The moral of today's gospel, obviously, is not that it's O.K. to insult or belittle people. Jesus' behavior in this passage is not an example that I would want to teach my children to follow. As a middle school teacher, I know that put-downs come all too naturally to some children. We don't need Jesus giving lessons in how to kick 'em when they're down. So, if this isn't the moral of the story, what is?

Commentators and theologians have had a difficult time explaining this story. Perhaps some have even questioned whether it ever actually happened. For my part, I don't doubt its authenticity. (But if a gospel writer's job is to make sure the Messiah gets good P.R., then I have to say that the evangelist here fails miserably.) So why did Matthew include this story? And what are we to make of it?

Some commentators try to cut Jesus a little slack, saying he was, after all, a first century Jew. As fully human, he would not have been immune to the cultural prejudices of his day, and after making it abundantly clear that Jesus understood his mission as being "only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel," we can't really blame him for getting a little testy with a woman who refused to get the message and go away. After all, Jesus got huffy with the Pharisees on more than one occasion, and nobody seems to mind the Pharisees getting the shaft. In fact, we rather enjoy it. And then there's the cleansing of the Temple. So what if Jesus was subject to annoyance and anger? He was a human being, after all.

And as far as whether what Jesus said was sinful, some folks argue that it's not the initial insult, but the final acquiescence to the woman's request that exonerates Jesus. What's important is that Jesus learns from his encounter with the Canaanite woman; he listens to her, and he recognizes her faith in her reply. From this point of view, Jesus demonstrates that he is open to the Father's will, through whomever it is communicated. In this case, he recognized not just the woman's faith, but his Father's call to expand his human understanding of his messianic mission beyond its narrow religious and geographic confines. Before this encounter, in chapter ten, Jesus instructs his disciples to "go nowhere among the Gentiles, and enter no town of the Samaritans, but go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel." In chapter twelve, however, we get a foreshadowing of this expanding mission when Matthew writes, "This was to fulfill what had been spoken through the prophet Isaiah: '…in his name the Gentiles will hope."

So there, problem solved. Jesus wasn't sinning when he spoke harshly to the woman, though he was a little rude, but that's excusable when one considers his cultural context and the fact that despite the insult, he still listens to her, and in the end grants her request. Her daughter is healed. The ends justify the means.

Or do they? Other (more conservative) commentators take a different tack. They assert that if Jesus intended to insult or put down the woman, it would indeed be a sin, and one would then be forced to jettison the notion that Jesus was, in the words of Hebrews, "tempted in all things as we are, but without sin." But orthodox Christianity insists that Jesus was fully divine as well as fully human, and therefore necessarily sinless. What's more, because Jesus was fully divine, he knew what people were going to do and say before they did or said it. So Jesus wasn't insulting the woman, he was really just testing her faith. Either that, or he was using the exchange as a sort of object lesson for the disciples. They were the ones who urged him to send her away, after all. So maybe he wanted to teach them that Gentiles could be faithful people, too, and they shouldn't write them off so quickly.

Oh, and there's another possibility, a variation on the object lesson theory. Some folks read Jesus' words, and the woman's reply, as witty banter. Jesus is just kidding around here, pretending to insult her, "playing along" with the disciples who truly do want her to go away. If we put enough irony into his voice and sarcasm into hers, then Jesus can't be said to be sinning or even setting a bad example; rather, he's sort of using "reverse psychology" on the disciples, with the woman's full cooperation.

In short, the commentators' answers fall into one of two schools of thought: the developmental school says that Jesus was not omniscient and learned from his exchanges with people; that God spoke to the human Jesus through others just as much, if not more, than God spoke directly to him. The omniscient school, on the other hand, says that Jesus already knew everything, and that his exchanges with people were intended to teach them a lesson-he was, after all, God in human flesh, and all of his actions need to be interpreted with this fact in mind. Whether you think of Jesus primarily in "human" terms or in "divine" terms, therefore, ultimately determines how you read this story.

All of these theories are truly fascinating, and it's not by any means unprofitable for us to ponder them. I think that's part of why this story is in the gospel-to challenge us to ask such questions about Jesus, about his motives, as well as his M.O. The problem is that asking only these questions of the story allows us to avoid both its wider context and its deeper implications. As long as we use this story to put Jesus on trial, so to speak, we ensure that we don't end up on trial, instead. It's more comfortable for us to be the prosecution and the story to be the defendant than the other way around.

In the end, the fact remains that, whichever theory you prefer, the gospel does not tell us what was going on inside Jesus' head, or what his motives were. We should focus, then, on what we do know. And what we do know is found in the wider context of Matthew's gospel.

The story under consideration begins at the twenty-first verse of Matthew's fifteenth chapter. In the twenty verses immediately preceding, we find another story, which also portrays Jesus throwing out a choice insult, in this case calling a bunch of folks "hypocrites." Just before we get to the story of the Canaanite woman, the Pharisees and scribes come to Jesus and ask him why his disciples don't wash their hands before they eat, "breaking the tradition of the elders." (My mother also taught me that washing my hands was the right thing to do, but the Pharisees' concern here is holiness, not hygiene.) It's important to note that the disciples aren't actually transgressing the Law of Moses, but they are departing from the traditional rabbinic exposition of the Law, of which the Pharisees and scribes are the keepers and teachers. So the Pharisees here are quibbling over a minor ritual. They ask Jesus a question about form over content.

In response, Jesus cuts through all their quibbling and goes right to the content of the Law itself. He asks why the Pharisees have created a special exemption from the commandment "honor your father and your mother" for people who make charitable contributions to the Temple. He says that doing so puts a non-Scriptural tradition ahead of the Biblical mandate to support one's parents in their old age. Jesus concludes, "So, for the sake of your tradition, you make void the word of God. You hypocrites!"

Immediately following this tense exchange, when the disciples manage to get Jesus alone, they ask, "Do you know that the Pharisees took offense when they heard what you said?" Jesus' reaction is to say, in essence, that if the Pharisees are offended, that's their problem, not his. I was reminded here that four chapters earlier, Jesus had proclaimed, "blessed is anyone who takes no offense at me."

I find it ironic that Jesus' own disciples are practically defending the Pharisees' honor when they point out to Jesus that the Pharisees were offended by him, yet they are the ones who actively urge Jesus in the next story to send the Canaanite woman away. Where is the disciples' concern for the Canaanite's honor? Well, obviously, they don't think such a woman has any honor to defend.

That's no way to treat a lady. Let's look at this woman more closely. I see two things of particular significance:

First, the woman addresses Jesus as "Lord, Son of David." This means that she has some understanding of who Jesus is, or at least of his reputation. "Son of David" is a messianic title, after all. As a gentile, she has no reason to recognize him as her messiah, yet she puts her faith in his healing power. Note that in using the correct address, she is following good form, if not proper etiquette. (She is rather persistent, after all.) One could even say that by calling Jesus "Lord, Son of David," she's trying to butter him up. But Jesus doesn't care what she calls him. He ignores her.

Second, when Jesus essentially calls her a dog, she has every reason to be indignant, to be offended by what Jesus says. Yet she isn't-at least, not outwardly. She has enough presence of mind to maintain humility in the face of insult. She puts her own dignity second to the goal of obtaining healing for her daughter. Her response-while humble-isn't groveling. She shows that she is smart, even witty. "Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters' table." What a perfect line! It's a great comeback. At the same time, it's no put-down.

Remember, again, that Jesus had said four chapters earlier, "blessed is anyone who takes no offense at me." And here we get two stories, one about a bunch of easily-offended Pharisees and scribes, and one about a single, determined, humble woman. The Pharisees are the religious leaders, the in-crowd, and the disciples clearly want to remain on good terms with them. This Canaanite woman, on the other hand, is a religious outsider, and the disciples don't care at all how she feels or what her daughter's problem is. They care more about smoothing over the ruffled feathers of a bunch of nitpicking hand washers than they do about caring for the sick and the outcast. In short, these disciples have their priorities all out of whack.

And one wonders, at least initially, whether Jesus has his priorities in order, either. In the first part of the chapter, he scores a perfect ten for exposing hypocrisy and emphasizing content over form. But in the second part, his insistence on the narrowness of his mission seems to echo the Pharisees' own narrow focus on form over content.

The question of whether Jesus' response to the woman proceeds from his humanity or his divinity fades into the background, however, when we look at this woman compared to the Pharisees. Jesus sees the difference, and he acts on what he sees: "Blessed is anyone who takes no offense at me," Jesus had said. In recognition that this woman is such a one, he replies "Woman, great is your faith! Let it be done for you as you wish." He grants her daughter the healing the woman seeks.

So this story is no longer about how Jesus responds to the woman, but how the woman responds to Jesus. This story is about a woman, a gentile, the ultimate outsider, who refuses to be offended by Jesus and thereby finds healing for her daughter through her faith, contrasted with the Pharisees, the ultimate insiders, who are completely offended by Jesus and thereafter seek only vengeance because they lack faith. There's an underlying theme in these two stories of meeting challenge with violence, or with humility, of meeting Jesus with unfaithfulness or with faithfulness.

We, too, are called to meet Jesus with humility and faith, no matter what the circumstances. It would be easy for us to get offended if Jesus seems to be ignoring our pleas, or when we seem to be getting answers we'd rather not hear. But the fact remains that we will not find what we're looking for-whether that's healing, or guidance, or strength-by getting offended at God's mysterious providence. As many of you know, I leave Saint James not knowing for sure where Anne and I will land in a few short weeks. It could be Toronto, or D.C., or even New York. As the kind of guy who likes to have my plans finalized a year in advance, this has been a new experience for me, of trying to muster the patience, the humility, and the faith that will carry us through to the next thing that God has in store for us. At times, I have been like the Pharisees, easily offended that my traditional way of doing things isn't being respected by God-but last time I checked, I wasn't the one in charge. And while I haven't been as successful as the Canaanite woman in maintaining humility and faith in the face of difficult-even personally offensive-circumstances, I try to remember that even the crumbs that fall from the Master's table are food enough for the journey. It is my prayer for Saint James that you will find this to be true for you in the years ahead, as well. It is my prayer that, whatever the challenge, we will all find the courage and faith to say, "Lord, help me" when we need it most, knowing that in the end, this simplest and most heartfelt of prayers never falls on deaf ears.