The Canaanites by this point have become a representation of a displaced, indigenous people, a stumbling block to the entrance into the Promised Land, and a people who may have been present here in the lap of God, but somehow were not quite chosen to stay. The Canaanite woman may well have been a stranger in her own land, but it’s quite possible that the term was used here as a slur, and a way of describing an internal other who has one way or another fallen outside of the bounds of those whom God would choose.
This is the kind of person you are trained to ignore and to not have sympathy for at all, and so to shore up your own sense of being different to them, different to her. You need to tell yourself that such people are not people, and the parts of yourself that are like them are equally to be kicked, spat upon, and treated like dogs, like strays.
I suppose it makes sense to see ourselves as more like lost sheep, who hold at least some potential value, who are given a place to sleep and food to eat, and whose owner searches after them with hope, than to think of ourselves like the Canaanite woman.
***
I think of being trained as a young child to look away from people with disfiguring injuries and to hurry past people who were homeless. When people look at us, they tell us a lot about how they see us, they show us who we are to them. The human gaze offers up something like a mirror, and so some of us were taught that the other is disgusting, broken, and horrific, and to look at them would show them something unspeakable.
When we are drowning in shame, this is how it feels to be encountered by the other: that nobody sees us, but they all stare; that we are hidden, but scrutinized; that we are hated objects of indifference, and every encounter constitutes some mockery.
So it is that we train children when to smile at a stranger, and when to avert your eyes. We have a whole society built upon the foundation of when it is nice to slow down and wave at the other, and when you should shove your hands into your pockets and hurry on your way past them.
What a relief it is when there are no more Canaanites to ignore.
***
Christ tells us that what we do and what we say defiles us, that our actions reveal the evil in our hearts, of which there is no small measure. Our actions, too, carry the possibility of showing something good and something loving, and everything we do shows you something of who we are. When we long to be seen as good and righteous, to be looked upon as decent people, maybe worthy people, and certainly good-enough, we do not want others to see the speck of hatred that lingers deep within.
We demonstrate our purity by refusing to have anything to do with the Canaanites of the world, lest we become unchosen, too, but the next thing we do reveals that we are stray dogs among the belovèd, lost sheep. Evil leaks from our hearts.
***
The world is too often ruled by shame and exclusion, but when we truly let ourselves see and be seen, we will find that there are at least some scraps of which we are worthy, and that life among the fallen is not really so very bad. There is healing, here, and there is even food enough, and the company is not so bad as we might fear.
There are those upon whom God has obviously poured out an abundance of favour, but God does not look away from the lives of those the chosen cast as dogs.
***
To see and to love as God does is to offer hospitality, presence, and even healing to everyone in our midst, even those who seem to have turned away from what makes us God’s own. Christians have always shown preference for the sick, the dispossessed, the prisoners, because that is what God seems to do. Those who seem to us to be devoid of love and unworthy, and respect are nonetheless embraced by God. It’s easy to love the lovable, and those who are truly well may not have much need of healing. Those who are deeply sick, however, are given an abundance.
The glory of God is the heart of a person whom the world has cast aside as broken and disgusting, and who carries even one speck of love or hope within them. Blasphemy is when life has been good to us and we add to the burdens of those who struggle, and deny the goodness of those who suffer.
May God be glorified in our actions, and may we know that we strays are loved.