Today, just after Jesus confronts legalism and defilement and speaks to it being what is being produced by our hearts that is what actually defiles us, Jesus has a rather interesting interaction with a Canaanite woman.  There’s a lot of discussion and disagreement about this passage and what Jesus says to her and the meaning of the interaction.  Jesus said, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” But she came and knelt before him, saying, “Lord, help me.” He answered, “It is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.” The problem for me is that this just seems so counter to Jesus’ normal interactions.  It seems out of character.  Some argue that this is the true humanity of Jesus shining through, complete with bias, prejudice and bigotry.  I just can’t buy that.  I agree with professor Joy J. Moore, that a God that needs to be taught her value raises the question of God’s judgment of us all.  Joy asked, Does God need creation to show or prove that God created us good?  I am reminded of what God said at creation as God completed each day.  “That’s good.”  So what’s going on here?  I think that I learned something last week.  I wasn’t there to hear Jesus say any of this.  We see Jesus’ lesson through the whole of Matthew.  We see Jesus heal a centurion’s servant, eat with tax collectors and sinners, hang out in places like Tyre and Sidon, feeds a multitude twice without checking credentials, he tells the parable of the wedding banquet so the dog question is interesting because we see Jesus as far more open to all and showing their inclusion. This woman is terrified for her daughter.  She is pleading and fearful, yet she is bold with Jesus. So it makes me wonder.  What was his tone of voice here?  Was he setting up a rhetorical strawman?  It sort of feels like it to me.  Was it said sarcastically?  Was there a knowing wink to the woman?  She certainly knew how that culture viewed her, so is Jesus exposing what the people are thinking to turn it rightside up?  I think Jesus is being a little crafty and cunning here.  This is God in the flesh and he knows her like God knew Job better than Job knew himself, so he knows what she is capable of. This is Emmanuel, God with us, the embodiment of the God that spoke through Isaiah in the first lesson and said, “for my house shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples. Thus says the Lord God, who gathers the outcasts of Israel, I will gather others to them besides those already gathered.”  This is not new stuff. Jesus knows her love of her daughter and that she will not shrink.  After all she is bold in calling out after him and approaching him well beyond cultural norms.  She surely ends up as a co-teacher.  Her reply is a bombshell.  It’s the distilled, 200 proof, pure point of what Jesus has been trying to get across.  In that culture, she is “just a she” and she is a hated outsider and enemy.  This is the writer’s “for goodness sake people, pay attention” moment. Mustard seed, fish and loaves to thousands, tiny amounts of yeast.  The lady make the point.  It’s the crumbs and their sufficiency!  “Jesus, your crumbs are fire.”  Like the mustard seed and yeast I was looking up things that matter in what we perceive as really small amounts.  So here’s a thought experiment.  Take a dollar bill and cut it into a thousand equal pieces.  Take 1 of those pieces and cut it into a thousand equal pieces.  Now get your reading glasses and a sharper knife from the kitchen and cut 1 of those pieces into a thousand pieces.  The mass of that piece is pretty much a nanogram.  A grain of salt is about 58,500 nanograms.  So, if you weigh 180 pounds and sliced that grain of salt into 722 equal pieces and one of those pieces was botulinum toxin, that piece would be enough to kill you. 5 bands of bills mass-wise could eliminate human life on this planet.  That tiny amount, and I think we would agree, that’s a tiny amount, can have a catastrophic effect.  This lady knows that Jesus’ grace and power are like that.  She gets it, except that what Jesus offers brings life in that way instead of death.  If you could ask her she would probably tell you that 1 piece of that cut up grain of salt worth of God’s grace would have healed her daughter and left her some to spare.  She gets it and Jesus is thrilled.  She is considered a reject.  It’s once again Jesus’ M.O.  Embracing the outcasts and the unexpected and lifting them up as examples to be emulated.  You can imagine, and see in the Gospels how that went over.  But there is that promise there in Isaiah and elsewhere through the prophets and Old Testament and Paul reminds us that God’s gifts and calling are irrevocable, even in our disobedience.  God above all things is faithful in the things God has promised.  I would say that those traits are written in God’s metaphorical DNA.  They go deeper than clear to the bone.  After a very traumatic event this week, I was taking some time to reflect on it and the fact that I was currently studying this passage kind of merged the two things and made me consider them in light of one another.  I think that happened because of Jesus making the dog comparison.  Here’s what happened.  I was taking my dog, Cordelia out.  I was right behind our apartment and everything was casual.  All of a sudden she turns and her body quickly stiffens and squares up.  She does this every time anything and I mean anything happens outside.  She’s a half and half mix of Komondor and Great Pyrenees, both are guardian dogs, so she is very aware and let’s us know it.   She grows excited, and this is all very quick so I halt her leash because I don’t want her to scare anyone and casually look up to see a pitbull charging at us as fast as I can possibly imagine a dog moving.  It’s making ground fast and I had little time to think.  You’re not supposed to run.  There was no way back to our door.  I had Cordelia in pretty tight to me.  I realized I needed to give some leash and prepare myself to do battle with a big dog.  One big problem was that several months ago I had heard screams outside of our bedroom window and saw a woman being mauled by a pitbull and it severely injured her arm before they could get the dog off.  That was about 0 feet from where I was standing.  I think I managed to yell a fruitless “no”.  My neighbors above were on the balcony and yelling, so at least someone to call 911.  All the while, I’ve got no great ideas and am terrified for me and my dog.  However, Cordelia is not.  Centuries of breeding.  Instincts and actions and responses written into her DNA.  A guardian is who she is.  Both breeds are known to stand up to bears and wolves and she positions herself between me and the threat and somehow gets bigger.  This all sounds like it took awhile but we are probably at about three to four seconds when it arrives.  I had no idea what to do, but it seems as though the dog thought better of it and sort of shrinked down a little.  The neighbors were hollering for someone and the owner came and got the dog.  Thank God and thank Cordelia for being cool headed, brave, resolute, unshrinking and above all faithful.  Without question she earned her name in that short time.  We named her after Pam’s great grandmother that we found on ancestry because the name sounded cool, but we later found out that the name means heart and has come to mean “faithful” because in the Shakespearian play King Lear, the only person to remain faithful to the king was his daughter Cordelia.  She stood by me, actually before me.  Heart and faithfulness.  I don’t have any doubt now.  I saw the way she stood there unflinching with her life on the line with a really weird calmness and control.  Jesus stood before this woman, saving her daughter, answering the petitions of outsiders and outcasts.  Eating with them, touching them, lifting them as examples, unflinching, upsetting the dogs of war so to speak, the cross approaching much too quickly and he steps forward, resolutely and squares up between it and us.  Compassion, courage, protection, shepherd stuff.  That moment and the time after really made me think.  My dog did that for me.  I didn’t ask for it and I’m not sure I deserved it.  My dog.  Jesus did that for me.  I was so thankful for Cordelia.  I am so thankful for the grace, love, protection and faithfulness Jesus has extended to me and I know there’s nothing I can do to deserve it.  Jesus simply asked us to love our neighbors as ourselves.  So out of that thankfulness I think my prayer needs to be to be more like my dog.  You know realize how awesome crumbs are and let love of neighbor and faithfulness get down into my DNA and become my automatic response, stand between the helpless and terrified  and what threatens to harm them and to be so happy and excited to do it that I knock stuff off the coffee table with my wagging tail.