The Dog who taught the Sheep

Have you ever prayed for something so obviously good, so certain it was in-line with God’s will (with Scripture verses to back it), that you couldn’t imagine Him possibly saying “no”? 

Healing for a sick child. The conversion or reversion of a spouse. Freedom from an addiction. You bring it to God with confidence, certain that this is the kind of prayer He delights to answer.

And nothing happens.

Crickets.

Or worse, you suffer the opposite. The child gets sicker. The agnostic or wandering spouse becomes more biting in his attacks against the faith. The addict spirals out of control.

We’ve heard all the platitudes.  “Sometimes the addict has to hit bottom before he climbs up.” Or, perhaps, it’s less explanatory. “Just have faith. God is in control.” 

When you’re asking for things like that, though. When you’re so sure that the prayer is good, unselfish, fully in line with what we know God desires for us, it puts our faith to the test. 

It is rare in God's economy to receive a great grace that is not preceded by trial.

So often, we hear of what God has done for others, we hear a testimony, and think, "Me, too, Lord, bless me!" or “You did it for them, it’s my turn, now!”

We might be a little more sophisticated in the way we phrase such a prayer. But that’s the substance of it.

It might be on account of a testimony someone told about how they’d come to faith. It could be a story we read about one of the saints. It might even be an episode recalled in the Gospels.

But we have a tendency, believing that God is fair and equitable, to demand that He give us what He gave others. 

So we pray, with confidence at first. We expect to receive a “yes,” particularly if we know what we’re praying for is in God’s will. 

If I’m praying for purity, I don’t have to ask if God wants me to be pure. He’s revealed that in Scripture. “For this is the will of God, your sanctification: that you abstain from sexual immorality” (1 Thess 4:3). 

If I’m praying for a conversion, I don’t need to doubt whether this is a prayer spoken according to God’s will, for He “desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth”  (1 Tim 2:4).

If I’m praying for a deeper faith, to be drawn more deeply into God’s love, to overcome a vice, there’s very little reason to think, “God doesn’t want that for me.” 

Of course He does.

But maybe, just maybe, the problem isn’t with what we’re requesting.

Maybe it’s not even a problem at all.

What we see as a problem is a plan far grander, an intention so overwhelmingly, beautifully, and perfectly designed in the infinite mind of God, that we can’t see the architecture of it.

Often, God has a greater work in mind for us, through the very trial He’s permitted, than we had ever imagined. That means, it is not out of some kind of poverty that God has responded in silence. It is because He is so immensely generous, because He has such lofty desires for us beyond what we can imagine, that He must withhold an answer now for the lesser thing so that He can, ultimately, make us into precisely the person He created us to be.

His silence, more often than not, is not because He desires not to give us what we ask. It is because He intends to give us so much more.

 

A Prayer That Should Have Been Answered Immediately

The Canaanite woman we encounter in Matthew 15 offers us exactly this kind of testimony. And as we read her story, keep in mind one thing:  what she originally asked for ends up as little more than a footnote in the story. 

She had heard the reports. She knew about the healings, the exorcisms, and all the signs Jesus had done throughout the region. Like so many before, she had a desperate need: a daughter tormented by a demon.

She came to Jesus with a cry that, theologically speaking, must’ve been shocking to hear from the mouth of a pagan woman: “Have mercy on me, Lord, Son of David; my daughter is tormented by a demon” (Matthew 15:22).

A Caananite calls Jesus, “Son of David.”

What an odd thing for a Canaanite woman to proclaim.

That was a messianic title. This gentile woman, standing outside the covenants of Israel, has grasped what many within Israel could not see. She recognizes who Jesus is. She cries out for mercy, not justice. She names her need plainly. No embellishment. No long diatribes. She identifies Jesus in an alarmingly unexpected way and makes her request plain.

One would think that this act alone would elicit an immediate and compassionate response from Jesus.

One would think the disciples would be impressed that a pagan, and a woman (who in that culture would not have likely concerned herself with the faith of other peoples) used such a title. I can imagine, though, how they might have justified continuing to ignore her. "She's pretending to be like us. She's trying to deceive us. She's trying to flatter Jesus with words and titles."

But forget about how the disciples might have taken it. Jesus knew this woman's heart. He knew she wasn't resorting to deception or flattery.

By every reasonable expectation, this is exactly the kind of prayer Jesus should have answered on the spot. And yet that’s not what happened: “But he did not answer her at all” (v. 23).

Silence. From the One who supposedly never turns away the brokenhearted.

 

From Silence to Rebuke

The Canaanite woman persists despite the silence.

The disciples start to take notice and get annoyed. “Send her away, for she is crying after us.”

But that's not what happened. He doesn’t dismiss her. He doesn’t send her away. For a moment, it feels like that would have been the more merciful approach. To let her down “gently.” But he turns to her and offers what sounds like a rebuke:

“I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” (v. 24)

What harsh words! Is this the "loving" and "compassionate" Jesus whose smiling face was painted on your Sunday School workbook? It's as if he were to say, "Sorry, I don't do these things for people like you."

This is not the Jesus of the felt-board flannelgraphs. This is not the Jesus with the gentle smile beckoning children to His lap. This is a Jesus who appears to draw a boundary line and place this suffering mother and her child on the wrong side of it.

We need to be careful with this. Nothing in this passage gives us license to erect walls of race, class, or gender against those who come to us for help.

Jesus is not providing us an example to imitate. He’s doing something only He can properly do because He knows the woman’s heart. He knows what she needs, and He knows what the disciples who had asked Him to send her away need to learn.

When the woman comes and kneels before Him, saying simply, “Lord, help me,” Jesus seems to humiliate her even more: “It is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs” (v. 26).

The word here in Greek is kynariois, a diminutive form, linked to the word we now use as “canine.” It’s sometimes softened in translation to “little dogs” or “puppies.” Some commentators have tried to “get Jesus off the hook” by pointing this out, as if Jesus was calling her something cute and cuddly

I disagree with those commentators. And most of the better scholars do, too.

The Jewish use of “dog” as a term for gentiles was well known, probably as stinging as any racial slur someone might use today, though the history behind its use is very different than it is here. The point is, the words were biting, and this woman would have felt it.

St. John of the Cross, though, speaks of how often the weak in faith receive exactly what they ask for immediately, while those who have advanced receive additional trial, receive what they ask only after a season of hardship, or receive something else entirely. Consider this from the Ascent of Mount Carmel:

A father of a family provides at table many different kinds of food, some better than others. One of his children will ask for a dish not of the better food, but of the first that meets the eye, and the child will do so because it knows how to eat this kind of food better than the other. Now when the father observes that his child refuses to eat the food offered to it and wants and likes only that first dish, he gives it to his child sadly so that it will not go without its meal and be unhappy." (Book 2, Ch 21).

I've been there. Parents, you know what I'm talking about. The time I made a great meal, cooked up a great dish, something delicious with nutritional value, but the stubborn kid refuses it: "I want Mac and Cheese." Sometimes, we make them eat what we first prepared. Sometimes, lest the child go hungry, we make them only take a small bite of the good food then let them finish with the Mac and Cheese.

St. John of the Cross Continues:

God accordingly condescends to some sou ls, granting what is not the best for them, because they are ignorant of how to journey by any other way. Some souls obtain sensible or spiritual sweetness from God because they are incapable of eating the stronger and more solid food of the trials of the cross of his Son. He would desire them to take the cross more than any other thing... In all our necessities, trials, and difficulties, no better or safer aid exists for us than prayer and hope that God will provide for us by the means he desires" (Book 2, Ch 21).

Remember that testimony you heard? That new believer who seemed to receive so many good things and answers to prayer? Why am I, who've been faithful for so long, not given the same Mac and Cheese? It's because God knows your heart. And He's going to give you the better thing. If you persist in faith, just like the Canaanite woman.

 

The Scalpel Does Its Work

We should not be too quick to soften what Jesus intended to be sharp. You do no good to take a scalpel from a surgeon, imagining his instrument too dangerous, to replace it with a spoon. 

Jesus speaks so harshly because He intends to do more for this woman than rescue her daughter. He is the master physician who often selects the proper tools to heal, to make new, that come to us under the appearance of the opposite.

Remember, it was the disciples who first would have turned her away. Jesus wants to make of this woman more than some gentile with a demon-afflicted daughter.

He wishes to make her a teacher, with him, of his very disciples.

Because he knows what she will do next.

Despite His rebuke, which seems unduly harsh, she bows down and adores him. She worships the Lord even as he seems to "pile on" the humiliation and rejection. And then comes her confession of faith: Not immediately. Only after he calls her a "dog," but this dissuades her not at all: “Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters’ table.” (v.27)

At last! She began with a prayer of mercy, she worshiped through humiliation, what appeared to be rejection by Christ Himself.

She does not say "I am no dog, but a woman who deserves respect."

She becomes as the dog, seeking crumbs, and Jesus raises her by this to the feast!

“Woman, great is your faith! Let it be done for you as you wish.” (v. 28)

Her daughter is healed at once.

But this is not all our Lord meant to do for this woman.

He reduced her to “dog” so that she might be a dog who teaches lost sheep.

 

What the Silence Is Doing in You

If you are in a season where your prayers seem to hit the ceiling, bouncing back without an answer, or even by as answer in appearance of the opposite of what you asked, consider that God may be doing for you.

First, He may be teaching you the difference between wanting something from Him and wanting Him. The Canaanite woman came for a healing. She left having encountered the Son of David Himself, having spoken with Him, having been named by Him as a woman of great faith. The healing was almost incidental to the deeper gift. In a very real sense, she became a teacher of those who would done day teach the Church.  

Second, He may be forming in you the humility necessary to receive true grace. Pride is never damaged by success. Even spiritual success. But pride struggles in the silence. In the silence, all sense of “entitlement” with which we approach God disappears. When the answer doesn’t come on our schedule, and seems like it will never come, the silence erodes our false sense of self-sufficiency. But something else is born in the eroded channel that the silence leaves behind. It is a faith that knows it lives on crumbs from the Master’s table, and sees not scraps, but a feast. 

Third, He may turning you into a kind of teacher. Not necessarily a teacher in a literal classroom, but a teacher in the school of regular life. What happens when your friends and family see how you persevere through unanswered prayer, when you suffer what seems to be the opposite of what you ask, but you pray still more? By witnessing your persistence, they may learn something more than they’d ever learn from a sermon or by studying a theology text. They are learning the love of God thrives even in the silence. That is a lesson so much of our world needs, and it can only be learned when those of faith take hold of our Lord as the Canaanite woman did, in a faith that refuses not to receive whatever the Lord gives, even if it be humiliation for a time, even if it mean we be reduced to the status of dogs feeding on crumbs.  For when we find the crumbs, we learn that the Master has been guiding us to His side all along.

 

Practical Steps for the Waiting Soul

How do we live this out? A few concrete practices may help.

When silence comes, don’t think of it as a rejection. The Canaanite woman still worshipped, bowing down to the Lord, even after being ignored, dismissed, and called a dog. She did not let the surface evidence become the last word. She knew that our Lord must be clung to in faith even when it feels like He’s doing something humiliating or uncomfortable in our lives. Remember, a scalpel looks sharp. But you’d never insist your surgeon exchange it for a spoon. 

Bow lower, don’t stand taller. Our instinct when we feel dismissed or are wrongly accused is to assert our worth. This runs counter to most advice you’ll hear in our culture. When someone’s down, they’ll say, stand tall, suck it up, take a stand. Try the opposite. This does not violate your dignity. Be humble. Be willing to live on the crumbs. This is not self-hatred. It is the recognition that grace is grace precisely because it is not earned.

Persist in faith.  The woman never stopped. In fact, the more she seemed to be rebuffed, the more she pursued the Lord. When He was silent, she cried out. When He refused, she knelt. When He insulted, she answered with a remarkable kind of faith that no dictionary definition of the world could articulate.  Do not go silent because heaven seems silent. The prayer that is spoken into apparent darkness is often the prayer that pleases God most.

Remember, God has a bigger vision for us than we have in the moment. Ask yourself, in the middle of whatever you’re going through, what God might be forming in you that could not be formed any other way. What virtue is being purified? What source of pride is He cutting out of your life?  How is He drawing you into a deeper faith?

The Canaanite woman went home with a healed daughter. But that was almost a footnote in this story. She also went home a different woman. She had become, at the borders of the pagan world of Tyre and Sidon, a teacher of the apostles, a model of faith for every generation of the Church.

Your silence may be preparing something similar. Don’t walk away. The crumbs, when they fall, will be more than enough. And you will, if you allow His work to do its job on you, some day find yourself reclined at the seat of honor in His banquet. 

 

God Bless,

Judah