Martin Luther King wrote that “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” Last weekend the painful and tragic events at Charlottesville, Virginia (and the strange silence on that subject from the usually freely tweeting President Donald Trump) were a reminder of the deep divisions that continue to exist in America (and in many other places too). At least one white supremacist marcher was carrying a flag emblazoned with the Nazi swastika. One picture I saw showed the right wing marchers being protected by a black city policeman - somewhat ironic, I thought.
Alas, there’s nothing new about race discrimination or race supremacy. The gospel story we’ve just heard introduces a woman of Canaanite extraction; the sort of person Jesus should have had nothing to do with - a foreigner, an outsider. And to begin with Jesus did seem reluctant to deal with her.
Some commentators suggest that indeed, Jesus didn’t want to have anything to do with this non-Jew. They see this event as a pivotal moment: meeting this foreign woman persuaded Jesus that his mission should not be just to Israel.
I don’t actually buy that. I’m more inclined to think that Jesus was testing both the disciples and the woman herself by speaking and behaving in the way they would have expected him to as a Jewish rabbi. It was the disciples, after all, who’d originally wanted to send the Canaanite woman away; the way I read the story, Jesus played along with that in order to open their eyes and change their minds.
Religion has been as ready to raise barriers and set exclusion zones as any other sphere of human activity. Jesus I think wanted his disciples to realise how wrong we are - how wrong they were that day - to erect barriers that close off the way of salvation; and yet we still do it: barriers of culture, gender and social status; barriers also of race.
In our Old Testament reading Isaiah called the Jerusalem Temple a house of prayer for all nations. The prophet had urged the Israelites to live just and faithful lives that would honour God. But then he went on to say that the foreigners among them who did the same would also find favour with God. Now the prophecies of Isaiah were important to Jesus; he would have known this passage well.
And that’s why I think that in his dismissive words to the woman he was playing the part of the traditional rabbi in order to provoke her to declare her faith. But his words about it being unfair to throw the children’ bread to the dogs do show just how real were the barriers between Jew and non-Jew. Such barriers are often never really thought about or challenged; it’s just how it is. To compare the woman to a dog is a familiar ploy: the person different from us dismissed as less than we are, as subhuman, like in wartime propaganda.
What were the barriers that would keep a woman like this from receiving from a Jewish rabbi the help she sought? Firstly and most obviously, nationality; she wasn’t a Jew, and therefore had no business turning to a Jewish teacher for help. She didn’t belong there because she was a foreigner.
Secondly, she was a woman, and no woman had the right to approach a rabbi uninvited. Jesus in fact had close friendships with many women, who supported him as he travelled and taught - but this Syrophoenician woman couldn’t know that. She didn’t belong there because she was female, but she was there all the same, having crossed a substantial boundary.
And there were other barriers: the barrier of silence, for example. Jesus to begin with seemed prepared simply to ignore the woman, to act as though she wasn’t there - probably to provoke a response from the disciples. The disciples did respond, and their attitude of scorn and rejection, repugnance even, was a further barrier. “Send her away,” they demanded.
The woman’s persistence is admirable and amazing. She fell on her knees before Jesus to ask for help, and he just insulted her, or so it seems. Would I have put up with that sort of treatment, I wonder, or would I have walked out in disgust, and maybe gone on to badmouth Jesus to my friends: “Just as bad as any other rabbi, they’re all the same.” But she didn’t do that; she persisted despite all those barriers. Why? Because only this man could give the healing her daughter needed so much. She wasn’t a Jew, but she’d seen something in Jesus, or heard something about him, that convinced her that this man really was the Messiah the Jews were expecting.
So this is a story about overcoming barriers; about overcoming the barriers that prevent both others and ourselves from being healed, from being made whole. She held firm to her faith despite the barriers raised against her, the rejection and the insults; and in the end she was heard, and her daughter healed. Jesus praised her faith: not her persistence and her cleverness, but her faith, by which I think he means both her faith in his own power to heal, and her faithful commitment to her daughter who needed that healing.
True faith enables us to take courage and find purpose. We might think that a busy and active church that’s doing lots of things is a good example of what it means to be faithful and successful. And that could be the case; but it depends who sets the agenda: what’s being done, and why. What we do needs to be based in what we pray, in our seeking of God’s will.
But a prayerful faith will always lead to action; it turns us outward, to see what needs doing, who needs healing, where the love of Christ needs to be shown and shared. The woman’s faith in Jesus and her faithful response to daughter’s need - these overrode everything else, and gave her the energy and will and courage to persist in the face of opposition.
So I take two messages from this story: firstly, it tells me that everyone counts. God is not my God or your God but the world’s God; not the God of one sort of people but of every people. “A light to lighten the gentiles, and the glory of thy people Israel”, as the Nunc Dimmitis puts it. So religion should not erect barriers. When it does it’s not true to the God whose desire is that all peoples should know his just and gentle rule; true religion breaks down barriers. Our mission is to be like Jesus, to let his love flow with good purpose in our lives, crossing boundaries, and healing hurts wherever those hurts may be.
And secondly it tells me that in our faithful response to God we’d do well to follow this woman’s example; we should be bold and inventive on behalf of those who need someone to speak up for them, to work for them, to bring them healing, and we should stick to that task no matter what. Our God is life and love and goodness: his life is stronger than the mightiest enemy which is death; his love is greater than the highest wall of prejudice or the most stubborn barrier of ignorance; his goodness knows no human boundaries or limits, but is offered to all.
The disciples that day had wanted and expected Jesus to turn the woman out; but he went against their expectations and the religious norms of his time, to the extent that he praised her faith. The woman could well have given up and gone, but she refused to budge, she stayed strong in faith and in her commitment to her daughter. In both Jesus and the woman who sought his help we’re set an example of what it means to stand firm in the cause of justice: real justice, not an idea or a system but decisive action to change lives for the better. May we take to heart ourselves what we find in them.
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