{"id":101658,"date":"2017-12-08T00:27:21","date_gmt":"2017-12-08T07:27:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/markshea\/?p=101658"},"modified":"2017-12-07T20:31:43","modified_gmt":"2017-12-08T03:31:43","slug":"missing-wry-christ","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/markshea\/2017\/12\/missing-wry-christ.html","title":{"rendered":"Missing the Wry Christ"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\u2026in which we finish up the series looking at Christ and the Canaanite Woman<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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Last time<\/a>, we saw that the Church to which Matthew writes has been grappling for decades with the question of the relationship of Jew and Gentile in the early Church, particularly in the Holy Land where Jewish ethnocentrism encouraged the idea that Jewish believers sit in first class while Gentile believers are second class and the proposition that \u201cin Christ there is neither Jew nor Greek\u201d is regarded with hostility and skepticism.\n

It is against this backdrop that Matthew relates the story of the Canaanite Woman. There are parallels to this story in other gospels, most notably that of Jesus\u2019 encounter with the Samaritan Woman at the well (John 4). There too, Jesus meets a woman regarded as a foreigner and outsider. But so far from ignoring her, Jesus scandalizes his disciples by speaking with her. This calls into question my reader\u2019s contention that Jesus feels himself bound by the notion that \u201can unrelated man and woman should not engage socially in public, all the more when the woman is a foreigner.\u201d<\/p>\n

Of course, the rejoinder is that the \u201cMatthean Jesus\u201d is not the \u201cJohannine Jesus\u201d. But I reject that approach. There is only one Jesus and all the gospels are relating things he said and did, albeit different things and in varying language for varying purposes. So the fact is Jesus had no trouble breaking social expectations regarding women and foreigners when he had a mind to do so.<\/p>\n

And, as we have already seen, even the \u201cMatthean Jesus\u201d was willing to talk to Gentile Centurions and even willing to go to into their homes. So we need, I think, to look somewhere beside his alleged ethnocentrism for his actions with regard to the Canaanite Woman.<\/p>\n

One thing I will grant my reader is that the conversation does partake fully of Jesus\u2019 deeply Jewish and Middle Eastern love of badinage, argument, and riposte. As we saw back in\u00a0Part 2<\/a>, Jesus engages in it constantly. He bandies words with his disciples, he engages in clever arguments with those who, in their zeal to condemn him, pretend to care about paying taxes to Caesar and women taken in adultery. When somebody tries sophistry by asking \u201cWho is my neighbor?\u201d as a way to dodge responsibility, he responds with the Parable of the Good Samaritan (which, by the way, is not terribly ethnocentric). Even on trial for his life he deftly turns accusations like \u201cAre you the King of the Jews?\u201d into confessions with the artful reply \u201cYou have said it.\u201d<\/p>\n

And, of course, he does this most famously with his own mother in the scene at Cana when she too \u201cbests\u201d him in an exchange laden with enormous significance. Her request for wine is not mere \u201cMom hoping that My Son the Miracle Worker will impress the neighbors with drinks all around.\u201d This is the Model Disciple importuning the Messiah to manifest himself, using precisely the kind of stubborn, importunate prayer he himself commands his disciples to use (Luke 11:5-13). That he understands this is clear from his response that his \u201chour\u201d has not yet come. His \u201chour\u201d, in John\u2019s gospel, is his death. That will be the culmination of the mission she is asking him to inaugurate. The subtext of Jesus reply is, \u201cAre\u00a0you<\/em>\u00a0ready for this?\u201d She persists, and he grants her prayer, performing the first great sign\u2013a sign of the shedding of his Eucharistic blood. She \u201cwins\u201d this round of argument and riposte insofar as she chases Jesus till he catches her.<\/p>\n

Something similar is happening, I believe, with the Canaanite Woman. Here is another peasant woman with, pardon the pun, dogged faith: as dogged as Mary\u2019s and as dogged as the Gentile Centurion who, earlier in Matthew\u2019s gospel, caused Jesus to marvel (Matthew 8:10).<\/p>\n<\/section>\n<\/article>\n<\/blockquote>\n

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Much more here.<\/a>\n<\/section>\n<\/article>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u2026in which we finish up the series looking at Christ and the Canaanite Woman. Last time, we saw that the Church to which Matthew writes has been grappling for decades with the question of the relationship of Jew and Gentile in the early Church, particularly in the Holy Land where Jewish ethnocentrism encouraged the idea […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":92,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[836],"class_list":["post-101658","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-catholic-weekly-stuff"],"yoast_head":"\nMissing the Wry Christ<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"...in which we finish up the series looking at Christ and the Canaanite Woman. 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