Matthew 15:29-39, the God of Israel, commentators have noted for centuries that this phrasing is strange if the crowd is Jewish, you do not praise the God of Israel as if it is a new discovery if that is already your God. That language is the language of people encountering something for the first time, this is a Gentile crowd and then Jesus feeds them, 4,000 people with seven loaves and a few fish. Look at Matthew 14:14-21, what did Jesus do there in Jewish territory, he fed 5,000 people with five loaves and two fish. Matthew is showing you a parallel, the same act of feeding, first for Israel, then for the nations, first inside the covenant, then outside and between those two feedings, standing at the hinge between them is this woman.
Her argument about the crumbs does not just win her daughter’s healing, it opens the door to a feast for thousands. There is a word that ties all of this together, it is the Greek word artos, meaning bread, the children’s bread in the conversation, the seven loaves at the feeding of the 4,000, the bread broken at the last supper, the bread that Jesus calls himself in John’s gospel where he says, I am the bread of life and then immediately says, and the bread that I will give for the life of the world. The world, not just Israel, Matthew is building a single argument across chapters and this woman is a load bearing wall in that argument, the bread was always for everyone, but it required someone with enough faith and enough theological precision to argue for it, she made that argument.
Consider who this woman actually was, because the way this woman has been treated in the history of Christian reading says something uncomfortable about how the tradition has dealt with the people it most needed to hear from. We do not know her name, in 2,000 years of Christian tradition, people have tried to give her one, some traditions call her Justa, some Cyrophinissa, none of those names appear in any text. Matthew and Mark both leave her anonymous, that anonymity is itself meaningful, Matthew is not interested in her as an individual story, he is interested in what she represents, the unnamed outsider who argued her way into the story of salvation, but she is despite that anonymity, one of the most fully realized figures in the entire gospel narrative.
Consider how she sounds, desperate, urgent, not willing to be polite about it. Consider how she thinks, precisely, quickly, without panic. Consider what she believes, she believes that the God of Israel is real and that this man can reach her daughter. Consider what she loves, her child with everything and consider what she was willing to risk, because this was not a safe thing to do, she was in her own territory, yes, but she was approaching a foreign religious teacher in a public setting, demanding his attention, refusing to accept his initial response. In the social world of the first century, women did not do this, full stop. The disciple’s discomfort was not cruelty, it was a reflection of how profoundly she was violating the expected script, she was not supposed to be there, she was not supposed to argue, she was definitely not supposed to win, she won anyway.
Her argument about the crumbs does not just win her daughter’s healing, it opens the door to a feast for thousands. There is a word that ties all of this together, it is the Greek word artos, meaning bread, the children’s bread in the conversation, the seven loaves at the feeding of the 4,000, the bread broken at the last supper, the bread that Jesus calls himself in John’s gospel where he says, I am the bread of life and then immediately says, and the bread that I will give for the life of the world. The world, not just Israel, Matthew is building a single argument across chapters and this woman is a load bearing wall in that argument, the bread was always for everyone, but it required someone with enough faith and enough theological precision to argue for it, she made that argument.
Consider who this woman actually was, because the way this woman has been treated in the history of Christian reading says something uncomfortable about how the tradition has dealt with the people it most needed to hear from. We do not know her name, in 2,000 years of Christian tradition, people have tried to give her one, some traditions call her Justa, some Cyrophinissa, none of those names appear in any text. Matthew and Mark both leave her anonymous, that anonymity is itself meaningful, Matthew is not interested in her as an individual story, he is interested in what she represents, the unnamed outsider who argued her way into the story of salvation, but she is despite that anonymity, one of the most fully realized figures in the entire gospel narrative.
Consider how she sounds, desperate, urgent, not willing to be polite about it. Consider how she thinks, precisely, quickly, without panic. Consider what she believes, she believes that the God of Israel is real and that this man can reach her daughter. Consider what she loves, her child with everything and consider what she was willing to risk, because this was not a safe thing to do, she was in her own territory, yes, but she was approaching a foreign religious teacher in a public setting, demanding his attention, refusing to accept his initial response. In the social world of the first century, women did not do this, full stop. The disciple’s discomfort was not cruelty, it was a reflection of how profoundly she was violating the expected script, she was not supposed to be there, she was not supposed to argue, she was definitely not supposed to win, she won anyway.
