From the Field: Even Jesus Had to Learn to Listen

In Matthew 15:21-28, a mother asks Jesus for healing, and Jesus calls her a “dog.”

Yeah, it gets thorny in Matthew 15! 

But if we look closely, this is perhaps the most important story from scripture about the transformative power of listening. 

Initially, when the woman begs Jesus to heal her daughter, he ignores her. But the disciples implore him to send her away, so he turns to her and says, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” The woman is a Canaanite.

She persists. She kneels before him, calls him Lord, and says, “help me.”

That’s when Jesus calls her a dog: “It is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs,” he says, referring to the Israelites as children and to the Canaanites as dogs.

This feels like a mic drop, and a brutal one. But Jesus does not drop the mic, and the woman does not walk away. Both continue through the uncomfortable exchange.

The woman pushes back, insisting that even dogs need to eat. 

She is saying, There is enough for everyone. Your ministry is bigger than you think.

Matthew does not record what happens within Jesus when he hears this, and this is a shame because the interior movements must have been seismic and profound. 

In the unrecorded moments, Jesus listens deeply. He allows her speech to rearrange his worldview. He rethinks the orthodoxy with which he so quickly dismissed her, questioning his own certainty. Jesus takes in the implications of her words — There is enough… Your ministry is bigger… — and rethinks his calling and the boundaries of his compassion. 

How do we know this -- or something like this -- must have moved within Jesus?

Because in the very next verse, he has dramatically changed his tone and his behavior. He calls her “woman,” compliments her “great … faith” and heals her daughter immediately. 

Jesus and his ministry are transformed by listening deeply. In eight verses, Jesus goes from ignoring, dismissing, and insulting to seeing, respecting, and healing. He lets go of a limited calling based on clans and embraces a universal calling based in compassion. 

I love this story about Jesus because he’s not perfect in it. I get to watch as he grows and think about how that growth happened. It helps me see that ministry is about adapting to new relationships. The play-by-play of Jesus’ transformation gives me a set of questions I can ask myself when I feel like I have a spirit of constriction rather than expansion regarding who/what I am here for:

1. Who is the Canaanite woman for me? Who is the person whom it is least convenient or fun or efficient for me to listen to? Who might interrupt the best-laid plans I just want to get done?

2. Am I open to the possibility that listening to “an outsider” might enhance my work and make me better? 

3. What resources can I gather to help me sit in discomfort when someone I see as an “outsider” challenges me to see a blindspot in my ministry? 

4. How can I give myself time and grace to move through this transformation, away from the sense that I have been “challenged” and towards the realization that I have been given a gift?

This is not easy, this ministry work. What happened to Jesus in 8 verses has sometimes taken me months or years. But I am thankful every day for those voices who stopped me short in my progress and showed me that my ministry can be still more attentive, inclusive, and compassionate.