Reflection on the Gospel for Trinity X

Then he called the crowd to him and said to them, ‘Listen and understand: it is not what goes into the mouth that defiles a person, but it is what comes out of the mouth that defiles.’ Then the disciples approached and said to him, ‘Do you know that the Pharisees took offence when they heard what you said?’ He answered, ‘Every plant that my heavenly Father has not planted will be uprooted. Let them alone; they are blind guides of the blind. And if one blind person guides another, both will fall into a pit.’ But Peter said to him, ‘Explain this parable to us.’ Then he said, ‘Are you also still without understanding? Do you not see that whatever goes into the mouth enters the stomach, and goes out into the sewer? But what comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart, and this is what defiles. For out of the heart come evil intentions, murder, adultery, fornication, theft, false witness, slander. These are what defile a person, but to eat with unwashed hands does not defile.’

Jesus left that place and went away to the district of Tyre and Sidon. Just then a Canaanite woman from that region came out and started shouting, ‘Have mercy on me, Lord, Son of David; my daughter is tormented by a demon.’ But he did not answer her at all. And his disciples came and urged him, saying, ‘Send her away, for she keeps shouting after us.’ He answered, ‘I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.’ But she came and knelt before him, saying, ‘Lord, help me.’ He answered, ‘It is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.’ She said, ‘Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters’ table.’ Then Jesus answered her, ‘Woman, great is your faith! Let it be done for you as you wish.’ And her daughter was healed instantly.

[Matthew 15.10-28]

The Holocaust throws a long and terrible shadow over Christian theology, both backwards (as it brings to light the ways in which we have denigrated our parent faith Judaism), and forward, as we are rightly forced to understand afresh the sometimes critical words of Jesus to his Jewish listeners. We hear such words today where Jesus describes the Pharisees as ‘blind guides’, and there are various other words of criticism towards the Pharisees, as well as the Scribes, and those aligned to the Royal Court.

 

The first thing to say is that in the time Jesus was speaking, and for much of the first Century following on from Jesus’s death, the early Church (or perhaps more correctly the Jesus Movement) was a reform movement within Judaism. Had you stopped and asked the Apostles what they thought they were doing, forming a new faith, or reforming an old one, they would have said the latter. They were seeking to reinterpret their parent faith within the context of the words of Jesus. If we look at modern day Judaism we see similar movements just as Hassidism, which for the past 200 years has sought to embody Judaism through lens of the mystical teaching of the great spiritual leader and rabbi known as the Baal Shem Tov.

 

When we see Jesus (and St Paul) using sharp words against the Pharisees and Scribes, it is akin to a family argument, not a clash between two distinct faiths. These arguments represent not a clash of civilisations, but rather a seeking to understand the Jewish faith through a particular set of lenses. It is just that the lenses used by the Scribes, Pharisees and Jesus Movement were each different, and brough them into conflict with one another. When we understand this, some of the sting in drawn from what Jesus is saying. Unfortunately, these criticisms made by Jesus and St Paul have been used in order to persecute the Jewish people ever since.

 

Of course, things changed, and Judaism and Christianity eventually parted company, each to follow its own course. Part of this separation is represented in the second half of Sunday’s Gospel reading, where the gentile Canaanite woman confronts Jesus as asks him to heal her daughter.

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There are many elements to this conversation that are opaque to us today. The woman came from the region of Tyre and Sidon, and is named as a Canaanite, one of the ancient enemies of Israel. During the time of Jesus the region of Tyre and Sidon was under Roman occupation and was being colonised, with people from outside moving in, a policy with the Roman Empire used to help control the regions under its authority.

 

One of the effects of this form of colonisation was economic, the colonisers had more money than the resident citizens. When Jesus talks of bread being taken from children and being given to dogs, he is saying ‘your people (the Dogs) have used their economic power to buy up the staples the people of Israel (the Children) need in order to live, that is not the way things should be. The woman takes this rebuke on the chin, and says yes, but even we need to eat in order to live. But this criticism has resonances with today, where poorer nations become the breadbasket for richer ones, and where the poor are forced to feed other richer nations, whilst their own children starve.

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The lessons of today’s Gospel then continue to speak to us today, both as to how scripture when used badly can be deeply destructive, but also throw a light on the injustices of our own age. And my prayer is that we may each be wise, not blind guides to those around us.