Bible Passage: Matthew 15:21-28

It was the fall of 2008; I went to visit my parents in Nepal. I had a conversation with one of my Hindu friends, Jon. He told me he wishes he were born as a dog in America. I inquired why he did so. Compared to human beings in the third world, the dogs have a better life here, he explained. People treat them with dignity and honor, even as their children. They get more attention and human companionship, which includes regular walks, playtime, and affection from their owners. He has never been to America. He learned about these “fateful” dogs, as he called them, through watching Hollywood movies and reading news outlets. He is not entirely wrong in his assessment of the treatment of dogs here. He envied dogs living a comfortable life here. Ironically, he would not tolerate it if anyone compares him to a dog in Nepal. He would not hesitate to get in a physical altercation with a person labeling him like a dog. Culturally, that remark is considered too derogatory, as dogs are deemed lowly animals. Comparing a person with a dog is an assault on someone’s moral aptitude. It is a belittling of a person’s social status. Calling a person “dog” in public is making a judgment call on a person’s moral, ethical, and social standing. It is character assassination. 

PAGE ONE: TROUBLE IN THE TEXT

In the part of the Bible we read, a gentile woman from the region of Tyre and Sidon comes to Jesus asking for help. The demon has brutally possessed her daughter. As a mother, she has been watching how her daughter’s life has altered over time. She is helpless but can only hope that tormenting will end soon. She has been worrying all these years thinking about her daughter’s future. Never a day has gone by that she has not cried. She has forgotten what normal life looks like. She constantly worries that no one will marry her daughter. She might never become a bride and make her home and family. It terrifies her that she might never become a grandmother. Her daughter could become the target of harassment and sexual exploitation. She might succumb to death by throwing herself on fire or drowning in water during a convulsion. The demon has broken the spirit of this woman and her small family. Jesus is her last hope for her daughter. 

She hears that Jesus has just entered her village with his disciples. She runs toward the direction of the village where they are traveling. She wants to get there first before others surround Jesus. She does not want to bet on her chance to seek help for her daughter. As she approaches closer to Jesus, she is covered with sweat. She is still panting like a dog. At once, she catches her breath. Then, she cries out from the top of her lungs from a little distance, “Lord, Son of David, have mercy on me!” In the same breath, she says, “My daughter is possessed by a demon!” Her voice still shaking, she finishes, “and suffering terribly!” The high pitch of her voice catches everyone’s attention. It is filled with agony. 

People look in the direction with eagerness. She is striding toward leaving the dusty trails behind her. She looks tired and desperate. When she gets nearer to Jesus, she is afraid that she has offended him with her running and shouting too loud. Just as a dog hides its tail between two legs, she seems to be nervous. She looks to the ground, slightly hanging her head down. She stands still, grabbing one end of her shawl, and wipes her wet eyes. 

People from the neighboring village roll their eyes and give her a look of disapproval and disgust. They could not understand why she would come to seek help from a Jew. They had their pantheons of gods and goddesses for help. She could have gone to El and Asherah, or Ba’al, Anat, Yam, Mot, or Ashtoreth. Or, she could have just visited her local Baals—Baal-Melqart of Tyre, Baal-zebub, Baal-zephon, or Baalat Gubla, “the Lady of Byblos.” They just could not believe that she had turned her back on her ancestral gods! They thought she had angered the gods of Canaan. As a result, she will have to suffer even more from now on. Now she did nothing but care what people would think about her. She does not want to lose her daughter. 

She is standing there with both hands clasped together. The streams of tears are trickling down her cheeks to the ground and disappearing in the dry dust. Her lips have already dried from her continual wailing. The aura seems to be of a mother mourning the death of a child. Indeed, she is grieving for the loss of her daughter’s innocence that the demon robbed from her. She is lamenting the loss of her child’s future. She is crying out against the injustice done to her family. She is pleading for freedom from oppression.

On the other hand, the disciples are wondering why Jesus decides to go deep inside the gentile country. They are confused. Some disciples find Jesus’ decision very bizarre. They do not feel comfortable making a pit stop there. They are well aware that historically, Jews do not associate with the “cursed” Canaanites. They have a generational animosity between them. They are thinking Jesus probably wants to avoid the Jewish crowd for the time being. 

The volume of her cry has not subsided yet. She is still crying with the same urgency and brokenness. Yet, Jesus ignores her presence. He avoids interaction with her. It seems Jesus is occupied with something more important. He is not showing any emotions toward her cry. He is quite disinterested in performing miracles in the pagan land. It seems her cry would not go past the eardrums of Jesus to his gentle heart. At that point, some bystanders wondered why she continued to cry when Jesus is indifferent to her plight.

The disciples understood Jesus’ silence as “NO” to the woman’s request to heal her daughter. Her presence and continuous distressing cry started annoying them. They wanted him to just send her away! They know this is not the first time someone in need came to Jesus. This will not be the last time either. Jesus has all the days and months ahead to help people in need. It is unthinkable for them that the Jewish messiah would come to rescue the unclean Gentiles whose status does not rise above the dogs. Thus the prominent disciples who have special footing among the twelve earnestly keep asking Jesus to send the woman away. They have their fair share of worries to take care of. They are more concerned about their safety, hunger, and their needs in the gentile district.

PAGE TWO: TROUBLE IN THE WORLD

Let me tell you a story about a friend of mine; let’s call him Emmett. When growing up in his neighborhood, four of his closest friends’ fathers worked for one of the biggest pharmaceutical companies. They had several kinds of medicines stored in their house. Once, he caught a cold and cough that lasted for a week. That was when one of his friends gave him two bottles of cough syrup and directed him to take only one tablespoon every night before going to bed. The label in one bottle read, “Phensedyl/Pholcodine,” and the other bottle read, “Codeine.” Codeine is an opiate. Both were narcotic cough medications only available with prescriptions from a doctor. 

He found out that codeine worked better for him. So, he took two tablespoons of codeine every night. He ran out of it in a week. He liked the reaction to it. He still had Phensedyl in his room. He decided to try it, but it did not have the same effect as the former one, which had provided him with a sense of euphoria and relaxation that he craved. So, he finished the whole bottle at once and got a very good sleep. Just after two weeks, he realized that he wanted codeine more. He felt he was missing something in his life without it. He went to see his same friend who gave him the drugs before and asked for more. His friend warned him what he was doing was not okay. Still, he walked out with another bottle with him that afternoon. The pattern continued for a couple more weeks. After about two months, his friend stopped providing him any. 

Now, he needed to find a way to get them. They were available on the black market, but he could not afford to buy them. He again went to another friend’s house and did the same. This kept going on. Emmett started trying new things. Spasmo-Proxyvon plus Capsules became his staple drug now. They were easy and cheaper to obtain from the black market as well as from his friends’ houses. They come in a big file. Without even realizing it, he was becoming dependent on drugs and other substances. He needed more and more to stay high. Relationships started breaking. Grades went down. The mood started constantly swinging. When his father found out about his drug abuse, he cursed him. His father told him he wished he were dead before he found out about it. He thought his son brought shame to the family. His family had big dreams and hopes for him, and they saw those dreams crumbling before their eyes.

Cravings were getting so out of control that he had to sell his personal belongings, family artifacts, etc., to buy the drugs. Narcos had controlled his life. He did try to overcome his addiction when his head was clear. Yet, he felt he was overpowered. He was losing weight to the extent that his body looked more like a human skeleton. Eye sockets were sunken and turned dark; ribs could be counted from the outside. His mother was making promises to her gods and goddesses for his deliverance from addictions, hoping that these spiritual appeals would lead to a miraculous recovery and restore her son’s health. She was pleading to the god of good omens and the goddess of wisdom in the nearby temples. She would worship the sun god when it rises and the moon god on the full-moon day. She sought help from sorcerers. Witch doctors’ magical recitals did not affect his life. Nothing was helping. He was known as a bright student. Now he made himself a laughingstock. It was damaging the family’s reputation in the community. He felt he was a defeated soldier waiting on death row.

PAGE THREE: GRACE IN THE BIBLE

In our Bible reading text today, the Canaanite woman had risked everything when she approached Jesus. She was broken and vulnerable. She had no turning back when she decided to ignore the tribal ancestors’ gods and come to Jesus. Yet, he continues to ignore her. He turns his head to his disciples and directly speaks to them loud enough for her to hear him. How humiliating that can be when someone ignores us in such a fashion! But he has not dismissed her from his presence. He stresses that his job is primarily to bring the Israelites back to one true God. The disciples felt their request to Jesus to send her away was justified when they heard this. Even amid ignorance, the heartbroken mother is filled with renewed hope. At least, Jesus spoke, if not directly to her, then to his disciples. She read that as an indirect invitation from him to join him in the conversation. 

This time, she forces herself between two disciples to get past them. A helpless, vulnerable, and heartbroken mother appears before Jesus. She breaks the wall of racial and ethnic division between Canaanites and Jews by acknowledging Jesus more than the Jewish Messiah. She addresses Jesus with the honorific title “Lord.” She fully accepts him as God and renounces her tribal gods. She humbles herself, kneels, and prostrates on the ground before him. She puts herself in a defenseless and submissive posture like a dog before its master. She stretches both her hands toward Jesus and makes an urgent distress call. Her plea for help requires an immediate reaction. Her daughter’s torment was so dire that it needed critical and immediate aid (v25). For her, healing means more than getting physical well-being. It is freedom for her. It is liberation from the physical, emotional, spiritual, economic, and psychological burdens. It is freedom from shame and humiliation. It is a restoration of a person back to the family and society.

She had heard many great things about his love and kindness for the poor, marginalized, and sick. People talked about Jesus raising the dead, giving sight to the blind, giving voice to the mute, enabling the lame, and driving demons out of people. Jesus was her last hope. Instead of helping her, Jesus refers to her as a “dog.” Not a dog but dogs—calling an entire group of people! He reveals the general attitude of Jews toward the gentiles. He makes it clear that the dogs do not get any shares from the children (v. 26). Therefore, it is not a good thing to take away children’s bread and toss it to the dogs. 

The disciples could not believe their ears after they heard what Jesus just said. They looked at each other. Peter, the leader among the twelve, murmurs to the other eleven that anything could happen now. A disciple, known as Doubting Thomas, pulls Peter aside and asks if Jesus is inciting racial and ethnic violence here. Judas Iscariot fidgets and asks if Jesus has brought them here to be slaughtered by the hands of the pagan dogs. The Canaanite bystanders gasped in dismay and said to each other, “How dare this Jew come to our district town and insult not just her but all of us?” 

She had not expected public humiliation. Her last hope is hammered and certainly crushed in her soul. The disciples already made her feel unwelcome. She has been the subject of humiliation from the day her daughter was possessed by the demon. Friends, neighbors, and even some relatives excluded them from their circle. They thought that the demon spirit would come out of her daughter and possess them too. She was not unfamiliar with rejection and embarrassment. She takes a moment to look long and deep inside her heart. After a hard soul-searching about her state, “Yes,” she says to herself. “I am no different than the dog right now. My daughter is unclean. We are as unclean as dogs with fleas, mites, and ticks. My life is full of scabs, after all, living my whole life like a lowly creature, like a dog, in this country. Yes, I am one of the dogs. I know my proper place in the house of my master. I live just outside the house by the door. I live on the leftover bread that master gracious provides for me. I cannot tell how much I despise my vomit. I know it is repulsive. I always told myself that I can control my instinct and can stay away from them. I failed every time, though. I tell myself that I will not go back to eat it, yet I tend to go back and do it anyway.” She ends her soliloquy with a nod. “Yes, you are right, my Lord, I am a dog!”

The story does not end here. She does not dwell on the harsh words. She looks at who she is conversing with. Jesus did not deny her from coming to him. The woman swallows the insult to everyone’s amazement. She still had hoped that the Rabbi she claimed as the Lord would help her. She takes a chance to now plead for “help.” She says to Jesus with a wit that even the little dogs get to eat the crumbs falling from the master’s table (v. 27). Maybe Jesus wanted to teach his disciples the necessity and the sufficiency of faith for the transformational life. Jesus sees a mother in her brokenness, vulnerability, humility, and perseverance in her faith. How would he not grant her request? Indeed, Jesus frees her daughter from the claws of the devil. He restores her to a new life. He cures and makes her whole again. That is to say, she is freed from her sins. 

PAGE FOUR: GRACE IN THE WORLD

He felt life was unfair to him. He felt every path he took led him to a dead end. He thought that life was worthless living if a person could not achieve their goal. In his Utopian vision, life must strive for constant progress. Living for the sake of living is a cowardly scavenger. A stagnant life is only a burden to Mother Nature. Hopelessness crept into my mind. One day, he thought hard about life. He felt his life was regressing and believed that the quality of his life was abysmal.

He decided to end his life the next day. He diluted thirty-seven tablets of 500mg Paracetamol (acetaminophen) into a 16oz glass of water and put it under his bed before going to bed. The next morning, he checked the glass and found the white tablets diluted to an orange color. That night, he told himself that was the end of his life. So, he drank it until the glass was empty. The next thing he remembered was that he found himself in his vomit, unable to move, feeling intense muscle cramp, and semi-conscious of what was happening. He survived that horrible night.

To make the story short, he still had the same suicidal thought that came back a few years later. He saw his future was bleak. He was going through the same rough patch. He decided to try narcotics once again after staying drug-free for years. That night, as he explained, he felt he was paralyzed waist-below. His body was not responding to what his brain was telling him to do. He could not lift his head. He felt he lost his grip on his hands. Everything around him was spinning so hard that his brain could not keep up with the speed. Then, he saw images of all the family members, loved ones, and friends slowly reeling one after another like in a movie. His mother appeared many times in that reel. He wanted the spin to end soon, but it lasted for two nights and three days. The whole time, he was disoriented but still could talk to his mother.

Lying down in a fetal position, he whimpered and asked for help if there was a god or something. He wanted to live again. He thought that his cry for help would disappear into the cosmic vacuum. His story had to have a twist. After he fully recovered, he began to read the New Testament. He devoured the Gospel of John. The narratives of Jesus’ prediction of his death and the following events on the Cross-Death, and resurrection—moved him. He was so moved that he risked everything again to become his follower. He asked Jesus to save him from himself. He also knew the cost of becoming a Christian. His family, especially his father; his best friend; and other closest friends abandoned him once he professed his faith in Christ. His life, nevertheless, was changed for the best.

EVALUATION

In the passage, the woman kept crying out to Jesus. She was shouting the whole time until Jesus responded to her directly. He chose to remain silent. Maybe there are some people among us today who have experienced the same kind of uncomfortable silence. You wanted to hear God say something when you needed him the most. Maybe you lost your job, a friend, or a family member. Boss or a coworker wronged you, marriage was crumbling down, and children went off the track heading for a complete train wreck. You stand there, all alone in your room, asking God to say something at that moment. Likely, some of you tried to pray out loud going down to the basement, and you only heard your monotonous voice. Some of your prayers were turning to soliloquy or mere hopeless monologue. You hear nothing but utter silence. Maybe there were days when some of you went to showers seeking a safe space to cry. I think it is one of the safe spaces for anyone to go cry aloud without worrying about someone hearing you. You turned the shower on and just stood there with rolling streams of tears. It feels like the Spirit who promised to dwell in us, making our bodies his temple, has left us, just as the “Ichabod,” or the glory of God, left Israel. 

We live with a painful reality: that sometimes, he chooses to remain silent. Some people would lose patience and hope. They would walk away from God, saying, “You know, I am done with you.” But the Word of God reminds us that he is not silent. He is in our brokenness, and he will not leave us in our brokenness. Just as he went to seek the Canaanite woman in her place, Jesus comes to meet us where we are—in our brokenness, helplessness, and rejection. When he healed the woman’s daughter, the benefits were attached to the physical healings. He has elevated the lowly creatures like little dogs and called them no longer slaves but friends who will partake in the magnificent banquet in the day of the Lord. The same dogs who had picked the crumbs under the table are now made to eat with the master around the same table. This is what fixed brokenness and cleansed dogs look like.