Homily for the 11th Sunday after Trinity (20th Sunday of Ordinary Time)

Today’s readings are filled with the promise of God’s expansion of the covenant beyond the bounds of ethnic Israel. In particular, Isaiah’s description of all the nations “ministering” to the Lord — using distinct priestly language — is a striking reminder that the newness of the New Testament, the newness of the expansion to the Gentiles in the book of Acts, is new only in part. This was, in other words, part of the plan all along. Israel’s particularity, her status as the chosen nation, was always oriented to the good of the whole world. Despite the strict separations demanded of the chosen people, salvation history contains regular examples of irregularity, if we can put it that way: think of Rahab, saved from the ruins of Jericho; think of Ruth the Moabite, the great-grandmother of King David; and think of Israel himself, that is the patriarch Jacob, who was in fact not the chosen one, the heir to the covenant, but conned that status from his older brother Esau, and who gained his name and the name of his people by the fact that he wrestled with God and lived.

In this way of thinking, the Canaanite woman is in very good company. Though on the surface she is in a very difficult position. Mark describes her as Syrophoenician, identifying her with the place where she lives, but Matthew calls her a Canaanite, drawing pointed attention to those who were more than anyone else the enemies of ancient Israel. Another Jesus, Yeshua, that is, Joshua, was supposed to show no mercy and eradicate the Canaanites from existence. Disturbed by those stories, as I think we ought to be, the Church fathers saw there, among other things, an allegory of the moral life and the need to absolutely eradicate vice. Without getting pulled down that rabbit trail of interpretation today, I mention it simply to suggest that the early Church saw here in Matthew a clear and explicit moment of comparison. The new Joshua’s response to a suppliant Canaan is all the more revelatory in its comparison to the old. Here we see God’s true and final intention towards the nations.

Compared to the covenant people, the people of the promise, the Canaanite has no right to God’s gifts. The Lord’s response, which always seems harsh to our ears, compares her to a dog — almost never a nice thing to say, but even more so in a cultural context which lacks our modern northern-European sentimentality towards dogs. God’s gifts are for his children, not for the dogs. 

“Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their master’s table.” (15:27)

It is an amazing response, and the Lord’s own response affirms as much: “O woman, great is your faith!” This is the only time in any of the four gospels that this emphatic, vocative “O” is used in a positive context. Many of the ancient commentaries as well as modern interpreters suggest that Christ’s harshness was an intentional provocation to this greater faith. As Chrysostom puts it, “He know what she would say, and would not have her so great excellence hid.” Many also wonder what Jesus was doing wandering around the region of Tyre if he did not expect to do something among the Gentiles.

We can accept this reading, but we should be wary of framing the dialogue as mere rhetoric, as if the Lord were merely engaged in a kind of playful jibing. For one thing, the situation, with a daughter tormented by a demon, is hardly a matter for play. But more importantly, the Lord’s words, despite our instinctive modern scruples about inclusivity, are true. The gentiles were not heirs of the promise. Jesus did first come to the lost sheep of Israel. He owed this woman nothing. He owes us nothing. Any properly Christian theology of grace insists as much, and the whole system of sacramental economy, and the Church’s dispensation of gifts, does nothing to change the fundamental nature of God’s absolutely free and unnecessary gifts to us, both in our foundation at creation and in our restoration through Christ. And the way that the Lord presents this scene to the disciples is instructive, for Israel stands implicated, as it so often does in the gospels, in a way that both affirms its chosen status and insists that that status was itself not some sort of prize won by merit but another instance of God’s grace. God’s history of relationship with Israel — a relationship which the prophets and writings repeatedly compare to that of a marriage — shows that being the chosen one does nothing to guarantee success or holiness. Perhaps, to use the harsh analogy of today’s story, the gifts for the children should not be thrown to the dogs. But what if most of the children have forgotten that they are children? Israel had a very high vocation. Humanity had a very high vocation. How better to describe the Fall than Adam and Eve rejecting their seat at the table. St. Paul writes in our passage from Romans, “For God delivered all to disobedience, that he might have mercy upon all.” God uses our failures to reinforce the goodness of his grace.

Of the Canaanite woman, Chrysostom says, “He called her a dog, she accepts the office of a dog; as if she had said, I cannot leave the table of my Lord.” Again, what an incredible humility and faith, so powerfully echoed in the Prayer of Humble Access that we use at every Mass: “we are not worthy so much as to gather up the crumbs under thy Table.” This sentiment grates against the current climate of individualistic entitlement which so pervades our lives and taints our every moral and political instinct, whether conservative or liberal, progressive or traditional. But paired with such unworthiness stand, as our heroic Gentile woman points out, the “manifold and great” mercies of almighty God.

Elsewhere, of course, Jesus tells us that those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted. Here we find this principle less as a secret technique for advancement than as a recognition that to truly enter the house of God we must do so on our knees; we must recognize the truth that it is better, as the psalmist says, to be “a doorkeeper in the house of my God than to dwell in the tents of ungodliness” (Ps 84). Because what matters isn’t first where we are but who our real Master is. We are not dogs, in the end, but we will always be happier if, like dogs, we live in the confidence that our Master will take care of us, and that the most important thing is to be in his presence. This simple humility is the start of true human freedom.

Our selection from Romans cuts out, a little strangely, one of the more dramatic images of St. Paul. He suggests that the Gentiles are like a wild olive branch grafted onto the main tree (Romans 11:17). This is exactly the opposite of what we would normally do in nature. But in God’s economy those who have no standing, which is to say all of us, can be attached to the tree of life which is Christ, if only we can give up that desire which we inherited from Adam to grow on our own.