Out of Place in the Presence of Jesus? The Faith of the Canaanite Woman (Matt 15:221-28), Part 4

There is a final approach to this story that we need to consider, one that does not characterise Jesus as a racist misogynist, but also takes seriously the faithful complaint of the marginalized Canaanite woman. This understanding of the story compels the Church to acknowledge real socio-political barriers to community, and to overcome these barriers for the purposes of inclusive kingdom fellowship and mission. In this reading, the Canaanite woman and her request are not out of place in the presence of Jesus; rather they are located in the heart of the Jewish biblical tradition of prophetic argument and Psalms of Lament.

This approach reminds us that Jesus is the Jewish Messiah, and places his ministry and his interaction with the Canaanite woman within the broader scope of Israel’s role in salvation history. Matthew is not embarrassed, as we might be, to highlight that Jesus retains a focus on ethnic Judaism, which was still a part of the Church at the time the gospel was written.[1] It is likely that growing tensions existed between the Matthean community and the local synagogues, and between Jewish Christians and the increasing number of Gentile believers within the Matthean community. This story is remarkable therefore in that it names the divisive issue, thus helping to dispel its power and offer a way forward. Jewish Christians needed to know that they were not being dismissed or replaced; Gentile Christians needed to know that there was a place for them in the presence of Jesus and the Christian community. 

Jesus speaks to this by highlighting the importance of Israel, but then naming the great faith of the Canaanite woman. The woman speaks to this by displaying great faith and asserting that the children and the dogs both eat of the master’s food, an idea that took the power out of certain social taboos and hierarchies.[2] The Canaanite woman also stands alongside the women noted in Jesus’ genealogy, not just as a sexually dangerous outsider, but as a Gentile woman who requests the protection of Israel’s God. Just as Tamar fought to be included in Israel’s family blessing; and Rahab relied upon the protection of Yahweh from the destruction of Jericho; and Ruth sought covenant protection from her Jewish kinsman-redeemer; the Canaanite woman is ultimately permitted to seek the blessing of God by aligning herself with the covenant community of Israel. Tamar, Rahab and Ruth were all portrayed as righteous, though their actions were morally ambiguous. Likewise, the Canaanite woman finds herself described as faithful, someone who could receive the blessing designed for Israel, though her actions were considered inappropriate. She is a faithful recipient of the covenant blessing, a true daughter of Israel, in part because she is not offended by Jesus (Matthew 11:6), unlike the scribes and Pharisees in the story before. Their hearts were far from God, but her heart was with her daughter, and with the Son of David who she knew could bring her daughter healing.[3]

It is possible that the Canaanite woman’s identification with Israel goes even deeper still. Gail O’Day insists that the woman’s honest and painful cries are “a narrative embodiment of a lament psalm.”[4] A lament psalm involved Israel formally addressing God with a complaint and a petition; giving God a motivation for action; and expressing the belief that God would hear and respond with mercy.[5] Isolating the woman’s words in this story, her address to Jesus forms the very pattern of lament: “Have mercy on me” is the opening petition; “O Lord son of David” is the formal address; “My daughter is severely possessed” is the body of the complaint; “Lord” is another formal address; “Help me” is another petition; and “For even the dogs eat the crumbs…” is the motivation for why Jesus should act.[6] Matthew deliberately puts the “traditional, candid speech of the Jews before their God” into the mouth of the Canaanite woman.[7] This helps frame the response of Jesus in the story, as he stands in the place of Yahweh receiving lament. It also evokes the biblical prophetic tradition of arguing or negotiating with God, seen in the stories of Abraham, Moses, Job, and Jeremiah.[8] 

Importantly, God permits and even encourages this type of dialogue and petition in the Hebrew Scriptures, just as Jesus permits it in the Matthew 15 story. God is moved by the cries of his people throughout Scripture, and Jesus is moved by the pleas of the Canaanite woman to respond with healing. This leads O’Day to conclude that though this woman is clearly not a Jew, “she is, nevertheless, fully Jewish.”[9] This affirms the continuing place of Jewish Christians within the story of God, but also includes the new Gentile Christians of Matthew’s community within Israel’s covenant blessing.

This reading of the story challenges our community to consider what social divisions we need to name and overcome. We do not struggle with Jewish-Gentile tensions, but our neighbourhood contains many who feel out of place in Church because of historic abuse and discrimination, mental illness, addiction, or gender, ethnic, and socio-economic divisions. We do not want to be an exclusive community that “truncates redemption in assuming that only people ‘just like me’ go to heaven.”[10] So we need to learn to lament together, acknowledging each other’s suffering and fear as we intentionally welcome one another into the heart of the kingdom community. 

One of the most important stories in our Church’s history illustrates this possibility. We were meeting for prayer, and asking one another if our marginalised friends were really in the heart of our community, or if they were still on the margins of our supposedly incarnational fellowship. Did we really expect to hear the voice of the Lord through the cries of the oppressed and broken in our midst? We decided to take some time in silent, communal prayer to consider the matter. As we began, we heard the loud, obnoxious cries of our friend Leena, newly released from jail, who had decided to attend our gathering. As she walked up the stairs, noisily crying, complaining and inquiring, we knew there would be no silent prayer. She crashed into our meeting room and began approaching each person in the room to give them a hug and yell: “I love you!” Ten full minutes later she finished by sitting down in the very centre of our circle. Leena is the most marginalised woman we know, the least welcome everywhere. That night, however, she came to us with her brokenness, her need, her lament, her insistence, and her love. She spoke the words of God over us, and showed us what it means to have a heart close to Jesus. May we always find our place in the presence of Jesus, alongside the Canaanite woman, and alongside Leena.

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[1] Levine, “Matthew’s Advice,” 40.

[2] Levine, “Matthew’s Advice,” 40.

[3] David McCracken, The Scandal of the Gospels: Jesus, Story and Offense, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994), 19.

[4] O’Day, “Surprised by Faith,” 119.

[5] O’Day, “Surprised by Faith,” 120-121.

[6] O’Day, “Surprised by Faith,” 122.

[7] O’Day, “Surprised by Faith,” 122.

[8] Gench, “Back to the Well,” 20.

[9] O’Day, “Surprised by Faith,” 124.

[10] Josiah Ulysses Young III, No Difference in the Fare: Dietrich Bonhoeffer and the Problem of Racism, (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1998), 47.

Out of Place in the Presence of Jesus: The Faith of the Canaanite Woman, (Matt 15:21-28), Part 3

Some try to deal with this offensive passage by seeing the Canaanite woman, and not Jesus, as the story’s protagonist. This approach shows a powerless, abused outsider asserting herself in the presence of Jesus, proving that he is in the wrong, and getting the healing she wants for her daughter. The offense of Jesus’ actions and words are not downplayed or justified; rather, the text is read from the perspective of, and in conversation with, the Canaanite woman who is the recipient of the offense. 

That Jesus himself initially refuses to converse with this woman only increases the importance of this reading.[1] Like all the Gentile women in Matthew, the Canaanite here serves to “shift the normal ‘male gaze’ to a distinctly female one.”[2] What does this gaze show us? The geographical setting for this story is, like the woman, ambiguous, marginal, dangerous and unclean.[3] As Anne Thurston says: “Our definition of margin depends on our definition of place, our view of where the centre is…Jesus and the disciples are concerned this is a voice from the edge. She does not have a place, according to the terms of their understanding.”[4] This is the first non-Israelite woman that Jesus meets, but expectations have already been set by the mention of Tamar, Rahab, Ruth and Bathsheba. These women are all “out of place” in Jesus’ genealogy and are all known for their marginality, their aggression, and their sexual provocation.[5] Canaanite women in particular were considered dangerous, for “it was by way of women that the Gentiles were considered unclean since their women were considered ‘menstruants from the cradle’.’”[6] That the Canaanite woman accosts Jesus in the open, unattached to any man, is a scandal and a danger to him, but also a bold and risky move for her.[7]

The situation becomes even more tense because she refuses to be silenced, ignored, or dismissed. The disciples ask Jesus to send this embarrassing, out-of-place woman away, but she will not stop making her demands.[8] She takes on the role of a poor, persistent, and desperate woman making supplication to a corrupt judge, which certainly casts Jesus in an unflattering light.[9] In response to Jesus’ explanation to the disciples that he was “sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel,” the woman unashamedly grovels before this Israelite man. Feminist theologians mark this as “indicative of women’s marginalization and Jewish colonialism.”[10] She refuses to remain a victim, however, forcing Jesus to acknowledge her presence and her request for help. This is the part of the story that seems truly at odds with our understanding of Jesus as a liberator of humans in general, and women in particular.[11] 

Finally addressing the woman and her persistent plea, Jesus likens her, her daughter, and her kind to dogs who should not get a share of food from the table. Some scholars have suggested that this was an old maxim; or that Jesus really refers to “puppies” or household pets; or that Jesus said this with an affectionate and humorous twinkle in his eye. All attempts to take the sting out of this insult fail to satisfy. This is offensive language, especially when spoken by a Jewish man to a Gentile woman.[12] And the offense is not simply ethnic, but religious as well. The later Babylonian Talmud Hagiga states that “as the sacred food was intended for men, but not for the dogs, the Torah was intended to be given to the Chosen People, but not to the Gentiles.”[13] Jesus is saying that her place is outside of the kingdom blessing, a place where the demon-possessed should not expect healing.[14] Still the woman will not relent, arguing back to Jesus that even the dogs might expect the crumbs of blessing from the table. She demands that Jesus live up to the title of Lord, and wins the healing of her daughter from him because of her bold faithfulness and theological acuity. Some scholars believe Jesus here learns from the woman to overcome his prejudices and change his missional priorities to include Gentiles.[15]

Many of us will find this approach deeply problematic. The notion that Jesus needed to be educated out of his racist misogyny is troubling if we believe him to be sinless and sovereign. This argument also unfairly promotes the idea that the Jewish worldview was uniformly exclusivist and misogynistic, and portrays the woman as an outcast victim of Jewish imperialistic tendencies, though if the woman faced any displacement and oppression it was from Rome, just as it was for the Jews.[16] 

However, we should not dismiss the importance of the Canaanite woman being central to this story. Her example reminds us that we need to read with people who are vulnerable, oppressed, borderless, out of place, in order to hear this and other scripture passages correctly.[17] Ethnic, gender and socio-economic prejudices still very much exist, including in the Church, and require great human effort and persistence to overcome.[18] Recognising great faith and wisdom in people we might easily ignore and marginalize helps form the shape of the Church and our discipleship in new and surprising ways.[19] It is arguably the great faith of this woman that helped justify the Matthean community’s mission to Gentiles and their inclusion in the church meals.[20]

Our friend Jessie, like the Canaanite woman, came from a very marginal place, yet that did not prevent her from approaching Jesus, and the Church, with her need. Now a believer, she continues to aggressively advocate on behalf of First Nations communities, prostituted women, missing and murdered survival sex workers, addicts, and prisoners. Her voice demands to be heard, insisting that the humanity of the marginalized be acknowledged. Starting from the outside, distinctly “out of place,” she has moved herself into the centre of many Church conversations and there are some, like the disciples, who want her silenced. Her faith is not that of a quiet, submissive, “safe” woman, but of a bold, relentless, loud champion of that which is right. She requires Jesus, and the Church, to be who they claim to be and will not stop until she is satisfied. She is therefore an essential part of shaping our Church discipleship, constantly pushing us into areas of obedience where we might not otherwise go. Jessie reminds us to pay careful attention to voices from the edge.

Part 4 tomorrow...

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[1] Stephenson Humphries-Brooks, “The Canaanite Women in Matthew,” in A Feminist Companion to Matthew, edited by Amy-Jill Levine, (Cleveland: The Pilgrim Press, 2001), 155.

[2] Humphries-Brooks, “Canaanite Women,” 156.

[3] Elaine M Wainwright, “Not Without My Daughter: Gender and Demon Possession in Matthew 15:21-28,”, in A Feminist Companion to Matthew, edited by Amy-Jill Levine, (Cleveland: The Pilgrim Press, 2001), 132.

[4] Thurston, Knowing Her Place, 26.

[5] Kathleen E. Corley, Private Women, Public Meals: Social Conflict in the Synoptic Tradition, (Peabody: Hendrickson Publishers, 1993), 166; Stuart L. Love, Jesus and Marginal Women: The Gospel of Matthew in Social-Scientific Perspective, (Eugene: Cascade Books, 2009), 160.

[6] Elaine Wainwright, cited in Nortje-Meyer, “Gentile Female Characters,” 68.

[7] Lilly Nortje-Meyer, “The Homosexual Body Without Apology:  A Positive Link Between the Canaanite Woman in Matthew 15:21-28 and Homosexual Interpretation of Biblical Texts,” in Religion and Theology, Vol 9, 2002, 130-131.

[8] O’Day, “Surprised by Faith,” 118.

[9] Keener, Matthew, 415.

[10] Levine, “Matthew’s Advice,” 23.

[11] Evelyn and Frank Stagg, cited in Willard M. Swartley, Slavery Sabbath War and Women: Case Issues in Biblical Interpretation, (Scottdale, Pennsylvania: Herald Press, 1983), 183.

[12] Witherington III, Women, 65.

[13] Babylonian Talmud Hagiga 13a, cited in Garland, Reading Matthew, 166.

[14] Wainwright, “Not Without My Daughter,” 134.

[15] Daniel Patte,“The Canaanite Woman and Jesus: Surprising Models of Discipleship (Matt 15:21-28) in Transformative Encounters: Jesus and Women Re-viewed, edited by Ingrid Rosa Kitzberger, (Boston: Brill, 1999), 35.

[16] Levine, “Matthew’s Advice,” 26, 30.

[17] Patte, “The Canaanite Woman,” 54-55.

[18] Frances Taylor Gench, Back to the Well: Women’s Encounters with Jesus in the Gospel, (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2004), 20.

[19] Patte, “The Canaanite Woman,” 35.

[20] Corley, Private Women, 168-169.

Out of Place in the Presence of Jesus: The Faith of the Canaanite Woman, (Matt 15:21-28), Part 2

The traditional approach to this passage focuses on Jesus opening the door to mission and faith among the Gentiles. The strength of this approach is that it locates the story within the broader purpose of Matthew’s Gospel. Matthew 15:1-20 relates a debate over purity rituals and defilement. After rebuking the scribes and Pharisees and announcing that defilement comes from the heart, not from unwashed hands, Jesus leaves the “clean” territory of Israel and heads for the notoriously “unclean” and enemy Gentile area of Tyre and Sidon. 

As he enters this enemy territory, Jesus is pursued by a woman identified as a Canaanite. This was not a current cultural or political category in Jesus’ time, unlike the designation of Syro-Phoenician used in Mark 7:24-29.[1] The Canaanites were “the bitter biblical enemies of Israel whose paganism had often led Israel into idolatry.”[2] So this story has Jesus, fresh from a debate over purity and defilement, entering an historically unclean land and meeting with an historically unclean woman, an obvious religious outsider.[3] This is an “intentional narrative strategy to accentuate the distinctions between Jesus and the woman who approaches him. She is the enemy, not his kind.”[4]

The situation is a perfect test case for Jesus’ previous teaching on purity: can God’s compassion extend even to the enemy? Can this woman, representing all that is unclean and dangerous, ever have access the blessings of God’s Kingdom? Not only is the answer yes, but by overcoming Jesus’ strenuous testing, this Canaanite woman is said to possess “great” faith. This testing is the traditional explanation for Jesus’ dismissive attitude and insults. There are no “hints of ethnocentrism, sexism, or even conflicting messages” in this reading; Jesus is demonstrating to the disciples what persistent faith looks like, and revealing to them that it may be found in the unlikeliest of people.[5] Therefore he deliberately puts obstacles in the way of the woman, to ensure her faith was legitimate, and to magnify the surprising faith of this scandalous character.[6] The woman approaches Jesus correctly, identifying him as Lord and the Son of David – thus confessing Jesus as Messiah before even Peter does in 16:16 - and begging his mercy, just as the blind men do in 9:37.[7] Though ignored she does not give up, kneeling at Jesus’ feet in the proper posture of worship and petition. She accepts Jesus’ statement that he has come only to the Jewish people, thereby acknowledging Israel’s part in God’s salvation plan, but also perceives that Jesus is the master of the children, the dogs, the food and the table – indeed the Lord of all - and that he gets to bless whomever he wants.[8] In all of this she impresses Jesus with her great faith. 

This faith, like that of the Magi (2:1-12), and the Roman soldiers (8:5-13; 27:54), is contrasted with the lack of faith found in the ruling elite of Israel (13:53-38), and the little faith displayed by Jesus’ own disciples (14:31; 16:8).[9] This point is foreshadowed in Matthew 11:21-24, where Jesus announces that godless Tyre and Sidon would have responded faithfully to him, unlike Chorazin and Bethsaida.[10] Rahab and Tamar, two Canaanite women who feature in Jesus’ parentage (Matthew 1:3, 5) also prepare readers to accept the faith of the woman in this story. Matthew’s audience know that if Jesus rejects this woman because of her ethnicity, he is rejecting at least two of his own ancestors.[11] During Jesus’ ministry there was still a real boundary between Jews and Gentiles, so “the woman’s request on behalf of her daughter categorically has no place.”[12] The woman’s persistent faith, however, combined with Jesus’ compassionate grace, overcomes the boundary in this case.[13] What is more, the daughter’s healing, which indicates the overflow of the God’s salvation for Israel onto the Gentiles, is a foretaste of what is to come.[14] Following Jesus’ resurrection and his command to go into all the world to make disciples (28:16-20), the barrier between Jews and Gentiles is completely removed.

There are some obvious applications of this interpretation of the story for Matthew’s community, and for ours. Matthew’s community was free to include Gentiles, but not because Israel had been rejected.[15] The children do not need to be starved for the dogs to be fed by the crumbs; the miraculous feedings that frame this story (14:13-21; 15:29-39) show that there is enough “food” for everyone.[16] This story foreshadows and justifies the mission to the Gentiles and their faithful response, which is where we also find our hope and mission. 

We too are Gentiles, and undeserving of God’s blessing, yet we have found a place in the presence of Jesus, the Jewish Messiah. This gracious welcome from the Lord must be received faithfully and humbly, in emulation of the woman who begged for mercy from the Son of David. It reminds me of our friend Gina, who felt worthless and out of place, rejected and isolated because of illness and addiction, her ethnicity, and the “sexual defilement” of prostitution. When she came to the Lord she was truly poor in spirit, bringing nothing but herself and her desperate, faithful hope that Jesus in his mercy would offer her welcome and freedom. Like Gina, and like the Canaanite woman, we all must throw ourselves at Jesus’ feet, recognising our desperate position before God and our need of healing and mercy. Having received that mercy, we must become the kind of community which seeks to help everyone – regardless of background - find a place in the presence of Jesus, and a place in our fellowship.

As genuine and helpful as this conclusion is, we are still left with some uncomfortable questions about Jesus’ treatment of the Canaanite woman. If Jesus tests this woman’s faith, the method is uniquely severe. Up to this point Jesus is compassionate and open to outsiders, sinners, even Gentiles. In Matthew 8:5-13 a Roman Centurion asks Jesus to heal his servant, using almost the exact same language as the Canaanite woman. These two stories are often paired to illustrate Jesus’ concern for non-Israelites.[17] Yet instead of ignoring and insulting the Centurion, Jesus offers healing. 

So why does Jesus put a frantic mother through a rigorous testing period only seven chapters later? Is it because she is a foreign woman, and therefore even more out of place in his presence than the male Roman soldier? Is it fair of Jesus to wait until the woman abases herself and agrees that she is a dog worthy only of scraps before he heals her daughter? What does that mean for marginalised women in our world today: do they have to pass a special test before they can be accepted and find their place in the family of God? We know this is how many marginalised women feel when they seek inclusion in the Church.

Part 3 tomorrow...

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[1] Gail R. O’Day "Surprised by Faith: Jesus and the Canaanite Woman,", in A Feminist Companion to Matthew, edited by Amy-Jill Levine, (Cleveland: The Pilgrim Press, 2001), 116; Stephenson Humphries-Brooks, “The Canaanite Women in Matthew,” in A Feminist Companion to Matthew, edited by Amy-Jill Levine, (Cleveland: The Pilgrim Press, 2001), 142.

[2] Craig S. Keener, A Commentary on the Gospel of Matthew, (Grand Rapids: William B Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1999), 414.

[3] Christopher W. Skinner, “Review of ‘Have Mercy on Me”: The Story of the Canaanite Woman in Matthew 15:21-28,’” by Glenna S. Jackson, Religious Studies Review Vol 33 Number 1 January 2007, 65.

[4] O’Day "Surprised by Faith”, 116.

[5] Amy-Jill Levine, “Matthew’s Advice to a Divided Readership”, in The Gospel of Matthew in Current Study, edited by David E. Aune, (Grand Rapids: WM. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2001), 22.

[6] Robert H. Gundry, Matthew: A Commentary on His Handbook for a Mixed Church under Persecution, (Grand Rapids: William B Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1994), 313.

[7] Keener, Matthew, 415.

[8] Gundry, Matthew, 315-316; Lilly Nortje-Meyer,”Gentile Female Characters in Matthew’s Story: An Illustration of Righteousness,” in Transformative Encounters: Jesus and Women Re-viewed, edited by Ingrid Rosa Kitzberger, (Boston: Brill, 1999), 70.

[9] Keener, Matthew, 415; Gundry, Matthew, 316; Ben Witherington III, Women in the Ministry of Jesus: A Study of Jesus’ Attitudes to Women and their Roles as Reflected in his Earthly Life, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), 66.

[10] Keener, Matthew, 415; David E. Garland, Reading Matthew: A Literary and Theological Commentary, (Macon: Smyth and Helwys Publishing Incorporated, 2001), 164.

[11] Keener, Matthew, 415.

[12] Matthias Konradt, Israel, Church, and the Gentiles in the Gospel of Matthew, (Waco: Baylor University Press, 2014), 65-66.

[13] Garland, Reading Matthew, 167.

[14] Konradt, Israel, 65-66.

[15] Garland, Reading Matthew, 167.

[16] Anne Thurston, Knowing Her Place: Gender and the Gospels, (New York: Paulist Press, 1998), 27. 

[17] Frances Martin, The Feminist Question: Feminist Theology in the Light of Christian Tradition”, (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1994), 102.