Unclean Foreigner
I lived near Charlottesville, Virginia for several years. In the midst of a very conservative rural portion of the state, Charlottesville stood out as a beacon of higher education and a town with a very cosmopolitan flavor. We encountered Ethiopian cuisine, Indian cuisine, a Brasilian pizzeria, and a host of people that gave it a feeling of having a place in the global economy. To find it the center of a rallying place for a demonstration to unite the alternative right groups of white supremacy is quite a shock to the identity of Charlottesville as a gathering place for people from all walks of life, races, cultures, and backgrounds. To hear claims of white supremacy in Charlottesville linked to avowals of Christian faith forces me back to the struggles of my own heritage with issues of race in opposition to the teachings of Christ Jesus.
In Matthew 15, we find Jesus leaving Israel after talking with others about issues over ritual impurity and what defiles someone before God. The standard understanding of Jesus' peers was that one needed to obey all the laws of ritual purity to be sure that you would not be impeded from entering the Temple and seeking God's presence and blessing. After casting those concepts aside and offering a very different perspective, Jesus left Israel and traveled to Phoenicia.
There in this region between Tyre and Sidon, Jesus would be completely surrounded by people who were all ritually impure according to Jewish traditions. None of those he encountered could be expected to fulfill any, much less all of the purity laws. Every single person he would meet would fall outside the lines of what Jewish tradition considered appropriate to participate in the worship of Yahweh.
These people ate the wrong foods. They wore the wrong clothing. Their racial heritage did not descend from Abraham. Their traditions, rituals, and norms were contrary to the worship of Yahweh. Even so, Jesus took a purposeful trip to enter their midst with his disciples. We don't know how long he was there, but he had traveled some distance from Israel.
As this Canaanite woman came out to address him, Jesus at first offered her the customary response of any self-respecting, religious Jew. He ignored her.
She was unclean. She was unfit. She had no standing to make any demands of Yahweh. She had no grounds for entering Yahweh's presence, making a request, or pleading her cause. By all the rights of custom, tradition, and laws of ritual purity, she was unworthy of any response.
As the woman continued to be a bother to the disciples, they asked Jesus to please send her away so they might have some peace. He addressed them with the expected Jewish reply, that he had been sent for the benefit of Israel alone. Then she came and knelt before him.
She asked for help, and Jesus gave her the standard reply of a Jew concerned with vindicating a special status before God. When she responded, it was from a very different perspective. She made no claim of any standing before Yahweh. She made no claim at all to any definition of worth. She made no defense of any right or privilege. She accepted that she was an outsider to a Yahwist faith. She accepted that she did not belong. She made no claim. She simply requested mercy.
This is what Jesus had been seeking. This was his purpose in taking the disciples to a foreign land among people who would all be esteemed unworthy before the Jewish laws of ritual purity. She was unclean. She lived beyond all definitions of those who might gain access to Yahweh's presence. She was a woman, a foreigner, and part of a society that did not revere Yahweh.
There were a couple of things going for her, however. She made no claim of a special standing. She made no demands upon God. She made no claim of worth, importance, or superiority. Instead, she cast herself before Jesus as one in need.
Rather than jockeying for position, power, or prominence, she simply pleaded for compassion in light of her need. This is what Jesus defined and elevated as a demonstration of true faith. Rather than basing her entreaty on some system of earned merit, she assumed she had no position from which to defend her worth or in any way deserving of God's intervention on her behalf. She came entreating God for grace based on God's character, not on her own deeds or qualities.
This was a stark departure from the underlying assumptions of the laws of ritual purity. While they were all designed to place people in categories of acceptability and dignity in approaching God, the grace Jesus displayed toward this woman came from a completely different direction. As she made no claims of personal worth, so Jesus did not regard her from a framework based on definitions of personal worth, piety, dignity, or participation in proscribed rituals. In contrast to all that, he looked at her need and her request for mercy, compassion, or grace.
Compassion does not care about one's past decisions, words, or actions. Mercy does not deal in categories of one's dignity, social, or religious standing. Grace is not a response to what one has earned in word, heritage, or deed. Rather, they are responses to one's need with no consideration of how one compares to another.
It is from grace, mercy, and compassion that Jesus demonstrates God's good will to meet the needs of this woman. Her lack or ritual purity becomes a non-issue. She seeks grace. It is grace that Jesus offers her. She seeks release from oppression, and that is what God provides.
Her nationality mattered none for Jesus, though it was important to the religious community of Israel. Her ritual impurity was no obstacle for Jesus, though it was considered an affront to Yahweh by the religious leaders. Her gender might bar her from many aspects of participation in society and coming before Yahweh to make her entreaty, Jesus looks beyond those socio-religious limitations.
Once Jesus had demonstrated for the disciples the traditional Jewish responses, he then proceeded to do two things. He brought into the open the reality of her faith. Then he demonstrated God's care for her in response to her needs.
Jesus highlighted her faith. Mainstream Judaism would not have considered her capable of faith, much less of God stooping to respond to her needs. Jesus placed her faith on display before all, however. He pointed her out as an example of one with the faith God was seeking. Hers was the faith God cared to reward. Instead of disregarding or ignoring her, God stepped forward to meet her needs in grace.
God was not concerned with her nationality, race, heritage, or even religious tradition. God was not concerned with her gender. God was not concerned with her statements of faith. God was interested in her approaching to ask for grace and mercy.
Salvation and blessing are not limited by the norms of religious, social, or racial traditions. God's desire is to bless all peoples, all classes of people, all categories of people as children of God. It is not Jesus who creates divisions among people. He was actually countering them. Grace is for all or for none.
© Copyright 2017 Christopher B. Harbin
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