Jesus Loses to a Foreign Woman

Master of arguments and insults, Jesus loses at his own game, beaten by a foreign woman.

Jesus loses too, folks. That’s okay! He’s not Mister Spock, Sherlock Holmes, Commander Data, Doctor House, or some other ridiculous American cultural idol from fiction. Jesus is real. The Incarnation is real. To be human, you have to be able to learn. To be able to learn, you have to be able to lose. In true incarnational fashion, Jesus lost. And he lost messily. He was beaten at his own game of challenge and riposte.

Most surprisingly of all, the Matthean Jesus was beaten by a foreign woman. And he learned something from this loss.

Jesus Loses More with Terrible Homilies

Today is a day of terrible homilies. This Gospel, the Story of Jesus being confronted by a foreign woman (Matthew 15:21-28), tends to make BS flow from the ambos. Today you will hear nonsensical homilies where Jesus winked at the woman, sharing an inside joke with her. Even though you can’t be more of an outsider to the Matthean Jesus than this Canaanite woman was.

We just can’t let Jesus be. As we do to all the prophets, we have to pretty Jesus up, change him into a nice person, soften him, and gut him of reality. We have to transform him into a culturally congenial Jesus buying our values and having our sensitivities.

Jesus Loses to a Dog

Again, Jesus loses. We lose too, especially with homilists. Today you will hear sad excuses of homilies claiming Jesus called this woman a household pet. No, he didn’t. He called her a dog. But let’s make-believe with the ignorance of this Sunday that he called her “a pet.” And let’s forget that in the traditional Middle East, dogs are like vermin running wild, and not kept as pets. Would calling a grown woman a pet be a respectful address?

You know what Jesus called her, folks. It starts with the letter “B.” That may sound irreverent to you. Just like if I said, “Jesus farted.” That may sound irreverent also. But to deny it is blasphemous, so I’ll stick with irreverence over blasphemy, okay? Jesus is fully human precisely because he is divine. Therefore he learned. That means he was enculturated and socialized into the stereotyping ways of his culture. Incarnation is messy, folks.

Jesus Loses Universalism

Please stop blurring the Gospels! The Matthean Jesus has no use for Gentiles (Matthew 10:5-6).

Whereas Lukan Jesus and Johannine Jesus are open to including Samaritans, not the Matthean Jesus! The Matthean Jesus sent the Twelve exclusively to the lost Israelites. He ordered them to stay away from Gentiles and Samaritans. Now here Jesus is, in beautiful Middle Eastern inconsistency, traipsing around in Gentile territory (Matthew 15:21). Can you imagine the stain of shame he’ll earn if he contradicts himself with any Phoenicians, especially a woman?

Take your American reading glasses off. They aren’t serving your reading. Instead, they block you from understanding. 

Jesus Losing Privacy

There is no privacy in the Middle Eastern world of Jesus. People are always under the gun, being scrutinized, being watched. The crowd is always judging everyone. Honor, more important than life itself, is still on the line. The woman who comes to Jesus knows this. She uses the crowd against Jesus. High context “Matthew” expects you to get that without him spelling it out. He didn’t count on low context Americans. The New Testament was not written for, by, or about Americans.

You think this woman is alone? Middle Eastern women, if in public (the domain of men), are always chaperoned. “Matthew” expects you to understand she has an entourage of female kin with her. She’s making a spectacle. She is challenging Jesus publicly.

“I don’t see that!” you say. Of course not. Neither could I a few years ago. Why would we see it? We are Westerners. Again, take off the Western reading glasses.

Mercy, Son of David!

This woman is clever. She calls Jesus “Lord, Son of David.” Next, she drops a request on him. She begs him, “have mercy on me.” John Pilch, a cultural expert on the Bible, explains that when biblical people ask for “mercy,” they believe they are entitled to something. This is because mercy in the Middle East means being sensitive to and responsible for the debts you owe God and human beings.

So those who ask Jesus for mercy in the Gospels, like this foreign woman, believe that it is owed to them. And people in the Gospels, like Jesus, who grant mercy, are acknowledging and paying what they owe!

Can’t you see that? Again, take off the American reading glasses.

Healing VS Curing

A demon afflicts the woman’s daughter. This is a world that is oblivious to impersonal causality. If something happens, if someone gets sick, the question is never, “WHAT happened?” Instead, it is, “WHO did it?”

Consequently, this is not a biomedical story of disease in need of a cure. Ultimately, this is an account of illness where meaning is lost, and healing (restoration of meaning) is needed.

How Jesus Loses

If an Israelite male challenged Jesus the way this foreign woman attempts, he would engage with a riposte or grant the requested favor. Either way, the honor of the Patron (God) and Jesus’ faction would be safeguarded. But this foreign woman is not his social equal. As Pilch explains, only equals can play honor games. So Jesus ignores her.

But the woman is unfazed. She (and undoubtedly her entourage of female kin and slaves) like a flock of harpies chase after Jesus and his band. Steadfastly, they cry and beg and hail him (Matthew 15:23). This is to produce a scene. Do you think that her actions will make the crowd of onlookers decrease? Quite the opposite happens.

The disciples beg Jesus to send this woman (and her entourage) away. Why? One possibility is to send her away and shut her up by giving her what she wants—healing her daughter. This seems to be confirmed by how Jesus answers them. The Matthean Jesus says, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel” (Matthew 15:24).

Jesus Loses at His Own Game

This woman doesn’t quit. She gets in front of Jesus, and honors him by kneeling (thereby preventing him from moving forward). Don’t forget her company following her. Calling him “Lord,” she says, “Help me.”

Jesus loses his cool. So he gives her the nastiest insult recorded in the Gospels. Don’t forget that Jesus was a master of insults. He told some doozies. But this one takes the cake. Repeating his culture’s stereotype for Gentiles, he calls the foreign woman a dog (Matthew 15:26). Jesus says Israelite food (i.e., shamanic favors of healing) belongs to the children of theocracy—it is not to be thrown to the dogs. 

If you understood Jesus’ cultural world, you would expect the woman to run and hide. She’s been destroyed. There is no way to come back from that devastating blow.

But instead, she ripostes with great cleverness. She says, “Please, Lord, for even the dogs eat the scraps that fall from the table of their masters” (Matthew 15:27).

Beaten!

Jesus is checkmated. He has met his match! Jesus loses—backed into a corner, all Jesus can do is lose gracefully. So he acknowledges his defeat. Jesus tells her basically ““touché!” and brokers the favor. Her daughter is healed.

Throughout his career, many enemies of Jesus, elites and their retainers, tried to humiliate him. And the Gospels inform us that he defeated them all. But not this foreign woman. She is the only one to ever beat Jesus at challenge and riposte. Jesus loses and learns.

The Woman’s Commitment

Jesus marvels at the woman’s faith. In the Bible, faith means loyalty, like in the “Godfather” movies. In contrast, Pilch and others explain that we Westerners turn faith into an intellectual thing, a belief, a conviction, and a knowing. That’s not faith in the Bible, folks. Faith in our Mediterranean Bible is undying loyalty. Like in the “Godfather” films. Like in this foreign woman.

This woman remains loyal and committed to meeting Jesus and getting what she’s owed. It doesn’t matter how he blows her off, or even his cruel insult. She remains loyal. That’s Biblical faith. That’s the kind of faith that works in the Middle East. 

Our American Catholic parishes don’t know about that kind of faith. Go ask parish employees what two decades of loyalty gets them in the time of pandemic disaster. Go ask a school teacher who gives decades of hard work and commitment. At the same time, bishops “tighten the thumbscrews,” holding a sword of Damocles over their families’ heads.

Thank God that God’s Human Word assumes our capacity to lose. We may think we are winners, Americans. We may aspire to be winners. But in the end, fellow dying inmates, we lose. We all lose. Jesus loses. Thank God Jesus lost because, in doing so, we truly win. Be grateful for that marvelous exchange, for that which is not assumed is not redeemed.