Crumbs under the Table

Jesus has just been questioned by the scribes and Pharisees about his disciples not following the traditional hand washing rituals when they eat. The encounter ended with Jesus quoting the prophet Isaiah, “This people honors me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me.” Their words and their actions don’t match. Then, Jesus calls the people to him and teaches them that it is not what a person eats that makes him or her unclean, it is what comes out of their mouth. What comes out of our mouths comes straight from our hearts. Jesus says, “…out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, fornication, theft, false witness, slander. These are what defile a person; but to eat with unwashed hands does not defile a person.”

And then, Jesus withdraws to the region of Tyre and Sidon, where the exchange we read this morning between Jesus and the Canaanite dog take place. It’s as bad as it sounds. Preachers and scholars have tried to explain this woman’s interaction with Jesus. We don’t know the reason Jesus called her a dog. We know it was a common slur of the time. Was he continuing his lesson, now just to the disciples, that what comes out of your mouth reveals your heart? Did he want the disciples to be shocked and then reflect on their own behavior? Was he tired and his fully humanness showing more than his full divinity? Was he focused on his mission, and this family and their problem was beyond it? Was he testing the woman’s faith? Or maybe his tone of voice kind and inviting, speaking to the woman with a twinkle in his eye, inviting her to engage and teach the disciples (and us) a lesson. We don’t know. What we do know is that this exchange took place. There is no way that the Gospel writers would have shared this story if it didn’t happen. They would not have recorded Jesus saying these things – harsh, painful words – if he didn’t say them. So, it is incumbent upon us to consider the story carefully.

Jesus has withdrawn, away from Galilee, north to the region of Tyre and Sidon. The region is along the Mediterranean sea, in what is now Lebanon; then, it was about 35 miles from the Sea of Galilee to Tyre, and Sidon was another 20 miles up the coast. The location is important because it is along the border – along the northern border of Israel and along the border of interaction with Egypt as ships came and went from these ports. We are in the outskirts of the Promised Land. And we are at the outskirts of God’s promises…at least traditionally. And a Canaanite woman approaches Jesus – it is important to note that there were not people known as Canaanites any more. Canaan was the name of the land given to Abraham, it is the land of promise, known now as Israel. When the Israelites returned from Egypt, after wandering in the desert for 40 years, God commanded them to destroy the Canaanites completely, to wipe them out. Canaanites were the traditional enemy of God’s people. Women were traditionally not to speak to men in public. She comes about a child, traditionally seen as a burden of little worth, and not only that, a child possessed by demons. Do you see how far to the border we have gone – we are well beyond not properly washing our hands before we eat! We are physically at the border of God’s promised land, we are socially at the border talking to a person whose ancestors somehow escaped God’s order for them to be destroyed, this person is a woman, and the topic is a child, and problem takes us to the spiritual border of holy and demonic.

Our translation politely describes the woman as crying out to Jesus. The verb is the word used to describe the shrieking of labor pains. She is making a scene. Jesus ignores her. The disciples are bothered. “Send her away; she is shrieking after us.” And Jesus answers them, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” She is beyond my mission. To be fair, Jesus is only recorded to have healed 3 Gentiles. And he wasn’t a traveling doctor. He didn’t set up clinic wherever he went to heal everyone in the region. Jesus’ healings were signs meant to affirm his identity as the Messiah, God’s anointed Savior of God’s people, Israel.

This woman, though, this Canaanite woman, knows who he is. “Have mercy on me, O Lord; Son of David” she shrieks. “Lord, help me,” she moans as she kneels at his feet. “It is not fair,” he tells her, “to take the children’s bread and throw it to the dogs.” Every parent knows that is true. Even if the children aren’t eating their food, we don’t take it away and feed it to the dog. Traditionally, the people of Israel are the children of God, and the Canaanites have been treated as dogs.

The efforts to smooth out this conversation have pointed out that the Greek word here for dog is the one used to describe pets. But, that doesn’t help when you dig another layer and remember that Jesus spoke Aramaic, and there was no distinct word to describe pet dogs in Aramaic that was different from the word used as a slur against those who were less than, the dogs who were unclean scavengers of the street – skinny, savage, diseased, wild.

“Yes, Lord,” the dog answers, “yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters’ table.” She knows who he is, and she knows who she is. She knows he is the master and she is as lowly as a begging, mangy dog. The Israelites, the children, have long since lost any appreciation for the gift of being fed. They take it for granted. They believe they deserve it. And so, they don’t see Jesus; they don’t recognize their Lord. Instead, they question him, why do he and his disciples not follow the traditions of their elders? They can’t see that God has placed bread on the table for them. But this woman, she begs for bread, she sees how good it is, she recognizes the Lord and claims him as her own Lord.

I wonder who we would be today, if Jesus passed through this region. Would we be the disciples, trying to quiet the shrieking? Would we clean up downtown and take the homeless to another city on buses – because we do that when a big event happens, every city in America does. Would we cordon off streets to keep protestors at bay? Would we try to shield him from shouts of criticism that the kingdom has clearly not yet come – look at our state, we killed Nick Sutton February 20th, a man who had become a force for God within the prison system and whose last words were, “If I could leave one thing with all of you, it is, don’t ever give up on the ability of Jesus Christ to fix someone or a problem. He can fix anything. Don’t ever underestimate His ability. He has made my life meaningful and fruitful through my relationships with family and friends. So, even in my death, I am coming out a winner” surely the anti-capital punishment people would be out there shrieking – and the Civil Rights activists pointing out that there are more slaves in the world today than there have been at any other point in human history, and the mission groups like Rise Against Hunger trying to eradicate hunger worldwide by 2030, using food to encourage education, the equality shriekers, the justice seekers– send them away, Jesus. Would we be the Pharisees and scribes, reminding Jesus of tradition and history? Or would we be the ones shrieking to Jesus to heal the demon-possessed, evil places in our world?

I keep thinking of that 2017 Lifeway research poll that I mentioned in the service on Wednesday, 33% of Americans do not believe that they are sinners.

When the Church of England split off from the Catholic Church, they wanted liturgy written in English, instead of the Latin that the Catholic Church was still using for mass. And Archbishop Thomas Cranmer wrote and published new liturgy in 1548. One of the prayers has come to be known as the Prayer of Humble Access. For a time, it was adopted by most Protestant churches in the Communion liturgy. It is in our Book of Worship from 1993. But, it is no longer a popular prayer to use in worship. Over time, have we become the scribes and Pharisees, more concerned about what goes into our mouths than what comes out of our hearts? In our privilege and wealth, have we become more concerned about status quo than the low of the low? Have we forgotten that we are the low of the low, too, when we approach God.

The Prayer of Humble Access confesses our relationship to God, “We do not presume to come to your table, merciful Lord, trusting in our own righteousness, but in your great love and countless acts of mercy. We are not even worthy to gather up the crumbs under your table, but you are the Lord who always delights in showing mercy.”

As we come to this table, we are invited by Jesus to eat of the bread as children of God, but not because we deserve it, not because we earn it, but because we know we don’t and place our faith in him.