He said to her, “Let the children be fed first.
For it is not right to take the food of the children
and throw it to the dogs.”
Somehow the woman took this rebuff in stride. She noticed that he didn't say 'Never', but only not 'first'. She somehow intuited what Jesus himself had elsewhere taught about perseverance in prayer. She asked and kept asking. If Jesus seemed for a moment to be the unjust judge should would not for that reason abandon her petition.
She replied and said to him,
“Lord, even the dogs under the table eat the children’s scraps.”
Her love for her daughter combined with what she had heard about Jesus to motivate her hope for his help. It enabled her to step beyond the boundaries of pride into the realm of grace. She did not go on to explain to Jesus why she or her daughter deserved what she sought, but instead sought the reason why the gift could be given in the abundance of the giver. There was enough on the sacred table for the puppies to get a portion which the children would not even miss.
Thus, even though Jesus said of himself at another time, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel” (see Matthew 15:24), the faith of the woman was able to anticipate and actualize the time of promise when the Gospel would go out to all the nations (see Matthew 28:19-20).
We are called to have faith like this Gentile women, faith that meets the apparent impossibilities of the present time but still believes so strongly in the eventual fulfillment of all of the promises of God as to bring that fulfillment even into the here and now. Thus did the saints bring something of the reality of heaven down to earth wherever they went. They lived in the now of their respective ages but their faith reached out to the not yet of eternity and even drew it to their individual moments in history. It can be so for us if our compassion for others is strong enough and if our own pride and sense of deserving are sufficiently uprooted and set aside.
Then he said to her, “For saying this, you may go.
The demon has gone out of your daughter.”
When the woman went home, she found the child lying in bed
and the demon gone.
Our world is full of demonic influence, full too of those who hunger for the bread from the table of Jesus. Do we care enough for the those afflicted to seek help from the one who alone is Lord of lords, and who alone can heal and feed them? When we approach him do we try to suggest all of the reasons why we think he 'should' do something or do we seek to provoke him by speaking of his own abundance, mercy, and generosity? When our focus is on anything other than his own abundance we tend give up after an initial rebuke or a lack of immediate answer. We take it as a no, and we typically take that no personally, as though it were a judgement on who we are as individuals. Jesus is trying to help motivate in us a faith that is not constrained by the limits of who we are, nor even the limits of time and space, a faith the only limit of which is the limitless abundance of God.
Solomon did evil in the sight of the LORD;
he did not follow him unreservedly as his father David had done.
Solomon then built a high place to Chemosh, the idol of Moab,
and to Molech, the idol of the Ammonites,
on the hill opposite Jerusalem.
Solomon was reputed to be wise. But he did not display this wisdom in this period toward the end of his life. He conceded instead to the desires of his foreign wives. Rather than trusting in the Lord who had appeared to him twice he tried fix what was doubtlessly a dire domestic situation by trying to appease all of them in the way they themselves desired. He was therefore the opposite of the woman who trusted in Jesus for her daughter rather than in our own sense of deserving. He serves as a cautionary tale about how little compromises can gradually drag us to make ever greater concessions, living lives divided between God and our many idols. But God will not peacefully share the throne with false claimants. He will in fact do whatever it takes to set kingdom back on the right path so that the throne can finally be his and his alone. If Solomon had, in addition to wisdom, something of the humility of the woman, he might have followed the Lord unreservedly as his father David had. Let us not follow in the footsteps of this foolish king but instead in those of the little puppy who found her desires met at the Lord's table.
Remember us, O LORD, as you favor your people;
visit us with your saving help.
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