Reflection for the Week – 11 August 2026

By Clive Conway
Crumbs from the table

Posted Aug 11, 2026 in Faith

Crumbs from the table

Matthew 15:21–28 is a rather confronting passage. A Canaanite woman comes to Jesus begging for her daughter’s healing. The disciples encourage Jesus to send her away. Jesus doesn’t respond to her at first, then, when the disciples encourage him to send her away, he tells them, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of Israel”. He then appears to compare the woman to a dog – though the Greek word he uses, kynária, is closer to “little dogs” or perhaps even “puppies”, rather than a street dog (kyōn), which perhaps softens the comparison a little.

Despite the biblical order, scholars generally agree that Matthew’s gospel was written 15 or 20 years after Mark’s, in the 80s or 90s of the Common Era (CE), and heavily based on Mark. In Mark’s account of the same story (Mark 7:24–30), the writer calls the woman “a Gentile, of Syrophoenician origin”. He seems to be just describing where she came from. By contrast, Matthew chooses to call her a Canaanite, an old word for a people who no longer existed as a distinct ethnic group, and who were historic enemies of Israel. Matthew seems to choose this word on purpose, to heighten the sense of ‘difference’ this woman symbolises, perhaps to confront his readers with a sense of just how big a boundary is being crossed in this story.

In response, the woman takes Jesus’s own words and, with quick thinking, courage, and perhaps even a hint of sarcasm, responds that “even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters’ table”.

Interpreters read this story in various ways, which might be seen as complementary rather than contradictory. One is that Jesus genuinely grows through this encounter – a reading that can sit uneasily with our assumptions about who Jesus is, but the Church has long held Jesus to be, in the words of the Chalcedonian Definition of 451 CE, “truly God and truly man”. Luke tells us Jesus grew in wisdom (Luke 2:52), and maybe this is one of those moments.

Another reading suggests that Jesus is holding up a mirror to his disciples, naming the kind of prejudices they carried. It’s worth remembering Matthew was writing during a difficult period for the early church, which was wrestling with how and to what extent they should be welcoming Gentiles, a struggle we also see in Acts 10 and Galatians 2.

So maybe the question this passage leaves us with is just this: is there someone whom we’ve overlooked, whose voice we haven’t fully welcomed at our table? To her credit, the Canaanite woman didn’t just wait to be invited in but kept speaking with love and courage until Jesus hears her and says, “let it be done for you as you wish” and her daughter is “healed instantly” (v.28). But not everyone is empowered to speak up for themselves in that way. Perhaps our challenges are to just listen a little more closely to the voices we might have missed, be more aware of those with no voice, and to be ever mindful of the unconscious biases through which we sometimes listen.

– Clive Conway

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