“Responding to Pleas” based on 1 Samuel 1:1-6, 9-18 and Matthew 15:21-28

What do you want most in life? Or perhaps, what have you wanted most? For many, I know the answer is that of the Canaanite woman in the Gospel lesson: healing for a loved one. For some the answer is that of Hannah: fulfillment of a lifetime desire. There are more answers of course, but those two cover a lot of ground.

They cover a lot of humanity too – the utter horror that we can feel when we face the pending death of a loved one, the discontent that can come when we are unfulfilled, and even the ways that society tells us who we should be and the pressures that puts on us to want particular things.

There are some challenges in these texts. The first one, I think, is primarily for people who believe that Jesus was perfect. Because in the Gospel story, he definitely isn’t. He’s human and quite fallible. Now, if this is an impediment to you being able to hear the story, it is always possible to tell yourself that Jesus was “acting like a human to make a point.” Because a point gets made here. Jesus, honestly, dismisses the human value of another person because her ethnicity is different from his.

Worse, it is rather consistent in the book of Matthew with how Jesus talks about Gentiles. They are OTHER. Gentiles are non-Jews, and they’re not people of faith, and they’re less important. They are THEY, the “not us.”

Which definitely seems like the energy Jesus brings into the conversation. Now, he’s tired. Let’s admit it. He had left the Galilee to get a break from all the demands being made on him. He is on retreat, or something like it, taking a break. He is trying to fill himself up so he can go back to giving away what he has.

And while he’s on retreat, yet another person has heard of him, and yet another person asks things of him, and he is DONE and he draws a boundary and says “she is not my problem. I was sent to the Jews, she isn’t a Jew, I’m on a retreat, let’s ignore it.” (I kinda get it. This far at least. You can’t fix the whole world – and maybe not even if you are Jesus, or at least the Jesus who lived in a human body which is inherently finite.)

But still she approaches him, and asks him directly, “Help me!” And then Jesus says the awful thing. The thing inconsistent with what we teach about Jesus in Sunday School, and even most of the time at church. He says, “ “It is not appropriate to take the children’s bread and throw it to the dogs.” And from what I’ve read, calling a woman a dog back then was about as unkind as you might think it would be today.

But, I’ve got to give it to this unnamed Canaanite woman. Because she wants her daughter healed, and she won’t back down. She is willing, even to take the insult, if that’s what it takes. She is already kneeling before him, pleading, and having her humanity attacked isn’t going to stop her now.

She sticks with his metaphor and says, “Yes, Lord, but even the dogs eat the crumbs which fall from their masters’ table.”

She blows him away. I don’t know what it was like for him in that moment. Did he finally see her? Was he convinced by her argument? Was she like the persistent widow and he realized he better just give her what she asked? Was he impressed with her rhetorical brilliance?

The Gospels don’t tell stories of Jesus getting bested by the priests or the scholars or the empire. But they do tell stories of Jesus getting bested by women. This is one of them.

And not only does the story say that he healed her daughter, from that point forward Jesus started talking differently about Gentiles. At the end of Matthew we hear, “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you.” The ministry of Jesus expanded in this story, and suddenly he wasn’t called only to the Jews, but to all of the people.

One might call this Jesus’ conversion story, if one wanted to.

Or, one might take this as a VERY GOOD example of what to do when one is called out for an unconscious bias – and how to let the wisdom of another person transform you into a better person.

And, one might see in this story the utter desperation of a parent with a sick child. That woman would have done ANYTHING for her daughter.

So would many of you. So have many of you. And so many of you, also, would have done anything that could have been done IF ONLY something could have been done.

For me, the part of this story that feels most universal is the desperation of the mother, of the person whose loved one needed healing. The one who couldn’t heal their loved one themselves, but would do anything to get someone else who could heal to heal.

That is one of the hardest parts of life, for those who experience it. Which over time is most of us. That desperation is part of being human. It is part of loving.

(I’m going to just mention this and move on, but the needs for universal access to great health care AND adequate support and care for medical providers are implicated in this passage too.)

I struggle a little more with Hannah’s request. Now, as a whole, I love Hannah. She speaks amazing words about God. But I worry that Hannah wanted to be the mother of a son because the culture around her told her that her entire value in the world was being a mother of a son, and she was trying to gain status with this request. That is, of course, unfair. Right? Because when society tells you that your value is based on something, humans tend to want that thing. I know that. But I want Hannah to just know she’s OK without the thing. I want her to know she’s enough as she is. I want her to throw away the expectations and just be awesome as she.

I’m tough.

(I’m tough on myself too, not just on Biblical characters.)

And maybe Hannah wants to parent because she wants to parent, but she kinda makes a deal with God here that if she gets to parent a son she will give him to be raised in the Temple and not actually get to be with him all that much. Which gets me back to thinking she wants status. But, OF COURSE SHE DOES. What other recourse does she have??

OK, so now I’m back to being compassionate for a woman who thought she had one job and wanted to do it and be recognized for being capable of doing her ONE job.

Great.

But once I start bringing in compassion, then I start seeing Penninah too. Because Penninah has the things she’s supposed to have. She is a mother, including being a mother of sons. Yet she knows herself to be unloved. She is said to “provoke” Hannah, and yet it seems perhaps she felt provoked as well. She had what society said mattered, but she she didn’t have fulfillment in it.

Well, she’s not the first or last one, huh?

A final complication exists for us in these stories of women pleading for what they want most. They have their pleas answered, in the positive. Hannah becomes a mother, the Canaanite woman’s daughter is healed. These stories tell of infertility being erased, and healing happening. Which means these stories can be painful for those for whom infertility remains or healing isn’t found.

Because we know in life that sometimes the thing we want most, sometimes the thing we need most, sometimes the thing we are willing to get onto our knees and beg and plead for …

we still don’t get.

Sometimes we plea and pray incessantly for something, and it doesn’t happen.

Sometimes our worst fears come pass.

And if not for us, then definitely for others, and we see suffering of God’s beloveds far too often for our souls to be at rest.

This is a known problem in theology – we have a God we say is good, and terrible things happen. And likely you have heard various “answers” to the problem from well meaning people of faith. Things like, “God always answers prayer, sometimes the answer is no.” or “Who are we to know what is good, only God knows” or (getting worse here) “maybe you didn’t pray hard enough” or (OYE) “maybe God is punishing you.”

I don’t have an “answer.” I don’t believe in God as a punisher, or in having to prove oneself in prayer, or that we are unable to identify bad things in the world. Indeed, I know that bad, sometimes horrible things happen. And they break my heart over and over again. And I believe they break God’s heart too.

And yet I believe that God is with us, all of us, and God is working toward good, all the time, and even the worst things in the world can be healed by God’s love. I believe bad things happen, but I don’t believe they’re the whole story. I guess I’m back to the whole Easter thing, once again. I believe God, who is Love, has the last word. I believe love wins in the end, even if it may take a while. Even if I will never see it. Even if I can’t see the way from here to there. I believe God is with us, and somehow, someway, that’s enough. Thanks be to God. Amen

Rev. Sara E. Baron 
First United Methodist Church of Schenectady 
603 State St. Schenectady, NY 12305 
Pronouns: she/her/hers 
http://fumcschenectady.org/ 
https://www.facebook.com/FUMCSchenectady

June 18, 2023