THE SYRO-PHOENECIAN WOMAN

Matt. 15:21 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.

We need a little background to really understand this story. First of all Tyre and Sidon were prosperous port cities infamous for slave trade and the worship of Baal. Especially because of the latter they woul dhave been susceptible to being called "dogs" by the Jews because Jewish writers sometimes used the word “dogs” of non-Jews to express scorn especially of their paganism, that is, their religious practices. Now a pagan is not just a non-believer; it is someone who worships other gods, namely fertility gods such as Baal, the so-called false and empty gods that we hear of in the psalms all the time. Tyre and Sidon were also among the cities often condemned by the prophets, Jeremiah (see Ch 25) who said they would have to "drink the cup of the Lord’s wrath."

But it's kind of a love hate relationship because at the same time Tyre and Sidon also had quite a cultural and religious influence on Israel. King Solomon’s temple for example was in part crafted by workers from Tyre. Jesus himself also mentioned these two cities earlier when he was railing against the unrepentant cities earlier in the Gospel of Matthew (Mt 11:21-22): “Woe to you, Chorazin! Woe to you, Bethsaida! I tell you, on the day of judgment it will be more tolerable for Tyre and Sidon than for you. For if the deeds of power done in you had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes. . . .”

So, on the one hand just earlier we have Jesus telling his own disciples (10:5-6) not to go into pagan territory, but to preach only to the lost sheep of the tribe of Israel, so it's interesting that he himself is going there (someone suggested perhaps only for a little vacation, because the parallel version of this story in the Gospel of Mark tells us that he retreated to a house and didn’t want anyone to know about it). And the parallel story in Mark makes it more explicit: this woman is no doubt a Syro-Phoenician, that is Greek-Canaanite; in other words, a pagan.

I was taught that the more a story paints Jesus in an unflattering light the more likely it is to be authentic. And this one, at first glance surely is unflattering. It’s even scandalous. The patristic writers seemed to take it pretty literally. John Chrysostom simply agrees that she was an unworthy dog and doesn’t try to color it at all: “What was she then but a dog, unworthy to obtain her request?” he writes, and “Christ admitted her to a noble rank, dog though she was”.

I liked Ed Hays’ retelling of the story in his book The Gospel of Gabriel. He has the disciples following Jesus into this pagan territory and feeling pretty worried about it. In what is surely a California twist on it, Jesus asks them if they would like to express any of their concerns, and James shatters the silence and says, “These pagans are mad and evil dogs. Their religion is like a cursed leprosy. This heathen land is evil, full of demon pagan temples, dens of gentile dogs and swine. Let us flee these mad and evil dogs and their religion’s leprosy.” And just then the woman appears pleading for her daughter. And Jesus says to her just an echo of James’ words: “Should I take the bread from the children’s mouths and throw it to the dogs?” as if as a lesson for James and the other apostles. It’s all in the tone, but imagine the words being mocking not to her but to his own followers. To her I get the impression they were like water off a duck’s back.

A lot of people like to say that this woman was teaching Jesus something about broadening his own vision. I find that problematic on a number of levels. I prefer to think that this is more like how Jesus dealt with his own mother, like when she and Joseph found the child Jesus in the temple after searching for him for days and he says, “Didn’t you know I had to be about my father’s business?”; or as when Jesus responded to his mother at the wedding banquet of Cana, when she tells him that there is no more wine: “What business is this of mine?”; where masculine pragmatism meets feminine intuition, but where in both cases Jesus submits––he goes home with them, and he makes more wine. The Tao te Ching #78 says

-Under heaven nothing is more soft and yielding than water, yet for attacking the solid and strong, nothing is better. The weak can overcome the strong; the supple can overcome the stiff.

If he had just kept quiet he might have had a chance. But as soon as the dialogue began, he was doomed to lose, mainly because his own goodness would give in. So here again the woman ultimately prevails.

There are some other hidden lessons here. Let me mention three that I get out of it.

First of all, and it seems obvious, so-called pagans sometimes have a deeper faith than we Christians do. I remember our friend Little Bear of the Esalen tribe weeping during the consecration at Mass. When I asked him why he said to me, "You were calling down the Great Spirit over the altar, weren't you?" I have another friend, who would no doubt be considered a pagan, who prays with his hands extended over his meal before he eats anything; most of the time I'm lucky if I remember I quick sign of the cross or a mumbled "thank you". The first conversion, the prime conversion is belief in the power of the Spirit, being unafraid to talk about the power of Spirit, and being unashamed to live and interact in such a way that it makes a difference. I want some of what they have, not just a set of orthodox beliefs, but a living, transforming relationship and commitment to the power of spiritual reality. “Woe to you, Cyprian! Woe to you, New Camaldoli! Woe to you, church of Monterey! I tell you, on the day of judgment it will be more tolerable for Esalen than for you. For if the deeds of power done in you had been done in Esalen Institute, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes and a sweat lodge. . . .”

And the second is just like it. In the book of the prophet Isaiah (56:1) it is written,"My house shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples." (This is incidentally the inscription over the new cathedral of Los Angeles which is to be consecrated soon.) This probably had a huge impact on the Israelites to whom it was addressed, returning as they were from the Babylonian capitivity, coming back to the Holy Land, and raising up walls to defend themselves against the pollution of the pagan dogs. But somehow by seperating themselves from the the other nations, they were in danger of enclosing God in a ghetto. So God through the prophet asks Israel to open its doors and welcome all the nations and their offerings, and to make of the temple a house of prayer for all peoples. This was a very powerful challenge to the people of Israel. Not unlike the documents of Vatican II challenging the church to interact with the world after 500 years of counter-reformation. As far back as the prophet of Isaiah, this God of ours has been trying to open the doors wide enough for everyone. And this is Jesus’ thing, I’m more convinced of it all the time, the central message of the Gospel: No one gets left out, no one gets excluded from the table. And as soon as we exclude someone, we have excluded ourselves. The Church is a house of prayer for all peoples. At least the first part of this same citation from Isaiah is quoted another place in all the three synoptic Gospels when Jesus is driving out the moneychangers; Mark quotes it in it’s entirety. "'My temple shall be a house of prayer for all peoples", but you have made it a den of thieves." As soon as I think someone else is unworthy to come in, I’ve made myself to be the dog, a moneychanger, if not thief and a marauder, and this place becomes a den of thieves rather than a house of prayer.

The third point is a little subtler, but maybe for me the most powerful. Maybe it gets back down to the debate between original sin versus original blessing. Maybe it goes back to why I love the line in the liturgy: Look not on our sins but on the faith of your church.

I am so impressed with the fact that this woman doesn’t seem to take offense at Jesus’ reference to her as a dog. Like water off a duck’s back. Maybe Jesus is testing her faith in another way, saying to her, “Can you drink the cup that I will drink of, how I have to bear all the insults of the people. And are you willing to be stripped bear and suffer humiliation for the sake of the pearl of great price? And are you willing to be the least of all, like I will make myself the least of all, hanging humiliated and naked in front of a crowd, the laughingstock of all?”

John Chrysostom says, along with other patristic writers, that the reason she is saved is because she recognized her unwothiness, and admittted that she was a dog. Maybe there’s another way to look at it. Maybe it’s not that she recognized her unworthiness. I imagine her as this dignified, beautiful untouchable woman. Maybe it’s only people who really know their own dignity and beauty who have the strength to endure trial and pain. Maybe it’s that she she really had a sense of her worthiness, maybe she knew as deep down as possible that she deserved the grace of God just like anybody else and even being called a “dog” by Jesus couldn’t touch that. Maybe she actually recognized her own dignity, a beauty so deep that no one could touch it or harm it in any way. And she said, “Call me whatever you want, I’m staying here until I get fed.” I thought of Paul’s letter to the Corinthians (2 Cor 4): (8-9) “… afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; . . . (16) So we do not lose heart. Even though our outer nature is wasting away, our inner nature is being renewed day by day.” She entered into the realm of the faith, because she intuitively knew her original dignity, her worthiness beneath original sin, and she became a child of the reign of God.

It just worked out a friend of ours was receiving Eucharist for the first time the day this Gospel was read. And this is what I said to him: Don’t let anyone ever cut you off from this house, or from this assembly. And don't anyone ever cut you off from this table. Even if you think God himself is telling you that you are unworthy, hold on to the worthiness and a dignity that is in you that’s deeper than any positive or negative acidental in our lives, deeper than our nationality, our sexuality, our way of life, our compulsions. That’s what God sees. That’s the pearl of great price, that's the Baptism of desire.

There was a strange text from a liturgical song that I learned almost thirty years ago that has stayed with me all this time, and perhaps I never really understood it until now. It went like this:

Even then, even then, I’ll cling to you, cling to you, cling fast to you, whether you want me or not. In your good grace or even out of it, save me, save me I’ll cry to you, Or maybe only love me, love me.

Ed Hays says: “…wrap yourself around God’s holy knees, in prayer refuse to rise until you’re fed. However hopeless your beggars pleas, God will hear you.”

Let’s pray for this: for a sense of our our worthiness, for a taste of our deepest selves; and let’s pray that once we have a sense of our own inner beauty and dignity and worthiness, we may then see the same in each other, in the least of our brother and sisters, no less than in the trees and the stars and all created reality.

cyprian - 08/18/02