“Truth, Lord, yet the little dogs eat of the crumbs which
fall from their masters’ table”
It is a powerful and amazing Gospel story. And very disturbing. I wonder if we can hear it. Sometimes, I think, ours is the culture of fragile, wounded and broken souls, strong, perhaps, mostly in its sense of entitlement and in its sense of injury. This story surely disturbs and disquiets us. Why?
Consider what we see here. A mother whose daughter is sick. Ordinarily, we may uphold the strength of a parents’ love for their children as being quite powerful and most strong. Isaiah, in a remarkable passage asks the question whether “a woman can forget her sucking child” and suggests that even that form of love is not as strong as God’s love. “Even these may forget, yet I will not forget you,” he has God say. His point is that our human loves are always incomplete in comparison to the divine love. “Behold, I have graven you on the palms of my hands,” God says in a wonderful image.
And yet, we may wonder about such loves, the love of a mother for her child as a limited love and the unlimited, unforgetting love of God, in the wake of this story. We may see here the power of a mother’s love for her daughter, to be sure, but we may question the love of God. If the love of God is what we are meant to see in Jesus Christ, then that love seems very odd, harsh and strange; indeed, disturbing. So what then are we to make of this story?
Again, let us consider more closely what we see and hear. Jesus goes into the coasts of Tyre and Sidon. A woman from those same coasts comes to him. She is described by Matthew as a Caananite woman. Mark describes her as a Syro-Phoenician woman. In either case, the point is clear. She is not an Israelite. She is from outside of Israel. But she cries out to Jesus, “Have mercy on me, thou Son of David, for my daughter is grievously vexed with a devil.”
She has a hold of something which is quite important and quite intriguing. She sees something in Jesus, a divine power that is capable of effecting the healing of her daughter. What she has a hold of is a truth, a true insight into who Jesus is and who he is for us. And, as we shall see, she never lets go of that insight. That is the power of the story and one of the important reasons for its being read on the Second Sunday in Lent.
But who is Jesus? Is he simply a Jewish Messiah? A saviour only for the people of Israel? Is the mercy of God constrained to just one group of people? In a way, the story in all of its strangeness raises those questions. Is the mission of Jesus, the son of David, a Messianic title, just for the Jews?
She comes to Jesus seeking the healing of her daughter. She explicitly names the healing as a form of mercy. Mercy, of course, is a property of God. Somehow that is what she sees in Jesus. “But he answered her not a word.” We all know how troubling silences can sometimes be, the so-called ‘silent treatment’ when we are being dismissed or completely ignored. And then, as if that were not bad enough, the disciples complain to Jesus, asking him to send her away because she is bothering them! Jesus responds to them but in the hearing of the woman. “I am not sent, but unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” It would seem to suggest that his mission is only to the people of Israel.
That remark would be enough to put off many of us, I suspect, but not this unnamed woman who does something quite remarkable. She kneels before him and simply says, “Lord, help me.” Her kneeling is the visible expression of her quest for mercy. She kneels before the Lord. Surely, that will do the trick. But no.
Jesus says to her something which is absolutely disturbing, harsh and hard. “It is not right to take the children’s bread and to cast it to dogs.” He is referring to the children of Israel and to her as a dog! It is to add insult to injury. What on earth is going on here, we may ask?
Her response to this insult and rebuke is absolutely astounding. “Truth, Lord, yet the little dogs eat of the crumbs which fall from their masters’ table.” We may say that she is persistent and that is partly the point of this gospel. She exemplifies the idea of persistence and perseverance in prayer. But her statement here is also about her deep insight in the reality of Christ and what he means for us. She recognizes that though his mission begins with Israel and comes out of Israel, it is not just for Israel. She sees in Jesus the greater reality of his being the saviour of all mankind.
Her persistence here is not just stubborn wilfulness, stamping her feet and insisting on having her way and her say. No. It is said while she is still kneeling. And it is said, I think, calmly and clearly and strongly. There is a remarkable strength in her persistent humility, if I may put it that way.
She holds on to what she sees in Jesus. And through her holding on, what she sees is brought out into the open for the disciples and for us to see. It is as if the heart of God is broken open through her persistent quest, but only because that heart wills to be broken open for us. Such is the greater pageant of Lent, after all, in the way of the Cross. Jesus’ response is immediate and direct and, in a way, it is another rebuke, but not of the woman this time, but of the disciples and, more generally, of Israel. “O woman, great is thy faith: be it done unto thee even as thou wilt.” And her daughter, we are told, “was made whole from that very hour.”
She has not been put off by circumstances or by others or even by these difficult and testing words of Christ, statements which elicit from her one of the most beautiful statements of faith in the whole of the New Testament. “Truth, Lord,” she says, acknowledging the Jewish origins of Jesus and his mission, but then goes on to bring out its deeper truth. “Even the little dogs eat of the crumbs which fall from their masters’ table.” She has done him one better, not just a dog but a little dog. There is the quality of ironic humility in her remark. “Even the little dogs eat of the crumbs which fall from their masters’ table,” she says. How much more are we fed from the crumbs which fall from the Master’s table!
This Gospel story has its application for us in the liturgy in one of the devotional prayers that belong to our approach to the table of the Master, the prayer of humble access. It evokes this gospel scene, reminding us that we do not come out of sense of entitlement, “trusting in our own righteousness,” as if God owes us, but humbly, trusting instead “in thy manifold and great mercies,” recognising that “we are not worthy so much as to gather up the crumbs under thy table.” The prayer derives its force and power from this incredible and powerful gospel story.
It teaches us about perseverance and persistence in prayer, to be sure, but it also teaches us about the heart of mercy that is, ultimately, revealed in Jesus Christ. That is what this remarkable woman has a hold of and she never lets go. May we say with her this day and this Lent:
“Truth, Lord, yet the little dogs eat of the crumbs which
fall from their masters’ table”
Fr. David Curry
Christ Church, Lent II, 2011