At the Table

 

Matthew 15:10-28

August 16, 2020

 

            A favorite movie of mine from the 1980’s was War Games starring a young Matthew Broderick. In the movie, Broderick played an underachieving high-school genius and computer geek hacker before any of us understood what a computer geek or a hacker was. We certainly had no idea how important and central computers and technology were going to be in our lives when that movie premiered.

            Broderick’s character, David Lightman, could barely be bothered to keep up with his actual studies, but he would spend hours in front of his computer. He was able to hack into the computers at school and change his grades. He was able to hack into an airline’s reservations hub and make reservations for a flight to Paris. And while searching for a way into a software company, and their new roster of games, David inadvertently connects with a military computer and engages its list of war games. With the advice of some other computer genius/geek/hackers, he figure out the backdoor password to the military’s computer and starts a war simulation gave. Without fully realizing just what he was doing, David almost causes an international incident between the United States and what most of us knew as the Soviet Union.

            While David and his girlfriend, Jennifer, thought they were just playing games, the computer, Joshua, thought that the attacks were actually being launched. To make a long story short, and without giving away too much of the ending, the computer – also known as Joshua – had to learn what the real outcome of nuclear would be before it started an actual nuclear war. Spoiler alert: Joshua the computer does indeed learn and stops the launch of a full-out nuclear wat at the last, most dramatic moment. The computer’s last words of the movie are:

 “A strange game. The only winning move is not to play. How about a nice game of chess?”

            The computer, Joshua, in this movie learned. It learned that any nuclear war scenario that was set before it would end in a draw. An undercurrent of the movie was if the computer could learn this, could the world superpowers learn it as well?

            This movie came out in the latter days of the Cold War with the Soviet Union. It spoke to the greatest fear of my childhood, and probably to the greatest fear of my older siblings’ generation as well: nuclear war. I didn’t have the hide-under your-desk-in-case-of-a-nuclear-attack drills that my older siblings had, but it was an omnipresent reality of my childhood. A few years ago, when tensions between North Korea and the U.S. were running high and seemingly escalating, I thought about War Games. I wondered if we had learned much from the long chill of the Cold War. Have we learned that the best result of any full-scale nuclear confrontation would be a draw? In the movie, the great risk was hoping that a computer, artificial intelligence, could learn. In true Hollywood fashion, Joshua did learn. And it seemed as though the humans around it did as well. Whether artificial intelligence has the capability to learn is one thing, but we know that humans can learn. My question today is, did Jesus learn?

            This is a hard question for many of us because it smacks up against our understanding of who Jesus was. But we claim in our confessions, in our theological understanding of Jesus’ nature that he was both fully human and fully divine. Well, if Jesus was fully human, does that mean that there were things he needed to learn?

            Our passage starts with an explanation from Jesus about what really defiles. All we hear are his words to the crowds, but they were spoken after a confrontation with some Pharisees and scribes. The religious folks were upset that Jesus’ disciples did not perform the ritual hand washing before they ate. We wash our hands before we eat for the sake of hygiene, and since the pandemic started, every 20 minutes or so just because. Observant Jews performed hand washing and other ritual cleansing for the sake of purity laws. To not perform the ritual handwashing was to be unclean; to be unclean or defiled was to be separated from God.

            Jesus turned this argument back on his detractors. He called them hypocrites. He lifted up words from the prophet Isaiah.

            “This people honors me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me; in vain do they worship me, teaching human precepts as doctrines.”

            Now we catch up to our passage. Calling the crowds around him, Jesus told them about what really defiles. It is not what goes into your mouth. It is what comes out of your mouth. Because what comes out of your mouth comes from what is in your heart. That is where you find defilement or cleanliness. Is your heart defiled? Is it unclean? Or is to close to God?

            All of this is great. I am cheering Jesus on with every word. But then he left that crowd and that place, and he and the disciples traveled to the district of Tyre and Sidon. This was a Gentile region. There a Canaanite woman, a Gentile, approached him, shouting at him.

            “Have mercy on me, Lord, Son of David; my daughter is tormented by a demon.”

            We expect people to come shouting after Jesus, calling after him, touching the hem of his robe. But we don’t expect what happened next – nothing. Nothing happened. Jesus ignored the woman. He said nothing to her, just continued on as though she had not spoken or approached him at all. But she would not be ignored. The disciples could not shut her out. They urged Jesus to send her away. She was a bothersome woman who kept shouting at them, and she was getting more annoying by the minute.

            Jesus spoke then, but his answer, although directed at the woman, was actually spoken to his disciples.

            “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.”

            But this Canaanite woman, this mother of a sick child, was undeterred. She knelt before Jesus, which in the Greek context would have been seen as an act of worship, and said,

            “Lord, help me.”

            The Jesus we think we know would have relented at that moment. He would have shown her the same compassion he showed the crowds. He addressed her at last, but what he said hurts to hear. Jesus told the woman,

            “It is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.”

            If he had said that to me, I would have crawled away, utterly defeated. But this woman, this Canaanite woman, this Gentile woman, this mother with a sick child was undeterred. She did not slink away, crushed and broken. If Jesus’ words hurt her, we do not glean that information from the text. What she did next was powerful. She turned Jesus’ words back on him.

            “Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their master’s table.”

            It would have been a bold statement for anyone to make, but it was especially bold for a Gentile woman to say this to a Jewish rabbi. But she was a mother with a sick child, and she would not be turned away. Jesus hear her. Not only did he hear her, he rewarded her persistence. Her faith, Jesus declared, was great! Her desire was granted. The woman’s daughter was healed instantly.

            Sure, it is a happy ending. The woman got what she wanted. But why did Jesus respond the way he did? It seems especially ironic after his teaching about a person’s heart and what really defiles. If what is in our heart defiles us than what was in Jesus’ heart? Did Jesus’ heart hold racism? Sexism? The woman had to convince Jesus to help her daughter. What was in Jesus’ heart?

            There are many theories as to what Jesus was trying to do with his response to this woman. One is that his words would not have sounded as harsh to the original hearers as they do to our modern ears. Perhaps the saying about the children and the dogs was from an ancient proverb. It would not have been offensive to the people living at that time. Maybe Jesus was the word for dog affectionately, as if he were addressing a puppy. The Greek word for dog used here does make the distinction between a household animal and the wild, stray dogs that roamed during that tie. The problem with this theory is that the Aramaic Jesus spoke did not contain this distinction.

            There is the possibility that this was Jesus’ way of testing the woman’s faith. If she passed the test, then her request would be granted. He tested. She passed. But when did Jesus test people before he healed them or their loved ones? I cannot think of another example. He did not make the crowds pass a test before he fed them. He might have turned on their heads the tests that the religious leaders used to try and trap him, but he did not test the people who came to him for help.

            Another possibility is that this story must be taken just as it is, harshness and all. Jesus was a Jewish man of his day. He lived in a particular context and that context included chauvinism toward women and outsiders, others. One commentator I read wrote,

            “His limited perspective is in part corrected by the clever retort of a desperately bold woman, who convinces him that Gentiles must also share in God’s bounty.”

            Does that mean that Jesus learned? Does that mean that this woman pushed him to see with a new perspective? Does that mean that her persistence, her undeterred pleading with Jesus to allow her even a small presence at the table, changed his mind, opened his mind, and taught him something?

            Yes, I know the idea, the possibility of Jesus needing to learn makes us uncomfortable. Yes, I realize this runs headlong into what we have been taught to believe and understand about Jesus. We equate him with perfection. But what does it mean to be perfect? And what does it mean that Jesus was fully human? As one commentator put it, Jesus endured all of the tests and trials that humans do, but he did not sin. Maybe not sinning does not mean that Jesus did not have something to learn. Maybe not sinning means that Jesus actually learned.

            When confronted, he did not fall back on excuses or defensiveness to justify his position. Maybe he learned from this Canaanite woman, this Gentile, this other. Maybe he saw through her eyes and realized that he was wrong and immediately corrected course. Maybe not sinning was that he learned, heard her, and changed direction. He was open to her pleas, to what he could learn from her, and to what God was speaking through her.

            Did Jesus learn? It seems to me that if he did, then that is our good news. Because it means that we still have much to learn. It means that not only is God still speaking but may be speaking to us through the most unlikely of people; people who are undeterred in making us listen and who are persistent in calling us to see. Jesus learned, and if Jesus learned, so can we. May we be like this woman in our faithfulness. May we be persistent in learning, even in the lesson is hard and painful. May we be undeterred in being willing to change and correct our course when God sends us a new lesson. May we be willing to hear another voice, a different voice, at the table. May we be ever more like Jesus and learn.

            Thanks be to God.

            Let all of God’s children say, “Alleluia!” Amen.