Re:Verse passage – Matthew 15:21-28 (day three)
“Even the dogs feed on the crumbs which fall from their masters’ table.”
With his responses to the woman, Jesus just about exhausts the entire catalogue of standard behaviors of the stalwart faithful towards outsiders. He begins with unresponsiveness, shifts to isolationism, and finishes with hostility. It took Jesus’s demonstration of these postures to highlight their utter repulsiveness. The spectacle of the Son of God demonstrating such behavior shocks the observer with the sheer depravity of these approaches. But that was Jesus’s point: such ways are incongruent with heaven. Jesus can tell the woman knows better than to think the Christ believed such nonsense, and so he effectively enlists her to help him expose the moral bankruptcy of these habits of the heart. Together, they demolish long-standing falsehoods and reveal the truth and beauty of God’s loving response to a persistent, faith-driven request.
This blog is a good reminder to us that God is constantly entering new territory and breaking boundaries. Everyone who puts faith and trust in Jesus will have a place at the table. Persistence in seeking help can break barriers!