Connecting the Dots

Matthew 15:21-28, Proper 15, Year A (Twelfth Sunday after Pentecost)

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Not Just a Child’s Game

When I was a child, I loved playing “Connect the Dots.” Sequence the numbers, draw the lines, and out of the background noise, a picture emerges. What a miracle it was to realize the dots connected into something beautiful! “Mom! Look! It’s a clown!” — or a boat, or the Statue of Liberty.

Do you remember connecting the dots?

I’ve been wondering lately about Jesus as a child. Was he a child like you and me — needing to learn and grow and acquire skills — or was he “different” from the start? Did Jesus ever draw the line from dot #4 to dot #15 by mistake? Or, because he was the Son of God, could he just instantly see the whole picture — the Golden Gate Bridge, San Francisco and all?

Was Jesus a real child, or a pretend one?

Listen to the second verse of a Christmas carol we sing every year: “The cattle are lowing, the baby awakes, but little Lord Jesus no crying he makes…” Any moms out there? No crying? Real baby, or pretend baby?

An ancient text that never made it into the Bible, The First Gospel of the Infancy of Jesus Christ, has the infant Jesus speaking from the cradle: “Mary, I am Jesus the Son of God… my father has sent me for the salvation of the world.” Quite a mouthful for a baby. Real infant, or pretend infant?

Even as a boy, some non-canonical writings turn Jesus into a kind of Superboy. In the Infancy Gospel of Thomas, five-year-old Jesus forms a pond and out of the mud creates clay birds and claps them to life — and when another boy breaks down his pond, Jesus curses him dead on the spot. When a running child bumps into him, Jesus strikes him dead too. The neighbors, understandably, stop inviting the family to BBQs. Joseph pulls Jesus aside: “You’ve got to stop killing all these kids!” Jesus agrees to behave — but the parents who complained are struck blind anyway.

Real boy, or pretend boy?

This is a crucial question to ask about the child Jesus, because sooner or later we have to ask it about the man Jesus. Is he really human like us? Or just going through the motions? Today’s Gospel forces the question — and answering it leads us to something vitally important.

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The Woman Who Wouldn’t Leave

Jesus is in enemy territory — Tyre and Sidon, pagan Canaanite country, outside Israel. Jews and Canaanites despise each other; the Jewish slur for Canaanites was “dogs.”

A Canaanite woman, having heard reports of Jesus’s healing power, cries out for her demon-afflicted daughter.

What does Jesus do? Like any good Jew of his day, he ignores her.

She persists. He turns his back. She keeps calling. He won’t answer. She won’t give up — until the disciples, irritated, ask Jesus to send her away.

So Jesus turns and says, “I was only sent to the lost sheep of Israel.” Translation: Canaanites need not apply.

She falls at his feet. “Lord, help me!”

And Jesus shocks us. In that day, the word he uses is the equivalent of the “N” word:

“It is not right to take the bread of the children of Israel and toss it to the dogs.”

Harsh. What do we make of that?

There’s a pause. Then, almost a whisper: “Yes, but even the dogs get the crumbs that fall from their master’s table.”

And in that moment, her daughter is healed. Jesus, stunned, turns to her: “Woman, you have great faith! Your request is granted.”

So — was Jesus just playing a game, always intending to heal the girl, making her mom jump through theological hoops first? Or did Jesus, by the grace of God, connect the dots and truly see something he hadn’t seen before?

Did Jesus learn something new about life?

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Fully Human

Christians have always struggled with the relationship between Jesus’s humanity and his divinity. We like to imagine Jesus had special powers the rest of us lack — that he wasn’t shaped by the prejudices of his time, that the baby never cried or needed a diaper change, that the boy never had to learn to walk or speak Hebrew, that the man was never tempted, never truly angry, never doubted. We resist the idea that Jesus had to grow and learn — that there were moments when the dots suddenly connected for him too.

“Woman, you have great faith! Your request is granted!”

Philippians 2 tells us Jesus, though God, did not cling to his divine nature but emptied himself, taking on the complete likeness of you and me. Jesus became like us. He lived among us as a fully human being — and as one of us, he shows us what it means to be fully human: to depend on God for our daily bread, to make mistakes and seek God’s help correcting them, and — most especially — to learn and grow into the full measure of humanity God intends.

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Three Dots

What did Jesus learn from this encounter? What can we learn from it?

First dot: this woman — not a Jew, not a Christian, addressing Jesus as “sir” with no idea he’s the Messiah — has faith. What a discovery: people of other religions can be people of faith, even Baal-worshipping pagans from Canaan.

Second dot: her faith isn’t built on doctrine. She’s not about to recite the Apostles’ Creed. “Even the dogs get the crumbs that fall from the master’s table” — she’s saying that even if God’s goodness belongs first to Israel, surely its crumbs reach people like her and her daughter too. She has faith that God’s goodness is bigger than one household — that it reaches every creature, regardless of race, religion, or ethnic background.

Third dot: in verse 26, Jesus calls her a “dog.” In verse 28, he calls her a “woman.” By the grace of God, he no longer sees a thing — he sees a person, a mother who wants the best for her little girl.

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Everyone Cries in the Same Language

These same three dots need connecting in our own day — now more than ever, when travel and the internet have shrunk the world, and we find ourselves elbow to elbow not just with other Christians but with Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, and others, in a post-9/11 world where each side is quick to call the other “the great Satan.” How might the world change if we connected the dots the way Jesus did that day?

If we could see that faith isn’t the possession of one religion but a gift poured out on people everywhere — could we not begin to bridge the chasms that divide us? If we could see that what God pours out isn’t a theological system but a relentless belief in the goodness of God toward all people — would we not find a mandate for how to treat one another? And if we could see, in one glorious connect-the-dots moment, that there are no “dogs” in this world — only mothers and fathers and sons and daughters who want the best for their families — our world would be transformed. The slurs so prevalent in our culture today would never again cross our lips.

On October 31, 1999, Egypt Air Flight 990 crashed into the Atlantic near Nantucket. All 221 aboard perished. My friend and colleague, a rabbi, was called to care for the families — most of them Muslim. She admits she was unsure what to do, surrounded by grief and by people so different from her, sometimes even hostile to people of her own background. But she found herself holding a sobbing Muslim woman just back from viewing the debris field. They shared no common language. So they simply held each other and wept.

She told me afterward: cultural and religious differences aren’t barriers at a moment like that.

“Everyone cries in the same language,” she said.

And the dots connected into a picture she’d never seen before.

Was Jesus a real man, or a pretend one? Did he know everything in advance, or did he have to learn and grow?

If Jesus already knew everything and merely played at being human, he has nothing to offer us. But if he truly became human for our sake — as the Bible insists — then he calls us, too, to connect the dots, and to see the picture of God’s kingdom emerging before our eyes.

RELATED READINGS:

• “Chosen People” – Ephesians 1:3-14 (Year B, the 8th Sunday after Pentecost)
• “The Birth of a Child of God” – (Matthew 3:13-17, Year A, Baptism of Jesus)