Friends,
our Gospel for today, the story of Jesus’ conversation with the
Syro-Phoenician woman, is one of those famously problematic passages in
the New Testament. This poor woman, a Canaanite, a foreigner, comes
forward and tells Jesus of her daughter who is troubled by a demon and
the Lord just ignores her. When she persists, Jesus says, “I have come
only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” When she prostrates
herself at his feet, Jesus says, “It is not right to take the food of
the children and throw it to the dogs.”
Of
course, the woman gets off one of the best one-liners in the
Scriptures, almost all of which otherwise belong to Jesus himself:
“Please, Lord, for even the dogs eat the scraps that fall from the table
of their masters. At which point, Jesus praises her for her faith and
cures her daughter.
What’s
going on here is really interesting and provocative. The
Syro-Phoenician woman is being invited into the life of discipleship,
into the following of Jesus. She is resisted, not because Jesus is
having a bad day, but because he wants the strength of her faith to show
itself.
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