This is a fascinating lectionary reading.
In one sense, we can simply read it as a story about Jesus and the Canaanite woman (vv. 21-28). That alone is worth the price of admission. It almost reads like Jesus as the character in one of his own parables. Think of the persistent woman and the unscrupulous manager. Even if he doesn’t want to be generous, he will be so to make the lady shut up!
This is also a fascinating story on its own precisely because it is not a good look on Jesus at all. And it remains quite the controversial moment among Christians.
Of course, there’s more.
The lectionary gives us the option to read a first part (vv. 10-20), which does effect how we read the whole passage.
Jesus offers a teaching two-fer. He manages to redefine the twin concepts of purity and defilement and also recasts how we are to emphasize them. It is quite the remarkable piece, actually.
And it serves as the favorite kind of teaching for the modern Christian. In part because it sounds like a straightforward teaching, rather than something we are supposed to interpret. Emphasis, of course, on the “sounds”.
It is the kind of teaching that tickles our sense of responsibility. Particularly when we want the Bible to offer us answers to our struggles and Jesus says do this! And we go Ah! Directions! Perfect!
It is also one that we take as affirming our own existing beliefs about what we’re supposed to do while casting those silly old ways of the past as ill-informed and off-base. So it becomes a great source of confidence for many and a useful weapon for a few.
Even as we love the parables, there is nothing quite like an explicit and direct teaching to make us feel like we, in fact, are pretty good students.
Oops…
The thing is…Jesus isn’t just reeducating some morons and telling us how to live right. And that view certainly runs into the buzzsaw that is the Canaanite woman.
In the passage the lectionary skips over, we see Jesus confronted by leaders who are getting frustrated by Jesus’s seeming disregard for tradition. It was bad enough that he was reinterpreting the Sabbath back in chapter 12. There, I imagine they could begrudgingly accept that Jesus at least has a point. But this is different.
Jesus doesn’t require his followers to wash their hands before eating. This is breaking a law—and he has no good reason for it. Jesus’s response is to prove them hypocrites.
This is what he’s responding to when teaching them about defilement.
Therefore, it doesn’t matter what comes in, because what we do to each other is what is vile.
Then what does Jesus do?
Jesus says something vile.
Of course it’s more than that. But it is also obviously that, too.
And maybe a good place to wrap it all up is to simply reflect on what comes out of Jesus’s mouth.
In this specific place, something wrong comes out. And she calls him on it. And then, he learns and changes.
Of course, people love to defend Jesus here. Because they don’t want to think Jesus had a racist moment. At the same time, they love thinking that he was a jerk to the Pharisees. Wooh! Give it to ‘em, J!
Perhaps we should be better served at examining all the other times words come from Jesus’s mouth. Particularly those more subtle moments when we think Jesus is being…direct. We often inject a scold into his voice. Think last week, (Matthew 14:22-33) when he says:
“You of little faith, why did you doubt?”
And we assume it is a criticism. Even as Jesus just taught them that the tiniest speck of faith could transform the laws of nature.
There are many others, of course. Get behind me, Satan and Have you believed because you have seen me? are among the most famous “rebukes” that sound entirely different when we take spoken defilement more seriously.
I suspect Jesus’s redefining of purity and defilement have a tremendous impact on what he learns from the Canaanite woman. Because I’m sure we all know that feeling—like saying something to the class and then Ope! I did it, too!
I also suspect that learning from this teaching has an impact on what we take from Jesus himself.