Christian Pathway

Today’s readings ask us a difficult question: who do we place beyond the pale? Who do we quietly assume is outside God’s reach? Who do we avoid, dismiss, or judge?

It’s a story of Jesus’ disciples repeatedly not getting the point despite his best efforts to turn their worldview around  then as a result
Jesus getting a bit cross with them
Then taking them somewhere where they will surely meet the unclean
Then showing the limitless love of Jesus in action, tipping our boundaries on their heads.   

The journey he takes them on is literal, moral, societal.   We all have our prejudices and biases. Today Jesus sets about overturning the very boundaries they had inherited. By doing so, he asks us to go on the same journey

Let’s see whether, with two thousand years of hindsight, we are any quicker to understand what Jesus is teaching.

Jewish society was deeply shaped by religion, far more than our society is today. It was a world of rules, rites, tradition, and birthright, with strong ideas about who was in and who was out, who was clean and who was unclean. The Pharisees helped guard and interpret those boundaries, and their influence gave them real power. Power that affected people’s relationships, status, worship, and daily life.

The Pharisees’ power came from seeing themselves and being seen as the righteous leaders of Israel, protectors of tradition, upholders of the faith. They could include or exclude you; they could raise you up or put you down.

The Romans had executive power, but daily life was controlled by the Pharisees.



So they had real power over every area of your life, and such they were courted, lauded, elevated

So when Jesus said, “11 It is not what goes into the mouth that defiles a person, but it is what comes out of the mouth that defiles.’

He was saying your rules of what makes you clean and unclean are pointless.
Thus, rendering their elevated roles pointless



By saying the rules they enforced had no bearing on who was holy or unholy, clean or unclean, their power became redundant;  worse still, he is saying they are leading you in the wrong direction,

14 Let them alone; they are blind guides of the blind. And if one blind person guides another, both will fall into a pit.’

so more than redundant, dangerous

Then he attacked their power to choose, power to know who’s on the right side of God, by saying, “Every plant that my heavenly Father has not planted will be uprooted. He will correct the work they are doing



Is it any wonder they were upset? This man was threatening all the nice seats at the table they got



That’s just the first half of this story.
When the disciples didn’t get it such was their societal conditioning. More than slightly annoyed at the apostles, he says

Then he said, ‘Are you also still without understanding?

It’s what’s in your heart that matters

19 For out of the heart come evil intentions, murder, adultery, fornication, theft, false witness, slander.
20 These are what defile a person, but to eat with unwashed hands does not defile.

Unwashed hands are an example of ritual cleanliness as beloved by  the religion of the pharisees; he’s saying it doesn’t matter.

, Is it any wonder the Pharisees are upset? He has really set about them, everything they stood for and everything that gave them power, position, money, etc

He may have finished annoying the Pharisees at this point, but he wasn’t finished with his apostles, not even begun. These guys are going to form his church, his body on earth. They have to wake up; they have to do better,

Then we see why these readings are put together: the first half tests the system and undermines it;

the second half shows him actually putting these ideas into practice.

So in the second reading, he went to the place most of the unclean people as defined by religious rules and prejudice lived: Tyre and Sidon; this move took a while, 4-5 days, so it wasn’t a trivial decision to go from where he fed the 5000 to where he met the Canaanite woman.

The canaanites lived in tyre and sidon

The Canaanites were the people who had been living in the promised land before the jews took over. They didn’t follow Judaism; in fact, they had a lot of idols. They were pagans in Jewish eyes.

So he went to the place that, by the Pharisees’ rules and Jewish society, people there are seen as unclean.

There was a contradiction here though

The canaanites they were also more literate, cosmopolitan, and traded in many things across the Middle East, and as such were wealthy, cosmopolitan and religiously diverse

So Jesus leaves rural, religious, purity-focused Galilee, not wealthy, not as worldly, advanced, not as literate and travels  5 days to a wealthy, literate, cosmopolitan Canaanite territory that is ritually unclean and worships the wrong gods in the wrong way.

They are about as unclean as unclean gets and worse still they probably don’t care.

Hes messing with his apostles

So off he sets

Taking his no doubt horrified apostles with him, I think they would have felt the contradiction of a neighbour they both looked down on while seeing a society more advanced in many ways.

Its like visiting a wayward member of your family, who’s just totally out there, who also has a BA from Cambridge and an Aston Martin and a toy boy, who still goes to clubs at 50 😊

They would have been in the midst of this contradiction (remember the first thing truth does is piss you off)  when a Canaanite woman began shouting and pleading with them.

Do you think that after part one of this story they may have learnt anything?

And his disciples came and urged him, saying, ‘Send her away, for she keeps shouting after us.’

 It seems not,  so this is what happens

she came and knelt before him, saying, ‘Lord, help me.’
26 He answered, ‘It is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.’

Dogs was the expression Jews used for the unclean and the Gentiles, in fact, anyone not Jewish, read the room right here and you will see more of Jesus messing  with his apostles!

Was she put off by this slur ? Not one bit

27 She said, ‘Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters’ table.’
Great answer revealing she knew the truth of Jesus, who he was and why he used such terms.

Then Jesus did something that would have blown the apostles’ tiny minds; up till this point Jesus had followed  their prejudice, used the names they were used too, they would  up till now have been in a nice, prejudiced comfort zone where the biased world they lived in made sense

Then Jesus answered her, ‘Woman, great is your faith! Let it be done for you as you wish.’ And her daughter was healed instantly.

The only other time Jesus does this is on the cross

Jesus elevates the Canaanite woman because she embodies the very truth He is teaching:

True purity comes from the heart, true faith comes from humility, and God’s mercy reaches beyond Israel to anyone who believes.

so if you heard Jesus being racist, you missed the point

Jesus is not insulting her — He is exposing the disciples’ prejudice and then publicly overturning it.

she trusts him and goes with it

She knows He is mirroring their prejudice so it can be overturned publicly.

Thus overturning the disciples’ worldview, forcing them to confront it and showing them the truth of their bias, and it does the same things for us.

It asks us the same question

so it asks us

Who are your unclean
Who do you regard as ritually beyond the pale
Matthew *wants* you to wrestle with these things.  This reading It’s not  a miracle story; it’s a diagnostic.

for us to use

Here are the questions this passage presses on us now.

Do I believe God’s mercy is bigger than my categories?** Whatever I categorise people as: race, sex, gender, religion?
Am I more like a Pharisee than I like to think? **Where am I clinging to tradition, comfort, or status instead of compassion? 

Who do I see as outsiders today and treat as such?
He elevates a woman every Jew would have seen as:

– foreign 

– pagan 

– unclean 

– socially inferior 

**Who do I quietly assume is “outside” God’s reach? 

Who do I avoid, dismiss, or judge?**

Those questions are for you and the Jesus who knows you intimately to pray about.

Because who is your Canaanite woman
That’s for you to wonder

Amen