THE LITTLE BITCH WHO TAUGHT JESUS A LESSON

 

Sunday's lection from Mark has a Syro-Phoenician (a Canaanite in Matthew) who comes to Jesus for help. Her little daughter was sick. She begged Jesus for healing. She was initially ignored. She was even treated like a dog (the Greek could be translated "little bitch"). Yet she persevered. And she persisted. And because she persevered, because she persisted, she got what she came for: her child was healed.

Robert Warrior, whose “Canaanites, Cowboys, and Indians” turned Hebrew Bible scholarship on its ear, notes that in the narrative, the “little bitch” does not become a follower of Jesus. She seeks him out because he has something she needs. She receives what she came for and walks away never to be mentioned again. She changes Jesus. Maybe she went back to her people and fought against the colonizing Romans in her own way with her own gods. The importance of her story is not whether she followed Jesus but that, without her, Jesus would have remained a narrow-minded bigot who viewed Indigenous People as dogs.

The little bitch who taught Jesus a lesson was alone in the text. But in front of the text, she is not. She is Filipina. She is Palestinian. She is Mexican. She is IP. She is Legion. She is transgressing borders. She is reclaiming what is hers. And she is fighting for her children’s lives and resisting empire her own way with her own gods.

And she continues to teach us.

**Prof. Daniel Patte, who passed away last September 2, urged me do the chapter on the "Little Bitch" in the 2003 book, The Gospel of Matthew: A Contextual Introduction for Group Study, we co-wrote with Justin Ukpong and Monya Stubbs.

*art, "The Canaanite Woman asks for healing for her daughter" by Bazzi Rahib, Ilyas Basim Khuri (from the vanderbilt divinity library digital archives).