The Children's Bread: A Meditation on Matthew 15

Of all the stories of Jesus’ interactions with people during His earthly ministry, this encounter with the mother of a possessed daughter has often been troubling for me.  As a child, I had the unfortunate lot of being harassed by demons in ways that absolutely terrified me—and as an adult, I have encountered them in painful and awful circumstances.  I know, both from Holy Scripture and personal experience, that demons are real, malevolent, and very powerful.  They are wicked and brutal creatures, with no light of compassion or humanity at all.  They are completely consumed with hatred and malice, and though their intellect is twisted by their evil, they have learned much in the millennia they have spent tormenting mankind.  No one should ever desire an encounter with a demon, and the utmost compassion ought to be given to anyone who is under their influence or oppression.  Demons are real, and the torment they produce is real.  Their goal is the destruction of the human race, and to drag anyone they can to the same hell prepared for them and their infernal leader, Satan.

Knowing this, for many years, I could only read Jesus’ response to this poor mother with a gasp.  How could Jesus, who knows the diabolical better than anyone, respond to the pain of this woman so cavalierly?  How could Jesus turn His back on this mother and her possessed daughter, knowing what evil torment was upon them, and the destruction that this demon intended for them?  How can Jesus, who we know as all mercy and compassion, be so seemingly callous?  The answer lies in the text, when read closely.

First, we must note, that the land of Tyre and Sidon was of a basically pagan population.  Even the quasi-Jewish people of the area were held in very low regard by the Jews of Israel.  To the Jews, the people of Tyre and Sidon were mongrels at best, and rank gentile pagans at worst—descendents of the Canaanites, who should have been wiped off the face of the earth during Joshua’s conquest 1500 years before Jesus.  They certainly were not seen as part of the covenantal people of God.  From a self-righteous perspective, the Jews could say that their slavery to evil through their worship of pagan gods was just and fair—but of course, after the Fall of our first parents, everyone on the face of the earth deserves and inherits that natural fate, Jew and Gentile alike.

Secondly, we must note, that Jesus very intentionally decides to go there.  This is significant, because it means that Jesus’ encounter with the poor mother of the possessed child, is no accident.  This Canaanite woman, outside the family of Israel, has a divine appointment with the Creator and Redeemer of the world.  Jesus is not going to Tyre and Sidon to repudiate the Gentiles.  He has a different, very important reason for going.

As this poor mother begs after Jesus for relief from her just fate, Jesus gives voice to the Jew’s prejudice.  She must make her way through the crowd, through the disciples, and eventually to Jesus Himself, begging for mercy and deliverance from the evil one.  When she finally makes it to Jesus, His response would shatter the faith of most people:  “It is not meet to take the children’s bread, and to cast it to dogs.”  He shows this poor mother that she and her daughter deserve nothing good from God.  She wants a miracle from Jesus, and Jesus has been sent to the lost sheep of the house of Israel—the Messiah was a gift to the Jews, or so many may have thought.

Yet this poor woman does not debate the Law Jesus gives her.  She does not contest that she deserves deliverance, nor that she is as worthy to receive divine gifts as the Jews.  She doesn’t defend herself, her family, or her people.  She simply states the penitent truth, that even “the dogs eat of the crumbs which fall from their masters’ table.”  And Jesus, seeing the fullness of this woman’s faith and repentance, reveals why He has come to this pagan land, as He says to her, “O woman, great is thy faith: be it unto thee even as thou wilt.”  Jesus has come, not just to deliver this poor mother and child from the grip of the evil one, but to teach both Jew and Gentile alike about the centrality of faith in receiving grace.

The Jews, like the Gentiles, deserved nothing good from God.  Their whole point, and the point of the Old Covenant—from Adam and Eve, through Noah, the Patriarchs, Moses, the Judges, the Kings, and the Prophets—was to bring forth the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.  The Jews are not chosen because they are beautiful, powerful, or spiritually great.  They are chosen, because the Father willed to bring through them His Son according to the flesh, and through them to give His Word to mankind.  The Jews are chosen to accomplish the salvation of the whole world, through Jesus Christ.  The special place of the Jews is not because of any merit on their part, because like every Gentile people, they are fallen and cannot justify themselves according to the holy and righteous Law of God.  They are chosen, elect, so that through them God might fulfill His promise to Eve, that through her He would provide His Seed who would crush their wicked oppressor the devil.  The rescue of mankind from the grip of every evil spirit, and from the devil himself, came through the Son of God—King David’s greater Son.

But such deliverance is given by His grace alone, because only Jesus can accomplish our salvation from sin, death, hell, and the power of the devil.  Only He could give His life as a ransom for many, that all who would believe in Him might not perish, but have His everlasting life.  Only Jesus, eternally begotten of the Father before all worlds, and conceived in time by the power of the Holy Spirit working in the Blessed Virgin Mary, fully God and fully man, could save us all from the just fate we inherited in our Fall.  And because only Jesus could accomplish the work of our salvation, it could always and only be a gift of grace given freely to mankind—a gift to be received by a living faith, which works in repentance and love according to His Word.

Such faith never presumes to argue with God over the curse of the Law, nor to debate our own depravity, unworthiness, and sinfulness.  It clings simply to the truth, that we live only by the grace that falls from our Master’s Table—His very Body and Blood, given and shed for us, for the forgiveness of our sins.  We do not cling to our culture, our nation, our family, or even our own pride; we do not demand from God anything that we deserve, because we deserve nothing but the tyranny of death and the devil in this world, and hell in the world to come.  But we cling to the Promise of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, that by grace we are saved through faith, and not by our own works, lest anyone should boast—not Jew nor Gentile, Lutheran nor Roman, Baptist nor Charismatic.  We have nothing to boast of, save Christ alone, who alone is our salvation, our life, and our hope.  Amen.