Jesus has taught that uncleanness does not come from what we eat, but from what comes out of us. He knows this rather simple and common sense principle could easily be regulated to head knowledge instead of personal embodiment. If that happens, His disciples will be unable to willfully eat with other cultures. That will mean the Gospel will be restricted to Jewish culture, and the few Gentiles that enter into Jewish culture. So He purposes to reinforce His lesson with full-on immersion into Gentile culture. He leads His band into full-on Gentile lands. The result is exactly what He expected, “A Canaanite woman from that vicinity came to him, crying out, “Lord, Son of David, have mercy on me! My daughter is suffering terribly from demon-possession.””
Jesus’ reputation has well exceeded national boundaries. The peoples around Israel have heard of Him. They know He can heal and deliver, and they’ve already rightly concluded that He is both Lord and the fulfillment of the Davidic line. One would expect Jesus to immediately respond. After all, He did when the Gentile centurion asked Him for help back in Jewish Capernaum, “When Jesus had entered Capernaum, a centurion came to him, asking for help. “Lord,” he said, “my servant lies at home paralyzed and in terrible suffering.” Jesus said to him, “I will go and heal him.”” Yet this time the Lord does not respond so quickly. Matthew notes, “Jesus did not answer a word.”
His response is radically uncharacteristic, but not without purpose.
The author of the famous missionary book Peace Child looked closely at this passage and concluded that Jesus was testing His disciples. Dr. Don Richardson believes there was a method to Jesus’ madness that is almost entirely overlooked by modern Christendom. Don thought through the uncharacteristic response and concluded that Jesus wanted to see how His disciples would respond to a Gentile in distress, especially now that He has taught them very explicitly that uncleanness comes from the heart: What would their heart reveal about how they see those who need God’s help – especially those their own culture would consider ‘unclean’? Or would they need yet another object lesson in God’s mercy?
God’s heart toward such a person is not hard to figure out. In fact, the Jewish Scriptures put it bluntly, “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.” So it’s not that the disciples wouldn’t know God’s will in the matter. They would’ve known that God would purpose to heal. They had the Scripture to inform them. They had considerable time with Jesus by this point to see how He has repeatedly responded to such a situation. Will they respond similarly? Will they pass the test?
Apparently not. “His disciples came to him and urged him, “Send her away, for she keeps crying out after us.””
One would hope Christ-followers in our day would act differently. But do we?
When we look at any other person, we do not see the label but the image of God. We see someone created by God, addressed by God, accountable to God, loved by God, valued, and evaluated by God.
Chris Wright
APPLICATION: Intentionality
Who in your eyes is ‘unclean’? How do you think Jesus would respond to them?