KES Chapel Reflection, Week of 11 March
“Even the little dogs eat of the crumbs which fall from their masters’ table”
Long before there was the felt need for International Women’s Day in our ever expanding advocacy culture, there was this story. It is the story of the Canaanite or Syro-Phoencian woman. It is the story of a very remarkable and strong woman and yet a most disturbing and troubling story. Crises bring out the best and the worst in people, it is sometimes said, but it is not ‘either/or’ so much as ‘both/and’. Sometimes the best and the worst are on display whether or not in equal measure is another matter.
This remarkable and strong woman is not an Israelite, that is to say, she is from outside of Israel, a non-Jew. And yet she shows what it means to be a true Israelite indeed, namely, one who wrestles or strives with God. Just so Jacob was renamed Israel. Part of what makes the exchange between this woman and Jesus so compelling is that it is really a form of self-criticism, a feature of the intellectual and ethical teachings of the religions and philosophies of the world. The story involves a critique of Israel and by extension to all and any who think that truth is something which they possess to the exclusion of others; in short, a denial of its universality. The modern version is the deconstructionist notion that there is only ‘your truth’ and ‘my truth’ which is really no truth. The idea of being self-critical is an important feature of the Christian journey of Lent but it is equally an important feature of ethical reflection in many other traditions.
This woman undertakes a journey in seeking out Jesus not for herself but for the healing of her daughter who is “grievously vexed with a devil.” That, too, is a contemporary concern in our culture of addiction, namely, the way in which we become dependent upon substances or digital devices and lose any proper sense of agency and responsibility. This strong woman has a hold of something which she knows and which she will not let go. This is her strength. It is a kind of prophetic insight or intellectus into the intellectual and spiritual principle of reality. It is not a kind of discursive reason, moving from one thing to another, but a simple and profound grasp of the truth itself as glimpsed and seen in Jesus.
That alone is wonderful but is almost eclipsed by the strange and troubling exchange. She asks for mercy for her daughter only to be greeted first with silence, then with dismissal and contempt by the disciples who complain to Jesus that she is bothering them. Jesus’ first response is really to them to state what in fact seems to be their thinking: “I am not sent, but unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel,” thus dismissing her as well, it seems. To this she kneels and simply says, “Lord, help me.”