If No Sound

God Is a Dog Person©

September 6, 2009

Proverbs 22:1-2, 8-9, 22-23

Psalm 125 or Psalm 124 (UMH 846)

James 2:1-10 (11-13) 14-17

Mark 7:24-37

Amy DeWitte

            I’m not what you would call a dog person.  Not naturally anyway.  And I wouldn’t admit that to just anybody.  My mom just really doesn’t like dogs – so when I was growing up we didn’t have a dog in our house for quite a while.  My dad always wanted a dog, though, so eventually my mom bought him what she thought was going to be tolerable family pet.  Knight was a pure bred black Labrador retriever, and he was a pretty good dog.  He was cute as a puppy, I guess, but as he got older and the novelty of having a new pet wore off, I didn’t spend much time playing with him.  I didn’t like the way he came up and licked my feet when I was sitting in my dad’s chair.  I didn’t like that his tail caught everything in his wake and I was constantly having to pick up things off the floor that he had knocked over.  He became an inside dog, but my dad was the only one who really loved him.  He wasn’t a family dog to me.e.

            And then…he became allergic to fleas.  I had never heard of such a thing.  A dog allergic to fleas.  We gave him medicine, but nothing that ever really worked, and he was constantly miserable.  He scratched and scratched all day long, so he lost a lot of what was once a beautifully shiny black coat.  There was always dog hair on everything.  Where he did have hair, he looked mangy and where he had bald spots, he also had open sores.  And while I sometimes had pity on him, I usually just thought of him as a disgusting mutt that my father loved.

            That’s the way Jesus’ disciples looked at that Canaanite woman that day. They had traveled outside of Galilee, outside of Israel to a place they didn’t normally go.  And there they were in the minority.  There weren’t that many Jews in that region – it was mostly Canaanites and other pagans that Jews like the disciples weren’t supposed to be around. The practiced barbaric rituals, had foreign beliefs, had no respect for their God or his laws, and didn’t obey any of their customs.  They had traveled outside Galilee to a place they didn’t normally go.  There, they were the minority.  There were not many Jews there.  Mostly there were Canaanites and other pagans the disciples weren’t supposed to be around.  From the perspective of many Jews these were people who had barbaric rituals, foreign culture and didn't obey God’s laws.  They were wholly Other.

            Jesus settled in a house and didn’t want anyone to know he was there, but she knew.  She didn’t belong anywhere near them.  She knew it and they knew it. But there she came barging in anyway.  This was a woman on a mission.  Frantic and disheveled she pushed her way into the place where Jesus and the disciples were.  You could feel the tension in the room as she disrupted their quiet privacy and, making no apologies for her behavior, fell at Jesus’ feet.  You see, her daughter was tormented by a demon and she pleaded for Jesus to cast the demon out.

            She didn’t know how to help her daughter on her own and she was desperate for someone to do something.  And somehow she knew exactly who that someone was.  She wasn’t a Christian, not even a Jew.  She didn’t know about the stories of a coming Messiah who would make the world right again.  But she did hear of the Jesus who was traveling through town, and she had hope that he could make her daughter right again.                 

            But Jesus, without hesitation, denied her: Let the children be fed first, for it is not fair to take the children's food and throw it to the dogs." Jesus had come to bless first his children, the Jews. He had chosen them as his special people.  They were his children and he was their God.  Jesus came first for the Jews.  He was going to work in the world through the Jews. 

            And she wasn’t one of them.  She knew it and they knew it.  But she couldn’t take no for an answer. Something had to be done for her daughter: “Sir, even the dogs under the table eat the children's crumbs." She knew she was not one of them.  She knew he didn’t owe her anything.  She knew she was asking something huge.  She knew it wasn’t her place.  But she also knew that he was the only one who could provide for her what she desperately needed.  She had faith.  And Jesus, looking deeply into her, saw that she truly believed. This woman who hadn’t grown up in the faith.  This woman who practiced a completely different religion.  This woman who was unclean and impolite.  This woman who was like a mangy disgusting dog to them.  This woman believed that Jesus was the one.  And seeing her faith, Jesus said, “For saying that, you may go – the demon has left your daughter.”  And when she went home, there her daughter was lying in her bed and the demon was gone

            Oh this is a troubling passage: we ask questions like: “why did Jesus at first deny her? Why didn’t he melt with compassion when he heard her sob story, when she lowered herself to begging?  Why didn’t he feel moved to solve all of her problems?

            But the most troubling thing about this story for the people of Jesus’ day would have been something completely different.  They would have asked questions like: Why did he even give her the time of day at all, much less give her what she asked for?  Why did he pa attention to the likes of her, the woman who wasn’t one of the chosen people, who didn’t read the Scriptures, who wasn’t a descendent of the ones God had mad promises to, who didn’t keep God’s law.  She wasn’t a child of God!  She was nothing but a dog!

            And they would be right – she wasn’t one of them. She had no right to ask anything of Jesus.  None of us do.

I’m not naturally a dog person. 

            I was disgusted by that dog we had growing up.  In a way he barged into our clean lives and changed everything.  He shed like crazy, he was ugly, and he always smelled bad. But my Father loved him.  I often wondered why my dad took so much time with that dog, training him, giving him special baths, and cleaning up his sores.  Sometimes I wondered if my Father spent more time with that dirty dog than he did with his own children.

            I imagine that’s the way the people of Jesus’ day felt about that woman.  I thought we were God’s children.  What is he doing performing miracles for this Gentile dog?  But Jesus saw something different in her.  Like my childhood dog was loyal to my Father, and he knew my Father was going to be the one who fed him, this Canaanite woman had faith that Jesus was Lord, and she knew he was the only one who could help her.

            Yes, Jesus came first for the chosen people, the children of Abraham, the ones who read the Scriptures, the ones who obeyed the law.  But ultimately Jesus also came so that all of us who have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, all of us who stumble and fall, all of us who are lost and broken, all of us who beg like dogs to be fed at the Table of God’s grace, Jesus came so that one day all of us crawl to him for help.                      

            Brothers and sisters, we have been graced by God to be called God’s children.  Though we are as unworthy flea-bitten dogs, we have been loved by our Father, we are being trained in his ways, we have been given a special bath in baptism, and our Father is constantly cleaning out the wounds of our sins.

            And even so, we sometimes wonder why God would have anything to do with dirty people  of our world – the unbelievers and the addicts, the foreign and the impolite, the undocumented and the poor.  There are times when we feel a though we have earned our place in God’s kingdom, that we have worked our way into the family of God.  The truth is that we have done nothing of the sort.  The truth is that it is by grace that dogs and children alike become part of the family.  The truth is that God has blurred the lines between the clean and the unclean.  The truth is that the very people whom God has invited to be part of the family, we should welcome into the quiet privacy of our church.

Copyright © 2009 Amy DeWitte. All Rights Reserved. No portion of this writing may be reproduced in any form without specific, written permission of the author.

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