What if We’ve Been Reading the Canaanite Woman (Matthew 15.21-28) Incorrectly? Or, Jesus is Not a Jerk, He is Teaching the Disciples

Background:

• In Matthew 13, Jesus teaches publicly and then explains privately to his disciples

• In Matthew 15.1-20, Jesus is teaching publicly about defilement and about the Pharisees being more concerned with traditions than with God’s Word .  We should expect a private explanation.

• In John 4, Jesus talks with a woman at a well, and never seems to be talking right to her.  He seems to talk around her. 

• John 10 has lots of sheep language, including: "I have other sheep that do not belong to this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice. So there will be one flock, one shepherd." (John 10.16)

• The RCL appoints Isaiah 56 to be heard alongside this reading.  Isaiah 56 includes: 

Thus says the Lord God,

   who gathers the outcasts of Israel,

I will gather others to them

   besides those already gathered.

Another take on the pericope -  Jesus Explaining His Mission to His Disciples:

Woman’s words	Jesus’ words	Interpretation	Next reaction
Have mercy on me, Lord, Son of David; my daughter is tormented by a demon.	Silence	Waiting to see what the disciples will do. Waiting to see if they connect his teaching with this situation	Disciples ask Jesus to send the woman away.
	I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel	He is speaking to his disciples, not the woman here.  She is allowed to eavesdrop though.  “Lost sheep” is not far from “outcasts of Israel” in Isaiah 56. Jesus is seeing if disciples will make the leap to see that “lost sheep of Israel” includes her.	Woman comes and kneels at Jesus’ feet
Lord help me	It is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs	Again, Jesus is not talking to the woman, but to the disciples.  The woman is part of the explanation of the previous teaching to the disciples but they still don’t get it.  Perhaps also, Jesus is saying what the disciples are thinking…
Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters’ table.	Woman, great is your faith! Let it be done for you as you wish	This time, Jesus is talking to the woman.  He responds to her with approval and grants her request.	The woman’s daughter was healed instantly

Hopefully, the disciples and the readers of the Gospel are thinking at this point.  Oh, so faith is a matter of the heart (15.19).  We’re supposed to look at people’s faith and not at earthly markers of belonging.  And we’re all just lost sheep. Jesus, you could have just said that…

Notes:

• I have no need to defend God’s unchangingness.  God changes the divine mind in Scripture.  If the Calvinists have a problem with that, let them deal with it.

• I don’t mind using more than one Gospel for interpretation.  

• I reject the idea that this lesson revolves around Jesus’ humanity, as if racism and bigotry was inherent to human nature before the fall.  Jesus, the new Adam, is not tainted by that. 

• I reject the idea that Jesus has given up some of the divine nature in order to “learn” in this reading.  Such teaching falls into heresy by not claiming that Jesus is fully divine.   

Art: Watanabe, Sadao, 1913-1996. Woman of Canaan, from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN. http://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=57538 [retrieved August 16, 2020]. Original source: https://americanart.si.edu/artwork/woman-canaan-26809.