We continue our journey through the Gospel of Matthew, continuing through a series of miracle stories. Once again, we are confronted with a story of a miraculous healing, although this one is different in a lot of respects. For one, the miracle itself takes place, in the parlance of show business, off-camera. We don’t see it. That’s because, in this particular case, the miracle is secondary to what precedes it.

And what precedes it is a bit unusual at best. Reading these Gospel stories as we have throughout our lives, I think each of us gets a pretty solid picture of who Jesus is. Enough that we have a pretty solid grasp of his personality. Our image of him is of a gentle soul, kind, compassionate. Here is a man rarely moved to outbursts of strong emotion, rarely angry, and certainly never hateful. His most famous outburst of anger is fully justified when he is witness to the unjust and exploitive practices of the merchants and money-changers at the temple. Men worshipping the almighty dollar (or the 1^st century equivalent thereof) in the shadow of God’s holy temple would likely anger any of us.

With all this in mind, to say that Jesus’ behavior in this miracle story is odd is a bit of an understatement. A woman comes to him desperate for a miracle; her daughter is demon-possessed. Jesus at first ignores her and then insults her, essentially calls her a dog. What’s going on here? This isn’t the Jesus we know. The Jesus we know is never cruel and heartless like this. What’s going on?

Scholars have put forward many theories. And like most of them, I am convinced that there is far more to this story than what appears. This is not, as it seems, yet another example of that age-old animosity between Jews and their Gentile neighbors, Canaanite, Roman, Greek, or otherwise. No, this is yet another sign of the kingdom at work and I believe that Jesus is cruel to this woman not because he despises her, but because he loves her. For in this foreigner, he has found a rare thing, someone who truly gets who he is and what he is about. And he is so confident in her that he puts her to the test to teach all of us a broader lesson.

I mentioned quite briefly last Sunday the idea that not only do we as disciples and followers of Christ have faith in him, but that he also has faith in us. Here is a prime example of that very idea at work. This woman has likely been standing on the fringes of all those crowds. She has been witness to miracles. She has heard Jesus teach. She knows that God is at work in this man, that he is the savior of the whole world. She believes in the very depth of her soul and when crisis strikes her family, she knows precisely who to go to.

Now Jesus has noticed this about her. He recognizes her faith, a faith not even the disciples themselves have developed just yet. And so he tests her. What will she do when the answer appears to be “no?” So he ignores her and she persists. He says the children’s food should not go to the dogs, and she throws it back at him. The dogs get the crumbs and that’s all I need, a mere crumb of God’s mercy is more than enough to save my daughter. She throws Jesus’ own promises back at him and will not take no for an answer. She passes the test.

“Great is your faith,” Jesus says of her and you can almost imagine his smile. She passes the test with flying colors. He knew she would not back down. He knew that she believed so strongly that even in the face of being ignored and insulted she would persist. He knew that she would stand up to him, and not give up until the promise of mercy was fulfilled.

The idea of arguing with God is alien to us, but it’s a fairly commonplace thing when you read through the Old Testament. Job argues with God. Jeremiah argues with God. Others argue with God. Often times God wins the argument, as you might expect, but sometimes he doesn’t.

God comes before Abraham and says he wants to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah. And Abraham argues with him. “Wait a minute, God. Shall not the judge of all the earth do what is just? Are you really going to kill all the innocent and the righteous along with the guilty? What if there’s 50 righteous?” God relents, “No, I won’t kill them if there are 50 righteous.” And Abraham keeps going, 50, 30, 25, 10, and God keeps giving in. Abraham not only argues with God, but he wins and convinces God not to destroy the cities of 10 righteous can be found within. Unfortunately, not even that many are found and God’s plan proceeds.

Moses also during the whole Golden Calf incident. Moses is up on the mountain getting the 10 Commandments and down below the people are having a raucous party worshipping a calf of gold. God gets mad, turns to Moses, and says, “I like you, Moses and I’m going to create a new chosen people for you to lead. As for those folks down below, I’m going to smite them all.” Moses is like “Wait a minute, God. You went through all the trouble of those 10 plagues, and the parting the Red Sea, and bringing the people all this way just to kill them?” And God relents, changes his mind the Scripture tells us.

These men, like the Canaanite woman, are tested. They throw God’s own promises back at him. You’re supposed to be just. You’re supposed to be merciful and compassionate. Start acting like it! They know they can do this because they know that God is just and merciful and compassionate. They know they can get away with it because they know if they are wrong that God will forgive them, and they also know that if they are right God will do as he should. As he must. He will fulfill his promises.

The lesson of this sort of persistence and boldness in faith should not be lost to us. It is a hard thing often times for us to pray for some great and grand thing, healing for a loved one, peace in our world, strength for the day, and appear to receive no answer. We do not know the full mind of God, but we do know some things. We know the promises. We know the mercy. We know the compassion. We know the cross and the empty tomb and all that they mean. And because all these things are true, we can stand up to God, clinging to those promises, and keep at it. This is the lesson of the Canaanite woman. Never give up. Never surrender. God is love and he will answer us, one way or another. Amen.