25. Matthew 15:1-39: Conflict, a Parable, a Healing, and another Feeding Conflict (Mt.15:1-9)

Some scribes and Pharisees from the center of officialdom, Jerusalem, come to Jesus with a complaint:

“Why do your disciples break the tradition of the elders? For they do not wash their hands before they eat.”

Jesus counters back:

“And why do you break the commandment of God for the sake of your tradition?

The tradition of the elders was authoritative interpretation of scripture for the people. It was how they were to live as God’s people. Jesus came along claiming to do nothing that would undermine the law, instead he would fulfill every little piece of it (5:17-20). Yet he allows his followers to disregard this washing before eating authoritative teaching. How can he be Messiah?

Jesus turns the tables on these teachers and expert in the law by showing that it is they who use their tradition to evade the obligations of the law. How can they be reliable guides for the people? They are, as Jesus puts it: “hypocrites” (v.7; lit. play-actors), citing Isaiah 29:13 in support of this point.

Wright spells out Jesus’ critique:

“In the Ten Commandments themselves, the Israelites were commanded to honour their parents. This meant, not least, looking after them in their old age. But in the Pharisees’ traditions it was permitted that someone might make a gift to the Temple of an equivalent amount to what they might have spent on their parents. If they did that, they were deemed to be under no further obligation. This had an obvious benefit to the Temple, and indeed might give the appearance of great piety. But it undermined the whole point of the law.”[1]

If behind this façade of piety their tradition represents but the thoughts of a people alienated from God, what might Jesus’ teaching be which bypasses this human tradition and comes from one who claims to mediate knowledge of God to those open to his word (11:25-27). Jesus leaves his hearers to ponder this in their hearts.

A Parable (Mt.15:10-20)

Jesus turns to the crowd, encouraging them to “Listen and understand” (v.10), as he propounds a parable about cleanness and uncleanness. What goes into a person from outside does not make them impure (“defiled” NRSV) but what comes out of their mouths instead” (v.11). This is a thinly veiled rebuke of the scribes and Pharisees, whose traditions “com(ing) out of their mouths” Jesus has just exposed as merely human ideas designed support a corrupt and soon to be judged institution (the temple).

“Don’t you know you’ve made the Pharisees mad,” the disciples ask Jesus (v.12). “Don’t bother about them,” he replies. “If they are not of God they will not succeed. Blind guides leading the blind, that’s what they are. They’ll both end up in a ditch” (vv.13-14).

The “trusted” guides to the law’s meaning for God’s people are not so trustworthy after all, Jesus reveals. They cannot evoke the purity of heart that seasons their words with truth and grace. Where can the people turn then to find such purity of heart, such that their words align with their character and reflect God?

The disciples themselves do not quite know. But they at least have the good sense to ask Jesus about it (v.15). Though Jesus upbraids them for not getting it yet, he explains the parable to them: “What go into the mouth goes through the digestive processes and leaves the body as waste products. But what comes from the heart and out through the mouth, that stuff can harm and even kill. Our words express the disposition of our hearts: “evil intentions, murder, adultery, fornication, theft, false witness, slander” (v.19). Sounds like a mashup of the Ten Commandments and the Sermon on the Mount! And it is these things that defile the community God intends for his people to live and demonstrate his way to the world.

Each of us is fully capable of such things, if we’re honest with ourselves. And that’s why the traditions of the scribes and Pharisees which can only regulate what goes into a person are finally unhelpful even if honestly intended. Something deeper needs to happen in us to unravel the kinks in our souls that produce the destructive, defiling words. It is Jesus’ way of being God’s people, in which he reveals God to them in the depths of who they are, that effects such a healing. And that healing alone will enable them to escape the coming wrath of God in the chariots, spears, and swords of the Roman army.

“The point of what Jesus is saying, then, is that through his work God is offering a cure for this deep-level impurity. And this cure cuts across what other teachers of his day were offering. They saw the purity laws as the right place to start, and some of them were content to stop there too. Jesus saw these laws as largely irrelevant to the real task he had come to undertake.”[2]

This cure is still unfolding in Matthew’s story. We don’t know or see it in full yet. But it is coming. God’s heavenly kingdom is here (4:17). The wheels are in motion. Faith, trust in Jesus, enables his hearers to participate in that kingdom even before its fullness has played out in their midst.

And this risk, this faith, is the venture those who follow him must embrace, then and now. Though we see the whole process played out in Jesus’ life that they did not, we too must take a leap of faith and trust that he is the Messiah, the ruler of the world, who will faithfully fulfill his promises to us and enable us to realize our divinely-ordained destiny. 

Jesus and a Canaanite Woman (Mt.15:21-28)

We have already seen Jesus commend the faith of the Gentile Centurion (8:10). Here we have an even more striking (unplanned) encounter between Jesus and a Canaanite woman begging for healing for her demon-possessed daughter.

Jesus moves into Canaanite territory (“the district of Tyre and Sidon,” v.21) after his dispute with the scribes and Pharisees over purity. He has done this before (12:15; 14:13). It also plays into the divided kingdom phase of Israel’s history Matthew portrays Jesus as recapitulating.

“This is . . . the region to which Elijah retreated when Jezebel was trying to kill him. It was in fact the region from which Jezebel came, since she was a Sidonian princess who married into the royal family of Israel. It was the region where Elijah met the starving widow and provided for her . . . Like Elijah and Elisha, Jesus is confronted by a woman who needs help for a child. Elijah raised the widow’s son from the dead, and Elisha performed a similar miracle for another woman whose child died.”[3]

A Canaanite woman accosts Jesus shouting to him to heal her demon-possessed daughter. His reputation had obviously preceded him. However, Jesus ignores her (v.23). His disciples want Jesus to get rid of her by giving her what she wants. However, Jesus reiterates to the disciples the claim he made earlier in ch.10 that his mission is to the Jews (v.24). The woman then comes and kneels before Jesus, addresses him as “Lord” and pleads for his help again (v.25). Jesus engages in a bit of banter reaffirming that his work is among the Israelites saying, “It is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs” (26). The woman, obviously quick-witted, shoots back, “Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters’ table” (v.27). Jesus, taken with her faith, especially against the frequent failures of his followers to show it, grants her request and heals her daughter (v.28).

This story has occasioned much comment especially about whether Jesus is insensitive and even racist in his response to the woman in v.26 and whether his rebuff of her is an occasion where he learns something new or even sins and needs to repent of (v.27).

BTW, that this story can be read in such a possibly unflattering way about Jesus is one sure mark that the early church did not make it up! They would not have written up anything like this. We can be certain Matthew has preserved an authentic story about Jesus here.

But how are we to take it? One main point is Jesus’ reiteration of his mission’s focus on Israel. He has come to regather and reconstitute the Abrahamic people of Israel as we have seen repeatedly thus far. He has no plan for outreach to the Gentiles and does seek them out. Nevertheless, he does encounter Gentiles from time to time. And each time he is impressed by their faith. Still, his mission is not to them. That day will come after Pentecost but is not Jesus’ day. Unlike his encounter with the Gentile Centurion, Jesus seems surprised by his encounter with this woman. Perhaps he was preoccupied with the growing conflict with the Jews. This may account for his use of the derogatory epithet commonly used by Jews for Gentiles “dogs.” Lacking any other signs of such bigotry or racism on the part of Jesus in the gospels or anywhere else the “surprised” or “preoccupied” view seems to make the best sense of this passage. Interestingly, the disciples want Jesus to do what she wants to get rid of this nuisance. But Jesus will not yield to their wishes. He did not come just to meet whatever human need presented itself to him (as difficult as that is to imagine for some of our more progressive friends). It may be that his “dog” comment is more for their benefit, to get their attention refocused where it needed to be, than an affront to the woman. As Leithart writes, Jesus “is first of all responsive to the One who sent Him. He will not let genuine human need, even misery, distract Him from the thing He has come to do. He is God-centered, not a humanitarian. Ultimately, Jesus does respond to her, but only after it becomes clear that her importunity fits with His mission.”[4]

At any rate, she takes no umbrage at his comment but comes back with a sharply-focused reply. And that reply gets Jesus’ attention. This is the kind of faith he has sought and all too infrequently found among his own people. This is Matthew’s other main interest in this story – to highlight this kind of faith though it came from a Gentile! This would be an important counter-weight to Israel’s lack of faith in Jesus.

This woman’s faith is “great” and paradigmatic in several respects. It is great

-because it is focused on Jesus, the Son of David, the one hope she knew her daughter had.

-because her faith is also humble. She lays out before him and pleads with Jesus for her daughter.

-because her faith is persistent, relentless even.[5]

We see here, I submit, the humanity of Jesus on full display. His preoccupation with his mission, his surprise at the woman’s faith are all about his humanity, in my judgment. Matthew’s sue of this story and its use in the early church betray no sense that sin, racism, or bigotry are involved. The passage’s reiteration of Jesus’ fidelity to his divine commission and the exemplary nature of the Canaanite woman’s faith doubtless accounts for Matthew using it even with its ambiguities and possible misunderstandings.

Jesus New Exodus and Another Feeding (5:29-39)

Jesus leaves the scene of his encounter with the Canaanite woman and ascends and sits down on a mountain, the posture of an authoritative teacher (5:1-2). Crowds gather and Jesus performs his teaching as works of power so that the crowds seeing “the mute speaking, the maimed whole, the lame walking, and the blind seeing (v.31) were amazed and praised Israel’s God.

Were they amazed simply because these were “miracles,” supernatural demonstrations? Not hardly. What they saw in these acts of power was what we with our meager grasp of the Old Testament usually miss. A key Old Testament text the crowds would know in Isa.35:5-6:

 “Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened,
    and the ears of the deaf unstopped;
 then the lame shall leap like a deer,
    and the tongue of the speechless sing for joy.”

This is a passage about the kind of signs that would accompany the people as God leads them home from exile. Matthew is telling us here that this is precisely what is happening right on front of the eyes of this crowd! The long-hoped for New Exodus from Babylon is underway and all these image-bearers are being restored to their community and the wholeness and vocation as royal priests for which they were created.

Leithart notes that this account follows the pattern of a worship service. The gathering in the presence of God (up on the mountain), the Word (Jesus presumably teaches as he assumes a teacher’s posture), the response to the Word (the healings), and the feeding (Eucharist).[6] Whether intended by Matthew (which is not impossible) or simply part of the mental furniture that shaped his mind as he told these stories, it is a clear reminder of the shape and function of Christian worship.

In this setting, in the Gentile region of the Decapolis (Mk.8:31),[7] with the events of New Exodus fresh in mind, and the Canaanite woman’s insistence that the Gentiles share in Abraham’s covenant blessings still echoing in the crowd’s ears, Matthew records a second wilderness feeding, this time of four thousand people. It follows the pattern of the first feeding.

-Jesus ascends a mountain (15:29; cf. 14:23).

-and he heals (15:30-31; cf. 14:14).

-he compassionately tells his disciples to feed the crowd (15:32; cf. 14:15-16),

-they wonder where the food will come from (15:33; cf. 14:15, 17).

-Jesus goes through the actions of the Last Supper (15:36; cf. 14:19).

-both feedings are connected to the sea (15:29; cf. 14:13, 22),

-and a sea-crossing follows each feeding (15:39; cf. 14:22-33).

-again, we have a re-enactment of the Passover-exodus sequence.[8]

The location and the numbers are the significant differences and are related. Let’s compare and contrast these differences:

-The feeding of the 5000 occurs in Israel and its provision, the five loaves (see Ex.13:18), and the leftovers, twelve baskets (the twelve tribes of Israel) point to the feeding of a Jewish multitude.

-the feeding of the 4000 (the number four points to the four corners of the earth) occurs in largely Gentile territory, the seven loaves used to feed the crowd with seven baskets leftover suggest completeness (the number seven) and points to a Gentile feeding.

Matthew, in his literary artistry, has provided a prefiguring of both the covenantal blessings to the Jews and the “crumbs” leftover for the Gentiles. The New Exodus brings both though in this order of primacy, the first of which is Jesus’ historical focus, the second the work of his followers taking his gospel to the Gentile world after Pentecost. The story of the Canaanite woman indicates this gospel will find a receptive hearing there. And the healing of the crowds just prior to the second feeding indicates the Gentiles incorporation into the people of God.

Jesus dismisses the crowd, boards a boat, and heads somewhere (we’re not exactly sure where) but it may have been Magdala (home of Mary Magdalene (27:55; Lk.8:2).[9]

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[1] Wright, Matthew for Everyone: 3619-3623.

[2] Wright, Matthew for Everyone: 3682-3685.

[3] Leithart, The Gospel of Matthew: 663-667.

[4] Leithart, The Gospel of Matthew: 684.

[5] Leithart, The Gospel of Matthew: 703.

[6] Leithart, The Gospel of Matthew: 720.

[7] Wilkins, Matthew: 3548.

[8] Leithart, The Gospel of Matthew: 727.

[9] Wilkins, Matthew: 3561.