Matthew 15: 21-28 Down and In

Matthew 15:21-28

[21] Jesus left that place and went away to the district of Tyre and Sidon.
[22] Just then a Canaanite woman from that region came out and started shouting, "Have mercy on me, Lord, Son of David; my daughter is tormented by a demon." [23] But he did not answer her at all. And his disciples came and urged him, saying, Send her away, for she keeps shouting after us! [24] He answered, I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. [25] But she came and knelt before him, saying, Lord, help me! [26] He answered, It is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs. [27] She said, Yes, Lord, yet even the
dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters’ table. [28] Then Jesus answered her, Woman, great is your faith! Let it be done for you as you wish. And her daughter was healed instantly.

What is happening in this scripture?
If there is every any doubt that Jesus was Jewish, culturally and religiously, let this scripture remind us. A Canaanite woman of Syro Phoenician descent “comes out” and starts to shout. Have mercy on me, Lord, Son of David; (addressing his Jewish ness); my daughter is tormented by a demon!” Jesus did not answer her at all. Matthew wants the reader to know this. The disciples entreated Jesus to send the woman away, mistakenly thinking that the woman is shouting for them. But she wasn’t. She was shouting to Jesus.
Matthew’s Jesus answered: I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. But the woman, desperate, did not go away. She came and knelt before him. Matthew also wants the reader to know that. She knelt before him. Then she said, Lord, help me. Matthew’s Jesus then said, It is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs. Sounds cruel to us, but we don’t know the full context. But whatever the reason, again, Matthew wanted to reader to know about this encounter. The woman, now kneeling, said to Jesus, Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters’ table. Then Matthew’s Jesus said this: Woman, great is your faith! Let it be done for you as you wish. And Matthew tells us that the daughter was healed instantly.
Several questions come to my mind. If Jesus was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel, then what does this say about the woman, her faith, and Jesus’ healing?

How is this happening in the world today? Matthew seemed to want us to know several things: The woman was not Jewish. The woman was desperate for the well being of her daughter. She was totally powerless, an outsider, not just as a woman in this culture, which was bad enough, but also a resident alien, and outside the cultural envelope. She was the marginalized of the marginalized. The Jewish people in Roman occupied and controlled Tyre and Sidon had it bad enough. But she wasn’t even accepted by them. It’s like being thrown out of the slums. You can’t get much lower than this woman was, and she faced the torment of her daughter to boot.
She has nothing, and nothing left to lose but her daughter. She has nothing but her faith, and probably this faith was in the form of terror, not the quiet peace of belief. Someone once wrote that you don’t always find God by looking up and out, sometimes you find him by looking down and in, at the very bottom of your life. Where the crumbs fall. Maybe that is what Matthew’s Jesus wanted us to know. One phrase from Jesus and her daughter was healed instantly. And that phrase was : Woman great is your faith.

How is this story my story? I think most parents would do whatever it took to rid their child of a demon, whether it be a disease, mental or physical, or something like uncontrolled anger, violence, or a terrible addiction that was destroying their life. But this woman put every fiber of her being into her plea to Jesus, Lord, help me. Maybe this is what it means to love God with all your heart, your soul, and your might. Maybe, when we realize how much we love our children, we are reminded of how much God loved his only begotten son, and what it meant for him to be sent to love us, the way this woman loved her daughter. I think Jesus ached to say Let it be done for you as you wish. But in order to receive this healing, this restoration, this exorcism of our demons, we must surrender. We must know that we are the lost sheep of Israel, all of us. Even the dogs under the table eat their masters’ crumbs.
But you have to go down, to the floor, and know you are lost.