We Christians often get criticised for our belief in the uniqueness of Christ. People accuse us of being exclusive because we believe that Jesus is the way the truth and the life and no-one comes to the Father except through him. We believe that there’s no other name given under heaven by which we can be saved and so we’re seen as judgmental or prejudiced. There may be some of you who have the same concerns. This becomes even more common when you start to discuss heaven and hell. It sounds so terrible to think that God might exclude people from heaven just because they don’t believe in Jesus. We think to ourselves, “That’s not how Jesus would have behaved, surely?”
But then we come to a passage like this and what do we find? Jesus is in the region of Tyre and Sidon. That’s Gentile territory, no longer in Israel, and one of the local women comes up to him and starts shouting for help. “Have mercy on me, Lord, Son of David; my daughter is tormented by a demon.”
Now this is interesting isn’t it? Here’s a Palestinian woman - a pagan presumably, yet she recognises Jesus for who he is. She calls him Lord. She knows he’s the Son of David. And the way she says it implies that she isn’t just talking abut his ancestry. This is a title. She might as well have called him the Messiah. Even the disciples haven’t made this connection yet, though they will in the next chapter.
So here’s this woman, acknowledging Jesus as Lord, presumably as her Lord that is, and what does Jesus do? He ignores her. Does that sound like the Jesus you know? Just ignoring a woman who’s obviously in pain, in great need? If we did that we’d be accused of being heartless. Why is that?
Perhaps he remains silent because he doesn’t want to stifle her faith. Perhaps it’s because he’s waiting to see what she’ll do. Will she give up? Is he unsure what to do at this stage? Do you know that feeling? You’re faced with some dilemma and you really don’t know what to say or do. For most of us I think our inclination is to jump in and say the first thing that comes into our head. One of the things I’ve learnt over the years, as hard as it is to actually do, is to stop and listen and be quiet a bit longer. To give myself a chance to think through the best course of action. That’s what Jesus does here, isn’t it? He could have told her to go away because he hadn’t come here to minister to Gentiles. But he doesn’t. He just remains silent.
And we find that the woman isn’t put off. She keeps shouting, but it seems she transfers her attention to his disciples. And it works because they can’t stand it.
Of course we know from other examples that they weren’t the most tolerant of people. Do you remember when the mothers brought their children to Jesus for him to bless them? They tried to shoo them away. Jesus was far too busy to worry himself with a few grotty children.
And here they come to Jesus and plead with him to send her away because she’s giving them a headache!
And so Jesus deals the killer blow. He says one of the most politically incorrect things in the New Testament. He says “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” He dismisses her because she doesn’t matter, she doesn’t rate. She isn’t a Jew so his message isn’t for her.
Now this isn’t the first time Jesus has shown this sort of favouritism. A few chapters earlier when he sent out his disciples in pairs to preach about the Kingdom of God, he told them, “Go nowhere among the Gentiles, and enter no town of the Samaritans, but go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel” (Matt 10:5-6). He was making it clear that his task was to take the gospel to the nation of Israel. Later it would be their task to take the gospel to the Gentiles, but for now his job was exclusive.
The danger for him if he does this miracle here is that he’ll get sucked in to extending his healing ministry to the whole world before it’s time. So it may be that his question is actually rhetorical. He’s tossing up in his mind whether he should respond to her or not. Will this cause more problems than it’ll solve? He’s thinking out loud, the way we might sometimes when we’re trying to work something out.
Notice that the woman seems to realise this. She overhears him speaking but isn’t put off by it. Instead she comes and kneels at his feet and begs him to help her. She’s stopped shouting. Now that she sees that Jesus is beginning to interact with her she speaks quietly.
In fact it’s as though she sees his thinking out loud as being an invitation for her to come closer. Perhaps that’s part of what he was doing. Giving her time to work up the courage to ask him again. So she comes and kneels before him, pleading for help.
Imagine you’re Jesus and this woman comes and kneels down in front of you and pleads for help. What would you do? Would you give her what she’s asking for. There have been plenty of other times when he’s cast out demons from people. You'd almost expect that that’s what he’d do. But he doesn’t does he?
In fact what he does seems to add insult to injury. He says “It is not fair to take the children's food and throw it to the dogs.” It was a common insult to call Gentiles dogs.
Though the word Jesus uses for dogs here isn’t as bad as it could have been. He uses the word for “little dog” or “house dog” rather than the word that was usually used that meant something more like a mongrel. But still it doesn’t sound very nice does it? Is Jesus still struggling to know what’s the right thing to do? Is he still wondering whether it’s right to spend time and energy teaching and healing these Gentiles rather than concentrating on the Jews he was sent to minister to? Or is he simply testing the woman.
Well, either way the woman assumes that Jesus is testing her. She picks up that Jesus has moved from the common Jewish understanding that Gentiles were mongrels who belonged outside in the street. At least with the word he uses for dog, he’s put both Jew and Gentile under the same roof. Her desperation leads her to overlook the personal insult in Jesus words and hang on to the positive side of what he says. And so she replies: “Ah, yes Lord, but even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their master’s table.” That’s an incredible insight isn’t it? And think about it some more. Is she saying that she doesn’t even need his full attention to be blessed by him? Just a few crumbs of attention will be sufficient!
Do you remember another person we’ve read about in this series already who came to Jesus and said something similar? The Roman centurion in Matt 8 came to Jesus because his servant was paralysed. He wanted Jesus to heal him but he wasn’t asking Jesus to come with him. He believed that Jesus’ power was so great that all he had to do was to speak and his servant would be healed. It’s interesting, isn’t it, that both of these people were Gentiles. Well, as in that incident, Jesus was so impressed with the woman’s faith that he agreed to her request. It seems that any doubts he had were dispelled by her faith.
Notice the way Matthew has written this. Look at the passage up to this point and see how he refers to Jesus, apart from the first reference. Notice that he only refers to him as “he”. But this time, now that the woman has shown how great her faith is, and that he’s made up his mind, he refers to him as “Jesus”. And notice too the way Matthew highlights the personal form of address that Jesus uses. Jesus answered her, “Woman, great is your faith! Let it be done for you as you wish.” It’s as though she’s just developed a personality that warrants his attention. Does that sound harsh? Well, perhaps it is, but I guess we have to understand the sort of culture he was coming out of. Political correctness hadn’t been invented in the first century. Women were hardly thought of as important people, let alone if they were Gentile women. So the way Jesus addresses her here is doubly significant.
So why the change? It’s faith in him isn’t it? In this woman’s case her faith overcomes the discouragement of hostile disciples who want to get rid of her and shut her up and also the discouragement that comes from Jesus’ own words. And her faith sees through Jesus’ objections to the real issue - that the gospel is great enough to benefit all people. That no-one need miss out on its benefits.
Here’s the secret to the apparently exclusive claim of Christianity. Yes it is only through Jesus that we can be saved, but faith in Jesus can be found in anyone, irrespective of race or gender or education or social status.
And so, as happened with the centurion’s servant, her daughter is healed instantly. I guess one final thing to notice is how so often the beneficiary of someone’s faith is a third person. Personal faith in Jesus doesn’t only work for our own benefit. God honours prayers that are concerned with other people’s needs and concerns as well as those that are on our own behalf.
Well, I wonder whether you’ve ever experienced the sort of response to prayer that this woman experienced. Have you ever felt like God was ignoring you? Or worse still, that he didn’t want to help you? What do you do when that happens? I guess it’s easy to give up and think he’s not listening or he doesn’t want to help you. But perhaps we can learn from this Palestinian woman not to give up. To keep asking.
Listen to what James tells us in James 1: “If any of you is lacking in wisdom, ask God, who gives to all generously and ungrudgingly, and it will be given you. 6But ask in faith, never doubting, for the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea, driven and tossed by the wind; 7for the doubter, being double-minded and unstable in every way, must not expect to receive anything from the Lord” (James 1:5-8). Now if that’s true of asking for wisdom, I’m sure it’s also true of asking for other things. Sometimes we have to keep asking, trusting that God loves to give good things to his children. In fact a little later in that chapter James says this: "Don't be deceived, my beloved 17Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change." (James 1:16-17)
So even if we have to wait sometimes, we shouldn’t give up just because God seems to be silent or ignoring us.
Jesus responded to this woman, not simply because he loves all people, but because of the great faith she showed in Jesus. So let’s take her as an example to each one of us of how to persevere in prayer and faith in God. If Jesus responded to an undeserving Gentile woman like this, how much more will he respond to us, his children by adoption. And when we ask for anything, let’s do so in faith, never doubting, remembering that every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, who delights to give good gifts to his children.
