NOTES for Mat 15:12-21

Jesus spoke more than once of the Pharisees' blindness, undoubtedly meaning spiritual blindness. But what causes it? It would seem that the Pharisees had everything they needed to avoid it. No one else at the time had such a rich and spiritually abundant religion, and even today an acquaintance with it sometimes reveals depths that are far from present in every tradition. Yet, evidently, no tradition in itself guarantees a full spiritual life. Nor, as a rule, does religious tradition in itself create obstacles to a normal spiritual life, except in situations where one must speak of a community's complete spiritual degeneration. Clearly, the issue is not religion itself at all, but one's attitude towards it. Every religion—if, of course, we are speaking of those usually called revealed religions—is the fruit, on the one hand, of revelation received and recorded in the language of a tradition already existing at the time it was received, and, on the other, of religion itself with its established forms. Yet even revelation recorded by tradition can become spiritually ossified, so that those who turn to it no longer see the revelation that gave rise to these forms, but explanations of them shaped by the religious tradition whose language was once used to record the revelation received. This happens regardless of which religion is concerned: what we seem to have here is a general spiritual law, a kind of spiritual entropy, expressed precisely in the fact that the spiritual component of every religious tradition diminishes with time, while its outward, formal component grows. Without conscious resistance to this process, every religion sooner or later dies spiritually, degenerates and becomes a matter of form. But such resistance is impossible without new revelation, and the fullness of revelation is precisely the Kingdom the Saviour has brought into the world. Every religion, however, has certain spiritual and psychological mechanisms of self-defence and self-reproduction, which usually engage automatically in religious people, independently of their will. Until a religious person consciously switches them off, they will not see the Kingdom. And switching them off can be far from easy psychologically: religion usually absorbs a person entirely, determining the whole of their outward and inward life. Switching off the psychological defence associated with being religious leaves a person feeling utterly defenceless before the hostile world around them. One can bring oneself to do this only for the sake of the Kingdom. If a person still cannot bring themselves to take that step, they keep their religiosity. But in doing so they lose the Kingdom. At best, for a time; at worst, for ever.

What makes this Canaanite woman's faith so great? Any mother would endure anything, any humiliation, for the sake of her daughter's health. Perhaps what matters to Jesus is not what prompted the woman's request or where her journey of faith began, but how far she travels along it. The Canaanite woman is a pagan, and Jews do not associate with pagans, so Jesus remains silent. When the disciples appeal to Him, He breaks His silence and reminds them that God helps His own people. Hearing this, the woman nevertheless asks for help. In doing so, she separates herself from her people for the sake of a relationship with the God of Israel. With His next phrase, Jesus shows that God cannot be compelled to help: He does not accept the magical approach to relating to Him that is characteristic of pagans. Her reply signifies consent to receive mercy from this God who is new to her. Thus, within a few minutes, she travels from being a pagan who relentlessly demands from Jesus what she needs to being a woman who trusts the God of Israel and humbly accepts His mercy.

Christ's initial unwillingness not merely to heal the girl but even simply to answer her mother seems strange. We have grown accustomed to the fact that up to this point He has refused healing to no one and has cared for everyone, and suddenly He reacts this way merely because it was a pagan woman who asked Him.

Today we are inclined to regard anyone's belonging to the pagan world neutrally, and when ordinary human relations are concerned, that is how it should be. But here the question is deliverance from negative spiritual influences that had caused the girl's possession. Yet in their everyday religious practice, pagans constantly appealed to lower spiritual powers. We may recall Christ's words about what happens when demons that have been cast out return to an unoccupied soul, for pagans who do not worship the God of Israel may well let them back in. In such circumstances, casting out unclean spirits is pointless.

But the pagan woman's humble request for crumbs speaks of the strength of a mother's love overcoming deep-rooted prejudices. After her humble admission, which essentially testifies that she is approaching faith, Jesus meets her halfway. Even the few crumbs of the Canaanite woman's faith proved sufficient for her daughter to receive not crumbs from the table at all, but the gift in its fullness.

Reading the account of the healing of the Canaanite woman's daughter, one cannot help marvelling at the extent to which the Lord respects human freedom. When we turn to him with requests, including requests for miracles, he always asks about faith. Do you believe that I can do this? The Israelites who flocked to Jesus in vast crowds believed that he was the Christ, the Son of David, or at least thought that he was a prophet and a righteous man sent by God, whose prayer the Almighty would hear. In either case, these people expected help and healing from the one God, the Creator of heaven and earth.

The Canaanite woman, however, came from a pagan people who not only did not await the Messiah, but did not even profess belief in the one God. Why did she turn to Jesus? Was it only because news of the healings he performed had spread throughout the country? Or perhaps her daughter's illness weighed so heavily on her that she did not consider the religious aspects of this healing... From a human standpoint, it would have been natural to ask what she believed in, since she could hardly have obtained healing without faith. God is not an impersonal force to be used, but a Person to whom one can turn. How, then, can one ask something of Someone in whom one does not believe?

But the Lord does not ask the Canaanite woman a direct question. He offers his own view of the situation, saying that only those who believe in the Father can be children in his house. In the Greek text, the word translated as ‘dogs’ in the Russian Synodal translation is in the diminutive form, ‘puppies’, and contains nothing offensive. Small children and puppies running together around the courtyard have much in common, but their relationships to the Master of the house are entirely different. As a result, the Canaanite woman remains free to make her own decision, to determine for herself whose gracious power she is asking for help. In making this choice and accepting the picture Jesus offers, she shows a rare humility that does not go unrewarded.

The story of the Canaanite woman sometimes raises questions and perplexity for readers of the Gospel. Indeed, does the woman's agreement to the crumbs that fall to the dogs mean only recognition of her position before Jesus and His disciples, or is there something else here that goes beyond the Canaanite woman's personal relations with Jesus and her own personal sinfulness?

Jesus Himself often said that He was "sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel." To God's people. To the people to whom He Himself belongs according to the flesh. And now, answering the disciples' request to help the unfortunate woman, He says those same words to them. What is this: national or religious narrowness? No, of course not. National and religious narrowness was already alien to the preaching of the later prophets, who said that in the messianic age representatives of many peoples would turn to the God of Israel, and that in the messianic Kingdom there would be a place for all of them. The matter was plainly something else. In the Messiah's ministry there is a logic of its own, determined not by Jesus Himself but by His heavenly Father.

It was this logic, connected with the plan of salvation, that required that during His earthly ministry His preaching and everything connected with it, including healings and other manifestations of the power of the Kingdom, be limited to God's people. The rest would come later, after He had completed His earthly path, after the Resurrection and Pentecost. Perhaps the point was that the Kingdom began its movement into the world precisely on the day of Pentecost; only on that day was it opened in fullness to every seeker. Before Pentecost the Kingdom could be open, insofar as it could be open to a person before Pentecost, only to God's people. There was no cruelty and no narrowness here, only God's plan of salvation and God's design for how His Kingdom was to enter the world. And every healing presupposed precisely a sharing in the Kingdom.

It meant inclusion in that spiritual process which determined its entrance into the world and its establishment in the world. It was still too early to include Gentiles in that process. But simply to touch the Kingdom was possible. Without claiming anything at all, without expecting anything except the desired healing of her own daughter. The woman agreed that for the Messiah and for the Kingdom she and her daughter were no one and would remain no one, if such was the will of the God in whose name this Wonderworker heals.

But could there be at least a crumb from the table of this Kingdom for her daughter? Such a request, of course, could not be refused. The woman received what she asked for. She received it after agreeing to remain no one and nothing for the Kingdom. Apparently, intuitively, she understood what we today often do not understand: one can receive something from God only when one becomes part of His plan. Even fleetingly, for a moment. But in that moment one can receive everything, provided one counts on nothing except that moment which God has appointed for you.

When we read in the Gospel that this woman was a Canaanite, it does not mean she was "second-rate," or of the wrong origin, or had somehow else failed to please Jesus. We know, having read the Gospel and simply sensing it in our hearts, that Jesus is always ready to help and heal the poor, the sinful, and the rejected. For the evangelist's first listeners it was entirely clear that she was a real pagan: she believed in pagan gods, worshiped them, and offered sacrifices to them. That is exactly why the Lord subjects her faith to such a test - to help her understand why she is turning to Him for help and not to her own gods.

Here a line is drawn between a person's pagan ideas and turning to Jesus, that is, prayer. Prayer to Christ, and to the Father in Christ, is incompatible with paganism. At the same time, paganism does not necessarily mean belief in other gods. It can also be the very ordinary Christian hope not in the one God, but in something else: money, one's own abilities, one's political party, the thought that things will somehow work out, and so on. Paganism is when we live not for God, but for someone or something else, most often simply for ourselves. If we, while being such pagans, want to ask Christ for something and turn to Him in prayer, we will need, together with this Canaanite woman, to pass through a complete revaluation of our faith and understand why we have turned to Christ and not to our idols...

Today's reading again offers us two episodes that, at first glance, seem directly unrelated: the healing of the Samaritan woman's daughter (vv. 22-28) and the miracle of the multiplication of food, similar to the one described in the previous chapter (vv. 29-38; compare Matt 14:13-21). And yet there is a connection between them. That connection runs through the Kingdom, whose manifestation underlies the events described in both episodes. After all, both the miracles and the healings mentioned in the Gospel narratives essentially always speak of one thing: the Kingdom which, in the Savior's words, "has come near."

Once again the Gospel repeats the account of Jesus distributing bread to the people, and now it speaks clearly about the inner meaning of what is taking place. Between the two accounts of meals, we encounter a person for whom receiving from Jesus even the remnants of this bread means receiving renewed life. She is a pagan woman who asks for life not for herself, but for her dying daughter. Outwardly, her dialogue with Jesus resembles a contest of wit: Jesus sketches a brief parabolic scene (the dogs and the children), and the woman skillfully enters into His imagery, thereby proving her right to the “crumbs of bread.” In reality, however, Christ praises her not for a clever answer, but for her faith, because what happens to her is precisely an act of faith: she recognizes in Jesus the One Who gives the bread of life. In her grief and need, Christ's words about the heavenly bread, which the disciples understood with such difficulty (cf. Jn 6), become entirely clear to her, and she touches the mystery of salvation, the mystery of the bread of life—Christ.

Today we perhaps do not understand very well what defilement is. In the language of Scripture, a defiled person is someone who has become ritually unclean, so that he cannot enter the temple until he has performed a sufficiently long and troublesome ritual of purification. The inability to enter the temple means being cut off from communion with God and with people, failing to fulfill God's commandments and, accordingly, inevitable punishment. Therefore the Jews were so afraid of ritual uncleanness, and they had to be very careful not to touch anything "unclean" or eat anything "unclean." Imagine such a life, constantly looking over one's shoulder, and you will understand that Jesus truly brings liberation to a person from dependence on the external world. But separation from God is nevertheless possible; it is connected with sin, with the sinful state of a person's heart, and this state in turn determines how we communicate, how we speak. "What comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart," says Jesus (Matt. 15:18). This means we need to watch not what is around us, but what is within us, and how it shows itself in our words, in our communication with one another; otherwise we too cannot enter the temple (cf. Matt. 5:23-24).

Human life is always connected, in one way or another, with “studying human teachings and commandments,” from traffic regulations to all kinds of “washing of hands” (each person can decide for themselves what this may mean). The conflict in this Gospel account evidently arises because human tradition has become detached from God’s commandment. Yet the degree of this detachment is not always easy to understand, for the Pharisees themselves derived the rules concerning washing from God’s law. In explaining this problem to His disciples, Christ moves the question out of the realm of casuistry and rules into that of ethics, or more precisely, love. In this light it becomes clear why the rule of dedicating one’s parents’ property to God contradicts God’s will. It is in relation to the fundamental commandments of love for God and for humanity that it becomes clear what defiles a person and what does not. We cannot escape human laws and rules... but their value, their conformity to Truth, is tested precisely by whether they lead to the realization of God’s principal gift, love, or lead away from it.

For the listeners of the evangelist Matthew, the law of Moses is not simply a set of obscure rules and ordinances. Matthew quotes the words of the Lord Jesus that "heaven and earth will pass away sooner than one stroke of the law" (Matt. 5:18). In what, then, does the conflict between Christ and the Pharisees consist?

For the Pharisees, it appears, the law is a set of commandments by doing which a person can please God, draw closer to Him, and fulfill His will for humanity. Such is the approach of religious consciousness in general, for which the essence of the relationship between God and a person consists in performing certain actions that God prescribes for people to perform. A familiar approach, is it not? What, then, does Christ say about the law? In His interpretation, love for parents is higher than an offering to the temple, and purity of heart is more important than purity of hands. This is the direction toward which the Mosaic law points. Then, in order to live according to God's law, one must be more attentive to the heart and to relationships with God and people than to the performance of laws or rules.

The accusation of breaking tradition comes from those for whom adherence to tradition has become an end in itself. Two positions collide; the dispute is over who actually keeps the law: the one who fulfills the external prescriptions, the necessary packaging of the law, or the one who keeps the essence of the law, even if from the outside it appears that the literal fulfillment of the prescriptions is being violated. But there is another problem: many pious rules are invented by people; they are not necessarily from God. How often the human obscures what has been given from above, and so we begin to substitute our ideas about God's will for His will itself!

Meanwhile, the Lord does not need the "correct" fulfillment of pious norms when it is indifferent to the true state of the soul. In guarding against ritual defilement from outside, and more broadly against any outside negative influence, it is too easy to lose sight of the evil within us that defiles us. But what nests inside us can prove to be a more explosive mixture than negative influences from outside. After all, we are the ones who accept or reject them.

If this approach causes someone to stumble, then such people have mistaken ideas about spiritual life. Christ's words about uprooting the plant not planted by the heavenly Father sound stern. But they contain a serious warning: if we see that a person has agreed to give in to temptation and has turned away from the Lord's ways, is it not because at first he rejected His will in the depths of his inner world?

Today's reading touches on one of the most important questions of religious life: the relationship between Holy Scripture and tradition. For every religion the problem of ritual purity has always been central, because ritual purity determines the very possibility of full participation in religious life. It is no wonder that the followers of the Pharisaic religious schools, being exceptionally devout people, asked Jesus questions concerning Jewish norms and rules of ritual purity. The question about washing hands is one of these questions (vv. 1-2).

In this case, of course, the issue is not hygiene but a purifying washing that was supposed to be performed before eating. The reference to the "tradition of the elders," however, clearly suggests that this is not about a commandment of the Torah, that is, of Holy Scripture, but about its interpretation connected with the Pharisaic tradition. Jesus answers a question with a question: can a commandment given by God and clearly expressed in Scripture be replaced by human opinions that have formed within any tradition at all, even an authoritative one? After all, any tradition is the fruit of human creativity, while the commandment is given by God (v. 3). By answering this way, Jesus appears to avoid the question, at least for a time. Yet very soon He answers it too, returning His listeners to the understanding of purity that the Torah originally implied (vv. 10-11, 16-20).

But on a more attentive reading it becomes clear that this answer is directly connected with the question of authentic and false tradition. Authentic tradition always puts first a person's spiritual condition, as well as his relationships with God and with his neighbors. This is what determines a person's destiny in the Kingdom, and also whether a person will be able to enter it at all. For religious consciousness, however, the external form is important. Any religiosity always carries something magical within it, even when the religion of Revelation is in view. And it often turns out that the external expressions of religiosity become more important than the essence. There is no dispute that God is more important than family; but does that mean that an offering for the Temple is more important than helping elderly parents? Hardly, since such an offering in itself does not determine the quality of the giver's relationship with God. Moreover, it may well turn out to be a means of forgetting about elderly parents without feeling any pangs of conscience, because formally the commandment has not been violated! Such formalism is always present to one degree or another in any religious tradition.

Perhaps this is precisely why Jesus did not create any new religion: Christianity is not a religion, but life itself in the Kingdom, and He constantly reminds His listeners that authentic tradition is the experience of the Kingdom. Such a tradition does not need to be maintained artificially: even without that, it will never lose its significance and will organically enter the Kingdom, becoming an inseparable part of it.