Insiders and Outsiders

The Rev. Dr. Peter Terpenning
August 17, 2008

Matthew 15:10-28

            Most of us as children experienced the picking of teams for baseball, soccer or kickball or something. My dominate memory of this takes place on the concrete playground at Philomethian Middle School in Chagrin Falls, Ohio where we gathered at recess to play baseball. We played other sports in season, but baseball is a particularly painful memory and therefore the one I remember the best. I was a fast runner and pretty good at some sports, but baseball was not one of them. Somehow kids learn quickly who is good at what and know how to pick their teams. There were no adults supervising these games so the procedure of picking teams went forward with ruthlessness. The captains were assigned, usually the best or most popular players, and the picking began. The first picked were the best players to ensure victory and then it moved to the special friends of the captains, or popular kids. Finally, we got down to the marginal players who could barely play and they were picked only under duress, as a sort of ballast for the team, “We’ll take fat Harry if you take the little shrimp”. That was the ultimate humiliation. In baseball I was usually picked near the end, but thankfully before the booby prizes… and occasionally sooner if it was one of my friends who was captain. I then took up my place in right field and began to pray that there were no left handed hitters.

But it was all good, for there I learned what it is to be an outsider. I had the opportunity to learn this again, such as when I moved to a new school in High School, but it’s about the same. We all know what it’s like to be an insider or an outsider: to be the last kid picked in sports, to be the new kid, to be one of the nerds, to live in a strange culture, to be the only one who doesn’t know the language, go be different or left out in some significant and lonely way.

Well, the woman in our story was such a person. She was a Gentile approaching a Jewish teacher. The Canaanite woman was probably a Phoenician or a Greek or a Moabite, we don’t know for sure. But she was one of the minority of people living in Israel who weren’t Jewish; one of the former occupants of the land who now found themselves an oppressed minority. Many lived along the coast. These people were not welcome in Jewish Temples, were unclean, technically, and not of the people of God. They were outsiders from the perspective of Jesus and the disciples.

But this outsider dared to approach Jesus and ask for healing for her daughter. This was not usual, and the disciples were shocked. They told Jesus to send her away, and to our amazement, Jesus agrees with them. He says, “You don’t take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.” He meant, the Kingdom of God is first offered to the chosen people of Israel, not to the Gentiles. Yet it is shocking to here our gentle Jesus call someone a “dog”. But she does not give up, and says, “Yes, but even the dogs get the scraps that fall from the master’s table.” Now Jesus has just been preaching that the Pharisees and those who follow the correct rituals of Judaism, but who lack compassion and faith are really blind. Just a few days before, he confronted Peter in the storm saying, “O you of little faith”, and if Peter is not an insider, then no one is. But when this woman shows absolute faith in the power of Jesus to heal her daughter, he says she has “great faith” and her daughter is healed immediately. Jesus realized that standing before him was one who could see, she was not blind like the Pharisees or his disciples, yet she was an outsider.

The key point here, according to the scholars is that the woman, a non-Jew, an outsider, is the one who can see; the one who has great faith. Whereas many of those who think they are insiders, actually are as blind as bats.  We could make much of the story if it were certain that it were historical, about how at this point Jesus realized that his message was not just for the Jews, but for anyone who has faith. But scholars believe that the main issue for Matthew had to do with the controversy of his time, when the Christian movement was deciding if Christianity was for everyone, or just for those who became Jewish and followed the Jewish religious law. Matthew is pointing out that here was a non-Jew who had great faith and that anyone can have this faith. The point is that following Christ is not about right rituals and ceremonies, but about faith and compassion. It is not an accident that Matthew places this story immediately after Jesus’ condemnation of the Pharisees who follow the right rituals and worry about purity, but who should be worrying about what comes out of their mouths and whether they show compassion and love to their fellow travelers in this life.

Our faith is a faith of outsiders. Abraham and Sarah were “strangers in a strange land”, called to leave their homes and live among foreigners. Ruth, the pillar of faith and loyalty was an outsider, a non-Jew who marries a Jewish man, and when he dies, agrees to go back to Israel with her mother-in–law Naomi and cares for her. God liberates the slaves of Egypt, an oppressed group of outsiders. Jesus himself was an outsider of sorts, born in poor country to a poor family; he lived and taught on the margins of the world. He left the organized religion of his time and taught radical love and compassion. Condemned by the institutional church of his time he was executed outside the city walls on a garbage dump where they killed revolutionaries, zealots and terrorists.

It was the outsiders of the Roman world who flocked to the Christian movement: poor fishermen, slaves, prostitutes, women, lepers, tax collectors and at least one Canaanite woman.

The lesson of the faith of the Canaanite woman is for insiders to remember that it is often among the outsiders that true faith is found. It is not in the powerful, institutional religions that Jesus feels comfortable, but often among the people on the margins, people of faith, wherever they are.

One last thought about this story. When Peter was afraid in the boat and saw Jesus walking on the water he said, “Jesus, if it is you, command me to come to you on the water.” It is like a test, really. It is as if I were to pray, God, if you are really real, heal my affliction. I imagine Jesus shaking his head in sadness and saying to Peter, “Come”. And Peter gets out of the boat, but as soon as he starts to get afraid and sink, Jesus saves him and says, “O you of little faith, why did you doubt?” Peter doubted from the very first right through to the end of Jesus’ life, but lucky for him and most of the rest of us, Jesus forgave him. But the Canaanite woman, it needs to be noted, never doubted, fought her way in to see Jesus, confident that he could heal her daughter if he only said the word. She knew who he was. She had faith. In the end, that’s what this story is about: faith and its power.