Matthew 15:21-28 I’m going to start today with a disclaimer. My interpretation of this scripture is likely to make you uncomfortable. It’s made me uncomfortable over the years. But I’ve studied the passage at various times, read other pastors, academics, and theologians, and there’s a commonality to what we say. If you don’t like it, I encourage you to study the passage on your own, read some commentaries and see where
the Spirit leads you.
Today’s passage deals with prejudice and bias. As a 21st century disciple, it’s not easy to see at first. Jesus went to Tyre and Sidon. He may as well have gone to Olancha, or Hemet, or Escondido. Most of you haven’t heard of those towns either. Or Decatur, or Forest Park, or Chancellor. They’re just city names on a page. So, at first, Jesus went to two cities we know nothing about. Big deal. But, if we pause for a minute and look into Tyre and Sidon, we’ll see there’s a little more to it than that. If you look for Tyre and Sidon in the scriptures, you’ll find them among the cities indicted by the prophets. They get in trouble a lot. Jesus went there, to the cities that are often condemned. And it was there a Canaanite woman approached him. Which, for most modern readers, also seems innocuous. We’ve heard of Canaan before, so a Canaanite woman in the story seems reasonable. Most of us probably have a neutral sense of Canaanites, right? So, we have to dig for understanding. Loosely, Canaanites were “those” people…from a large swath of the middle east, who were generally polytheistic, and often known for their failures to keep Israelite law.
Now, we have a little bit of footing to proceed into our story. Jesus enters the cities where people often disobey God and get it wrong, and he’s approached by one of “those” people. Jesus is in the land of “us and them”. He’s in the realm of bigotry and hard hearts. In a similar way, Burke is the land of us and them. The Vikings despised the dragons. They had had some really bad interactions and they only knew them as the enemy so that’s how they treated them and that’s how they taught everyone else to relate to the dragons. They were trained to fight. There were no relationships. There was no understanding—except that we have to be prepared to fight and kill them. Let’s watch.
Clip #2—learning to fight. “They will always go for the kill.”
And she approaches Jesus as many others do in the scriptures, “Have mercy on me.” Though she’s not really asking for herself…but for her daughter. She doesn’t say, “Have mercy on my daughter.” But “have mercy on me”, which is one of those things most parents will understand, especially the mommas—to heal our sick kid is to have mercy on those who stay up late and clean up puke and rock a miserable inconsolable child. Have mercy on one and you show mercy to the other.
Study how dangerous they are. Learn to fight. Fear them. They will always go for the kill. What we learn may not be so dramatic, but we learn similar messages about other people. We are trained to look with bias. Do any of these sound familiar?
They can’t drive. They’re lawbreakers. They don’t follow the rules. They’re dangerous. Keep your kids away. They’re dirty. They aren’t smart. Do those sound familiar? Depending on where you grew up, “they” might represent a different category or class of people, but all of us were raised with “thems”. Some things we learned overtly from family and friends, some by community norms, some through the media. There may be nuance, but we all learned it. Developmentally as humans it’s necessary, it’s a way our brain works—we create classifications and categories so we can find ourselves and process leagues of information. But then we’re also supposed to learn and grow and start to unlearn those classifications and that doesn’t always happen.
It wasn’t until college that I started consciously unlearning some of my bias. I was in classes dealing with race and racism and as the teacher named different prejudices, I was regularly shocked to see those beliefs in my own heart and mind. I didn’t remember learning them. I wasn’t taught to be racist. I wasn’t taught to hate. But some of that insidious stuff was in there. I’d tense when I’d walk by a black man late at night on campus. Somewhere I had learned he was dangerous. But there weren’t black people in my home town. Literally, there weren’t, so where did I get that idea. And how could I unlearn that idea? After all, I didn’t tense when I saw a white man. I had to learn to challenge myself…why fear one more than the other. Statistically, I was not in more danger from one than the other. I know the media would lead us to believe otherwise, but actual stats and data proves it’s not true. I had to unlearn my bias.
But first, something, someone had to poke a hole in what I thought I knew. The Canaanite woman did that for Jesus. He dismissed her out of hand. She asked for help and he simply said no. I didn’t come for you. Did you notice that? The Jesus who welcomes everybody, including tax collectors and prostitutes told this woman no—not you. But she’s not willing to give up. She needs help for her daughter so she persists. And Jesus calls her a dog….we don’t give what’s for the children to the dogs. He calls her a dog. And so she bites back…even the dogs get the crumbs. Poke.
Similarly, Hiccup got poked. In dragon killing class he was told that all dragons will ALWAYS go for the kill…but this one he had met didn’t. Which got him thinking. He started to wonder if they were right about all the things they thought they knew. So, he tried an experiment…he took some food to this one dragon to see what would happen…
MOVIE CLIP #3: First fish…toothless smile
This simple gesture initiated a relationship between Hiccup and Toothless. It wasn’t a feast. It wasn’t a month’s worth of food, it was one simple fish, but it conveyed humility, trust, a willingness to build a relationship. And Hiccup’s kindness was immediately reciprocated with Toothless’ kindness. Kindness begot kindness. Love begot love.
I think sometimes we over-complicate the issues in our lives. We see someone who is different and all the things we think we know about them and when someone challenges us to think differently or get to know them we create scenarios in our head where it would be way too challenging to move past where we are. But, in reality, the potential for change lies in simple things….little pokes that challenge us to wonder if what we thought we knew is actually true.
Jesus called this woman a dog. It’s shocking. It’s unnerving. It’s ugly. It’s the kind of racist rhetoric we hear and speak today. We think of Jesus as perfect. And if he could show prejudice, that’s uncomfortable. What else could he do wrong? It’s easier to think this a misinterpretation. That isn’t what happened. Jesus wasn’t racist. But what if it is? What if he was? What if even Jesus learned hate and exclusion? And that translated to him equating this woman with a dog. But she doesn’t just take it. She challenges him. She pokes at his prejudice. Even dogs get something. And it’s like there’s this pivot in Jesus’ mind. The story shifts there. He concedes. He shows her mercy. He heals her daughter.
And if we read it that way it feels like “poke” “flip” undoing racism is easy. But it’s not. Scripture can be deceiving in that it’s compacted. It’s like reading the Clif’s notes. If we think “those are all the words, that’s the whole story” we miss the complexity of who we are. We have to pause in a story, look around, imagine ourselves in it, and if we’re there, if we’re honest, we know that transforming our bias—whether it’s racism, or sexism, or heterosexism, or ageism, or sizeism…it takes time and intentionality. It takes repetition before we can actually be convinced of something different. Having one Asian friend, or one Muslim friend, or one gay friend isn’t enough to change our bias. It helps, don’t get me wrong. But one can simply be exceptional. It’s when we dare to have more relationships with them that we can really unlearn our bias.
Now in the movie, Toothless wasn’t trying to convince Hiccup of anything. But he had Hiccup’s attention. He showed he “wasn’t like all the rest” and so Hiccup dared to entertain a relationship. He got to know him. It started with a fish. But as they spent time together Hiccup was able to help Toothless with an injury and Toothless was able to teach Hiccup about dragons. And Hiccup was able to see that what he might have thought was exceptional was actually the norm. Take a look.
Clip #4 –learning what works
We are called to get to know people, not just know about them, or listen to what others say. But instead, we are supposed to build relationships, to spend time together, not just once or twice, but long enough to build a relationship. God didn’t create us to be divisive and hateful. God created us for friendships that matter and help us to grow in love, kindness, and humility. Sometimes that proves more challenging than others, but that doesn’t mean we should give up…it means we have to muster our courage and do what we know is right.
Sometimes it means we have to be like the Canaanite woman. We have to call a spade a spade. We have to name the “ism” that’s standing in the way. We have to stand up to the ugly prejudice that prevents relationships and breaks down the community.
Hiccup does that. He starts to show others about the dragons and he challenges the way they’ve always thought about them. But people are slow to change. They know what they think they know and the other Vikings still fear and want to kill the dragons. When Hiccup’s father learns that Toothless knows where the dragon nest is, he captures him and forces him to lead the way. Hiccup isn’t allowed to go and his friend has a hard conversation with him. Listen in:
MOVIE CLIP #5: I saw myself.
Hiccup got it. He could see the dragons because he stopped looking at them as them. He saw himself. He saw their commonality. He saw the thing that connected them. And it was that that facilitated a new way of thinking and the chance at a relationship. And ultimately that’s what helps us too, when we stop seeing them as them, but start seeing them as one of us. I don’t know exactly what Jesus saw in the Canaanite woman, but she stopped him in his tracks. She made him rethink what he thought he knew. He’s the master at challenging us in our prejudice, and he could do that well because he’d been there too. Fully human. He struggles like we struggle. Not just with sin and temptation, but with racism, cultural constructs, and socially accepted bias. He was challenged to unlearn his assumptions. And we’re challenged to unlearn ours.