...Like A Gentile Or Tax Collector (part 7)

Here also is an opportunity for Jesus to prove His previously made point, which was that if Tyre and Sidon were able to see the miracles that had been seen by the denizens of Chorazin, Bethsaida, and Capernaum, that they would respond in an appropriate manner.  However, given this opportunity, it is to be noted that Jesus says that He “was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.”  Undeterred by Jesus’ seeming aversion to Gentile outreach, this woman that had made her initial messianic proclamation, and who had followed and continued to cry out after Jesus, bows down before Jesus and says simply, “Lord, help me!” (Matthew 15:25b)  Surely now one would expect Jesus to respond in the way to which His observers have grown accustomed.  He again disappoints expectations by saying “It is not right to take the children’s bread and throw it to the dogs” (15:26).  Undaunted, the desperate woman offers her reply, saying “Yes, Lord, but even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters’ table” (15:27). 

Putting aside the apparently problematic use of “dogs,” which has not yet been on offer from Jesus in His previous dealings with Gentiles, and so apparently is meant to play a rhetorical role in a conversation that has taken the appearance of a rabbinic debate (thereby, in point of fact, elevating this woman---is this encounter taking place at a meal, amplifying Jesus’ point and removing the possibility of insult from His comment?), rather than being used as a demeaning and blanket statement (considering the possibility that Jesus already has in mind what He is going to do for this woman and how He is ultimately going to respond to her), she has taken up the words of Jesus, accepted His statement without challenge, and then added “master” to the fact of her already referring to Him as “Lord” and “Son of David.”  Finally, this is productive of what would be expected from Jesus from the beginning, as He answers her with “Woman, your faith is great!  Let what you want be done for you” (15:28a).  The closing report is that “her daughter was healed from that hour” (15:28b). 

When stepping back from this for a moment and viewing the exchange as a whole, one can find tremendous similarities between the encounter between Jesus and the centurion in Capernaum, and between Jesus and the Canaanite woman in the region of Tyre and Sidon.  While viewing the similarities, one must also consider Jesus’ statement about Tyre and Sidon and their potential response to the miracles that He performed.  As indicated, Matthew neatly introduces this story into the narrative of Jesus that he is telling, and both ends---Jesus’ statement about Tyre and Sidon juxtaposed against the “woes” He pronounced and what takes place here in Tyre and Sidon with this woman---are heavily suggestive when it comes to considering the prescribed treatment of an erring member of the new covenant community as a Gentile or tax collector. 

In the previous story, the centurion comes to Jesus with a request.  The Canaanite woman does likewise.  Jesus responds positively to the centurion, but does not respond to the Canaanite woman (perhaps the Roman commander, as part of the Gentile, tax collecting, oppressive force, would be looked upon as a greater enemy by the majority of Jesus’ and Matthew’s audience, therefore Jesus offers greater compassion and praise to Him, whereas the Canaanite woman would merely be considered a nuisance?).  Upon Jesus’ response, the centurion, even though his request has been granted, says “Lord, I am not worthy to have you come under my roof.”  The audience then goes on to find out the reasoning behind these words, as well as the way that He perceives Jesus’ power and authority, as he says “For I too am a man under authority, with soldiers under me.  I say to this one, ‘Go,” and he goes, and to another “Come’ and he comes, and to my slave, ‘Do this,’ and he does it” (8:9)  

Where Your Treasure Is (part 1)

For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. – Luke 12:34  (NET)

As is almost always the case, Jesus does not offer up these words as a disconnected aphorism.  Though it can be taken as a truth, it is only taken as such because of the context provided to it by Jesus and the Lukan narrative.  Though the overall movement of Luke’s Gospel will not be here touched upon, it would be entirely inappropriate to make an attempt to rightly comprehend a statement such as this without operating within a mental framework that is consistently cognizant that Luke is telling a story so as to communicate a particular point of view, and that every component of that story is serving a greater end. 

That greater end that would seem to be in Luke’s view is Jesus’ conception of the kingdom of heaven.  In fact, it is a reflection upon the kingdom of heaven that is the immediate precursor to the series of statements that concludes with “For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”  To this point, and prior to this telling statement, Jesus has said to “pursue His kingdom” (12:31) and that the “Father is well pleased to give you the kingdom” (12:32b). 

Before moving any further, one must take care to not make the serious mistake of thinking of the kingdom of heaven as something distant, whether that distance be a matter of time or space.  For a Jew such as Jesus, the kingdom of heaven was defined as the Creator God’s rule on earth---the realm of their God and His rule invading and occupying the realm of the beings that He had created as His image.  Heaven was not conceived of as the post-death eternally blessed attainment of a life well-lived, and as such, was not a motivating factor in living according to that which would be expected of a member of the covenant people.  It is incredibly important to establish such things, as it is incumbent upon observers to know what Jesus would have had in mind, along with what His hearers would have had in mind, knowing that they had to share a common verbal and mental vocabulary if Jesus was going to be understood. 

The idea of heaven, and the attached idea of an eternal realm to be occupied by disembodied souls, would have been foreign to the religious thought-world of the Israel of Jesus’ day.  There would almost certainly have been an awareness of such ways of thought, but thinking along those lines would likely have been heavily resisted, as an alien invader.  It was Greek thought, popularized by Plato, that divided the physical from the spiritual, positing that the physical world was only a shabby reflection of the spiritual world.  Essentially, for the Greeks and for those influenced by Greek thought, physical equaled bad, whereas spiritual equaled good.  This was antithetical to contemporary Jewish thought.  Now, this is not to say that because it was Greek, it was wrong, but rather, it would have been foreign to Jesus, and likely rejected by Him and the earliest of those that sought to convey His message to the world. 

So it needs to be reinforced that thinking of heaven or the kingdom of heaven in such a way would not have been the position of one of the covenant people of the Creator God.  They knew that their God had created a world that was very good, that the good world He had created had been corrupted, that His image-bearers had been marred, and that their God was eventually going to act to not only restore this world to its very good condition, but that His restoring, redeeming operation, which would occur within history and be brought to bear in this creation, was going to create a world even better than the one that had suffered a fall.