Twentieth Sunday in Ordinary Time, August 16, 2020 – Isaiah 56:1, 6-7; Romans 11:13-15, 29-32; Matthew 15:21-28

When I was a kid growing up in the Bronx, there were certain neighborhoods you just didn’t go into, because there were gangs there. Not like the gangs today, that carry guns and sell drugs, they were just hormonal teenagers, spoiling for a fight. But still, it was better not to go there.

In senior year of high school, our class went on a retreat to a little Jesuit retreat house just outside of Tuxedo. And we were warned by the retreat master, if we were walking on the grounds, not to go into the woods beyond the markers of the retreat house property, because there were people in the wood who really didn’t like strangers, and didn’t have any quibble about taking a shot at them with a shotgun. Those people, I later learned, were called Jackson Whites.

Jackson Whites were an intermarriage between the original Ramapo Indians, part of the Leni Lenape Tribe, who lived in that area for centuries, and German Hessian soldiers, who had been employed by England during the Revolutionary War and deserted, and runaway slaves. I encountered the Jackson Whites a second time when I was a deacon in the parish in Suffern, NY. There was a very nice little community of middle class homes and neat streets located just between Rt. 17 and Rt. 59. You had to cross over a bridge that crossed the railroad depot, a place where there were about 13 or 14 tracks, where they parked freight trains overnight, to get to the little neighborhood. But it was well-known throughout Suffern that you were not wanted in that neighborhood. I used to shortcut my car through there because it saved over ten minutes trying to get to Rt. 17. But still, if you did, you got very pointed stares from any of the people walking on the streets. This little community, called Hillburn, which belonged, almost exclusively, to the descendants of Jackson Whites.

I tell you these stories so you understand where Jesus has gone. What is the region of Tyre and Sidon is outside the territory of Israel. The Lake of Gennesaret, or the Sea of Galilee, is located at the very northern end of what was considered Israelite territory then and now. Just beyond that lake you enter into a place called Syrophoenicia - today it’s called Lebanon. The people there are hostile to Jews, and Jews were hostile to them. Jews considered them, like all non-Jews, to be heretics, unwashed, unclean. So the question is what is Jesus doing going there?

From where His headquarters are in Capernaum to the first of the two towns, Tyre, is a walk of about two days, about 32 miles. So considering that everybody walked back in those days, a two day walk, you’d have to stay overnight in a hostel or a campsite. Mark’s introduction to the story is very different from Matthew’s introduction to the story. Matthew says that Jesus withdrew to the region of Tyre and Sidon. That doesn’t make any sense. He wouldn’t withdraw to someplace where He wasn’t wanted. Mark says He deliberately went into that territory to somebody’s house and stayed there and didn’t want anybody to know He was there. Why would that be?
Well, it’s possible that Jesus wanted to go and visit the Jewish community in Tyre, and the Jewish community in Sidon. Then, as now, Jewish people made their money largely by trade. And both Tyre and Sidon are right on the coast of the Mediterranean; they’re seaports. So it would have made sense that a business community would have grown up in each of those places, where there might even have been a synagogue. And those people kept themselves separate from the rest of the society there because they were unwanted and they did not want them. So that makes much more sense that Jesus would have been visiting someone’s home there and didn’t want anyone to know He was there, but Mark says oh, but the news got out right away. That makes sense then because people wanted to get a look at him, including this Canaanite woman. The other theory is that Jesus went there deliberately to preach the gospel, then decided it wasn’t a very good idea and got cold feet. It doesn’t make as much sense.

But, suppose this … let’s take a look at Matthew’s church – he’s writing primarily to Jewish Christians around the year 85 AD. So the temple has been destroyed. The civic life of both Christians and Jews throughout Israel has been decimated by the Roman occupation. And Matthew’s church experiences a number of things. First of all they are grieving the loss of their national identity. They’re fearing the loss of their culture. They are resentful that, in the mid-80s, the followers of Jesus are made up more of Gentiles than of Jews. They’re crushed by the fact that they, and members of their families, have followed Jesus, and other relatives, that they love dearly, have not. And it’s split their families apart. And finally, because of all these experiences, they’re very reluctant to go out and preach the Gospel. They’re afraid of persecution. They are still mourning the loss of their Jewish Christian identity. Matthew has to get them over that, and help them to move on. So he tells a story in which he deliberately casts Jesus in the role of the people who say the kinds of things that Jesus is saying in the Gospel. Notice what Matthew says, he says that Jesus didn’t say a word, but His disciple said, “Make her go away. We can’t stand her.” This is what people are saying in Matthew’s community. So Jesus takes on the persona of a prejudice person. He treats the woman with disdain, ugly disdain. Then, she gives it right back to Him. He says, “You don’t give the children’s food to dogs.” She says, “Ah, even dogs eat the scraps that fall from the table.” He’s brought up short. Then He says to the woman, “Great is your faith.”

I asked you to think, at the beginning of the Gospel reading, what you thought was the most important word in the story. The most important word is “great.” Now, in Matthew’s gospel, Jesus is always healing people. And very often He says, “Your faith has saved you. Go on your way.” But only to this woman, and to nobody else in the entire gospel, does he call their faith “great.” A couple of weeks ago we heard Him tell Peter his faith was little. He tells this woman her faith is great.

What can we get from this story? We have groups in our civic life, and in our church life, who are treated as outsiders and resent those who treat them that way. There’s two elements to the story that apply to our situation today. The first is how importunate the woman is. She’s not the least bit polite because Jesus is not the least bit polite. It’s important that people on the margins demand, and continue to demand, their rights in the most vocal way possible, while still maintaining a modicum of decency. At the same time it’s important for those people, who are seeking entry, who want their rights recognized, who want to be part of the whole, it’s important for them to remain faithful to their own ideals, and faithful to the ideals of the group they desire to enter. Their faith needs to be great in order for them to pursue their goals in a hostile society.

Now how does that apply to you and me in our daily lives? Very often we are praying for something. Perhaps it’s something that we hardly think God can grant us. It’s important for us to storm heaven. Demand from God what we think is our due. And to keep demanding until somehow there is an answer. And then God says to us, “Your faith is great.”