Twentieth Sunday in Ordinary Time

“’O woman, great is your faith! Let it be done for you as you wish.’ And the woman’s daughter was healed from that hour.” (Mt. 15: 28)

Today’s gospel presents a Jesus we don’t recognize. At least, not at first.

He’s a Jesus who says “No” … a Jesus who is dismissive to the edge of being rude … a Jesus who ignores obvious suffering.

How can this be?

After feeding the hungry multitudes; after teaching us to reach out in compassion to all those in pain; even walking on water and inviting us to join him in overcoming the fears that prevent us from leaving our places of comfort and safety – after all this, how can it be that Jesus would refuse this woman who is experiencing terrible anguish because her daughter is “tormented by a demon?”

And yet, that’s what Jesus does. Not once, but twice he refuses the woman’s plea for mercy. He even seems sarcastic when he says to her: “It is not right to take the food of the children and throw it to the dogs.” (Mt. 15: 26)

So what’s really going on here?

The gospel of Matthew was written some 50 – 60 years after Jesus died.  It came out of a community of believers struggling to deal with two major issues:

First, the role of “gentiles,” “foreigners,” people of different cultural and ethnic backgrounds. What to do with these people? How to assimilate them into the community of believers?

Second, the role of women in the early church community. What to do with these people?

Sound familiar?

We Christian people, we followers of Jesus are still grappling with both concerns to this day.

Let’s begin with the first of these two: the issue of how to treat people that are not “one of our own” – the immigrants of today, including the   racially different of today.

Historically, both immigrants and ethnically different people have been gigantic problems that still arouse serious controversies personally and culturally for all societies, our Church, and our nation as well.

Who is to be accepted? Who is to be rejected? Who is to be relegated to the back of the bus? Who is to be treated as “different”?

Today’s gospel shows Jesus himself struggling with these same questions through an encounter with a woman – a very persistent woman; a woman who refuses to take “no” for an answer.

At first, Jesus shows how uncomfortable he is with her because she is not Jewish. She is a Canaanite, not an Israelite. She is part of another culture, another country, another racial grouping, another religion.

And so initially he stays with his “own kind,” and states: “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” (Mt. 15:24)

We can all identify with this point of view.

We are Americans. We are Catholic. We are Caucasian. We are uncomfortable – at least initially – with anyone who is “different.” We don’t like people who don’t speak our language, worship at our churches, follow our customs, eat our foods, and agree with our politics. At least, initially we don’t.

Jesus is depicted in today’s gospel in much the same way. But notice one huge distinction:

What changes him, what makes all the difference is the Canaanite woman’s faith.

It’s not her persistence that transforms Jesus. That alone can just lead to greater annoyance.

It’s the depth of her love for her daughter and her recognition that God loves all people and will heal all people that amazes him. That is what is transformative for Jesus.

Here’s how he says it: “O woman, great is your faith! Let it be done for you as you wish.” (Mt. 15:28)

The other major issue presented in a subtler, but still significant way, in this gospel passage is the role of women.

Women, of course, had no rights – legally or religiously – in society at that time. Yet, again and again, Jesus ignored the rules of his religion and culture to listen to them, converse with them, heal them, and include them among his primary disciples and followers.

Think of these stories:  the woman at the well, the woman who washes his feet with her tears and dries them with her hair, the woman who was the first to recognize him after his resurrection, the woman caught in adultery. These and many others all tell the tale of Jesus’ radical concern and love for them.

Then there are the stories of the women who were unusually persistent – the woman who will not quit looking for her coin until she finds it; the woman who will not quit knocking on the judge’s door until she gets the answer that she wants – and many others as well, including the woman in today’s gospel.

In the gospel’s time and place with its multitude of rules constraining females, Jesus upheld those women who broke the rules – the women who reached out when they were supposed to stay away, who spoke out when they were supposed to remain silent, and who cried out when they were supposed to ask for nothing.

Jesus even went so far as to use women as examples for us all – like the woman who gave her last dime; like the woman who knocked until the door was finally open; like the woman in today’s gospel who speaks truth to power and is given the ultimate compliment of teaching Jesus!

In all these cases, what Jesus finds remarkable is their faith. Despite all the prejudices against them, and all the sorrows they endured, Jesus is consistently awed by the faith of women – by their undying conviction that the God that Jesus preached and taught and modeled was a God who included them fully in a boundless, unending, lavish love for all humankind.

It was this very faith, Jesus recognized, that gave them the power, the courage, and the relentless energy to make their faith the dominant feature of their lives.

Matthew’s community of believers needed to understand this some 2000 years ago, and you and I need to understand it and learn from it to this very day.

Because, in the end, what you and I need to remember above all else is:

It will be our faith, our undying conviction that we, too, are included in God’s boundless, unending, lavish love that will carry us. It will be our faith that will triumph.

It will be our faith that will lead us through all the heartaches and all the “demons” that torment us. It will be our faith that will overcome all our many biases and prejudices and give us hearts large enough to welcome everyone.

It will be our faith in the God of Jesus that will make it possible for us to be transformed to such an extent that Jesus will be able to say to each one of us those same words he spoke so long ago, and with the same degree of amazement:

“Great is your faith! Let it be done for you as you wish.” (Mt. 15:28)

Ted Wolgamot, Psy.D.

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8/18/17