+In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
It’s sometimes hard for many twenty-first century Westerners to appreciate the taboos of other cultures past and present, and perhaps one of the most strange to some would be how we regard the creature we call “man’s best friend.” Perhaps this is less common in Findlay, but I’ve spent a fair amount of time in cities in both North America and Europe, where it is nothing to see somebody’s dog in a cafe or shop. I attended a wedding a few months ago in which the couple’s dog was present which, call me a stick-in-the-mud, I thought was a bit much, but In suspect it wouldn’t have occurred as odd to about ninety-percent of those gathered.
Conversely, I’ve also spent time in places where dog-owners were at least a bit apologetic and sometimes properly secretive about having a pet dog. These were mostly Christians in Muslim countries, which may not be surprising. Islam, as I understand it, generally holds that dogs may be necessary evils if they’re used for guarding livestock or hunting, but keeping them indoors and treating them like part of the family is largely considered illicit. So the Pakistanis and Palestinians and Turks whom I’ve known to keep dogs as pets are generally seen as being too Christianized or Westernized, hence covert canine companionship is the order of the day. This isn’t unique to Islam, though. Folks in Sub-Saharan Africa, the non-Muslim parts of the Subcontinent, and East Asia (excluding Japan) are, at least as I understand it, generally not places where normal folks would keep a dog for anything other than practical purposes.
(As a side note, I am pleased to say as a cat-person, that felines are generally more acceptable in a lot of these cultures. This is not, however, universal. I remember a few years ago I hired an Amish man down in Kenton to repair our dining room table. I was waiting outside with one of his sons when I saw a cat and asked, “Oh, what is your cat’s name?” to which the child said something like, “it doesn’t have a name, English. It’s a cat.”)
Anyway, in at least some of these cultures the primary objection to dogs as pets revolves around ideas of cleanliness and purity. Dogs can be found in junk yards and roaming around the outskirts of villages, eating whatever they come upon and lying in whatever hole they find. Who would want to introduce their filth into a home!? They are outsiders, outcasts, ritually unclean and their taint is a danger to a sort of primal human urge to see the impure as dangerous.
No doubt this was the general opinion of first-century Jews, which gives some context to the exchange that Jesus has with the Syrophoenician woman in this morning’s Gospel, in which the latter is likened to a dog. We must be circumspect in how we interpret this passage. I may have seen more bad “hot takes” on this incident in sermons and commentaries than I have in regard to any other Gospel passage. Jesus is not being a racist here. Jesus is not committing that sin and being corrected by his interlocutor. This isn’t to say that Jesus did not grow in his understanding of his mission; he is fully human as well as fully divine, and an aspect of that humanity is certainly growth through prayer and discernment. But he did not sin, and if you pull at that Christological string, the whole tapestry unravels.
Rather, I believe that in this exchange, Jesus was intentionally parroting an argument he knew would be in the minds of the bystanders in order to give the Syrophoenician woman the opportunity to say what he almost certainly already believed–namely that his grace and power were gifts for those outside the fold of the people of Israel. The prevailing wisdom would have been that like a junkyard dog, a gentile was ritually polluted and polluting, that merely being in her company was dangerous. We know from the beginning of the pericope that Jesus did not want to be seen going into her house, perhaps because he wanted to get in, cast the demon out of her daughter, and get out without causing too much fuss, his time not having yet come to reveal the entire truth of his identity and mission. Being foiled in his attempt at secrecy, though, an object lesson was at hand.
To push this a bit further, I wonder if Jesus’ audience here fully understood what I think he was trying to teach. I think the implication is a great deal more radical than saying that the ritually unclean outsider should be given some consolation. Rather, I think what Jesus might be trying to imply (particularly when we understand this episode in light of everything else he said and did), is that the Syrophoenician woman understood something about herself that others could not recognize about themselves–namely, that whatever their privileges by right of birth into God’s people, they weren’t any different.
We aren’t any different, either. Whatever pride we might take in any accident of the estate in which we find ourselves–I’m a proud American, I’m a cradle Episcopalian born to countless generations of Episcopalians, I’m a pillar of the community, whatever–we are born unclean by virtue of the stain of original sin, and even with the mystical laver of Holy Baptism, we are still in constant need of God’s grace. The only difference is that those without the benefit of being in the “in-crowd” can more easily see their need for the Savior.
It’s always dangerous to say that you wish Jesus had said or did something he didn’t, so I say the following with as much humility as I can muster. I wish Jesus had punctuated this encounter by turning around to those who had seen this exchange and said, “do you think you’re better than her, then?” In all events, I think we are best served by asking ourselves that question, and I hope we can all say, “no, not really. I need Jesus just as much. I’m just as much like the dog under the table, needing crumbs of grace and mercy to get on in life.”
To return at last to dogs, considering how I opened this sermon, isn’t it fascinating that keeping them as pets, recasting them from dangerous, dirty beasts to man’s best friend, seems almost uniquely a practice endemic to those parts of the world we would once have called Christendom. Just maybe it’s because deep down, maybe unconsciously we recognize that we were once unworthy even to gather up the crumbs under God’s table, but we have been made Jesus’ best friend. Don’t tell the rectory carts but it almost makes me want to be a dog person.
+In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.