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Amidst the backdrop of Roman subjugation, pharisaical religiosity, and in general a culture with its back toward God, Jesus Christ and his disciples ventured into the racially charged region of Samaria.

Matthew 15 records the Lord’s encounter with a Syro-Phoenician woman of Canaan. She asked Jesus to heal her demonically oppressed daughter. But Jesus did not answer her. Rather, he told the disciples that he was sent only to the “lost sheep” of Israel, and it would to be good to share the children’s food with little dogs.

In New Testament Greek, there are to words for dog. One was a generic term, but the word Jesus used meant puppy or pet.

In those days, the Jews referred to other races as dogs, which alluded to, among other things, their indiscriminate procreation. The Samaritans especially were despised because they had intermarried outside of the Jewish faith and culture. They were deemed half-breeds and impure having no right to the covenant claims and blessings of Abraham.

Already the woman had addressed Jesus as Lord and Son of David, the latter which acknowledged Jesus as the Messiah. Perhaps the Lord ignored the woman as a test of her faith. Crossing the boundaries of racial prejudice and daring to thwart the undeserved cultural stigma of her gender, the Canaanite woman came closer, bowed and worshiped, and asked again. “Lord, help me.”

When Jesus noted the “little dogs,” the woman’s perceptive heart did not miss a beat. She immediately shot back, “Yes, Lord, yet even the little dogs eat the crumbs from their masters’ table.”

She was not asking for the entire Happy Meal; just one measly French fry would suffice. It is the faith the size of a mustard than finds abundant mercy in a mere crumb from the Lord’s table. And it was the kind of faith that elicited from Jesus Christ the healing she sought for her daughter.

Norm Miller Can be contacted at communications@montanacc.edu