Sunday June 7, 2015

MEDITATION ON MATTHEW 15:29-39

My first reaction to this story is to focus on the geography. As Matthew 15 opens Jesus has just had a confrontation with Pharisees regarding what defiles a person, that which goes into him, or that which comes out of his mouth, spoken from his heart. The Pharisees believe that deeds make you holy, so washing before eating is a big deal for them. Jesus challenges their thinking and his theology once again trumps theirs. Just prior to the feeding of the four thousand, Jesus has just left the area of Tyre and Sidon, cities on the Mediterranean coast. Jesus is making inroads in areas he told his disciples to avoid when he sent them out to preach. In this district he confronts a Canaanite woman who challenges him to heal her daughter. She tells him that even the dogs eat the crumbs from the master’s table. While Jesus seems to be hostile and rude to the woman, his challenge to her forces her to express a deep humility and unshakable faith. In that hour, her daughter is healed.

Next we see him …  “along the Sea of Galilee. Then he went up on a mountainside and sat down”

The areas of the Sea of Galilee that slope gently down to the shore are the fishing districts where Jesus found his first disciples. Most of this seacoast however is hilly, with cliffs. It is in one of these mountains where Jesus sits, likely to rest and even more likely to facilitate the healing and preaching he knows he must accomplish. When people are waiting for three days to present their loved one for healing, it is encouraging to see the healer from a distance, visible on the hillside. And afterwards when people give thanks in this territory, they “praise the God of Israel”. Clearly this clue lets us know Jesus is in Gentile territory. So all the healings and the feeding of four thousand take on a very different tone than a miracle accomplished among the Jews.

People bring “the lame, the blind, the crippled, the mute and many others”. As I think about that idea, I am amazed that the feeding of the four thousand so often overshadows this part of the story. For a Gentile person to see their loved one suddenly have full use of his or her limbs or to see again would be truly amazing, as Matthew records. Luke’s record of this event focuses on one blind man (Luke 18:43), but I appreciate that Matthew’s focus is on any and all illnesses presented to Jesus over the three days of healing. Some of the crippled might have had twisted limbs. Some surely had limbs missing. Jesus restores and replaces them all before the eyes of everyone present. I cannot imagine the amazement of seeing a missing limb restored! The mutes were more than likely mute because they were also deaf. So Jesus would have had to, in one moment, restore their hearing and add to their memory all the language of the region where they live so they could speak. He would have had to go farther in one healing second than Helen Keller did in her lifetime. No wonder these Gentiles rose up and praised the God of Israel. Such healings must come only from a supreme being. There was no other explanation.

Many in the Church return to this passage encouraging us to take our troubles and “lay them at His feet” (v.30). I agree, but I know Matthew does not write in isolation. The story of eating without washing and the story the Canaanite woman are linked here. When the Pharisees see the sick touching Jesus, or Jesus touching them, in their thinking, he becomes unclean, unworthy to enter the temple unless he pays a fine and is restored to ‘purity’ with their blessings. Jesus challenges this view of the interaction of humanity. His idea of compassion involves embracing the sick, including lepers.

By the same token the Canaanite woman has her prayers answered while others do not. She understands she is unworthy of God’s mercy. She acknowledges Jesus’ image of her as a dog begging for scraps of bread meant for the children of Israel. She is humbled in her need. We too have no business laying our needs at the feet of God unless we are as humbled as the Canaanite woman to the point where we realize we are also not worthy of mercy. We must beg for it in our lowliness. In the same way, Gentiles (non-believers) in this story stood in line for three days, waiting in hope for healing – and in a barren place where their food must have run out long before they got to the front of the line.

Jesus, in his compassion not only heals them, he feeds them as he did with the five thousand.

“I have compassion for these people; they have already been with me three days
and have nothing to eat. I do not want to send them away hungry, or they may collapse on the way.”

This time the disciples do not argue with him. But they still ask where bread could be obtained for such a crowd. They still think in earthly, physical terms. They tell him how many loaves and how many fish are available among themselves. This time, when the miracle is enacted seven baskets of scraps are left over. Once again the disciples miss the point. Jesus is the not only the source of abundant bread, he is the bread of life.

I always wondered why only the men were counted. If each man had a wife and a few children, a crowd of four thousand more than doubles – more if an entire family brought an elderly sick person. Perhaps, the food was distributed to the males in each family, and only they were counted. But I’d be guessing at how the disciples organized the distribution process. More important is the fact that the crowd went away satisfied as Matthew said. (v.37) I believe they went away satisfied both in body and in spirit as Jesus intended.

Jesus leaves by boat and travels to Magadan, a village on the west coast of the Sea of Galilee. It is from here he skirts the north shore and arrives at Bethsaida, his next stop. So, his travels are non-stop and exhausting, as the gospels recount. Jesus seems to establish no pattern to his travels, other than to boldly go into Gentile areas, and alternate with Jewish areas. He challenges the Pharisees when they show up and works at healing and preaching when they are absent. Wherever Jesus goes, he gives a full measure of compassion and healing.

If the Kingdom of Heaven is not a place, but the notion of a world embraced by kindness and love and free of fear and selfishness, then wherever Jesus goes, he embodies the Kingdom within himself, demonstrates it and encourages all within the sound of his voice to walk in its light as well. The disciples are challenged, as are we, to walk in the same light, without having the physical presence of the Lord to motivate our daily actions. Like the Gentiles lined up for days, like the Canaanite woman, we hope for mercy, with no thought that we deserve it in any way. We cling to our faith and hope the Lord has compassion for our needs.

Peter Mansell