Who Was Healed?

The scripture story today is titled The Canaanite Woman. I think that it should be changed! It
should be titled The Canaanite Motherbecause ultimately, it is a story about a mother seeking
healing for her daughter.
But first, lets figure out what we know about this woman-
Matthew names her as a Canaanite Now the tricky thing is that the Canaanite
people were the ancient enemies of the Jews. And, by the way, there were no
more Canaanites aroundthey were the ancient enemies of the Israelites.
Matthew chooses this description purposefully to illustrate something of the
relationship with the enemy.
Shes a mother who loves her daughter.
Shes courageous, determined, and persistent. After all, she is a woman
confronting a group of men in the countryside. This is not a safe thing to do at all!
She knows or intuits enough about Jesus to believe he can help her.
And She has faith.
Additionally, although it is not in the Bible, it is in other early Christian writings, she has a
nameJustaLatin for justice. So lets not leave her unnamed as so many women in history
have become, lets use her name! Justa.
Justa, a mother of compassion, is seeking out healing for her daughter. Guardians everywhere
know the pain of a hurting loved one. There is nothing more we seek than to create healing and
safetya safe space. My older son, Kennedy, suffered from horrible migraines in junior high.
Once he had a migraine for 21 days straight. We did everything we could think of doing,
including leaving town and taking a vacation so hed have a change of environment. His
headache lessened, then it crashed right back in with a rebound headache. He must have felt
horrible. I felt horrible! It was almost a daily occurrence. I am just grateful that he has more or
less outgrown them. During the time he was going through this, I tried everything to find healing
for my son and we would have gone anywhere. Justa, does the same.
We went to the mountains to seek a healing place, but Justa not only crosses into the wilderness,
she crosses ethnic and gender boundaries to seek healing for her daughter. She is aCanaanite
mother seeking healing from a Jewish man outside where women are supposed to be quite and
defer to men. There is a history of hatred between the Israelites and the Canaanites. So, seeking
out a Jewish man is a big risk. This is a border she must cross.
Additionally, she is a woman and meets the disciples outdoors in the male domain. These are
risky behaviors! It takes courage to meet a man in the open spaces of the frontiers during that
time. That is a border she must cross. But Justa crosses borders to bring healing to her daughter.
She risks it all to find the only healthcare system she has faith in. And she finds Jesus and is
persistent in her questioning and in her pursuit. Its kind of awesome. And then she finds Jesus
and what is his response? Silence. Its like the public people that stand at the microphone and
say, no comment. Because he is ignoring her. That is not the Jesus we have come to know!
And then, I think it gets worse! He goes from silence to responding that he was not there for her,
but only for the lost sheep of Israel. See! Hes keeping the power for his people only. But she
persists with, Please help me! And now it goes further downhill as he says, It is not fair to
take the childrens food and throw it to the dogs. Yes, he did it. He compared her to a dog. Jesus
is caught lacking a little bit of compassion, yes? I cant even imagine what I would do if this
happened to me in real life.
I would go to the doctors office and say, Please help me! Kennedys migraines are getting
worse. And they would respond, Sorry, you dont have the insurance clearance to get
treatment.
Oh wait, I can imagine how that would go down. But we dont expect that from Jesus! We have
a tendency to sanitize Jesus a little bit and lose the human reaction that he shows from time to
time. This is one of those spots.
Ultimately, though, we are confronted with the question of what do we do with this Jesus? This
Jesus seems to be caught with his compassion down. Justa comes to Jesus and asks for a
healing gift and Jesus treats her with silence! What could his silence indicate? Is he formulating
a snappy repartee? Or is he thinking that he might have a teachable moment with his disciples?
Or, could it be that a Canaanite woman is so far out of his cultural context that he is taken by
surprise? While I would love to embrace the idea that Jesus was creating a teachable moment for
his disciples, I have to stick to the context of his social environment and the actual words of the
text. Socially, it would be accurate for a Jewish man to silence a Canaanite woman. His
disciples do not even speak directly to her, but ask Jesus to send her away. Nobody talks to Justa
in the beginning.
She pleads again and his response is a rejection of her one more time. He bolsters his disciples
and the Jewish community by putting the sheep of Israel ahead of her. He compares healing her
daughter to throwing the bread to the dogs. Then in a clever reversal, she outsmarts Jesus. This
is the man who has outsmarted Pharisees throughout his life. She out-thinks, out-smarts him and
out-compassions him. This is another twist to our modern Christian world-view. Jesus was out-
done by a mother. But, his undoing is our saving grace.
Gods universal grace is in every step of this story-grace upon grace. Grace prepares the way for
us to react to God. It gives us a chance at hearing God through the muckiness of our world--the
world that causes disease, inequality, pain, and crime. Somehow, God, through grace, finds a
way to cut through the social inequities. We can see this in Justas story. Justa comes to Jesus.
Why does she come to him? There are other magical healers. What is it that brings her to Jesus?
It is Gods grace. It is nudging her right along. It is opening her to the healing possibilities of
God.
But, is Gods grace and Gods nudges enough? No, Justa has to respond to Gods call. If she is
not willing to cross her borders, then it is simply not going to happen for her. Therefore, she
does cross the borders into a male dominated, Jewish social group. However, Jesus, has crossed
borders too. That is where grace is found. This is significant for our story. Jesus will meet us
where we are. We just have to listen and respond.
And it does require a response. God is not having a one-way conversation with us. God requires
a response in order to create a relationship between God and the world. Often, God is calling us
into unfamiliar territory, demanding that we cross a border and experience something outside of
our normal lives. Jesus shows us over and over that he finds God in the homeless, the hungry,
the poor, and the stranger among us. Jesus calls us to cross borders and to be his action in the
world. Saying yes to Gods presence in our lives.
Justa said yes to Gods presence in her life. Should she just go home because she did not get
what she asked for? No. She continues asking for what she wants while worshiping and
recognizing Jesus as Lord, Son of David. She is allowing God to work in her life. She is not
letting impediments block her way. She is doing her part in responding to Gods grace.
It is then that she finds Justice.
While developing a relationship with Christ, we become more enabled to respond. The ultimate
in responsiveness is to defend the least among us. Justa is seeking a defense for the least in
societytoday, we could imagine her child as a kid in detention, from a broken home, whose
parents are also imprisoned. There is not much available in social justice for this child. For her,
justice must start with Gods grace. For us, justice also starts with Gods grace. Through grace,
we are empowered to feed the hungry, give water to the thirsty, welcome the stranger, clothe the
naked, care for the ill, and visit the imprisoned (Matt 25:34-40).
Justa continues to respond to Gods gracenot giving up. I am reminded of the story in Genesis
where Abraham is arguing with God about the destruction of Sodom. Abraham is trying to
convince God that there are some worthy people in Sodom. He bargains God all the way down
from total, sure destruction for everyone, to just finding five righteous people (Genesis 18:16-33
NRSV). This is good news for Justa and for all of us! I take great comfort in the fact that we
can talk to God and God will respond. God will change things. For Justa, Jesus changed and he
recognized her great faith. Justa fulfills Gods word in every way. She responds to Gods grace
and she protects those who are unprotected.
The real story for us is the change in Jesus. It is hard to imagine Christ changing. We grow up
with the most challenging story being that of the temple and the tables being overturned.
Nevertheless, we understand that story. We can understand righteous anger and the indignation
we would feel at the abuse of Gods house. It would be unnatural for Jesus if he were not angry.
But what do we do with a Jesus that ignores the marginalized and denies their requests? This
Jesus is outside of our common understanding. To increase our challenge, we find that when
Jesus is bested theologically by a Canaanite mother, he has a fundamental shift in his point-of-
view.
That is uncomfortable for us. We are not used to thinking of Jesus as someone who grows and
changes over time. That is what humans do! And it is when we see Jesus doing that, we can
remember that he was human too. Here, Justa defeats Jesus argument and the results are saving
grace. It changes his ministry from a Jewish centered ministry to a full embracing of all of
humanity. It is a pivotal story and we are meant to hear and feel Jesus climactic words when he
cries with emotion O Woman, you have great faith.
Justa and Jesus are great examples for this Mothers Day. Mothers Day in the United States was
founded by Julia Ward Howe as a response to the civil war. It was intended and created to be a
call to healing, compassion, justice, and peace. I have a video that demonstrates the roots of
Mothers Day by Ron Lewis
[video]
It is pretty awesome what we get from the women in the Bible and the women in American
history! And here, in the story of Justa and Jesus, we have a story of radical grace that becomes
radical service to a suffering world in the form of that little, hurting child. And we have a story
of transformed peopleJesus, Justa, and the daughter. That would be a fresh wind of Gods
spirit!
But most impressively, Jesus changes. Jesus becomes the Holy Parent that protects, heals, and
transforms her childrens lives. He is the mother that stays with her sick child; the father that
teaches multiplication tables; and the parents that creates a safe place for their children. Jesus
becomes grace upon grace, bringing justice, for the whole world.
And as he is called into transformation, we are called into our own change as servants of
Christwe are called into serving the whole world, including our ancient enemies. And it is here
that we find the beginning of service and can begin to bring radical peace, redemption, and
reconciliation to a lost and dying world.
Amen? Amen!