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Michael Angelo Immenraet: English: Jesus and the Woman of Canaan. Wikimedia Commons.
Aug. 6, 2020
Sister Eloise Rosenblatt, R.S.M.
Scripture reflection, Sunday, Aug. 16, 2020
At Trader Joe’s, in the days before we wore masks, you could hear people speaking several languages -- a United Nations of grocery shoppers. I remember two, even though I couldn’t understand the words. One was a high-pitched Chinese accent announcing on the phone -- a fishmonger call, heavy, so loud and commanding that you could imagine it grabbing at you in an open air market over the racket of car horns, rickshaw pullers, fruit sellers and animal bleats. Another language was an animated exchange between women friends from some state in Mexico or Central America -- gutturally rasping and nasal at the same time -- a masculine commanding tone that it be heard, not silenced -- a fighter-for-attention voice you can’t ignore.
I imagine the Canaanite woman had a voice like these. Whatever she said loudly in Hebrew or Greek, a native speaker would know right away she wasn’t “one of us.” She knew Jesus was a Jew from out of town. She had to have known his reputation. She recognized him even though none of the disciples knew who she was. She tried to get his attention with words of respect-- “Help me, great man, descendant of famous King David.” She spoke like a colonialized woman, who defers to conquerors, masters, the more powerful. Desperation had driven her out into the street. What did her daughter suffer from? One of those mysterious demonic oppressions that Mary Magdalene herself was released from? The Canaanite mother feels her powerlessness to heal her daughter, but all the more determination to seek her child’s healing. She has no one else.
Maybe Jesus didn’t say a word to her because he couldn’t understand at first what she was saying. The disciples seem confused and don’t know what to do. People come to Jesus to be healed, and this woman wants healing. But like little kids, they ask Jesus to take charge of the situation. They feel intimidated. “She keeps calling out after us.” We know what she yelled at Jesus, but we don’t know what words made the disciples feel pestered. Maybe it was that rasping, commanding, insistent, nasal-gutteral maternal sound that rattled their eardrums and chilled their jaws. Was it their distress at feeling the power of a woman’s primal scream on behalf of her female child?
Often times, it’s hard to identify the liturgical theme that unites the three Sunday readings. Here, there is an unusually coherent celebration of God’s invitation to gentiles, to non-Jews, to be saved, blessed, justified, and made joyful in Isaiah’s welcoming image of “a house of prayer for all peoples.” Paul says the gentiles “may now receive mercy” for it is God’s purpose to “have mercy upon all.” The Canaanite woman stands for the gentiles who receive God’s mercy through the compassion and healing of Jesus. Commentators try to soften what seems a harsh exchange between Jesus the Canaanite woman about dogs, or puppies, or pets. Despite her accent, she does manage to engage Jesus in a memorable conversation. She understands who’s “inside” and who’s “outside.” She is willing to be the outsider, the family dog that eats the scraps from the table. It’s for her daughter, for the least important of human beings -- an indigenous girl with no future anyone should care about. Only a mother marginalized by her ethnicity and her skin color would care about her own so deeply that she’d willingly humiliate herself to free her child. Jesus rewards her confidence in his power to heal. Jesus doesn’t need to touch the child. His power to heal zooms across space and time, casts out the demon, and heals the daughter.
Mark and Matthew memorialize the “example” of the Canaanite woman. But it’s likely that women in some early Christian communities got angry -- this was supposed to be a model for gentile women’s faith in Jesus? Luke is apparently so uncomfortable with the story, he drops it completely from his Gospel. In its place he offers the parable of Martha and Mary, and Mary choosing “the better part.” We are left, in either case, with the question of what is the right attitude and the right role for women in the Christian community.
Eloise Rosenblatt, R.S.M., is a Sister of Mercy, a Ph.D. theologian, and an attorney in private practice in family law. She lives in San Jose.