"Conquered by Love" Matthew 15:10–28 | Episode 272

This week, Jesus encounters a persistent Canaanite woman who refuses to take no for an answer. Peter Walsh and Elizabeth Garnsey wrestle with a provocative question: Does this woman learn something from Jesus, or might Jesus and his disciples learn something from her? Along the way, they explore what comes from the heart, the boundaries we draw around God’s mercy, and the surprising grace of having our point of view conquered by love.

Questions for Reflection

Themes & Application

1. The Canaanite woman refuses to accept the boundaries that seem to determine who deserves Jesus’ attention and mercy. Who are the people today whom religious communities are still tempted to keep outside the boundaries of belonging?
2. Peter and Elizabeth offer different interpretations of Jesus’ encounter with the Canaanite woman: is Jesus himself being changed, or is he intentionally creating a moment that will change his disciples? What difference does each interpretation make for how we understand Jesus?
3. The episode contrasts the Pharisees, who are offended by Jesus, with the outsider who persistently seeks him. What might this suggest about the relationship between religious certainty and openness to encountering God in unexpected places? 

Personal Reflection Questions

1. Peter asks, “How many times do we grow because our point of view gets conquered?” When has changing your mind actually been an important part of your spiritual growth? 
2. The Canaanite woman persists through silence, rejection, and insult. When have you had to persist in asking for something that mattered deeply to you?
3. Jesus teaches that defilement comes from the heart rather than external observance. What attitudes or reactions within yourself are hardest for you to examine honestly?

Broader Spiritual Considerations

1. What does it mean for Christian faith if Scripture gives us a Jesus who can appear challenging, harsh, or even capable of learning rather than the “airbrushed Jesus” Peter describes? 
2. Jesus repeatedly returns to Hosea’s declaration, “I desire mercy, not sacrifice.” What would change if mercy, rather than correctness, became one of our primary measures of faithfulness?
3. The episode ends with the idea of allowing ourselves to be “conquered by love.” What might that look like not simply as an individual spiritual practice, but as a way for communities and churches to live?

References & Resources

Books & Thinkers

• René Girard, I See Satan Fall Like Lightning

Places & Art

• St. Peter’s Church, Jaffa — Peter references the artwork behind the altar depicting Peter’s vision of the sheet descending from heaven in Acts 10.

Vocabulary

• Kynárion (κυνάριον) — The Greek word translated as “dogs” in Matthew 15:26–27. It is a diminutive form of the Greek word for dog and can refer to a small or household dog. Importantly, as Peter and Elizabeth note, the comparison remains belittling regardless of the nuance. 
• Skandalízō (σκανδαλίζω) — The Greek verb behind language of being “offended” or “caused to stumble.” Peter and Elizabeth connect it with Matthew’s recurring theme of “scandal” and offense, particularly the disciples’ warning that the Pharisees were offended by Jesus’ teaching. 
• Mimetic Desire — A concept associated with René Girard describing the way human beings learn what to desire through others, which can produce rivalry and competition. Elizabeth connects Girard’s analysis of coveting with Jesus’ insistence that destructive behavior ultimately originates in the desires of the heart.

Clothing

• Rob’s “Be Kind” T-shirt, The Happy Givers

Learn more about St. Mark's at https://www.stmarksnewcanaan.org

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Everybody, welcome to Revved Up for Sunday. We are the clergy of St. Mark's Episcopal Church in New Canaan, Connecticut. And I'm Peter Walsh.

SPEAKER_00 0:07

I'm Elizabeth Garnsey.

SPEAKER_01 0:08

And as many of you know, this is the first podcast without Father John as he moves on to his next call. And what a podcast uh perhaps you're in for, because the passages that we have are really in the Wowser category. Uh just for those of you who are following along in the Episcopal Lectionary, the Revised Common Lectionary, there is a passage that is appointed for the day, and then there's an optional passage, and we're going to take them both on. The first has uh Jesus being shocking at the dinner table with the Pharisees and the scribes, and the second one, he's up entire inside, and then Wowser Wowser. Uh, Jesus has an encounter that is shocking in which he is the one that has to learn the lessons. So we are in Matthew 15, uh, verses 10 to 20 are uh Jesus uh talking about what is clean and what is defiled, and then verses 21 to 28 are uh his encounter with the Canaanite woman. Jesus called the crowd to him and said to them, Listen and understand, it is not what goes into the mouth that defiles a person, but it is what comes out of the mouth that defiles. Then the disciples approached and said to him, Do you know that the Pharisees took offense when they heard what you said? He answered, Every plant that my heavenly Father has not planted will be uprooted. Let them alone. They are blind guides of the blind. And if one blind person guides another, both will fall into a pit. But Peter said to him, Explain this parable to us. Then he said, Are you also still without understanding? Do you not see that whatever goes into the mouth enters the stomach and goes out into the sewer? But what comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart. And this is what defiles. For out of the heart come evil intentions murder, adultery, fornication, theft, false witness, slander. These are what defile a person. But to eat with unwashed hands does not defile. Jesus left that place and went away to the district of Tyre in Sidon. Just then a Canaanite woman from the region came out and started shouting, Have mercy on me, Lord, son of David, my daughter is tormented by a demon. But he did not answer her at all. And his disciples came and urged him, saying, Send her away, for she keeps shouting after us. He answered, I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. But she came and knelt before him, saying, Lord, help me. He answered, It is not fair to take the children's food and throw it to the dogs. She said, Yes, Lord, and even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their master's table. Then Jesus answered her, Woman, great is your faith. Let it be done for you as you wish. And her daughter was healed instantly. Incredible, incredible. Both of them are incredible passages, uh, you know, pericopes, as we learned in um in seminary. And uh I just I'm gonna start us very high up uh here and note something that I was looking at this morning when I was as you cramming here, uh, and to say that these each of these stories in its own light is really, really worth our time and really something. But then as they come together as Matthew forms the gospel, he puts the two of them together, which really uh has incredible comparison. So in the first one, we have those who are socially acceptable uh talking about the outside, you know, those those uh external differences. And then the second one, we have somebody who's on the outside uh talking about the differences, you know, on the inside here. And the comparison gets more startling when, and obviously in the first one, Jesus has all the punchlines, right, which we're used to. And then in the second one, the Canaanite woman has all the punchlines. Uh and and so what we end up seeing is that as Jesus moves um from the region of the Galilee into Tyronside, which is obviously up in current day Lebanon, um, you know, that this really is not a mission to the Gentiles, uh, because he still says to her, you know, uh, you know, he still instructs her that he's really come for the house, uh, the lost house of of Israel. Uh, but that really this is a gentile mission to the house of Israel, to the Messiah. This is like shocking. This is a Gentile mission to the Messiah. So we have all this incredible stuff to kind of pick at and talk about here that I'm looking forward to the conversation.

SPEAKER_00 5:24

Yeah, it's it's really great. I mean, Matthew, we've been marching along through these incredible stories of confrontation and resistance that Jesus comes up against, and um, his life is exhausting.

SPEAKER_02 5:36

His life is exhausting. So powerful.

SPEAKER_00 5:38

Like no conversation is wasted on the small talk, you know. But um he, I think these setting these uh passages together is really wonderful because as you pointed out, it it's these contrasting responses to Jesus and who's ministering to who. And the Pharisees, you know, there's so much in Matthew about um scandal and offense. And in Matthew 11, Jesus has said, Blessed is the one who is not scandalized or offended by me. He says to the disciples of John the Baptist. Yeah. Um, and here the disciples are like, but don't you know the Pharisees were offended when they heard what you said? Uh, you know, and they're very hung up on the commandments, of course, you know, their own scriptures. And um, Jesus is always talking about the heart, and you know, the Pharisees are all about what goes into the body and the food you eat and stuff like that. And and Jesus is turning it inside out to say it's what it's what comes out of your mouth that defiles you, you know, how you speak, how you respond to the world.

SPEAKER_01 6:43

Yeah, it's really it's really something I think we do really, really well to to kind of shed something and put our put ourselves right in the room and right in that world. You know, this is where the historical critical method is fantastic because it draws us in. And, you know, I love that you're referring to the scandal. You know, I mean that Mike, the the best Greek verb scandalizo, you know, it's so super cool because it is, you know, it sounds even better. Sounds better with than scandal. But uh uh and and it is a scandal, what he's doing there. And I think one of the things that we do well uh to kind of kind of grab a hold of here again, uh, is you know, the word defile is used five times in that little prickopee. And uh I I looked it up and found out that uh I mean this is this this question of defilement and pollution and uh is a big deal in the in the as a biblical category. In the New Testament, there's five verbs used to defile three nouns and one adjective, and it's used dozens of times. But in the Hebrew scriptures, the main Hebrew word for defile is used 225 times. And so we have to under, you know, we again we have to, which is what we do, put ourselves in the way in which um the law, um, the covenant is applied, which starts, of course, uh uh with the Ten Commandments, um, comes out to the tent of meeting in the book of Leviticus, and by the time Jesus comes along, you know, there's the the laws of the tradition, and we always say that that's now up to 1600 six six fourteen or six fifteen. And so into this thing, and we get the Pharisees who are on the varsity team of this, right, really trying to do it. And and and Jesus says some stuff, as you were saying, about the inside out and you know what we talked about in the past about the Sermon on the Mount. But I do think it's really important that we don't flatten it out too too much, which is to say, you know, as you know, you've quoted in the past podcast that when Jesus quotes Hosea, which I'm sure we'll get to, I desire mercy, not sacrifice.

SPEAKER_00 8:44

That is like the linchpin of Jesus' insight into the heart of God. I feel like Jesus is sort of showcasing this is what God it means to love beyond what we're used to or what we think God loves. So I think that he's literally acting out a parable here of what Hosea did as a prophet, you know.

SPEAKER_01 9:05

It's not like it's all outside in the Hebrew scriptures and inside on the Hebrew, but I mean, you know what I mean by just don't want to oversimplify that.

SPEAKER_00 9:15

No, but it is, I think, Jesus' overarching program is to to um help people to uh to turn the law inside out so that you know they desire to fill the law through love, not through fear and not through um power struggle and stuff like that and and separation from um one from another. I mean, his way of fulfilling law is prioritized differently, I think, than in the Pharisees. And the reason I bring up law is you know, Renee Girard has in one of his seminal books, I see Satan fall like lightning. He does this analysis of the Decalogue, the Ten Commandments, and the tenth commandment, of course, is do not covet. And for Jesus, the heart is the seed of desire, you know, to covet you everything we desire comes out of the heart. Whether we're desiring for God or desiring for evil, it's it's the heart. So Jesus is always getting to the heart, and here he's saying, what comes out of you proceeds from the heart. You know, and and in Girard, he says the tenth commandment involves the scandalizing fall into rivalries of, you know, into competition with one another, you know, power struggles, and um, and you know, we have covetousness, we want what the other person has. And this is just a human bit bedrock behavior in every child, in every grown-up, and those are the things we have to learn to desire differently and ultimately desire from the heart of God, you know, but that's our journey. But he says in covetousness, out of covetousness issues forth from there um all the previous four commandments murder, adultery, fornication, theft, false witness, and slander. This is Jesus' exact list, you know, that he spells out here. And these are what defile a person. So he's landing at the same place they're starting from in a way, but um he he wants them to see that it it's from their heart and not from just outer behaviors that they force themselves to conform to.

SPEAKER_02 11:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 11:26

I thank you for that. That's super cool, super good. I, you know, I I as I listen to you, all I can think of is what I do think that in some sense the whole biblical drama is about uh starting with the uh getting booted from the Garden of Eden, is a divine divine deficit disorder. And by not being able to uh experience and understand the reality of the being of God, the divine being, which as we hear in one John, is you know, God is love. And later we're gonna hear when we get to mercy, which is the key portion of the second uh pricky here, that mercy is an attribute of God. And that um that what happens is that when we do not understand that we are loved, and I mean fully loved, I've talked about this in past podcasts, I won't bore people with it, but when we don't experience that we are loved wholly and completely beyond our ability even to love ourselves, we fall into just what you're talking about, the social sociocultural covetness, which Girard lays out so beautifully. Uh and and and you know, and then there's there's a sort of all hell breaks loose, and that um and that part of the mission that Jesus is teaching us is to um I mean I used to think that he's trying to bring us back into the Garden of Eden, to bring us back into intimacy, to bring us back into right relationship, and uh by doing that, um exposing that these these infrastructures that uh that so-called religious sociocultural infrastructures, which are um toxic to the human being and to human culture. I mean, it's this this whole thing here with like I mean, how often I have to say uh also and I can't help it, you know, one of my favorite jobs uh uh and sometimes ranking as my favorite job was working in the sewer department uh in the town I grew up in. That was a very, very high, I mean that was yeah, I got promoted to the sewer department. Sounds like Ed Norton from the honeymooners. And uh and when I love it here where we have Jesus talking about sewage. Uh and uh one of the things, you know, I'm always coming back to I really want to know what Jesus was like. I really, really hope that on the other side I get to meet Jesus face to face. Like this is something that's a big deal to me. Um and and that we get Jesus uh a language, you know, talking about sewage and um because it's super earthy, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 13:55

Right?

SPEAKER_01 13:55

Yeah, this is like an earthy, earthy passage here.

SPEAKER_00 13:58

And it's literally it's biological. He's saying, yeah, whatever you eat is gonna come right out into the sewer. Like it's not gonna come out of your mouth again unless you know you're what I mean. That's probably not exactly what he means, but yeah, he's differentiating between the banality of their obsession with food. Yeah, yeah, um, I think that's part of how he's approaching it, and again, trying to like get them into the much deeper place of the heart.

SPEAKER_01 14:24

Yeah, and I want to affirm what you were talking about right from the start about um the movement, some of the the mega movement from uh the the Hebrew scriptures into the New Testament. And and part of that mega movement, as you know, I mean, Jesus is taking on not just piety, he's taking on a tradition and saying it doesn't square with the divine being of God. And uh and also we see this in the New Testament, obviously in Acts, where Peter has the vision, and and three times in that vision he says, No, I can't eat that food, and God is saying, you know, when the the this falls down. That's a great church to visit, St. Peter's Church. It's about a it's about a um 20-minute walk from downtown Tel Aviv. For those of you who are in downtown Tel Aviv, go down to the church and you'll see behind the altar, you'll see the sheet coming down from the heavens. It's really cool because it was said to have taken place there. But what you were saying earlier, I want to affirm because when it's the discussion about defilement in the New Testament, it is about things like evil intentions, murder, adultery, fornication, theft, false witness, letter. It's not about you know whether or not your cup was clean. That is that is that is that is true. There is a major shift in that.

SPEAKER_00 15:38

That's such a great reference to bring up Peter's story about the vision where God says, I nothing I make is unclean, you shall not declare it so, or something like that. And it's before he goes to visit the Gentiles and eat with them in their house, and he's just horrified that he might have to do that. So, you know, it's the Epiphany isn't the automatic in understanding, like we all go through this long arc of you know, hearing a truth and then actually moving into it. Yeah. And he's speaking to his own people. Like I think that's the other interesting thing about these two stories is he goes from speaking to his very own people about their their shared tradition and they're offended by him.

SPEAKER_02 16:19

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 16:19

And then he gets to this outsider, yeah, and she's not offended. You know, she's pushing right through. They're being offended by her, who's only asked for help, you know? And it's just the the twisting of that Rubik's Cube is like super beautiful, interesting context.

SPEAKER_01 16:39

Let's twist the cube. I I I am in agreement with you. And I think one of the things that's so valuable about this is it takes Jesus out of the airbrush to Jesus that's you know, was in my fourth grade C C D class in St. Thomas the Apostle in Delmar, New York. Uh, and now we're really getting into some real stuff here where uh Jesus uh you know, Jesus is encountered it's shocking to us, right? I mean, it he raises questions of Jesus' prejudice, right? His, you know, what is divine uh divine election and what are the limits of God's mercy. And it's kind of like you've probably heard the phrase, you know, does gee was Jesus caught with his compassion down? And that Jesus is harsh here. It would be really, really you have to really talk yourself into a pretzel to say he's not harsh, because this woman who is about the bravest soul going, she speaks to him, she shouts at him. The passage starts with her shouting, which is really, really intense. Interesting, yeah. You know, it starts with her shouting and he gives her the silent treatment. He doesn't even like whoom, walking on, walk on by Renee. I mean, he just, you know, he doesn't do anything. And then when he cannot avoid engaging with her, he says, Listen, this is only for the for Israel, for the you know, the lost house of the the the shepherds, I mean the sheep of Israel. And then he calls her a dog, essentially. I mean, this is like this is like a trifecta of, oh my gosh, this is our Lord. I mean, you know.

SPEAKER_00 18:09

I like the reading of it that he's acting out for the benefit of his disciples. And then she's sort of in on the secret, you know.

SPEAKER_01 18:17

Oh, interesting. I don't know if I've ever even heard of that before. But roll it out for me.

SPEAKER_00 18:21

If he if he's I mean, if he's consistent, he wouldn't be doing this in his ignorance. You know, I mean, he's giving the disciples a acted out parable of what it looks like to have this us and them thing. And because she's asking for him from the outset, what he would call in someone else great faith, you know, and he does end there with her. But um he's hearing their response, like they don't like it at all. And and he's they're urging him, send her away. She keeps shouting after us. I mean, they're the ones who are offended here by her. And she has no qualms with with coming right out to ask, Lord Son of David. I mean, there we are, like this messianic witness. Right. Um, and in in in other passages, she would be considered demon-possessed. So it's you're either a prophet or a demon-possessed person when you call Jesus that off the street. Interesting. Yeah, Matthew. And I think I think Jesus it's the daughter who's tormented by a demon, you know, like she's asking Jesus for help. Um and I he has to know, he has to know where he's going with this. I just don't buy that he's you know following his disciples' lead, ignoring her. I think he's giving a pregnant pause for his disciples to to react to this situation and see what they do with it. And the other part of this passage, just to back up for a second, if you don't mind. Last week our podcast was about the stilling of the storm, and we talked about how Jesus was acting like you know, Moses passing through bringing the people through the Red Sea, and Joshua bringing people across the Jordan into the promised land, and then and conquering the Canaanites this week, you know, like so. This this is like Jesus acting, it's the tale of two Joshuas, you know, Yeshua is the Jesus name, you know. And here's Joshua in the Canaanite land, or among the Canaanites, yeah, conquering them in this other way, like through healing, through love, through engagement, and um conquer isn't the right word, but only for the sake of the the um comparison. But so just I just wanted to mention that at some point that he's he's kind of like you know, now he's engaging with the Canaanites, it follows all the promised land, and and these people like he's just been talking to his own people. They're in their promised land, they're supposed to be living freely, you know. I mean, they're occupied, which is terrible, but they haven't, after all these 14 centuries between the Joshua of the Promised Land and Jesus, they're just not free, you know. And here we have this woman, um, somebody obviously left behind by the first conquest of Canaan, you know, there she is. And she recognizes Jesus, like wants his help, wants in on what he's uh got to offer. So I just don't really stand by the idea that he's truly in the dark. And I think he's there to serve the purpose of enlightening his disciples and knows that she can handle it.

SPEAKER_01 21:33

Oh, this is like such a good podcast because this is an example of me laying something out, and you're like saying, uh, yeah, I don't agree with you. No, no, I'm just laying it as a possibility. I like it.

SPEAKER_00 21:43

I like Because at face value, it is what you say.

SPEAKER_01 21:45

Yeah, you know, I like I like this kind of conversation because it it causes me to to reevaluate my own thinking. Um and and just say one of the things that we do find in in of Jesus in Matthew's gospel. Is that we do find Jesus as a person listening to others, asking questions, re-evaluating. And in the way I was thinking of it, I mean, we have Jesus here not being defensive. I mean, once he I mean, once he does lay this out, he's not, he's, he doesn't, he doesn't burst into like shame, like, oh, how could I be such a loser? Or how could I be so wrong? He learns something, you know, and then obviously in the end of the story, the Matthew 28 is the gospel to all nations. But I I want to revisit here the Canaanite woman and the and how she's described. And I love your two Yeshua's your Joshua, you know, the the coming into the promised land. And uh, you know, down Mount Nebo into the promised land. This question of Canaan and is is is it is big then and big now even still. But the difference is that Jesus has is, you know, ethnicity, heritage, religion, gender, demon-possessed, you know, daughter, you know, woman acting in socially unacceptable ways, uh, you know, shouting at him and his own seeming reluctance to contend with all this. But if you take a look at um the genetics of the people of the Holy Land, uh, you know, this is a this is a land in which the many peoples have have poured and and come into, and the genetics of of of you know uh the pre-state of Israel uh uh you know still exist um with those who've been in the land for a long time. They they have genetic traces to the Canaanite people, uh, and to all the other uh organiz you know, peoples that have poured into the lands. I mean, these are these are all I mean it was it was Palestine, not all that long ago. Uh and and that that that Palestine grows from the word Phoenicia uh and it grows in from this, you know, how how Canaan and and all this stuff gets kind of wrapped together, and sorry for that. Oh, that's interesting. But the that uh in Jesus' day, you know, this this woman is so socially out of bounds. I mean, Jewish men did not talk, they didn't talk to their spouses in public, uh never mind to to somebody like this, and and entire inside, and that is primarily Gentile territory, but not apparently completely Gentile territory. I mean, there's some Jewish um uh Hebrew communities there too. But it it is really um nonetheless for us, no matter how we contend with it, in the end God's mercy is conveyed uh to this woman as a sign that, as I mentioned earlier, that mercy is an attribute of God, and Jesus uh conveys that and he uh moves from it seems like it seems to move from like ooh, to you know, this embrace, what a great faith you have, your daughter is healed. I mean, just praising her and seemingly just delighting in this. And uh so it is a it's a kind of wild thing that happens in a few verses here.

SPEAKER_00 25:06

Yeah, it is. I mean, even the phrase send her away, that sounds like you know, a kind of displacement of the people, you know, displacement and all that.

SPEAKER_01 25:16

Uh I mean I I think that that one of the things that happens in the exchange is that um uh you know, she comes to him at first shouting and and he's resistant. And then I mean this woman to my mind is a is a is a negotiating genius because she changes her manners. She falls on her knees and she says, Lord help me. She's uses the Lord twice, as you pointed out earlier. And this may not whether or not this is confessional or respectful, you know, like because Lord can mean sir. Um, but there's a definite reference, and and and she says, Help me. Well, we just got done, you mentioned it, we just got done with Jesus yanking Peter out from drowning because he says, Help me, right? Same phrase, yeah. Here we are right again. And so there's you know, this this help me and whatever it is, this kind of straightforward prayer, help me, seems to be a thing that really works. And because we have we have back-to-back help me that in the end really works.

SPEAKER_00 26:21

It helps, but not yet. Yeah. Okay, so let's get to the name says it's not fair to take the children's food and throw it to the dogs. I mean, talk about theatrical. And I I've I've read that this word dogs is more like puppy, house puppy, or pet.

SPEAKER_01 26:34

Oh, that's not what I read. Okay, so you hear what I read. This is why it's good that we're both in conversation that that dogs was a name that was routinely used by the Hebrew people to describe pagans. So this was just a this was a a routine phrase.

SPEAKER_00 26:48

Aaron Powell Maybe Jesus wasn't willing to go that far. But the cunarion is the word, and it it's also a word used for maybe like a stray dog or something. Well, interesting. Um but it's that's a pet or puppy sometimes too. So I don't know, for whatever it's worth. Like it's a gentler um even because if they're under the table, there might be the house dogs. Oh, yeah, yeah. But I guess it's probably a word that has both uses. Um in any case, it's belittling, right? And it's hard to get around that. Yeah. But she but one one writer compared her word or his um her response to him, yes, Lord, even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their master's table. That he that's a some allusion to a Davidic psalm that she's playing back to Jesus, that you know, David is being pursued by his enemies, and the the enemies have their bellies filled, but may some crumbs fall. Oh, I'd forgotten that. You know, some of them. Um so forgive the inaccuracy, but it there's some illusion that she's no I mean, they somehow she is playing back this voice, and um and she's right, Jesus answers her great is your faith, let it be done for you as your wish, as you wish, and your daughter was healed instantly. So all her two her her shouting, her kneeling, her help me is not enough until and you know, she makes this incredible mic drop argument.

SPEAKER_01 28:14

Yeah, she's brilliant. She doesn't argue against him, she goes with him. I mean, this to my mind, you know, if you take a look at like fighting in the east versus the west, you know, in the west, we punch each other, we you know, it causes this pain. This is like you take boxing, the boxing of my childhood, Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier. But in the East, if you take a look at martial arts, if somebody comes at you and you're going to receive a blow, you don't stand up and take the blow, you go back with the blow. You give into it, and then you come back. The the the view there is like a reed blowing in the wind. And I think the brilliant thing here is that she takes Jesus' argument and says, I got you. But even. And uh and and you know, we've we've said this in the pre some of our previous podcasts. I'm always wondering why there isn't the church of the Syrophoenician woman or the church of the Canaanite women. These are the people who are identified as people of great faith, and yet we got 5,000, you know, St. John's and St. Peter's and St. Paul's churches. And and and how about we dig into some of the grittier, not not that these guys weren't gritty, I don't mean it that way, but there are some gritty minor characters that I in minor, I mean they're they're major, but they're minor in in the whole of the biblical drama that really to my mind reveal the divine grace.

SPEAKER_00 29:29

Definitely.

SPEAKER_01 29:30

And and who are heroes?

SPEAKER_00 29:31

This Canaanite woman, so-called Canaan woman, she's a hero of the faith. Nothing like a mother with a sick child.

SPEAKER_01 29:36

Absolutely. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 29:38

And one one person called this passage the a rude awakening, right? Like it gives new meaning to rude awakening, which I loved. Yeah, but I'll just stand by the fact that she and Jesus are in cahoots on this one. Yeah, yeah. Even if she doesn't know it, I Jesus knows it, and his disciples are away are enlightened by it. And then later, he, you know, just in the next verses of chapter 15, he goes on to feed the 4,000 with, you know, seven baskets, and there are seven Canaanite tribes. And so there's much, much more following in Matthew about this Canaanite so-called second conquest or whatever you want to call it. It's interesting. That's cool.

SPEAKER_01 30:14

That all the second conquest stuff and the way you're describing it, that's all that's all new to me. Uh, and I I like it. I like it a lot. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 30:22

Yeah, it's amazing.

SPEAKER_01 30:24

Well, I would just uh as we wrap this up, I I just want to circle back to uh one of the great themes in the gospel of Matthew is is mercy. And and and Jesus, you know, previous to this passage, twice he uh quotes you know Hosea with uh I desire mercy, not sacrifice. And and I the reason I want to bring that up is I think if we uh we had talked about this in the podcast, I don't know, way before I was on vacation. But um, if there was one word for our world to to ponder here, I think mercy is right. And and you know, and I I I laud um you know Bishop Buddy for her settling in on the question of mercy. And in Claudia, I want you to know, uh Claudia is a one of our pod people who has reached out to me about the the the the the the mercy t-shirt. Um I'm still working on it, so I haven't forgotten you. Uh but anyway, I I do think that um, you know, whether or not uh whatever is is happening or whether how Jesus and this woman were together, how the story's told, how this I you know, I I'm willing to live with all these perfections and imperfections because the drama, the the underlying drama is the same. I mean the underlying drama comes screaming out that it's it's it's you know the transformation of the heart uh from judgment to mercy that is the thing that aligns us with a divine being who is love and mercy. And when we live in the flow of love and mercy, uh, I mean, my gosh, it's just a better plan, it it's a better life, it's it's better all around. Yeah. It r it just is.

SPEAKER_00 32:01

Yeah, and this is crescendoing later in in Jesus defining what a Messiah is for his disciples when when Peter has his theophany and declares Jesus Messiah, and then he Jesus has to walk it back and tell him what that actually means. Right. Yeah you know, which is a a conquest of by love and um generosity and justice, you know. And here the conquest isn't Jesus conquering another Canaanite, it's the con the Canaanite conquering him, you know? It's the cool thing. Like and them, not just him, but the disciples, like you know, showing revealing the heart of God through her persistence and her faith. And um, I think that's just a really beautiful note.

SPEAKER_01 32:43

I do too. And take a look at our own spiritual growth. How many times do we grow because our point of view gets conquered? Uh-huh. Oh wow. So and that's what I mean about even doing the podcast all these years. There's a lot of my points of view we got conquered. I do. And and I, you know, once you get over yourself, uh, it's the coolest thing in the world to be conquered.

SPEAKER_00 33:04

It's fun to grow.

SPEAKER_01 33:05

It is. Yeah, you know, if if we can just quit being so defensive and let ourselves be conquered by love, um, you know, and put set our set our neediness aside and our egos aside, you know, dang, it's it's just it's just better. It's just better to live in that psyche and then in that world.

SPEAKER_00 33:23

But thanks, Peter.

SPEAKER_01 33:25

Yeah, okay, everybody. God bless you all, and thanks as always to Rob. Rob, what's your t-shirt say? Um Rob's got a t-shirt on that says, in a world where you can be anything, be kind. There you go. That's as usual, Rob. The man's got got the message from behind the camera. We're really, really uh thankful that you have hung in here with us. And we do like it when you send us notes and when you forward our things so that more people might participate in our mid-rash. Uh, but nonetheless, we are we are grateful to you. So God bless you. Uh God bless you, and God bless all of you. Take care. See you again. Bye-bye.