Matthew 15: 21-28
We do not have to look far these days for stories about borders.
- Whether its boat people rescued in the Mediterranean from leaky vessels.
- Or lines of asylum applicants trying to pass from Mexico to the United States.
- Borders loom large in our awareness.
- Borders are where two cultures rub against each other.
- At times the friction generates a certain heat…as cultures clash.
Borders played a role in the time of Jesus as well.
- There were no such things as checkpoints or border guards.
- But there was an awareness among travelers when they were passing from one country into another.
In the border regions there were certain villages where people of one ethnicity…or one religion…predominated.
- Everyone knew this.
- Sometimes you only had to walk a few miles before suddenly finding yourself in a different world.
- This is what happens to Jesus and his disciples when they cross into a certain village in the district of Tyre and Sidon.
- Jesus has left behind the lands he knows best and has crossed into the country we now know as Lebanon.
A Canaanite woman…a native of that region…calls out to him for help:
- “Have mercy on me…Lord…Son of David…my daughter is tormented by a demon.”
- But Jesus ignores the woman’s desperate plea.
- And his annoyed disciples say:
- “Send her away. She keeps shouting after us.”
- And if that wasn’t enough…Jesus says: “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.”
But here’s the thing…this woman will not take no for an answer.
- She’s got a daughter who’s very sick.
- She kneels and repeats her plea.
- And holy cats…the next words from Jesus are:
- “It is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.”
O My Gosh!
- Jesus does not just brush her off.
- He does not just mumble some bureaucratic excuse and move on.
- For cry-in out loud…he insults the woman.
- To call someone a dog…in that culture…was harsh.
- No one kept dogs as pets.
- But dogs kept the rat population down.
- So…they were tolerated and allowed to hang around and forage for food.
Now you must admire the Canaanite woman…she is so cool!
- Even after enduring the insult…she keeps it up.
- She turns the slur around and spins it into a virtue:
- “Yes…Lord…yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters’ table.”
- Darn good theology!
- Even Jesus leftovers are enough.
- To heal and to save.
- It’s a startling moment.
- And then something changes in him:
- “Woman…great is your faith!
- Let it be done for you as you wish.”
- And with that…the daughter is healed.
OK then…what a relief.
- To remember that Jesus was both fully God and fully human.
- No dualism here.
- And the Canaanite woman’s quick wit exposes Jesus’ humanness.
Martin Luther says this:
“She catches Christ with his own words. He compares her to a dog…she concedes it…and asks nothing more than that he let her be a dog…as he himself judged her to be.
- Where will Jesus now take refuge?
- He is caught.”
Well…what can we learn here.
- We learn that Jesus does not let his off-the-cuff answer…the typical…expected answer for a person of his place and time…stand.
- He pivots…acting in a deeply merciful and loving way.
- Jesus quickly recognizes his error and corrects it.
OK then…let’s consider a story that all too often happens at the border.
- It’s a 2004 Israeli film called The Syrian Bride.
- It’s a fictional story…but it is based on real-life situations that have happened.
- And still happen…in the borderlands between Israel and Syria.
It is the story of a young woman named Mona…a member of the Druze people.
- The Druze are an ethnic minority who have lived in the three nations of Israel…Syria and Lebanon for centuries.
- They have their own language and their own religion.
- They are grudgingly tolerated by the larger nations within whose borders they live.
Mona and her family live in a Druze village in the Golan Heights…
- That strategic region Israel captured from Syria in the Six-Day War of 1967.
- The border between those two nations is among the most heavily fortified in the world.
- And one of the most difficult to cross.
The problem is that Mona is engaged to marry a man…one of her own Druze people…
- Who happens to live across the border in Syria.
- The two families know and respect each other.
- But she is sad at the expectation of leaving her family.
- What makes the parting even sadder is the harsh fact that…
- Once Mona crosses that border…the Israelis will never let her return.
- The only way Mona will ever see her family again is if they can contrive to meet in some neutral country.
- What a world.
- No wonder we are going to Mars…there is no peace here.
Her wedding celebration is an odd one…because of the border that runs straight through the middle of it.
- First there’s a lavish wedding feast…put on by Mona’s parents…for all the people of their village.
- The groom is not present…he has not been given permission to enter Israel.
- As soon as the party’s over…Mona and her family drive to the border for the tearful farewell…
- She crosses through the chain-link and barbed-wire fences alone…to meet her new husband and his family.
- The actual wedding ceremony will take place on the Syrian side…with no members of the bride’s family present.
It has taken months to obtain the necessary visas from the two governments.
- The Israeli border officer stamps Mona’s passport.
- Then a female officer of the Norwegian army…a member of the U.N. peacekeeping force.
- Escorts her through the fence into no-man’s land.
It is there that a perfect storm of bureaucracy arises.
- It seems the Israelis have just changed the type of rubber stamp they use on the passports of travelers leaving the Golan Heights.
- The new stamp declares that Mona is leaving Israel.
- This is not okay with the Syrian border guards…because their nation has never given up its claim to the Golan Heights.
- If they let Mona into their country…
- Does that mean Syria is giving up its claim to the Heights?
- Mona…wilting in the hot sun in her wedding dress…has become a symbol of everything that’s dysfunctional between those two nations.
- Even though she…as a member of the stateless Druze people…does not belong to either one.
Tense negotiations ensue.
- Phone calls are made to Jerusalem and Damascus.
- Jeanne…the sympathetic Norwegian officer…borrows a metal folding chair from the Israelis and carries it over for Mona to sit on.
- And…also gives her a couple bottles of cold water.
- Jeanne practices a kind of shuttle diplomacy…
- Driving her U.N. jeep back and forth from one immigration-control booth to the other.
Both families are looking on in astonishment and horror.
- From opposite sides of the border… they can see each other…and they can see Mona…
- Forlornly sitting there…surrounded by barbed wire.
- Her fiancée is on the scene as well…pacing nervously on the Syrian side…helpless to do anything.
- Because the Syrians will not let him cross into no-man’s-land to sit with his bride.
Negotiations drag on…hour after hour.
- Finally…the Norwegian liaison officer gains a small concession from the Israelis.
- The Israeli immigration officer agrees to cover over the offending rubber-stamp image with White-Out.
- But the Syrians decide this is still not good enough.
- It appears that the wedding will be delayed by weeks…even months…if it can happen at all.
But wait! Mona…who has been sitting there all this time…the picture of composure…takes matters into her own hands.
- She gets up without a word…and begins walking…with great determination…towards the Syrian border.
- She has no passport…it’s still in the hands of the Israeli immigration people.
- She has no luggage…and she’s wearing a wedding dress.
- Will the Syrian border guards shoot her?
Everyone is so completely dumbfounded by her decision to cut the bureaucratic red tape and just walk across that no one stops her.
- Mona walks right through the Syrian checkpoint unchallenged…and into the arms of her new family.
- Despite all the assaults of racism and sheer bureaucracy…love wins.
The same happens with Jesus and the Canaanite woman.
- The same can happen in the borderlands of our own lives…if we let it!