THREE REJECTIONS, ONE PERSISTENT FAITH

(6-minute read)

This week’s BeInReach session delved into a very uneasy conversation between Jesus and a visibly distressed Canaanite woman, recorded in Matthew 15:21-28. It was at a time after John the Baptist was beheaded and Jesus had tried repeatedly to retreat into solitude. When He finally found a sweet spot to rest in an area around Tyre and Sidon, He was approached by a Gentile woman who was determined to engage Him – no matter what!

In the process, she faced three solid rounds of rejection from the Lord in the most uncharacteristic manner, yet she persevered. Let’s look at how she persisted through the three rejections.

FIRST REJECTION – HIS SILENCE

The unnamed Canaanite woman started the conversation with Jesus by crying out, “Lord, Son of David, have mercy on me! My daughter is demon-possessed and suffering terribly.” (Matthew 15:22). It was a voice with an urgency that was hard to ignore, except to the hardest of hearts. Yet, Scripture tells us that the Lord ‘did not answer a word’. We can assume that His body language also did not give His disciples any cues that they should attend to her. Soon after, they urged Him to send her away so everyone could have some peace and quiet.

At this point, Jesus had, in fact, just left a distasteful dialogue with some nit-picking Pharisees and teachers of the Law who were offended by what He had said to them (Matthew 15:12). While He was uncharacteristically silent in His interaction with this woman, he was not oblivious to the different issues that were playing out before Him. Neither did He withdraw from her. In fact, He remained very present.

This illustrates a point that Chuck Swindoll had made famous: “God’s silence doesn’t mean His absence.” Rather, silence is God’s call for us to grow deeper, without giving up.

Remarkably, the woman continued to ignore the Lord’s silence. By approaching Him directly, she had already ignored the gender decorum of the day. She had also chosen to defy the cultural norms that kept Jews and pagans from interacting with each other because pagans (or people who worshipped idols and nature instead of the Creator God) were considered unclean. Notably, she also took no notice of any ‘off-duty’ signs around Jesus and His disciples when she showed up unannounced and uninvited, and interrupted their ‘downtime’.

If God seems silent to you, there are only two options left for you: give up on Jesus, or go on believing because you are called to walk by faith, and not by sight (2 Corinthians 5:7). Not giving up means you will continue to seek God and engage Him because He has not ‘left the building’.

SECOND REJECTION – NON-JEWS NOT INCLUDED

When Jesus finally spoke, He seemed to address both His disciples as well as the woman, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of Israel.” (Matthew 15:24). It was a clear reminder to them of His mission - first to the Jews. As for the woman, that was all she needed to move even closer to kneel before Him and begged, “Lord, help me!” (Matthew 15:25). 

Sometimes, we can be quick to read both God and people’s reticence as a rejection. Not for this woman. It would be accurate to say that she did not approach Jesus with a rigid mental script about what He should do for her, or how He should respond to her to show that He cared. But she came prepared to let the One she now called ‘Lord’ to change her life. On His part, Jesus knew that she was a pagan woman who had exposed her life to ungodly religious practices with grave consequences to her daughter (Matthew 15:22).

When we approach God for help, we must be ready to hear His truth about us and our realities. When God reveals the truth, He does not leave us feeling defeated and discouraged. If anything, they lead us to personal breakthroughs and miracles. Therefore, we can be sure that no matter what mistakes we have made, we can come clean before God. We need only to go to Him and say, “Lord, help me!”

THIRD REJECTION – BREAD NOT FOR DOGS

During conversations, it is not uncommon for people to feel hurt when they take statements at face value, without thinking deeper or applying the right contextual framing to what was said. When Jesus continued, He said to the woman, “It is not right to take the children’s bread and toss it to the dogs.” (Matthew 15:26). 

This sounds insulting at first, until we understand that ‘dogs’ was a common term used to describe the idolatrous culture of pagans and the unclean food they ate. The Lord had deliberately used this word to link back to the recent conversation with the Pharisees and the teachers of the Law who were finding fault with the disciples for not washing their hands before eating! But while the reference was lost on His disciples, the pagan woman swiftly picked up on the semantics with a brilliant response that instantly changed the trajectory of her exchange with Jesus.

“Yes it is, Lord,” she said. “Even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their master’s table.”

Humility is not about holding onto self-denigrating statements about ourselves or our achievements. It is about having a right perception of self, and being conscious of both the strong and broken parts. For those of us who feel like a chipped cup, we need to ask God to help us continue to serve others in spite of our imperfections. For others who feel like a broken chair unable to support others, God will give us a leg up so that we can continue to live useful lives.

The woman recognised that she had lived a paganistic lifestyle and was now turning away from it. She had a voracious appetite for change, and between crumbs or nothing, she would happily settle for crumbs of the Living Bread any day!

In the end, what she received was not mere crumbs but a full meal. Her daughter experienced complete deliverance when Jesus declared, ““Woman, you have great faith! Your request is granted.” And her daughter was healed at that moment.” (Matthew 15:26).

And so it goes, that “...  without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to Him must believe that He exists and that He rewards those who earnestly seek Him.” (Hebrews 11:6).

As a community, when we see others experiencing what can be easily misinterpreted as God’s silence and His rejections, there is much we can do - through uneasy conversations and awkward silences – to take their faith to a different level that their situations now call for.

This is a summary and reflection based on a virtual BeInReach Session held on 3 February 2024.