Mother's Day with Jesus' Other Mother

Would we have a Jesus worth having if it were not for this Canaanite mother? Even though Mother’s Day thrives on sentimentality, let’s stop being sentimental about Jesus. Sentimental comes from the Latin word sentire. It means to form a judgment or hold an opinion based, primarily on feelings rather than thoughtfulness.

As Matthew tells the story, the meeting between this foreign mother and Jesus comes well after his Sermon on the Mount. That is, by the way, another of our opinions about who Jesus is, as well as what he said and did, that we hang onto, more sentimentally, than thoughtfully. We just love those sweet sounding “blesseds” don’t we? Look quickly at Matt 5:43ff. 43You have heard that it was said, 'You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.' 44But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, 45so that you may be children of your Father in heaven; for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous. 46For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? Nice happy thoughts, huh, but not many of us go there much.

We can’t, in all honesty, square the Jesus of the Sermon on the Mount with the Jesus who meets the Canaanite woman. 21Jesus left that place and went away to the district of Tyre and Sidon. 22Just then a Canaanite woman from that region came out and started shouting, "Have mercy on me, Lord, Son of David; my daughter is tormented by a demon." 23But he did not answer her at all. And his disciples came and urged him, saying, "Send her away, for she keeps shouting after us." 24He answered, "I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel." 25But she came and knelt before him, saying, "Lord, help me." 26He answered, "It is not fair to take the children's food and throw it to the dogs." 27She said, "Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters' table." 28Then Jesus answered her, "Woman, great is your faith! Let it be done for you as you wish." And her daughter was healed instantly (Matthew 15:21-28). This is Jesus’ Don Imus moment. Look how he is.

First, in verse 23, he flat out ignores her. Now you can’t make the case that he hasn’t heard her. In the same verse his disciples say, “Yo, you deaf? Can you hear that screeching? The Greek word they use is kradzo. It means to croak, or to screech like a raven.

Most likely to shut them up, he brings them up short with his, suddenly much narrower vision of who he’s to shepherd. Back in 9:35-36 Matthew tells us that after healing the woman with hemorrhages, after raising the synagogue official’s daughter from the dead, seeing crowds of needy people flocking to them in Jewish synagogues, Jesus was moved with compassion.

Here, it seems, seeing this outsider, this foreigner, this Gentile, Jesus is moved with contempt. “It’s not fair,” he says “to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.” Not a phrase our mothers or grandmothers stitch on our throw pillows, is it? I’m tellin’ you, this is Jesus’ Don Imus moment.

Let’s step back. Who is this woman? Start there. Back then, women don’t start conversations with men they don’t know. Women don’t roam the streets unescorted. Canaanite women, or men, don’t go seeking out any Jew, much less some sort of a rabbi. All that said, who we have here is a person with her back up against the wall. Most of us know that feeling, as well as the thoughts that go with it!

What she wants to know is, does this Jesus, and the God who he claims sent him, have anything to offer folk who have their backs against the wall? She seems to have found a flaw in Jesus’ his inclusive humanitarianism. The wisdom of his God (Proverbs 2) - that those who truly seek God will come to understand righteousness and justice and equity - seems to have escaped Jesus’ footpath.

To be fair – and, no, I’m not going to offer any excuses at all for Jesus’ arrogance, classism, racism, or sexism, this is a question that folks with their backs against the wall have been asking Christians for years. Does the Christ we Christians profess, offer a Good News that is concrete and relevant to particular experiences of real, bad news?

Most Christians have still the nasty habit of proclaiming an exclusive Gospel. We also make our proclamations of Good News more burden than grace. We preach a Jesus who asks folk to take up a cross, then we abruptly declare their current states of injustice, oppression, inequity not inhumane conditions which followers of Jesus ought to rail against, but burdens of faith they must bear, as they give out of their neediness to those who have less!

Like Jesus, whose narrow mission focused on the maladies of insiders, we are quicker to talk about the bounty of membership than we are to act in ways that make God’s blessings available to all God’s children. This mother, and all those still walking in her shoes, will have none of that from Jesus. Neither will they abide that kind of alienation from us; no matter we offer it in the name of God.

In her neediness, with her back up against the wall for the sake of her daughter’s wellbeing, she accepts Jesus’ vulgar description of her ethnicity. Kneeling before him in a submissive position, addressing him with a title of reverence, she adopts the oppressive identity he’s used to put her down and says, “Even B-words get to eat scraps from the master’s table. You got any scraps left for the B’s, Mister Rabbi? Cuz I’m thinkin’ Lord Master, that the One who made us both, and my daughter too, in God’s image and likeness, draws on a wisdom that prefers equity to fairness.” See that? She’s doin’ the dozens on him.

By the strength of her “right back at ya” faith in that kind of God, this woman, whose ethnicity, race and gender were held by Jews in Jesus’ day to embody all the wickedness and godlessness of every non-Jew, works a conversion is Jesus’ heart. He now calls her, “Woman,” the same word used in Genesis, for who it was that God made from Adam’s rib. It’s a word reflecting dignity, worth and belonging.

More than that, Jesus describes her faith as great. This is the only place in Matthew’s gospel where Jesus uses that word to describe someone’s faith.

Standing on and in the dignity and worth of her creation as woman, this Canaanite mother does nothing short of rebirthing Jesus. The one who brought the new teaching from the mount, be perfect, literally, be complete and whole as your Father in heaven is complete and whole, is moved to wholeness and completion by the heart of soul of this one who was called godless and wicked.

Here she represents all that God has in mind for the women who would share God’s own life-giving, freedom-bringing, home-making mission for all God’s children. Here she demonstrates for us the height and depth, the length and breadth God is willing to go to make life whole and complete for all those whose backs are up against a wall.

Were it not for her stamina, the charge Jesus gave his disciples, the command we call the great commission, to go out and make all nations disciples of this now inclusive Gospel, might never have been uttered. Were it not for her willingness to suffer the travail Jesus laid on her, we, so-called honorary Jews (Krister Stendahl), would not share in either the grace or the faith she experienced.

She is, for all of us Gentiles, the mother of our faith. By grace, most of us can claim an experience of a woman who has suffered travail for us. By grace most of us can name an encounter with a woman who has borne indignity to bring about our wellbeing. By grace most of us have a relationship with Jesus based on the great faith of a woman we call mother.

Today is a good day not to just find warm feelings for your mama. Today is a good day to make time to think about your mama. Remember her travail. Recall the indignities she bore on your behalf. Remind yourself of her stamina. Reminisce about the ways she sought to distinguish fairness from equity. Recollect her courageous faith.

When you’ve got all that thinking done, notice how you feel, then give God thanks for the gift of God’s own wisdom and presence you’ve seen, heard, touched, tasted, smelled and relished in, with the Mama God chose just for you. Like the Canaanite woman, against all kinds of odds we seldom call to mind, she mothered you best she could.