Wednesday, November 4
Jesus is the Master Teacher. God’s true character shines through in His teaching, and also in His life. Thus, one Gospel story is all the more remarkable for showing that when someone talks back to Jesus, He still listens.
Read the story of Jesus’ encounter with a Gentile (or “Canaanite”) woman from the region of Tyre and Sidon (Matthew 15:21-28, Mark 7:24-30). Notice that the men in Jesus’ circle are impatient with her, and that even Jesus appears to dismiss her. What do you make of the woman’s audacity? What does this story teach us about how Jesus Himself taught others?
Jesus was near Tyre and Sidon. He had crossed into a place where strangers abounded and ethnic tension bristled. The Greek-speaking city dwellers looked down on Jewish farmers in the countryside, and the Jewish farmers looked down on them in return.
Not long before, Herod, the puppet governor of Galilee, Jesus’ home territory, had executed John the Baptist. But John was a man whose vision Jesus largely shared, and the execution seemed ominous. Jesus came face-to-face with the danger of His mission.
Feeling the strain, Jesus entered a house, hoping, so Mark says in his account, that no one would know He was there (Mark 7:24). But the woman found Him.
In the culture of that time and place, a woman had no right to assert herself. What is more, this woman belonged to a culture and ethnic group the Jews had little time for, and this put her at a further disadvantage.
But the woman’s daughter was sick. She wanted help, and she persisted in asking for it.
Jesus dismissed her. “It is not meet to take the children’s bread, and to cast it to dogs”, He said (Matthew 15:26). The remark could have hurt her feelings.
And then something remarkable happened. She then responded. She was familiar with dogs – unlike the Jews, who would not have them as pets – and she said: “Truth, Lord: yet the dogs eat of the crumbs which fall from their masters’ table.” (Matthew 15:27).
Her remark makes a difference. It seems compelling. And Jesus heals her child.
“Be it unto thee even as thou wilt” (Matthew 15:28). How do we understand these words? How do we respond, though, when things do not happen as we desire?
