Study Format:
1. Read passage aloud. What did you notice in the reading? What words or phrase caught your attention?
2. Read passage aloud a second time. What questions would you ask the text?
3. Read passage aloud a third time. What do you hear God calling you to do or be in response to this text?
Interesting Ideas to Consider:
• Chapter fifteen starts with a question from the Pharisees to Jesus about purity rituals. Specifically, why did Jesus and his disciples not wash their hands before they ate. This requires some unpacking in the context of a time in which germs are understood. Germ theory, the knowledge that illness can be transmitted through microscopic organisms on unwashed hands is a very modern concept, like within the last 150 years. Jesus, his disciples, and the Pharisees had no concept of illness being passed by unwashed hands. The question here is not about hygiene, it is about ritual purity. Now, to be clear, purity rituals in scripture often have some basis of community health in them. For example, quarantining someone with a skin ailment could keep it from spreading throughout a community in a time before medical treatments existed. We cannot, with our modern medical knowledge and treatment options, disparage all purity rituals as backwards simply because they no longer apply. Hand washing before meals, however, is a particularly interesting one, because there is no biblical regulation about it. The Pharisees question was not based on biblical purity codes (like Sabbath keeping or kosher food) or no general Jewish practice, but on a specifically Pharisaic tradition. Washing hands before meals was a way the Pharisees separated themselves not just from gentiles, but from other practicing Jews. A modern example might be questioning a church’s adherence to scripture based on whether they use the organ or a drum set in worship.
• Our reading for this week starts with Jesus addressing the crowd in response to his conversation with the Pharisees. Jesus’ remarks about it not being what goes in the mouth but what comes out is what defiles has been used to argue Jesus was abolishing purity laws. But Matthew is a thoroughly Jewish writer, so rather than nullifying Torah, Jesus seems to be getting to the heart of the matter of purity codes, the inner commitments that are expressed in how we speak and act.
• The story of Jesus and the Canaanite woman is an uncomfortable one, as it reverses the normal roles. Instead of the opponent offering critical statements, here it is Jesus who responds harshly to the woman, and the woman who pushes through until her “great faith” prevails.
• V. 21 starts with Jesus, yet again, responding to the threat by the Pharisees by withdrawing.
• The Canaanite woman addressed Jesus with the traditional later Christian language of faith, “Have mercy on me, Lord, Son of David.”
• Dr. Boring reflects that God’s plan for salvation history as laid out in Matthew is that salvation comes first to the Jews, and then expands outward to the gentiles. Here we see an example of how God will not be constrained even by God’s own plan and theology. The kingdom of heaven has come near, so near that even in the ministry of Jesus, God’s mercy is bigger than understanding.
• Struggling with God, as the woman did, is not unbelief, but a sign of great faith (ex. Jacob wrestling with an angel in Genesis 32 or the cries of the Psalmist). As opposed to Peter’s test in ch. 14 (“Lord, if it is you…”), the woman does not challenge or command, she merely stated reality, the kingdom of God is for me too.
• There is temptation to see ourselves as the role of Jesus in the biblical story, to follow Jesus’ example in hospitality and welcome. While that is great, and in fact a mark of Jesus’ effectiveness as a teacher, this story forces us to see ourselves not in the role of Jesus, but in the role of the outsider woman. It challenges us to consider our own sexism and racism, and question how we respond to those whom we see as “other.”
Works Sourced:
Boring, M. Eugene. “The Gospel of Matthew.” The New Interpreter’s Bible Volume VIII. Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1995.
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