following: Jesus tests and acknowledges that the woman possesses great faith, but in spite of her great faith, she is still a dog. This dialogue, although it may have been a test of faith, goes beyond just a mere exhibit of how much faith the woman possessed.
Verse 24 states, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” Who Christ is saying this to is not really clear. He could be saying it to the apostles, or he could be saying it to the woman, or he could just be saying it to himself, as a reminder of his own mission. We really do not know for certain, and each of the commentaries say different things on exactly who Christ was addressing, and they all make good arguments. I would like to think that Christ was addressing both the disciples and the woman. The disciples seem to want Christ to grant the request of the woman, to send her on her way. For the disciples though, it was not a matter of compassion or love for the woman that they wanted Christ to grant her plea; they wanted Christ to grant her plea because she was an annoying them. I believe Christ's response to the disciples had a bit of irony to it. Now, as we know, the disciples were Jews, and as Jews, the Law was important to their religion. Gentiles did not have the Law of Moses, and in the social structure of the day, they were considered somewhat beneath the Jews. Basically, the disciples were asking Jesus, “Justify her, make her right, have mercy on her, so she will leave us alone.” Many of the Jewish people of that time believed the only ones that can be justified before God were fellow Jews, and of those, only the ones that followed the Law. His statement could be an ironic remark to the disciples, possibly to remind them of their own preconceived notions of Jew and Gentile, as if to say, “If this woman was not being so annoying, you would have completely ignored her, because she is a Gentile. But since she is being so bothersome, you want me to help her, just so she will leave you alone.” The woman, on the other hand, may have taken it as a somewhat sarcastic remark. If Jesus was serious, he could have sent the woman away, but for some reason does not. Maybe she saw something in his body language, or heard something in tone of his voice that gave her a clue to his real meaning, because even after this apparent slight, the woman kept persisting. Then Jesus says the famous line, or rather, infamous line, “It is not fair to take the children's food and through it to the dogs.”
Now, where is the humor in this? It all depends on the type of connection they had. There are certain things you can say to certain people, like close friends, that you could not and would not say to others. The is a certain teacher here at Bishop Moore that I often call Katuwa Ma'am ("Katuwa" means tiger). I call her that, because it seems like every time I pass by a class room she is teaching in, she is yelling at the children to be quiet, sit down, pay attention, etc, and she always has a mean look on her face. I can get away with calling her that because she can see that I am joking. And for her part, she always says something insulting back to me. But neither of us take it as an insult, because we can see each others friendly character. Now, if one of the students calls her Katuwa Ma'am, I don't think she would be too happy with that, and might even be offended and angered by it. Elton Trueblood in his book The Humor of Christ sums my point up beautifully: “There are numerous words, especially during a period of racial strife, which cannot be said seriously without arousing anger or resentment, but which can be said jokingly, with no harm at all, between those who understand one another's friendly spirit.” I would not go up to a random person and make a joke about his or her ethnicity, or physical features, or appearance, mainly because I am afraid of getting punched. But I can do that with someone whom I have a certain bond with, who understands my friendly nature and of whom I understand theirs, and we both perceive the other on the same level.
Now, when Jesus calls the woman a dog, he is basically utilizing a term used by the Israelites of the Old Testament to refer to their enemies and others outside of their group whom they did not have a high regard for. If Jesus was deadly serious, it could be, and most certainly would be, taken as an insult. But I think the woman saw the friendly spirit in Jesus, and instead of going away in despair and empty handed, she responds with her own wisecrack: “Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters' table.” And I believe this is where the miracle happens. As I have said before, Jews of Jesus' time did not have a high regard for Gentiles; Gentiles were at the bottom of the social ladder. And the fact that she was a woman put her even further at the bottom. The miracle is that to have such an exchange of words, Jesus helps the woman rise up from her lowly social status, a status that neither Jesus nor the woman created, but something that the societies they were in created, that both she and Jesus acknowledged. Jesus deals with her and treats her, not just as a human being, but on a more personal and intimate level. Jesus was using what we would consider an insult, if it is to be taken at face value, to show his friendly and personal nature to the woman. And the woman responds to Jesus in the same way. This type of dialogue is only possible if both recipients can see the amicable character in each other. By engaging in such a dialogue, the woman transcended boundaries of ethnicity and social class, even if just for a moment, and was not treated as an unworthy Gentile, but was treated as if she were a dear friend. I believe this is the best evidence that Jesus had a sense of humor. One can often tell a lot about a person's character by how they respond to another person's wit, and Jesus responds positively to the woman: her daughter is healed that very hour. To sum up, I will end with another quote from Elton Trueblood: “If Christ's words in the dialogue are wholly serious, they are a permanent stumbling block to the Gospel. But, if they represent a form of banter, which is consistent with deep compassion, they give us one of the most delightful pictures of our Lord which we possess.... [T]hey shed light on His character we otherwise miss entirely.”
Having a background in ancient cultures, I think Jesus calling the Canaanite woman a dog as something of an insult, is a misunderstanding. Jesus called the woman dog, not because to deliberately insult her, but because of her religion. Canaanites worship the dog star, Sirius, which is the brightest star in the sky. This dog star is known as Kiyyun, Kyon, or Chiun in the Bible according to this verse:
ReplyDeleteAmos 5:26 -
"You also carried along Sikkuth your king and Kiyyun, your images, the star of your gods which you made for yourselves.
And according to etymology online:
Canine -
"pointed tooth," late 14c., from L. caninus "of the dog," gen. of canis "dog," from PIE root *kwon- "dog" (cf. Gk. kyon, O.E. hund, O.H.G. hunt, O.Ir. cu, Welsh ci, Skt. svan-, Avestan spa, Rus. sobaka (apparently from an Iranian source), Armenian shun, Lith. suo). The adjective is attested from c.1600. The noun meaning "dog" is first recorded 1869.
And, Wikipedia:
Sirius is also known colloquially as the "Dog Star", reflecting its prominence in its constellation, Canis Major (Greater Dog).
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So, dog in Jesus' time means a person who worships Sirius or Kyon the dog star which is the main religion of the Canaanites.
Also, to the Egyptian, Sirius is called Set and Dog as An. Hence, Set-An or Satan. (ref:Kenneth Grant, The Magical Revival.)
This is the reason behind why Christ told her, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of Israel" and "It is not right to take the children’s bread and toss it to their dogs.”
The Canaanite woman did not feel offended because Jesus was only stating her pagan religious affiliation. Christ knew what she worshiped.
So, if you worship another god, why should I help you? Your allegiance is not with me, but with the enemy.
Perhaps, the woman already consulted her god, but, did not receive any healing for her daughter. Thus, she went to Jesus and ask for His help instead, totally losing faith in her religion and placing her faith in Christ which was tested.