This is a very difficult gospel. It is hard to listen to, and hard to pray with a gospel where Jesus appears to be so sexist and racist, especially in the light of ongoing violence in so many countries around the world, all of which is based on discrimination and hatred because of difference. We can hope that he had a smile on his face when he said such a terrible thing to the woman – but we will never know. We might remember the great line of St Teresa of Jesus – well, if this is the way that you treat your friends, it is no wonder that you have so few of them.
The only way that we can make sense of this passage is by looking carefully at what Jesus says to his disciples and the woman – “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the House of Israel.” His mission was not to heal all of the sick people in the world at the time, or to drive out all of their demons. His mission was to reawaken Israel back to it calling as the covenant people, chosen by the Lord as the promise-bearers for themselves on behalf of the whole world. If we forget the centrality of Israel (as the Christian church often has) we forget something that is at the centre of the mission of Jesus. We also think that the church exists only for ourselves – but both Israel and the Church (and thus the sacraments and the whole life of the church) exists for the sake of the whole world. But this was only true after the resurrection and the gift of the Holy Spirit. But this woman, with her deep faith and profound compassion for her daughter, could not wait until after Easter. She wanted to bring God’s glorious future crashing into the present. That is why Jesus can say to her that you have great faith.
We are also invited to be the promise-bearers of God’s covenant people – to bring the great things of God alive in all the small daily decisions that we make.
