Shout

Text: Matthew 15:21-28

Some years ago, I read a most peculiar assessment done by the Environmental Protection Agency. In it, the EPA had lowered its official estimate of life’s value from about $8.04 million to about $7.22 million. Journalist David Fahrenthold writes, “This value [of human life] is routinely calculated by several agencies, each putting its own dollar figure on the worth of life – not any particular person’s life, just that of a generic American. The figure is then used to judge whether potentially lifesaving policy measures are really worth the cost.” He concludes, “Now, for the first time, the EPA has used this little-known process to devalue life” (Wash. Post.).”

         A quick reading of the encounter between Jesus and the Canaanite woman leaves you wondering if Jesus had just gotten a memo from the first-century equivalent of the EPA. At first, Jesus ignores the woman altogether. Then you wish he would have continued to do so. When he finally speaks, Jesus tells the Gentile woman that he has come into the world for Jews only. Then, to push his point, he uses the slang for Gentiles and calls her “a dog.” A quick reading of this story leaves you pretty sure that the Gentile woman’s life and that of her daughter could not be further devalued, even by the EPA.

Lest we misread this troubling story, though, there is some back story to be told. Though the Canaanite woman is the only character in Matthew 15 to be described as “shouting,” there is considerable shouting going on throughout the chapter. First, the religious authorities from Jerusalem arrive in town and they start shouting at the disciples of Jesus about not washing their hands. They are shouting not about bad hygiene but about ignoring religious tradition that these disciples have been taught to honor since childhood. More accurately, the religious authorities are shouting at Jesus for condoning such bad behavior by his disciples.

And sweet, quiet, meek little Jesus shouts right back at them. He knows that “washing hands” is code language for not touching anything or anyone that Old Testament law would consider unclean, such as forbidden foods, a diseased person OR a Gentile.

Jesus shouts back at these keepers of tradition with a graphic anatomical metaphor. He says that what defiles us, keeps us at an arm’s distance from God, is not whether we wash our hands or eat shrimp or touch a corpse. What defiles us is the toxic waste that spills from our hearts and flows out of our mouths.

And then Jesus keeps shouting. He accuses the most respected religious figures of his day of loving their segregating tradition more than loving God, and worse, of hiding behind their tradition to defy God. Jesus will not be brow beaten by Bible toting religious zealots who can quote every verse of Scripture while ignoring the radical love of God and neighbor that is at the heart of Scripture.

You see, there is shouting and then there is shouting. I joined some friends at a Braves game at the Nats stadium earlier this summer. The company was great but the game was a total disaster as the Nats beat us like a drum. Worse though was a nearby misguided Braves fan who possessed one of the shrillest voices I have ever had the misfortune of hearing. She felt a ceaseless need to defend our hapless Braves by shouting at a decibel range that the near deaf could hear clearly, “Go Braves.”

I mention her because she made me think about the disciples when all the shouting started in this story. As soon as Jesus left the shouting of the religious leaders from Jerusalem, he took his disciples into the toxic waste territory of Tyre and Sidon, a region literally awash with Gentiles. That is where some new shouting began from an unlikely source. A Canaanite woman, a certified unwashed, Gentile – someone to be avoided at all costs, if you wished to be considered ritually clean – started shouting for help from Jesus.

The Greek tense of the verb that is translated “shouting” suggests that this woman did not shout once, but like the Braves’ fan, she kept shouting and shouting. As I said earlier, there is shouting and then there is shouting.  Matthew says the anonymous woman made the annoying Braves fan seem like she was whispering.

The Canaanite mother’s shouting is the same verb of the scream or shriek coming from a woman at childbirth. This woman’s daughter was dying and she was not worried about protocol or tradition or annoying anyone, including Jesus. She was a desperate woman who was going to be heard!

It is hard to say if the disciples were annoyed by this woman’s persistence or the deafening sound of her voice or by her nerve to impose her dirty Gentile self on the pure, righteous Jew, Jesus. She shouts and the disciples plead with Jesus to make her stop. Remarkably, though, Jesus does nothing. He does not say anything or do anything. He is just silent. His silence is as deafening as are her shouts. At this point, you can almost hear the lament of the Psalmist, “O my God, I cry by day, but you do not answer” (Ps. 22:2).

The Canaanite woman keeps shouting and finally Jesus speaks. He tells her the hard, religious truth. He is a Jew and has come to fulfill God’s promise to his people. Then this no-named, desperate mother, shouting Gentile woman does what several no-named Gentile magi first do in chapter 2 of Matthew’s Gospel, she kneels before Jesus – something that never entered the minds of the shouting Pharisees from headquarters.

  This shouting woman kneels before Jesus but that does not change what Jesus tells her. In fact, he switches to slang and tells her that, no matter her need, he has come to address the need of his own people, not the “dogs,” i.e., Gentiles.

That should end the story. It usually does for me. When I need something desperately, I can be pretty persistent and that may be an understatement, but there comes a point when I am hoarse and can shout no longer. I know that no one is listening, no one cares. It is time to give up and go home and I do. Well, not this remarkable woman. She will not stop her shouting and she says that she is willing to accept any crumbs that might spill from the table because she knows who is the host of the table. Though a Gentile through and through, she never doubts that Israel’s hope is her hope as well. She seems to know this better than Jesus does at this point.

I am always stunned by this story, first by the silence and then worse, by the tough talk from Jesus. Mostly, though I am stunned that a certifiably unclean dog from a toxic waste area in Palestine keeps on shouting, refusing to be silenced by the voices of a religiously sanitized tradition or by the dictates of public decorum. She keeps on shouting because her faith is too great and the stakes are too high.

  The tough words from Jesus may shock our 21st century ears, but I can promise you that they did not shock hers. It is not the first time that a Jew had described her and her child as “dogs.” She had heard it all before, but she refuses to be quiet when there is something that must be said. 

I wish I knew her name. I wish I could ask her where she found the courage to keep shouting and the faith to know that Jesus would finally listen and God would surely care. I wish I could ask her and all her kin to forgive me and the church for all those times when we have walked away from her piercing cry for help or have hid behind respectable religious excuses explaining why we have no responsibility to care for her kind, whether in Tyre and Sidon or in Gaza.

I will never know her name, but I do know that she would not be silenced by stereotype or rendered mute by the holiest of religious traditions.  She loved her daughter too much to be silent. She would revere Jesus, but she would not take his initial “Not for you and your kind” answer. She would not settle for anything less than the gift of his healing grace for her daughter. She would shout until by her piercing cry and profound faith, new hope was born.

I know it is still the summer and that you and I live in the genteel South, but I pray whenever justice is being denied and human need is being ignored that you and I may draw courage from this amazing woman and with her faith and with her lungs stand at the throne of God and: shout!

  AMEN