The Narative of Jesus and the Canaanite Woman

[Paul DeBaufer]

Barbara Kay Lundblad wrote an article in the Huffington Post Matthew 15:21-28: Teaching Jesus concerning Jesus and the Canaanite woman. Her approach seems to come from an Open or even a Process theology perspective. She contends that Jesus is the one changed in the encounter.

I am not quite sure what I think about her take on this yet, but I did find it very interesting.

What do others think?

(I put this in this forum because she offers what appears a post-Traditional interpretation and I think it needs to be approached from the post-traditional persepctive)

[Todd Erickson]

Wow. I have no idea where this woman has gotten her education on things, but she has a lot of really bizzare takes on what's going on, what Jesus is saying, what the point of this is...she certainly doesn't appear to be somebody who takes into account the divinity of Christ, or his ability to read the character of others. Nothing Jesus says in the passage has anything to do with a Soteria salvation experience on the part of the woman, but this author seems to be specifically looking for that in Christ's statement about the woman's faith.

She makes statements about racism, but that racism was taken for granted at that point...Just a very odd article. She knows some bits of history, but other things she's completely ignorant of, and it makes for a very odd article.

[Paul DeBaufer]

Here is her CV http://www.huffingtonpost.com/barbara-kay-lundblad She is educated, no PhD Theologian, but M.Div and DD and has taught

[Paul DeBaufer]

She does say that the woman never mentions faith, yet Jesus ascribes great faith to her. I think that the woman demonstrates faith. Maybe faith isn't something that we acknowledge verbally, but by demonstration.

[Randy Wise]

She does say that the woman never mentions faith, yet Jesus ascribes great faith to her. I think that the woman demonstrates faith. Maybe faith isn't something that we acknowledge verbally, but by demonstration.

She was asking for divine (pertaining to God) help. Thats self evident that she saw Jesus as Lord. The Father is in the Son so maybe the Father changed Jesus's mind. Who knows?

R.

[Ryan Scott]

Scott Daniels preached on Mark's version of the story a few weeks back. His take was more that this was a woman reminding God who God really is. He compared it to Moses' pleading for the Israelites after the golden calf. Perhaps sometimes God needs to be reminded that God is love?

I appreciate this aspect of God's character in scripture - that God does indeed listen to the cries of creation. It's not as if the woman was teaching Jesus something he didn't know, but calling him to fulfill a well documented promise in the whole of scripture - redemption is big enough for all of us!

[Todd Erickson]

I don't think that we can ever assume that God or Jesus are not aware in any particular story that they have witnesses, and are leading by example.

[Paul DeBaufer]

So, what I like about this article is that it has disturbed my thinking thereby forcing me to truly engage the passage and consider a different perspective. This was interesting enough, non-literal enough, non-traditional enough to actually disturb me into actually considering the passage afresh.

So, I just returned from re-reading the Markan account. Mark calls her Syro-Phonecian while Matthew uses Canaanite. Mark, we know, writes to a non-Jewish audience while Matthew's audience is Jewish. (I am just processing here, so I'm not married to any of my ideas) It would seem to me that Canaanite might be a bit more inflammatory to Jews than Syro-Phonecian due to the history. The Canaanites were the people that Israel displaced, God removed them from the land due to their evil ways (2 Chronicles 33:2). The Canaanites were the enemies of God and the Jews, the ones whose ways the kings of Israel followed and brought God's judgment against the nation in the form of exile and loss of the Promised Land. At first Jesus seems resistant to aid this woman because of her heritage of being of the people God drove out, who rejected God way back when. Yet, this woman does not go to the gods of her heritage she comes to Jesus, she has faith that even the Jews do not seem to have. Jesus plays the role of the "good" Jew and refers to her and her people as dogs. Yet this woman persists in her faith that this Messiah has come not just for the Jews but for all, including the enemies of God. Matthew show the Jewish audience that God's love is for everyone who has faith and that this faith is not limited to the Jews, that even the historic enemies of God can possess this faith and be redeemed.

My thoughts are not complete, but this is the direction I've been heading since reading this article.

[Scott Daniels]

I'm increasingly convinced that the "Gentile cycle" (chapters 7 and the first part of 8) in Mark is there - with the Syro-Phoenician (Canaanite) woman at the center - as a brief glimpse for the reader (who already knows btw that the gospel has made it to the Gentiles) that the gospel will escape the boundaries of Judaism and reach the world.

I don't know what we want to do with the very clear fact in the text that Moses convinces God in Exodus 32 that he can't kill the Israelites because he is God, or the clear indication in Mark 7 that it was because the woman's argument (and not her faith) that Jesus heals her daughter... I'm sure neither the Father or the Son are confused about the Triune nature. (I don't know why we can't see some kind of literary devices at work. I'm not sure why we have to jump to ontological conclusions all the time... but that's another issue). But in both cases I would argue that Moses and the S/P woman seem to understand the divine nature more than those around them seem to understand it. And so in both cases their deep insights into God's nature connects with the activity of God and they require God/Christ to act like who he really is.

In a world where there are a lot of people (including most of us) who presume to speak for God. It would be nice to find some folk - insiders or outsiders - who know God so well that the can rightly name God's activity in the world and rightly pray for God's truest activity in the world.

I would like to be one of those people. But I'm not sure I fully get it either...

[Todd Erickson]

Is this anything like the Jewish parable where three Rabbis are arguing on a point of the law, and God comes down and says "this is what I meant by this" and the Rabbis turn to him and say "In line with your nature, you can't tell us what this means, because we cannot discover what it means without wrestling with it, therefore we ignore your answer" and God returned to heaven satisfied...