Episode 188 (Transcript) Jesus & the Canaanite Woman : Cynthia's Sacrament Meeting Talk

Episode Transcript

Many thanks to listener, Quinn Nilsson, for her work in transcribing this episode!

This episode can be found on any podcast app, or can be listened to here on Substack.

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Hi, I'm Susan Hinckley. And I am Cynthia Winward. And this is At Last She Said It. We are women of faith discussing complicated things, and the title of today's episode is Jesus and the Canaanite Woman, Cynthia's Sacrament Meeting Talk. Do you know what this means, Cynthia?  CW:What does this mean, Susan? 

SH:They still ask us to do things like speak in sacrament meeting.

CW: I know. I feel really grateful for that. Yeah, I think sometimes people, I mean, if people are longtime listeners, I think they know you and I are active members, but I think if people just go by our social media, sometimes they're like do you guys actually attend church? And so yes, we do attend church and we participate through giving talks.

And I know you recently gave a Relief Society lesson that we will focus on probably in a few weeks. So. Yes, we are participators. 

SH: I'm excited to break down another scripture story because that's what your talk was about and another scripture story involving a woman, even better. And so let's get to it.

I think you should give your talk and then we will have a conversation about it after. Does that sound good? 

CW:Let's do it. 

SH: All right.

CW: I have been loving our sacrament meetings lately where each person gets to speak about their favorite story about Jesus. That leaves it wide open to whatever touches our hearts. So I wanted to speak today about the story of the Syrophoenician woman, also called the Canaanite woman. That story is found in Mark 7 and it's also found in Matthew 15.

Before I jump into reading it, recently I learned about a phrase called the 70 faces of the Torah. Which simply means that our Jewish brothers and sisters take their scriptures and they tear them apart 70 different ways. 100 different ways. It doesn't matter. They get to argue with each other and nobody's offended by that.

And at the end of the day, it's okay, that's your perspective and this is my perspective. I picture it like a prism. If you lift up a prism, depending on just how you slightly turn it, the light will hit different facets of it. The light will refract and come out in different ways.

That's how I like to approach the scriptures, is to turn them just ever so slightly and try to see what different meanings there could be. So, the story of the Syrophoenician woman, say that ten times fast, in Matthew chapter 15, starting in verse 21, reads, and I'm reading this from the NRSV version.

‘Jesus left that place and went away to the district of Tyre and Sidon. Just then a Canaanite woman from that region came out and started shouting, Have mercy on me, Lord, son of David. My daughter is tormented by a demon, but he didn't answer her at all. And his disciples came and urged him, saying, Send her away, for she keeps shouting after us.

He answered, 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. She said, Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from the master's table. Then Jesus answered her, Woman, great is your faith. Let it be done for you as you wish. And her daughter was healed from that moment.’

 So there are three things that I really love about this story. The first is that Jesus left his comfort zone. He left Galilee and went into the area of Tyre and Sidon. He left the place where he had drawn large crowds. He left the place where he had an enthusiastic following among his own kind.

He left that place to go and seek out the other. In other words, he left his bubble. Recently in our ward, we had a fifth Sunday lesson at the end of December, and I wasn't really planning on going. But then Tamu Smith stopped me in the hallway, and she said to me, we're going to be discussing racism. So I ended up going to the meeting, and I was really impressed that a significant portion of that meeting indeed covered racism.

I love the comments that Tamu made that day. I also loved the comments of another man in the ward, although they were really hard to [00:05:00] hear. He's in a mixed race family. Another woman in the ward shared different ways that she's had to overcome some of her own upbringing. Then I decided to make a comment as well.

And my comment about leaving my bubble, about trying to become an anti racist, was that I started reading books, watching documentaries. I said that anytime we're trying to understand a marginalized group or another group that maybe we don't know a whole lot about, volunteer work is a good way to learn more.

Seven years ago, I felt my heavenly parents nudging me that I needed to learn more about the LGBTQ community. I didn't know a whole lot, and so the prompting was, ‘Mmm, this is something you need to know about.’ So I decided I would go ahead and volunteer at the Encircle House right here in Provo. It's just across the street from the Provo City Center Temple.

So I went through the training to become a volunteer, and I have to say that was probably one of the most beneficial ways I have ever left my bubble. I learned about a group of people that I didn't know very much about, and it proved to be very beneficial, because within a couple of years of volunteering there, several family members came out to me as gay and so I was really grateful that my heavenly parents had been nudging me to leave my bubble. Just like in this story where Jesus left his bubble to go to a place where maybe he didn't know so much about the people either. 

The second thing that I really love about this story was that Jesus was vulnerable and he was teachable. There's quite a dialogue that goes back and forth between him and the woman.

So again, if we were to maybe pick up that prism and turn it a different way, we're going to see a different side of Jesus. Because in the story, he's calling the woman a dog, and that just doesn't sit well with my soul. Once again, I pick up that prism, and I turn the prism in a certain way, so that the light refracts one way.

And here's one of the ways that light may refract. Methodist Reverend Uk Yon Kim Jung said, ‘We all know it takes great courage to admit that we are wrong. In fact, Jesus modeled for us some 2, 000 years ago what we are only now discovering. That true courage requires vulnerability. And we need to learn this lesson from Jesus, the willingness to be vulnerable, grow from our experience, and change.’

I don't know if I'm comfortable saying that Jesus was sinning or making mistakes here, but I am comfortable knowing that he too was learning line upon line. So maybe this was an instance where he needed to learn something about this woman as well. So again, if we pick up that prism and turn it again, maybe here's another facet of the story that we can see.