“Crumbs Are Enough”
Psalm 67 and Matthew 15:21-28
Allen Huff
Jonesborough Presbyterian Church
8/20/23
Let God grant us grace and bless us;
let God make his face shine on us,
2so that your way becomes known on earth,
so that your salvation becomes known
among all the nations.
3Let the people thank you, God!
Let all the people thank you!
4Let the people celebrate
and shout with joy
because you judge the nations fairly
and guide all nations on the earth.
5Let the people thank you, God!
Let all the people thank you!
6The earth has yielded its harvest.
God blesses us—our God blesses us!
7Let God continue to bless us;
let the far ends of the earth honor him.
(Psalm 67 – CEB)
21 From there, Jesus went to the regions of Tyre and Sidon. 22 A Canaanite woman from those territories came out and shouted, “Show me mercy, Son of David. My daughter is suffering terribly from demon possession.” 23 But he didn’t respond to her at all.
His disciples came and urged him, “Send her away; she keeps shouting out after us.”
24 Jesus replied, “I’ve been sent only to the lost sheep, the people of Israel.”
25 But she knelt before him and said, “Lord, help me.”
26 He replied, “It is not good to take the children’s bread and toss it to dogs.”
27 She said, “Yes, Lord. But even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall off their masters’ table.”
28 Jesus answered, “Woman, you have great faith. It will be just as you wish.” And right then her daughter was healed. (Matthew 15:21-28 - CEB)
I wish I could gloss over the fact that Jesus refers to a Canaanite woman and her ethnic kin as dogs. That comment is particularly baffling in light of the teaching that immediately precedes this encounter.
In a dispute that started with some Pharisees complaining that Jesus’ disciples fail to wash their hands before meals, Jesus says that it’s not what goes into a person that matters. Rather, what comes out of the mouth reveals the heart. So, what’s in Jesus’ heart when he speaks to this woman in such offensive terms?
Over the centuries, the most common defense of Jesus says that he didn’t really mean what he said. Already knowing how the woman would respond, he choreographed a teachable moment with spiritually-principled compassion and a touch of good-natured teasing.
That argument asks us to accept that God Incarnate looked at this woman and called her a dog in order to make the point that her faith was strong. And he said that to her to tell us that if our faith is equally strong, our children will be healthy. Our bank accounts will be full. Our nation will prevail. And everyone will get along at Thanksgiving dinner.
Through two millennia of the Christian faith, this passage has been used to justify judgment of and disdain for those who are poor, or whose ethnicity or gender is deemed inferior, or whose sexuality is deemed dangerous, or whose religion is considered wrong. And since Jesus said it, then it must be okay to treat “those people” like some neighborhood cur.
If that sounds harsh, just remember the arguments the Church has made—thatwe have made—in defense of atrocities like the Crusades, the Inquisition, slavery, segregation, lynching, the Holocaust. And think about the arguments the Church continues to make in defense of humankind’s appetite for excessive wealth, and our wasteful use of resources to develop and maintain enough weaponry to destroy this planet several times over.
And it’s not just as disciples of Jesus, but as the very Body of Christ himself that the Church has doggedly mistreated the very people on whom Jesus focused during his ministry.
While the Church does lots of wonderful things, it sometimes feels like we allow this one, brief instance, when Jesus acts more like a disciple than a Savior, to define us.
Come on, Preacher! Ease up a little! We’re already beat down. Here we are in the dog days of summer. Covid’s making a comeback. Much of our society is spiraling. Storms, fires, and floods are killing people, destroying forests, property, and peace of mind. It’s like someone we love is sick. Where is God in all this? Where’s our hope and our confidence? Quit tearing us down!
Does anyone feel that way? Well, what if I just said that “it’s not good to take the children’s bread and toss it to the dogs”? How would you respond if I said that we don’t matter because Jesus came to the lost sheep of the house of Israel? And let’s face it, you and I, we’re Gentiles. If I said that, would you keep coming to worship?
The Canaanite woman keeps coming—hounding Jesus for her daughter’s sake. She knows that this Galilean Jew knows, or that he will at least remember, that she matters and her daughter matters, because Gentile lives matter.
Maybe one of the many reasons the Church is in decline is that contemporary disciples have been experiencing a continual contraction of faith, a regression. It’s like the Church is becoming less and less like the Body of the resurrected Christ and more and more like the disciples before Good Friday.
Russell Moore, a former leader within the Southern Baptist Convention, and now the editor of Christianity Today, recently said that numerous evangelical pastors have told him that members of their congregations have begun challenging them after their sermons. The parishioners want to know where the preachers got those “liberal talking points,” points like, Blessed are the meek, blessed are the poor, turn the other cheek, love and pray for your enemy.
“‘I’m literally quoting Jesus,’” say the pastors.
Unmoved, these “followers of Jesus” respond saying, That doesn’t work anymore. It’s weak.
“When we get to [that] point,” says Russell Moore, “we’re in a crisis.”1
In their own crisis, trying to project bigotry as authority and strength, the disciples say, Go away, Canaanite woman. There’s not enough of Jesus for us and for you.
Brush me off like a crumb from your beard, she says, but crumbs are enough. A crumb from Jesus can restore my daughter.
Even this deep into Jesus’ ministry, the disciples still have to learn to accept the truth that, as Paul will say, “God chose what the world considers foolish to shame the wise…what the world considers weak to shame the strong…[and] what the world considers low-class and low-life—what is considered to be nothing—to reduce what is considered something to nothing. So no human being can brag in God’s presence.” (1Corinthians 1:27-29) And while Jesus’ response does take an inexplicable detour, he finally demonstrates to everyone who follows him that this woman and her daughter are children of God as fully as any priest, Pharisee, or ordinary Jew. As individuals and as a population, Canaanites deserve to be seen, heard, welcomed, valued, respected, and protected exactly the same as anyone from Bethlehem, Nazareth, or Jerusalem.
When the Church proclaims faith in Jesus and still treats certain people as less-than-worthy, when it withholds the holy gift of welcome from strangers, and the transforming gift of advocacy from people who are oppressed, it declares that it has given up on God’s mercy and grace. It has given up on Resurrection! When people live selfishly and fearfully, crumbs are never enough. Selfishness and fear provoke us to hoard and guard what we have and to grasp for more.
Brothers and Sisters, in the power of the Holy Spirit, God has raised Jesus! And his resurrection empowers us for embracing an entirely new understanding of abundance. If the tiniest seed and the smallest measure of yeast are enough to reveal God’s realm, then crumbs are all we need to follow Jesus and to live as his Body—as his hands, and feet, and heart in and for the world.
Seeing the agony of the Father and the Son foreshadowed in the agony of a Canaanite mother and her daughter, Jesus lives generously and loves fearlessly for them, and for all of us. He sees that we are all one, and his own hunger is for humankind to live in unity and wholeness. He hungers for us to see ourselves in the faces, in the sufferings, in the joys, in the potential, and in the beauty of every human being and of the Earth itself.
As we begin to see and to celebrate our oneness, we begin to see that God, in Christ, through the power of the Holy Spirit, is healing us, crumb by crumb, and making us whole.
1https://newrepublic.com/post/174950/christianity-today-editor-evangelicals-call-jesus-liberal-weak
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