But the woman said, “Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters’ table.”
Today’s Gospel lesson from Matthew provides a two-part discussion about reflection, the recognition of the evil that can lie within any human heart, and repentance. It is a lesson on the dangers of failing to own our own Shadow and the way that it plays out in projections onto others. And it is a lesson on prejudices and the way they impact us often without our awareness. There is a lot packed into these two verses, indeed. And it comes with a surprise ending.
Seeing Our Shadow in the Other
This story is found in Mark’s Gospel as well as Matthew. But in Matthew’s version the ties of the writers to the Hebrew people offer a distinct twist. Matthew is the Gospel most clearly directed to people of Hebrew heritage and we find continual references to Hebrew scripture throughout this Gospel. It is as if the scribes who wrote down the oral traditions that this community had assembled wrote their gospel by routinely dipping their quills into Hebrew Scripture to construct their version of the Jesus story.
We see that Hebrew background early on in this lesson. Jesus has just laid out a rather profound observation that it is not what goes into the body via the mouth that defiles people, it is what arises from their hearts and comes out of their mouths that evidences a soul that is defiled.
On the one hand, this assertion draws into question the kashrut dietary laws that are developing among the Pharisees who will eventually become the leaders of a new religion developing along side Christianity called rabbinical Judaism. For the Pharisees and those who follow them, one was an observant Jew by their diet, their attire, their observance of Sabbath and by the people they avoided. This was a religion based largely on tribal purity considerations which divided the world into us and them and defined themselves in terms of opposition to the other.
So it’s not surprising that Jesus’ disciples tell him that the Pharisees were offended by his teaching. But Jesus does not back down. He is clear that if there is anything that defiles human beings, it is the darkness within our hearts that we refuse to acknowledge.
In modern terms, depth psychologist Carl Jung would say that while every human being has aspects of ourselves we find unacceptable, we repress them from our consciousness into what he called the Shadow. Because we have intentionally blocked those things from consciousness, they tend to erupt in ways we had not planned. The words that seem to slip out that we wish we could immediately take back. The actions we inexplicably engage that make others shake their heads and say, “He just wasn’t himself.”
But, more often than not, we most often tend to see our own Shadow on those we project it onto. We often attack that in the other which we cannot face within ourselves. The more energy we feel around our response to them, the more that tells us we are looking at our own Shadow content.
So Jesus is onto something here. It is that which resides within ourselves that is most likely to defile us. And until we own it, the chances are we will project it onto others, seeing them as the defiled and ourselves as pure.
A Desperate Mother Willing to Risk Everything
[Image: Robert Lentz, OFM, "Syrophoenician Woman"]
This is where the second half of the story becomes particularly pointed. It is important to note that the woman who comes to Jesus in this story is not a Jew. She is a Canaanite, a people who historically have reviled the Israelites as readily as the Israelites have looked down on them. Each saw the other as impure, outside the arc of their deity’s love and protection. And each saw the engagement of the other as an action that made them impure.
So we have to recognize how desperate this woman must have been whose daughter was tormented by a demon. Perhaps she had exhausted all the possibilities within her own culture with no results. Then she hears of a Jewish mystic sage who is able to exorcise demons. He’s not one of her people. But she is desperate. And so she comes to see Jesus, hoping against hope that he can help her daughter. This was her last hope. And, at least initially, Jesus disappoints her.
This is the point at which we hear the bias of Matthew’s gospel writers. The disciples are irritated with the woman’s insistence that Jesus heal her daughter. They know she’s not an Israelite. They figure they have no duties to her as an outsider to their tradition. And at least initially, Jesus affirms that bias: “He answered, ‘I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.’ And, in most stories, that would have been the end.
[Image: Michael Angelo Immenraet, “The Woman of Canaan” (17th CE)]
But this is where the story takes a sharp turn that leaves all of the parties involved reeling.
This woman, alternatively called Canaanite and Syrophoenician in the gospels, will not take no for an answer. And she answers Jesus with an unexpected response: “But, Lord, even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters’ table.” Clearly she had not heard the Rite I eucharist prayer that would assert that “We are not worthy so much as to gather the crumbs under thy table.” Of course, the truth is that even ants are worthy to gather up crumbs. And this woman confronts Jesus with that reality – even dogs and the foreigners who are being compared to them are worthy of being shown proper respect.
[Image: Annibale Carracci, “Christ and the Canaanite Woman” (1594-1595)]
Let’s step back from this response for just a second to recognize its importance. First of all, note that this is a woman speaking to Jesus in a patriarchal culture that saw women as second class citizens if citizens at all. In that wonderful Yiddish expression, this woman had amazing chutzpah to even reply to Jesus, much less in this direct, confrontative way.
Second, this woman calls Jesus on his culturally driven prejudices. Consider how derogatory it would be to liken a human being to a dog. And consider in our own culture who ends up being described in such dehumanizing ways. This woman has nailed Jesus on his prejudices, this just after he has been pontificating about how evil does not come from outside us, it arises from within.
But it’s what happens next that what makes this story so incredible. Jesus repents. He recognizes that what he has just said is hurtful and demeaning. It fails to recognize the humanity of the person to whom he is speaking. For a man who has been preaching about how everything belongs, how G-d loves all that G-d has created, how the very hairs of our heads are counted and how much more G_d loves us than the beautiful flowers of the field and birds of the air, this is the time to put up or shut up. And Jesus rises to the occasion.
His response to her needs a bit of translation. As I noted last week, the Greek word pisteuo is not well served by the common translation as belief. That’s way too cognitive for what is happening in this story. The better translation for pisteuo is trust, an existentially grounded word that well reflects this woman’s willingness to approach a foreign spiritual figure, engage him, call him on his prejudices, all the time trusting that this man can heal her daughter. And that is exactly what happens in this story. In essence, what Jesus says to her is, “Woman, your willingness to trust me has healed your daughter.” And Matthew notes that at that moment, the daughter was healed.
Lessons to Be Learned
This is quite an amazing story. And the surprise ending leaves a lot of us gasping for air. So let’s look at it once again.
Jesus is telling us that it is what we carry around in our souls, our unconscious, that ultimately has the potential to defile us, particularly when we are unable or unwilling to own our Shadow content. Coming to grips with Shadow content is a life long endeavor. It is painful and requires great devotion. I think Jesus knew that when he told us that which comes from within us is more important than what we eat, drink, read, or otherwise consume.
Second, this story confronts us on our prejudices. It requires us to look at those we see as unworthy of our respect and to be open to what they might bring to our lives that we are completely unaware of our need for it. It also requires us to become aware of and willing to deal with our own Shadow and confront the projected Shadow we see in others through our prejudices.
Finally, we can all learn from Jesus’ example in this story. Even Jesus had to repent of his prejudices. What might trouble us is the idea that Jesus actually had any prejudices. But if Jesus was fully human as well as fully divine, he was a product of his own culture, just as we are. What we must not lose sight of here is that he became aware of those prejudices and repented of them. We are called to do the same.
I leave Saugus today to begin my long journey home. I realize I have left you much to consider in this sermon and the others I have preached here. But my sense of this community, much like Jesus’ sense of those hearing his teachings in his own time, is that you are quite capable of wrestling with these passages and making sense of the in your own ways. And so I leave you with these questions:
· What faults that we are so able to see in others might actually inhabit our own unconscious self, our Shadow? How do we recognize our projections onto the Other and confront them in our own lives?
· Who are the great unwashed we keep outside our personal and cultural circled wagons, those we readily identify as unworthy of our respect? What does that tell us about ourselves? And what might we be losing when they are excluded from our lives?
· Finally, how difficult is it for us to imagine that Jesus could actually repent of his culturally inherited shortcomings? Do we really believe that Jesus is fully human as well as fully divine? And what other understandings might this prompt us to reconsider?
I close with a revised version of our collect of the day to start us on our way. Let us pray.
Holy One, you have given us your Son to be an example of godly life: Give us grace to receive thankfully the fruits of his redeeming work, and to follow daily in the blessed steps of his most holy life; through Jesus Christ our Brother, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.
[Sermon preached Pentecost XII, August 20, 2023, St. John’s Episcopal Church, Saugus, MA]
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Harry Scott Coverston
Orlando, Florida
If the unexamined life is not worth living, surely an unexamined belief system, be it religious or political, is not worth holding. Most things worth considering do not come in sound bites.
Those who believe religion and politics aren't connected don't understand either. – Mahatma Gandhi
For what does G-d require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your G-d? - Micah 6:8, Hebrew Scriptures
Do not be daunted by the enormity of the world's grief. Do justly, now. Love mercy, now. Walk humbly now. You are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to abandon it. - Rabbi Rami Shapiro, Wisdom of the Jewish Sages (1993)
© Harry Coverston, 2023
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