The Gospel we have heard this morning may sound a little bit confusing (at least it sounded a bit confusing to me when I first read it!) and I think there are two reasons for it that we will need to unpack: One reason of contents, one reason of form.
– As for the contents, the lesson is confusing because it seems to deal with two completely different matters:
- First we see that Jesus is obviously teaching something, but because of the way the texts are broken down in the lectionary, we don’t know what Jesus is talking about, missing the ten first verses of the passage.
- So we have a rather obscure conversation, and then Jesus leaves the place, encounters a woman and (reluctantly it seems) heals her daughter. The two episodes seem to be completely unrelated.
– As for the form of this passage, what is actually disturbing is that Jesus isn’t very “formal” or even polite. Jesus is in fact rather crude and even rude, and this is confusing too. Watch:
- The disciples have to tell Jesus that he has offended the Pharisees with his teaching
- Jesus tells them that they shouldn’t care about their religious rituals around food because it all ends up in the same place when they flush the toilet
- If the Pharisees are blind, the disciples are also stupid for their lack of understanding
- After these words, Jesus leaves the place and heads to a foreign land
- There he meets a woman he first ignores, then rebukes and compares to a dog.
Okay, so now we can take a deep breath and start to ask: What is this all about? What is this all about when Matthew writes this story bringing things together that don’t seem to belong together in this very direct and almost offending way?
Well, again, my first response to that is once again that it’s really, really hard to understand the Gospel if we ignore its context, the context of the text itself, and the cultural and religious context.
So let’s see:
– As for the immediate context:
The controversy is about the ritual of washing of hands. The Pharisees notice that Jesus’s disciples don’t wash their hands before eating, and so they accuse Jesus of authorizing his disciples to break the tradition. Now of course, we generally think that washing our hands before eating is a good idea, but here is the interesting thing. The Pharisees and Jesus are not talking about hygiene. The washing of the hands was a ritual put in place at the dinning table to mimic what the priests did in the sanctuary. I actually learned that the ritual of washing of hands had to be performed with hands already clean (so it’s really not about hygiene!), and even more interesting, only when bread was involved in the meal that was about to be eaten.
It’s really interesting because with that, we get to the larger context of our story. The controversy with the Pharisees about the washing of the hands happens the day after Jesus has fed a multitude of 5000 with five loaves and two fish (see Chap. 14). Not only Jesus has shown extreme generosity and performed an incredible miracle, but for those who are in the know (and they all were at the time!), it is mainly a super evident, crystal clear sign that Jesus is a new Moses, and it could even mean that Jesus embodies God’s presence among the people: He feeds all the people with bread and Matthew takes the time to notice that Jesus did that “in a desert place”. It all points towards the manna. So there we go, there is this extraordinary sign, but all what the Pharisees are worried about is that Jesus, or at least his disciples, didn’t perform the ritual correctly. They didn’t wash their hands. So this Jesus cannot embody God right? He cannot be Moses, because otherwise he would have gone by the law, correct?
Well, when you don’t want to believe, you don’t want to believe, I guess. You always find something to sustain your skepticism. They have this huge sign in front of them, but there are looking at the little, insignificant matter that could cast a doubt, a shadow on Jesus’s ministry. Surely, if he was sent by God, his disciples wouldn’t behave like that. And this explains a little bit more why Jesus is so frustrated with the Pharisees and reminds them, again, that it is not the rite in itself that matters, but rather the intention of the heart (Jesus uses here, at the beginning of Chapter 15, a short example to prove them their hypocrisy, I invite you to look at it at home, because it is too long to explain in our context). But here it is: Then Jesus turns to the disciples and tells them: Food ends up where it needs to end up, it won’t contaminate your soul. And if the Pharisees are blind, the disciples themselves are dumb if they don’t understand what he has been teaching from the beginning: Real religion is from the heart.
Now here we need to stop for a minute because this is an idea that is very important to Matthew: Sin is not out there in the world and we have to stay away to avoid contamination (which is kind of what most Pharisees believed). In Matthew’s, Jesus consistently teaches that sin starts right here inside of us and you may remember the sermon on the mount at this point when Jesus tells the people that their lustful looks and angry words are already adultery and murder. Everything starts within the heart, Now the “heart” in Hebrew does not necessarily means the affection or the feelings. Rather, the heart is where the thoughts are formed, it’s the place of the imagination. And Jesus tells us that it is the place we have to watch out for: Don’t contaminate yourself with your own bitter, twisted thoughts, judging others, plotting revenge. I guess it’s a good reminder for all of us. We don’t need so much to protect ourselves from the world, rather we need to protect ourselves from ourselves. The Bible calls that “guarding our own hearts”.
So that’s the teaching. Now we see why Jesus is really upset and we can understand why. He leaves the area. Make no mistake: Jesus actually leaves Jewish territory. It’s not just that he resumes his trip, it means that he is done, at least for a while. He heads to a remote place to get some peace. Except. Except that now there is this woman who starts pestering the disciples, begging for help. and so what does Jesus do? (that seems very rude): Well, he reminds the woman very explicitly (and when he reminds the woman, he actually reminds the disciples), that if she acknowledges him as “The son of David” she herself is not of the house of Israel, she is not one of the “children” (meaning “children of Abraham“), that she is actually like a dog compared to the elected ones. And he makes it very, very clear so we get the incredible thing he is going to do: He is going to give her the bread. He himself is going to give her the bread, the crumbles under the table, this bread the Jewish leaders despise because it comes with unclean hands when the disciples hand it over to the crowd. Matthew told us a little before that after the multiplying of the bread there were 12 baskets of leftovers (probably collected by each disciple). This woman, a gentile, a pagan, unclean from head to toes according to the religious leaders’ standards, she will get the bread directly from Jesus, the bread being in this case the healing of her daughter who, by the way, is tormented by a demon (I guess we reached the paroxysm of uncleanliness here).
And so again I think Matthew tells the story crude and rude and hard to swallow to make his point very very clear by contrast. The bread, that is not necessarily the miracles but all the spiritual benefits of Jesus’s ministry, this bread is given to those who need it, to those who beg for it with a whole heart, to those who receive it joyfully. And this is what faith is all about. At the end of this chapter, after Jesus has cured the woman’s daughter, all sorts of people come to him and he heals them all, and again he multiplies the bread for them as he did for the Jews and Matthew says about this crowd is that now “(…) they all worshiped the God of Israel” all the gentiles, all the pagans.
So what does it mean for us?
Well, obviously, Jesus does not expect us to be polite and educated worshipers. Rather, Jesus lifts up the woman as an example of one who turns to God when in great need, ready to show her desperation and ready to wrestle in her prayer, a prayer that may resonate with our experience, when we pray in anxiety and are only met with divine silence, when we may feel ignored or dismissed, when we have to make our case, until we are changed, until we see things differently, until we become a different person, until we find true faith, as this woman had to trust that God will do her justice. And notice the power of her praying on behalf of someone else: “Have mercy on Me” she says “my daughter is tormented“. Her daughter’s pain is her own pain. I think it’s important for us to be reminded of that when like today we come forward to the altar to ask for healing, for us and those we love. We have to keep asking and wrestle with God until something – or someone – changes. Prayer isn’t a polite conversation, prayer is a matter of (spiritual) life or death. The question the Gospel asks us today is about how willing we are to engage in this kind of prayer, prayer for us and on behalf of the world. Every week we participate in the multiplication of the loaves, receiving the spiritual benefit of the Eucharistic feast, every week each one of us walks out with a full basket of the leftover crumbs: What do we do with them?