In the name of God, Creator, Saviour and Spirit.

The context for the conversation between Jesus and this Gentile woman whose name goes unrecorded, was a place quite different to our own. The two of them met in a place called Tyre – the same city in southern Lebanon which has featured so often in newspaper articles and news bulletins recently.

The place in which they talked will be hard to ignore for the many preachers who will preach on this text around the world today. In the city of Tyre, a Gentile woman, whom Jesus should not really have been talking to at all, challenged his apparent assumptions about the relationship between the Jews and the Gentiles. She asked him, very clearly and directly whether there was not enough of God’s love to go around everyone. On Racial Justice Sunday in 2006 that question rings down through the ages.

That Gentile woman made her way to the private setting of a house and somehow managed to get to him. And there, in the house, she began to implore him – won’t you do something for my daughter. Won’t you say something to me?

There is little doubt that she was being a nuisance. And in being a nuisance to him, she was challenging him. She certainly should not have been annoying him with her demands. She was being cheeky and rude. Rude enough to be noticed. [Read more…]