Our gospel reading today is a shocking story. At least it starts out that way.
It features Jesus ignoring a woman who is looking for his help.
It features Jesus refusing to heal this woman’s daughter and actually referring to the woman as a “dog”.
It’s not exactly what we expect from Jesus.
So we make up explanations…
We say that he was only joking and he was testing her faith, so that the disciples who were there could learn something new and important about the scope of Jesus’ mission.
We say that the particular word for “dog” that Jesus used actually referred to a wee puppy - and was not as offensive as we might imagine.
Now I’ll admit this.
When you see written words describing a conversation it’s sometimes hard to know exactly the spirit in which they were said.
For example, you could say to someone, “You are a head-case!” and be really angry with them.
On the other hand, you could say, “You are a head-case!” and mean it as a playful joke.
When you say the words it is often clear by your voice which you intend. But if you put the expression in print it can be hard to know which way it is being said.
This is especially true nowadays with the short sharp messages we are getting used to through email or text. If the message is very short sometimes it is possible to detect anger there even if none is intended. Emails and text messages have the potential to be dangerous and lead to misunderstandings.
Anyway, it could be that when Jesus was speaking to the woman and calling her a dog – it was a kind of kid-on criticism – he was speaking with a “twinkle in his eye” (as Scottish professor Willie Barclay once suggested).
It’s funny how we won’t let Jesus be human. We say he was truly human, but then we don’t want him to be so.
In Scripture we see Jesus hungry, tired, exasperated, stricken with grief, angry, frightened, needing to be alone, and we are okay with these things - but we can’t have Jesus making a mistake...
Yet to be truly human means to grow, to change, to develop.
Do we really think that Jesus knew everything? If Jesus did know everything then he wasn’t truly human.
For Jesus to be truly human means that he had limitations.
He was shaped by history, by his culture, and by the society in which he lived.
And one of the things that happens to all of us as human beings is that we learn new things by being in situations when our world-view is challenged.
So let me tell you what I think happened here.
Jesus was looking for a break from work and he moved out of Israel itself to the area of Tyre and Sidon - to get a rest.
Jesus was now aware that God had sent him on a mission to his own people – the Jewish nation - and even with that description Jesus couldn’t meet everyone. So Jesus was aware that he couldn’t do everything.
Jesus assumed that taking up challenges offered by other people from other places such as this Canaanite woman might be a good thing but not what he was called to be doing.
He even refers to the woman by the same word as any Jew would employ when speaking about a Canaanite. Jesus had grown up with this nickname for their old enemies - they were the “dogs”.
But this woman is persistent. She wants Jesus to help her sick daughter.
She’s not going to just give up.
“You can insult me. You can try and get rid of me. You can call me a dog. So be it. But even dogs can benefit from scraps.”
And as this woman persists she suddenly opens Jesus’ eyes to the truth.
He turns full circle.
He changes his mind. And he heals her daughter.
He realises in this experience that God is teaching him something.
He is learning something new.
This sort of thing happens all the time.
Let me give you a small example of this from my own life.
I was about 18 or 19 and I was relating a story about a guy called Colin Cunningham to some other friends of mine. And the story included Colin’s then girlfriend. I didn’t know her name.
So I said “Colin came down to London with his bird”.
Now I wasn’t particularly in the habit of calling women or girls “birds”, but it was an expression I knew of.
And right in the middle of the story just as I said these words, my best friend Ronnie (who was really sensitive about some issues) said
“Did she have a beak and feathers?”
“Who ?”
“Colin’s bird.”
He was trying to be humorous but also to score a point.
I kept going with the story and said no more about it, but the whole time inside my head I was thinking for the first time “Maybe calling a woman a bird is a bit insulting. I shouldn’t use that word.”
And since that day I never have called a woman (or a girl) a “bird”.
The point about the story, is that in this incident my eyes were opened to something I hadn’t thought much about before, but which I then realised was wrong, and from then on I changed my ways.
A more significant example comes from a man I read about (from the deep south of America) who grew up believing that “blacks” were inferior. They were not so clever as “their brains weren’t fully developed” and that’s why “they needed to go to special schools” and be separate from white people.
Why did he think that?
Because he was a bad person?
No, because this was the world and culture in which he lived. That was what he had been taught from everyone - and he simply grew up believing it. No one ever questioned the view.
Then one day he had a conversation for the first time with someone who did – who talked about prejudice and how twisted and unfair his belief was. And his eyes were opened to the fact that views he had never questioned before turned out to be prejudice and bigotry of the worst kind.
After that incident, he knew he couldn’t think like that any more. His view had to change.
I believe this kind of thing is what happened to Jesus.
And although the story is great news for the woman and her daughter who got healed as a result, it’s also a huge moment for Jesus.
He realises that God is telling him something. He realises on this day that his mission is bigger than he had ever imagined.
In other words, this was a turning point for Jesus.
God broke through to him through this woman with the knowledge that his mission is not just for the Jews but for the whole world. The gospel is for everyone.
Of course Jesus already knew that God loved everyone. But he believed that as God had worked especially through history with the Jewish race, maybe that was where he needed to put his emphases now.
Any other Jew would have thought the same – believing that they are the special ones - the chosen ones.
Now, realising that the gospel isn’t just for Jewish people, is pretty good news for all of us here today who aren’t Jewish. It means we know that God calls us too and that we are welcome in God’s family.
We are called into a relationship with God – a relationship with our Creator.
But there is also a challenge for us as well. Because sometimes we can be a bit twisted. We love the fact that the gospel message welcomes us, but when we become part of God’s family we sometimes think we can then start deciding who else is welcome.
It’s still a danger for people in church today to think that we are the chosen ones and the gospel is for us and we can decide who is in or out of God’s favour.
This is not our job. The gospel message is for all people. And all people must be welcome here…
The people who are like us - and the people who are very unlike us.
The people who have our colour of skin - and people whose skin colour is different.
The people who have grown up here – and the people that have arrived in our country.
The people who have been members here for donkeys’ years - and the people who have just arrived in the area.
The people who are full of faith - and the people who do not know what to believe.
All are welcome…
The people we find difficult to get on with.
People who are smelly.
People who are depressed and worn out.
People who have mental health issues to contend with.
The hyperactive child.
The wayward teenager.
The man with dementia.
All are welcome.
Only last century, in parts of our world, there were some churches where black people were not welcome.
Even now, there are churches around us who still will not open the door to women to be elders.
Even now, there are churches around us who would literally rather leave the Church of Scotland altogether than open the door to gay people.
It seems in every generation there is at least one group of people who are regarded as the other and we want to put them under the table - along with the dogs.
We need to ask ourselves are we gatekeepers or door openers?
Is our job to keep people out (like bouncers) or help people in (like ushers?)
Sometimes in the institutional church we have been more like the first than the second.
We use doctrinal statements, make people sign declarations, ask people to jump through hoops to become members, and require strict codes of conduct – the list can go on.
“Jesus did not act as a gatekeeper or call himself a gatekeeper.
He did, however, call himself a gate.
In the gospel of John, Jesus described himself as the gate through which sheep pass to find safe pasture and abundant life.” (John 10)
“He didn’t call himself a gate because he wants to keep people out. He is the gate because he wants to provide a way in.”
(Danielle Shroyer: The Boundary-Breaking God p66)
Our challenge is to continue to do the same.
We need to stop being gatekeepers. The purpose of a gatekeeper is to determine who is allowed to enter and to tell some other people why they are not welcome.
We need to be door openers.
For Jesus has opened the door for everyone. Our real job is to point to that door, to usher people into the door and do everything we can to welcome people inside.
When Jesus met that Canaanite woman, God opened his eyes to a bigger reality.
And God wants to open our eyes too.
So that we, too, will see that bigger reality.
Because God’s love is not just for us.
It’s for everyone.