Othering Others

One of my favorite stories in the Gospels is told in both Matthew and Mark. It is a story of healing. Remarkably, it is not simply a story of Yeshua healing another. In this encounter the healing is mutual. And the healing Yeshua needs and receives is a form of healing we all need.

In the story, Yeshua travels outside the borders of Israel to what is now Lebanon to the north. A woman of that region approaches him begging for help and mercy, for her daughter, she says is “tormented by a demon” (we might describe it as tormented by intrusive thoughts of self-harm and/or harm toward others, or perhaps profound depression--something like that).

Regardless, the condition is extreme and distressing. The woman makes herself vulnerable by approaching. She is not a Jew. She is Syrophoenician. In Matthew she is called “Canaanite,” a much older label used to evoke the historical animosity and conflict between the two peoples: Israelites and Canaanites (see the books Joshua 6-12, Deuteronomy 7 and 20, and Leviticus 17 which condemn Canaanites as a whole).

First, Yeshua ignores her. His disciples urge him to send her away, for she pleading and pleading loudly. Yeshua finally responds, saying “I came here only for the scattered sheep of the house of Israel (in other words only for the Jewish people living as aliens in that region).

She persists. She kneels before him: “Lord, help me.” Can you picture her anguish? A mother for her child?

This is not Yeshua’s finest moment. He speaks to her with an analogy: “It is not right to throw the children’s’ food to the dogs.”

Sit with this for a moment. Forget what may have motivated Yeshua to say this. Think of this mother, begging for help for her child. Only to be told that her daughter is not a child but a dog--as is she. Less than fully human. Unworthy of divine mercy.

Now the miraculous happens. Her love is so great that she takes the insult and puts it back to him: “Yes, but even the dogs get scraps from the table.”

Yeshua seems cut to the heart. Astonished, he looks at her and calls her “great in faith.”

Matthew writes, as we know, for a primarily Jewish audience. The story addresses centuries of hatred, prejudice, and othering toward “foreign” neighbors. Considering them as a whole outside the circle of their (and God’s) concern. A history marked by violence.

Masterfully, I think, Matthew illustrates the possibility and necessity of a kind of healing and transformation that overcomes the othering we do in relation to people-groups. Regarding “them” as alien. Unworthy. Even less than human.

It is a painful process. It’s a disturbing story. The roots of suffering need to be faced and acknowledged. Yeshua and disciples needed healing as badly as the woman and child, though they could only come to see it through an authentic, real encounter. The healing, then, was mutual. The girl was made well. The men were humbled and changed.