She persisted: The woman who turned Jesus from a racist into an Anti-Racist
Sermon on Matthew 15: 21-28
This is the story of an amazing woman, who persisted. Let’s call her Naomi. She is the mother of a beautiful daughter. She would do almost anything for this kid. But nothing and nobody has been able to help her so far. The girl suffers daily, and nobody knows what it is. Why she can’t just be like all the other kids.
Naomi loves her child and she is determined to keep her safe. So, that no one will harm her or mock her. Her girl is smart and funny and knows how to make the best bread. And yet, Naomi worries about her. She worries about her future and what will be when she won’t be around anymore. Who will keep telling her that she is beautiful and wonderful and just right the way she is despite people thinking she is crazy?
One day she hears the crowd outside shouting and running. A celebrity seems to be passing through the village. A teacher? A healer? A doctor? Then, she hears his name: Jesus. People from her part of the country have been traveling to be healed by this guy. They returned changed. Healthier, happier, more content. “This man”, they said, “is a man of God. He is special. He will make you feel special and loved and you will feel your strength coming back to you and the people you ask him for. And he doesn’t make a difference whether you are Jewish or not, male or woman, he just cures people and prays over them and you will feel a great forgiveness.”
Is it really this man, who is entering her village right now? Naomi runs inside, puts on her best dress and runs outside into the streets. This could be her chance to advocate on her daughter’s behalf. To change her life. To fight for her to get a chance in life. Even if that means to talk to a man who is technically “the old enemy” of the Canaanite people. O well, what does that matter if a kid’s future is at stake? She doesn’t have time for politics and boundaries. All she has is great hope for change!
So, out in the streets she shouts. Just like so many people before her had cried out to Jesus. “Have mercy, Lord, Son of David.” It’s a cry of desperation and fear. It’s a cry everyone can hear. It’s her way to admit that there is something at odds with her daughter and that she can’t handle it by herself forever. Desperately, she makes her vulnerability public, submitting herself to the mercy of the crowd, her neighbors. It’s risky. They could easily turn against her. But it’s her last resort in confronting oppression by risking her reputation, maybe even her life. Angry men with even the slightest bit of power can be dangerous.
Naomi puts pressure on Jesus, publicly shaming him into action.
At first, Jesus begins by being polite. Naomi knows the rules. To ignore her is the “polite” way to behave when someone seeks to start a public argument. If you don’t want to be part of the argument, you simply refuse to engage.
Naomi has been “talking the talk”, and “honoring God with her lips”, in the way she addresses Jesus. To call him Lord, and Son of David, is a very clear message to every bystander and reader, that a Gentile may worship God! Yet, Jesus tells her, that she in none of his business. That he was only sent to the people of Israel.
But Naomi doesn’t get discouraged easily. In the theatre of public shaming and the seeking of approval from the audience, Naomi takes the next step. She comes and kneels before Jesus.
This is a woman who truly worships God. This is a woman who sees more in Jesus than he has shown her. She sees that he is more than the guy verbally harassing her for being a Canaanite and woman. She knows that he has in the past healed people from her village, crossing boundaries. She knows he can better if he chooses to. She trusts that he is able to change and see beyond the barriers keeping them apart right now.
Let me add a little side note. Just because Jesus has healed Canaanites before doesn’t prove that he isn’t racist. It’s like me having this one black friend doesn’t prove I am not racist. It just proves that I have a black friend. Nothing more or less.
Which explains the next thing happening that’s probably more shocking to us than it was to Naomi. It’s one of the most brutal moments in the New Testament. Jesus, full of Jewish male privilege, in the clear sight of the large crowd around them, says to her “It is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.”
Bam. There it is. A total exclusion combined with an insult. “It is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.” Listen to these words. This is the one old argument of people in power when it comes to sharing their resources. All we can often think of is our self-interest of keeping what we have. We lack the imagination that there might be more to the human story than it being a circle of power and oppression, a story of people who have or want to have or fear to lose what they have against the people who can be exploited. And so, we make up differences like human races and justify that some get all and others get none.
This reaction contradicts everything we know about Jesus and what he reveals about God. Don’t we believe in an all-loving, forgiving, helping God who puts people over laws and other man-made rules? A God, who will heal strangers and feed people on Sabbath and reach out to the entire world.
And here we are, witnessing a quite different Jesus. A story that proves more than any other story that Jesus was fully human. He was fully human, meaning he learned about the culture and values of his time and he very much absorbed them. As we all do.
So, as a man, Jesus learned to be sexist. That was just normal. Nothing to even wonder about. A woman at that time was not considered equal to men. She was more of a servant than a partner in most families. Her voice didn’t matter, her opinion wasn’t asked. And as a Jew Jesus learned that he was part of the chosen people. He was never going to be a Roman emperor or hold political power. Yes, he was poor, most of his people were poor. But at least, he wasn’t a Canaanite.
The thought of Jesus being racist makes us unbelievably uncomfortable and so, he can’t be. Therefore, we seek to excuse him… because only bad people are racist, right? After all, if we said at this point that Jesus was being flat out racist, then that would ask some severe questions of us, and our behavior. Questions that we would rather not face, and certainly questions which we would rather not do anything about, because then we would have to change our behavior, and really work towards change in this world, starting at least by sharing the crumbs with everyone. And that’s going to be exhausting at first. Because we aren’t used to it.
But Naomi isn’t done yet. Jesus’ reaction doesn’t take her off guard. All her life she has lived in a patriarchy where men think they can rule over women and children. All her life she has lived as part of a minority both Romans and Jews look down at. All her life she has held her head up high and fought for her dignity in ways, almost unnoticeable for many. Like learning how to read and studying the holy scriptures. Like following the latest News and talking them through with her daughter. Like wearing her hair the way she likes despite the looks she gets from others. Like just being herself. It takes up most of her energy but it’s worth it.
And all her life people have called her names for speaking up. Women like her are considered “nasty” and “disrespectful” and “sassy” and “angry” when talking back to men in power. This hasn’t changed until this very day.
To her it seems like her entire life has prepared her to be in this moment and to face this Jesus and to challenge him. Because she truly believes that he can help her daughter. And that’s all that matters. She won’t let Jesus go until she wrests a blessing from him on behalf of her daughter. Moms with sick kids are like that – they won’t let anything get in the way of their taking care of their child. Not unsympathetic doctors or health regulations or lousy insurance, not even a slightly narrow-minded messiah-type.
As the confrontation begins, Jesus shows us pure blindness to compassion, caused by adherence to racial and religious privilege. This is what culture does. We hear and see—but we do not hear and we do not see, for too often the culture, not God, has told us what to see. We see what we know. Even when preaching this Gospel.
The mainstream interpretation of this story has been for centuries that Jesus was playfully testing the woman. We hear that the word for dogs is puppies, so, hey, it wasn’t actually an insult. And of course, he didn’t mean it that way but was just joking. He was just being sarcastic maybe. Trying to be funny.
Well, Jews didn’t have dogs as pets. And testing a woman from a different people and religion by insulting her as a dog is certainly not funny. Unless you are a misogynist of course and a racist. Whoever laughs at your jokes will reveal their own sexism and racism. Which makes us as a church appear in a pretty bad light considering our traditional interpretation of this story. How we have been laughing at this woman for being called a dog, suffering this humiliation. How we haven’t taken her side, how we haven’t really listened to her powerful voice.
The one voice that keeps telling the truth in this story. All the time. She calls Jesus “Lord”. She calls him out for treating her in a way that’s not worthy for the Son of David. She resists. She persisted.
Naomi talks back to Jesus. She is the true hero of this story. In a smart move she reframes Jesus’ answer, beating him with his very own skills. She knows her rights and she is determined to be treated accordingly. To the people in power that makes her a “sassy” woman. They will feel threatened by her advocacy, her power to use her language of resistance she has been trained to use by her mother, her grandmother and all the women before her, looked upon as nothing better than dogs, fighting for their dignity. This language of resistance she has been teaching her daughter and her daughter will hopefully teach to her daughter one day. This language black women still learn today, still use today. And they are still being called slurs for speaking up.
Naomi stands for all of the women in this world who have ever faced and will ever face sexist and racial discrimination. And even our church isn’t free of it. Because even Jesus wasn’t free of it. And how can we even think to be better than Jesus!
Naomi reframes Jesus’ answer by using her own cultural background. Despite Jews, many ancient Greek and Romans welcomed dogs into their houses and dedicated them to Gods. Naomi says “Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters’ table.”, meaning “No”. She plays it smart. As Professor Mitzi J. Smith puts it: “She questioned Jesus and the authoritative tradition he quoted that could have stopped her in her tracks and denied her daughter the healing she sought and needed, and which he had so freely bestowed upon others. Clearly, all lives don’t matter equally.” [1]
Most importantly, Naomi eliminates the language of power and priority. Her claim is the universal truth we refuse to hear. That all can be fed, children and dogs alike. There is enough for everyone if we just started sharing without fearing to miss out. Actually, we could gain so much, if we started sharing our resources freely with all the people, we have been denying opportunities. We could create such an amazing world by closing the opportunity gap that will always lead to an achievement gap. We could learn so much, if we started listening to the voices of marginalized women. We could. Jesus did.
Answering her, “Woman, great is your faith! Let it be done for you as you wish.” And her daughter was healed instantly.
This is remarkable. Usually, when it comes to demons, Jesus must cast them out actively. Here, he doesn’t do anything. Jesus just affirms Naomi’s faith and the power of her words. Her sass has power. And Jesus doesn’t need to add anything. Jesus is being a true Anti-Racist here by simply acknowledging her strength. It is her standing up for her child, her resistance to oppression, that brings restoration and relief to her family. Jesus’ role is to stand back in awe and to acknowledge this woman’s amazing faith in transformative justice and healing and peace. He celebrates the woman he despised seconds ago. That’s my Jesus!
Matthew lets us see that Jesus is truly, almost scarily human. Jesus wasn’t any better than us when it came to sexism and racism. This is a Jesus who is shaped by the society he grew up in – like any of us. This is a Jesus who has prejudices and makes mistakes —like any of us. This is a Jesus who learns and develops—like most of us. This is a Jesus who has to respond to what goes on around him—like any of us. This is a Jesus who doesn’t know everything—like any of us. This is a Jesus who is genuinely human.
But look at the nature of his humanity. Most of us, most of the time, let our personal prejudices, our biases and personal likes and dislikes, rule our responses. The truth of that is easily seen in the disciples’ reaction. They just want to move on and forget this annoying mother.
Jesus does the other thing. He actually lets the annoying woman engage him. And in the encounter Jesus changes—that’s what humans are really good at when they are brave enough to chance it. The woman teaches Jesus something new about the Kingdom of God — she widens its inclusion to be genuinely inclusive. And Jesus realizes the truth of it: ‘Woman, great is your faith!’ This tenacious and faithful woman pushed Jesus to reconsider, to learn, and to grow.
And that’s shows us that Jesus is the Son of God. That’s the nature of his sinlessness. He was able to instantly recognize the sin of racism when this mother made it obvious to him. Unlike us, he does not make excuses, or avoid the point or deny it altogether. He simply changes and goes the way of God, which is love for all people. Suddenly, he understands what his own message really means.
Somebody said, the day you can no longer change is the day you stop being a human being.
Well, Jesus is a human being, and this day he changed. Because a strong woman spoke up and was heard.
And Jesus discovered that there are enough leftovers for all. That there is enough mercy and grace for all. That nobody loses if everyone is being taken care of. And that that’s the kingdom of God. Where a woman refuses to obey. Where a woman challenges an unjust power. And that that’s a biblical woman working towards the kingdom of God. A woman who persisted. And the Son of God listened and learned and joined the fight. Jesus, you are simply the best human and the most wonderful God. Amen.
