The Canaanites are God’s People Too!

Eric Lemonholm

August 14, 2011, Proper 15 A – with alternate Scripture:

Genesis 27:46-28:22; Matthew 15:10-28

 

 

The Canaanites are God’s People Too!

The Canaanites get a bad rap in the Bible.

They are the indigenous people of the land that becomes Israel.

They are there when Abraham and Sarah travel there.

Later on, they will still be there when the Israelites arrive from Egypt.

The Canaanites are rivals to the Israelites, making claims to the same land.

Does that sound like the Middle East today?

It’s an old story of prejudice against people who are different.

Now, Isaac and Rebekah do not want Jacob to marry a Canaanite woman, so they send him to his uncle’s home to marry his first cousins instead, just as his father Isaac had.

Poor Esau realizes too late that his parents frown on marrying Canaanites, so he marries one of Abraham’s son Ishmael’s daughters.

 

Later on in Israel, there was an understandable desire to protect the distinctiveness of the Jewish religion and culture by having Israelites marry other Israelites.

Israel was a small nation surrounded by larger empires.

They struggled to keep their faith and culture alive in the face of the constant threat of assimilation – or annihilation.

But the simple reality is that the people of Israel are Canaanites too.

Their languages were closely related.

Later on, it is likely that 11 out of Jacob’s 12 sons marry Canaanites, while Joseph marries an Egyptian.

When the people of Israel return to the land of Canaan from Egypt and conquer the Canaanites, they do not, in fact, kill all the Canaanites.

Instead, they merge with them.  The Canaanites of the land become Israelites.

Jacob’s parents’ prejudice against Canaanite women does not make much sense to us today.

And yet, this prejudice against people who are different continues.

Genetically and culturally, Palestinians and Israelis today are closely related: they are brothers and sisters, yet by and large they do not see it that way.

Is it much different in our community today?

 

Last week, we saw that Jacob was a crafty schemer.

Now, he is beginning his journey to adulthood, his path of life, on a long quest to find a wife in his uncle’s home in Haran – in what is now Turkey.

When he stops to rest for the night with a rock as his pillow, Jacob has a dream of a stairway to heaven, with God’s messengers ascending and descending the stairway.

And the LORD – Yahweh God – comes and stands by Jacob and blesses him:  “I am the Lord, the God of Abraham your father and the God of Isaac; the land on which you lie I will give to you and to your offspring;and your offspring shall be like the dust of the earth, and you shall spread abroad to the west and to the east and to the north and to the south; and all the families of the earth shall be blessed in you and in your offspring. Know that I am with you and will keep you wherever you go, and will bring you back to this land; for I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you.”

God renews the promises made to Abraham and Isaac: promises of land, offspring, and a blessing of the world through them.

This dream has a powerful effect on Jacob: he calls the place Bethel, the House of God, the gate of heaven.

He stands the rock he used as a pillow as a sacred pillar.

Jacob promises that the LORD will be his God, and that he will give one tenth – a tithe – of everything he earns back to God his Provider.

Later, Bethel became a holy place, a sanctuary for Northern Israel.

 

In our Gospel lesson, although Mark rightly called the woman of Syria Syrophoenician, Matthew calls her the ancient term Canaanite.

We have to spend some time with this story.

This Canaanite woman, this woman of Syria – actually in what is now called Lebanon – prays to Jesus: “Have mercy on me, Lord, Son of David; my daughter is tormented by a demon.”

But Jesus does not have mercy on her – at first.  In fact, his silence speaks volumes.

It’s almost as if to say, “This person is not worth acknowledging.”

But she does not give up.  She may be a nobody to Jesus and his friends, but she is her daughter’s mother, and her daughter needs healing.

Jesus’ disciples want to get rid of her, and Jesus seems to agree, saying “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.”

 

This unnamed Canaanite mother comes and kneels at Jesus’ feet, saying “Lord, help me.”

Again, Jesus refuses: “It is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.”

In Jesus’ eyes at that time, the people of Israel are the lost sheep, the children of God, while the Canaanites are dogs.

Even in the face of this insult, the woman is not put off.

She is persistent, courageous, and wise: “Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters’ table.”

This Canaanite woman teaches Jesus how to be Jesus, the Savior, the Healer of not just Jews but all people.

Jesus answered her, “Woman, great is your faith! Let it be done for you as you wish.”

Jesus’ eyes were opened.  He was prepared to ignore this woman, but she showed him that faith in God – and faith in Jesus – is not confined by race or culture, gender or religion.

 

That’s a lesson we all can learn from the Canaanite woman.

As Jacob had a powerful experience of God and grew in faith in God’s promises, Jesus had a powerful encounter with the Canaanite woman – an encounter that led to the expanding of Jesus’ vision of God’s grace and mercy for all people – and the Canaanite woman received both Jesus’ commendation of her faith, and her daughter healthy and whole.

May God open our eyes to see God’s blessings in our lives, and may God open our eyes to see the image of God in all our neighbors, without exception.

Amen!