Earlier this year, a very prominent United States politician said
“There is a Christian concept that you love your family and then you love your neighbor, and then you love your community, and then you love your fellow citizens, and then after that, prioritize the rest of the world. A lot of the far left has completely inverted that.”
This makes sense. We should not abandon our families to help strangers.
If someone abandoned their minor children at home to work as a missionary in some foreign land, the Department of Social Services would take custody of those children, and when that person returned, they would be charged with child abandonment.
There ought to be a gradient of care for others.
Let’s go to God in prayer.
God of wisdom, may the words that I speak, and the ways they are received by each of our hearts and minds, help us to continue to grow into the people, and the church, that you have dreamed us to be.
Amen.
For many, this story of Jesus and the Canaanite woman is one of the troubling stories in the Gospels.
Jesus ignores her.
His disciples tell him to send her away.
He tells her she is not included:
He answered,
“I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.”
Matthew 15:24, NRSVue
And then he insults her:
He answered,
“It is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.”
Matthew 15:26, NRSVue
Jesus uses dogs as a metaphor for this woman and her daughter.
Well let’s sing a song and go home, because Jesus told us to only take care of people like us.
But even after being ignored, turned away, and insulted, the woman doesn’t give up:
She said,
“Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters’ table.”
Matthew 15:27, NRSVue
Let’s look at what’s happening here:
Jesus says this woman, who is not a Jew, doesn’t deserve the healing power of Jesus and, in fact, using his power for her daughter is like taking food from the children of Israel and giving it to the dogs.
And this is a policy we can get behind.
Yes, there are needy people everywhere, but they’re not our problem. We can’t take resources away from people close to us just to help people we may never meet.
And some look to historic theologians for support.
St Augustine of Hippo said the order of love, or ordo amoris, was to first live God, then love our neighbors, then material things, because all things are from God.
Thomas Aquinas spoke of the connection between a person and beings the person loves: one’s connection with family is closer than that with one’s neighbor, and the connection with one’s neighbor is closer than that with a stranger.
And so our love as connection with others will necessarily be stronger with those closest to us.
So that’s it. Me first, then my family, then my neighbors, then my community, then my nation, and then my world.
Except…
Aquinas also tells us that the closeness of the relationship cannot be the only criterion on which we base care for others.
The case may occur, however, that one ought rather to invite strangers (to eat),
on account of their greater want.
For it must be understood that, other things being equal,
one ought to succor those rather who are most closely connected with us.
And if of two, one be more closely connected, and the other in greater want,
it is not possible to decide, by any general rule,
which of them we ought to help rather than the other,
since there are various degrees of want as well as of connection:
and the matter requires the judgment of a prudent man.
— Aquinas, Beneficence, Summa theologiae
So we can’t just ignore people, turn them away, or – heaven forbid – insult them if they are truly in need and we have what we need to help them.
But Jesus is speaking of his limited resources, that he was only sent to the lost sheep of Israel, and that he can’t take their food and give it to dogs.
And the Canaanite woman says that the dogs eat the crumbs from their master’s table. She’s not asking to take anything away from those Jesus says he was sent to. She’s asking for the excess.
In Ezekiel 16:49 we read:
This was the guilt of your sister Sodom: she and her daughters had pride, excess of food, and prosperous ease but did not aid the poor and needy.
Ezekiel 16:49, NRSVue
Then Jesus answered her, “Woman, great is your faith! Let it be done for you as you wish.”
And her daughter was healed from that moment.
Matthew 15:28, NRSV
Now I don’t know what was actually going on with Jesus here. Was he illustrating a principle? Or did he get it wrong and learned something?
I know, for some of us, Jesus had all knowledge, so he could not have learned anything. For others, the human part of Jesus had some growing to do.
But regardless, if the church today is the body of Christ, we ought to try to be like Jesus. When we get it wrong, we have to make it right. When we shut ourselves down and shut others out, and someone brings that to our attention, we ought to take what we can spare to help those who do not have enough.
And let me be clear:
What we can spare and what others do not have enough of is not always money and food.
Sometimes it’s power.
Sometimes it’s a voice.
How we use what we have is going to be complicated, because the world is complicated. We need to care for those closest to us and not abandon them. We need to care for those in greatest need and not ignore them.
How we make those decisions can, perhaps, be summed up by the words of the Canaanite woman:
yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters’ table.
Matthew 15:27b, NRSVue
How much of our money, food, time, power, and voice falls from our tables like crumbs? What if those resources went to help someone in need, even if it was someone we never knew?
My challenge this week is to look for those places where we might have a little extra resources, something we might spend in a way that doesn’t even help us, much less anyone around us.
And see whether there is a way those resources could help someone: maybe someone close, but maybe even someone far away.
We don’t have to starve our own children to help someone in great need.
Amen.
Let’s sing NCH 575 O for a World
* Scripture quotations marked NRSVue are taken from the New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition. Copyright © 2021 National Council of Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide. https://www.friendshippress.org/pages/about-the-nrsvue
* Scripture quotations marked KJV are taken from the King James version of the Bible.
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