Where to start with the week we\u2019ve had? Perhaps with the 70th anniversary of the Partition of India, the final act of the enlightened British rule that led to mass migration, a million people killed, and the hostility between India and Pakistan lasting for all those years. Then we had a clash in Charlottesville, USA between white supremacists and those who opposed such views. It ended badly with a young woman dead and a number of people injured, not to mention the turmoil it caused in the American politics. Then on Thursday night we had terrorist attacks in Spain, when innocent people were mown down just for not adhering to the twisted, marginal Islamist ideology. Those three sad events, though separated by time and distance, have one thing in common: the driving force was the hatred of people for their dissimilarity. Sadly, those three incidents weren\u2019t uncommon. Tribalism holds tight across the globe, sometimes erupting into full-scale violence; but it\u2019s no less hurtful on a daily basis. Think about Brexit\u2026<\/p>\n
The narrative of the biblical Old Testament is mainly about being the Chosen People, separate from other nations and superior to them. Other nations were slaughtered in the name of God, enslaved or fought against. Any foreign dominance was considered to be God\u2019s punishment for perceived unfaithfulness of the people of Israel. Their ultimate humiliation came upon them when they were conquered by their powerful neighbours, followed by their deportation to Babylon. On their return several decades later, the people of Israel didn\u2019t have enough political or military power to regain the upper hand over their pagan neighbours. So, they separated themselves culturally from the pagans and treated them as inferior, deserving nothing more than utter contempt. Those nations paid back with equal derision. Such are the circumstances of the story told in today\u2019s gospel.<\/p>\n
A pagan woman cries for help to Jesus, who doesn\u2019t respond at all. She\u2019s a pagan, and she\u2019s a woman \u2013 two \u2018good\u2019 reasons to ignore her completely. Jesus\u2019 companions must be delighted to see him behaving as would have been expected from a pure-blood Jewish rabbi. But their glee doesn\u2019t last long; the woman follows them and keeps crying out for help. Suddenly they ask Jesus to help her: \u2018Give her what she wants.\u2019<\/em> You may think it\u2019s very noble of them to plead on behalf of a pagan woman. That\u2019s until they explain why they are doing so: it\u2019s \u2018because she is shouting after us.\u2019<\/em> So, they are driven solely by their personal discomfort. They aren\u2019t really bothered about her personal problems; they just want to get rid of her.<\/p>\n Jesus\u2019 attitude comes as a nasty surprise to us. Firstly, he rejects his companions\u2019 plea: \u2018I was sent only to the lost sheep of Israel.\u2019<\/em> Then his direct response to the woman\u2019s request is insulting: \u2018It\u2019s not fair to take the children\u2019s food and throw it to the house-dogs.\u2019<\/em> In our dogs-and-cats loving society it may not sound particularly harsh. But in many cultures calling people \u2018dogs\u2019<\/em> is derogatory and deeply insulting. In this situation Jesus seems to behave like a poster-boy for supremacists, be they Jewish, or Christian, or any other self-identifying group that attempts to invoke the Bible in support of their case. How to reconcile Jesus\u2019 message of love, even towards one\u2019s enemies, with such an apparently nasty, heartless attitude of his?<\/p>\n The answer is that Jesus didn\u2019t confront the woman, but his followers\u2019 deeply-rooted sense of superiority. I imagine Jesus discreetly watching the Apostles when the woman started begging for help. Perhaps he noticed disgust on their faces. When they eventually pleaded with Jesus to give her what she wanted, his reply of being sent to lost sheep of Israel<\/em> was highly sarcastic. Similarly sarcastic was Jesus\u2019 answer to the woman – but that sarcasm was again directed at his disciples, not at the woman. Her brilliant answer, and Jesus\u2019 high praise of her faith, was a lesson hard for them to swallow. Their overblown sense of superiority was punctured. To Jesus she was an individual in need, regardless of her nationality or gender. That was a lesson for the Apostles; and that\u2019s a lesson for each and every one of us.<\/p>\n
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