In the last four episodes we’ve looked at the late Gail O’Day’s piece entitled “Surprised by Faith: Jesus and the Canaanite Woman” that appeared in the volume A Feminist Companion to Matthew.1 (Be sure to check out those episodes if you haven’t already.) Today we will conclude our series on O’Day’s piece by looking at how the Canaanite woman’s retort to Jesus in Matthew 15 can be understood in light of psalms of lament. Here is Matthew 15:25-28 as it appears in the New Revised Standard Version:
25 But she came and knelt before him saying, “Lord, help me.” 26 He answered, “It is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.” 27 She said, “Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters’ table.” 28 Then Jesus answered her, “Woman, great is your faith! Let it be done for you as you wish.” And her daughter was healed instantly.
In her article, O’Day notes that in psalms of lament petitioners are typically relentless in reminding God of his promises. “When the circumstances of life seem to void them,” she writes, “Israel does not run away from God, defeated, but instead confronts God directly” (p. 124). Using psalms of lament as the interpretive framework by which we can understand this pericope in Matthew, the woman is also “infused with this same spirit of defiant resistance to despair, and bold faith in God’s promises,” to quote O’Day.
As I noted in the last episode, referring to the woman and her child as “dogs” was no doubt offensive. But it is telling that the Canaanite woman absorbs the blow, granting for the sake of her daughter’s well-being the truth of Jesus’s maxim. She will not let her pride get in the way, despite Jesus’s negative attitude. Indeed, her response to his insult is precisely what changes his mind. And in all this, there is great irony, as O’Day herself observes. She writes,
This woman, who shows herself to be full heiress of Israel’s tradition of lament, is not Jewish at all, but Canaanite. She is not of the chosen people, yet she clings resolutely to their promise. The Canaanite woman is more faithful, indeed, more authentically Jewish, than many of the Jews whom Jesus encounters. She is a fuller embodiment of Jewish traditions than Jesus’ own disciples, who want to dismiss her because she is a foreigner and an irritant. (p. 124)
Her persistence pays off.
What is fascinating about this pericope is that it depicts Jesus as one who is at first stubborn but then is willing to help. Normally, Jesus is in complete control but here it is the woman who has the commanding presence. And it is her humble yet clever retort that influences him to change his mind. In fact, some scholars detect in this scene the impetus for Jesus changing his mind about gentiles generally. Here is James McGrath in his excellent book What Jesus Learned from Women:
That Jesus might have been impressed in the short term, and changed more profoundly in the longer term, is…in keeping with his character as we see it depicted in the Gospels…. It might even be that the developing Gospel tradition reflects not so much a desire to improve how Jesus comes across in stories like this one, but an increasing willingness on the part of later authors to incorporate perspectives that Jesus was known to have held later in his public activity…. Just as Jesus seems to have been willing to change his mind on this occasion in the short term, deciding to heal the daughter when initially he refused, he may also have changed his mind about gentiles in more profound ways as he looked back on this encounter and others and took them to heart.2
While a Jesus who changes his mind may be anathema in some corners of Christendom, it nevertheless seems to be precisely what is going on in this passage. In so doing, it presents a very human Jesus, one who held his own prejudices but, when confronted, experiences a change of heart. It is easy to be hateful in the abstract. But often when we are exposed to people who differ from us and we see just how like us they really are, we may find ourselves changing our predispositions toward them, toward “the other.”
This scene in Matthew, taken from the Gospel of Mark, is cleverly cast by the Evangelist in terms of Israel’s psalms of lament. Consequently, the woman’s role in the story is highlighted all the more because she is now comparable to faithful Israel though she is herself cast as Israel’s ancient foe, the Canaanites. Here to close is O’Day:
Using the idiom of Israel’s lament, Matthew narrates a story that shows the power and possibility inherent in boldly insisting that God be faithful to God’s promises. In the voice of this marginal woman who would not be silenced even when no one seemed to listen, we hear the resilience of faith. The Canaanite woman’s faith insisted on the fulfillment of the gospel promise, and Matthew asks that we, like Jesus himself, listen to her and be transformed through a faith like hers: persistent, vigorous, and confident in God’s faithfulness to God’s promises. (p. 125)
That’s all the time we’ve got this week. See you next time! And remember, in the words of Richard Elliot Friedman, “One does not need to deny what is troubling [about the Bible] in order to pay respect to what is heartening.” Thanks for stopping by.
- Gail R. O’Day, “Surprised by Faith: Jesus and the Canaanite Woman,” in A Feminist Companion to Matthew, edited by Amy-Jill Levine with Marianne Blickenstaff (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2001), 114-125. ↩︎
- James F. McGrath, What Jesus Learned from Women (Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2021), 99. ↩︎
The Amateur Exegete 