Learning from Our Mistakes -- Matthew 15:21-28 (2nd Sunday of Epiphany; MLK Sunday)
- Scott Clark
- 3 days ago
- 12 min read
Photo credit: Unseen Histories, used with permission via Unsplash
SCRIPTURE -- Matthew 15:21-28
21 Leaving that place, Jesus withdrew to the region of Tyre and Sidon. 22 A Canaanite woman from that vicinity came to him, crying out, “Lord, Son of David,have mercy on me! My daughter is demon-possessed and suffering terribly.”
23 Jesus did not answer a word. So his disciples came to him and urged him, “Send her away, for she keeps crying out after us.”
24 He answered, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of Israel.”
25 The woman came and knelt before him. “Lord, help me!” she said.
26 He replied, “It is not right to take the children’s bread and toss it to the dogs.”
27 “Yes it is, Lord,” she said. “Even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their master’s table.”
28 Then Jesus said to her, “Woman, you have great faith! Your request is granted.” And her daughter was healed at that moment.
SERMON:
Do you remember the time that Jesus got it totally wrong? (Ooh – that’s a hard thing to say – I almost looked up for a lightning bolt.) But in this morning’s Scripture, that’s what happens. Jesus gets it wrong. Way wrong. And if we don’t say that up front, we might just miss the whole point of the story.
We’re further along in the Gospel of Matthew this morning, Chapter 15.[1] Jesus is travelling around healing people and proclaiming the good news that God’s salvation, liberation, and love are for everybody. And this Canaanite woman comes asking healing for herdaughter, and Jesus’s first response is – “Well, except for you.” Jesus’ first response to her plea for help is actually silence: “Jesus answered not a word.” And then, he says “no” twice – the second time, with a metaphor that likens her to a dog. Jesus gets it wrong. The woman challenges and corrects him. And Jesus changes his mind. You see – making a mistake and learning from it – well, what we see here is... that, too, is the way of Jesus.
So let’s unpack that. We’re in the Gospel of Matthew. Jesus is moving through Herod’s world – a world of violence and oppression – proclaiming and embodying a new humanity, a way of love, justice, and peace – not just for one people, but for the whole world.[2] And he’s doing two main things: He is teaching, and he is healing – performing miracles. When this morning’s Scripture opens, Jesus has been schooling the Pharisees – rejecting their categories of “clean” and “unclean.” There is no separation. This is good news for everyone.
Jesus enters into the region of Tyre and Sidon, and a Canaanite woman comes to him seeking healing for her daughter: Lord, Son of David, have mercy on me, my daughter is possessed by demons [what we would think of as illness or disease – perhaps mental illness, or maybe something that causes seizures]. My daughter is suffering terribly. I need your help.
Now Janie Spahr would remind us that before we do anything else with this story, we need to do our power analysis: (1) Who has the relative power here? and (2) How is that power at work? In this story, Jesus has all the relative power. He is a man within the dominant social group. And the woman has little to no power – she is Canaanite (a marginalized group), and she is a woman navigating a patriarchal world.[3]
So this Canaanite woman approaches Jesus with all the right words – how folk approach someone with more power asking them to use it for good. “Lord. Son of David.” She asks him for mercy. Have mercy, sir. You don’t have to do this, but I beseech you... have mercy.
And his first response? “Jesus answers not a word.” Now, I hadn’t ever focused on that before – because Jesus’ words to this woman have always felt offensive enough. But, at first, Jesus doesn’t even give her the dignity of a response. Womanist scholar Mitzi Smith writes from experience: “Anyone with a pressing need knows how horrible it feels to have a dire or significant request for help or information met with dead silence. Women’s words,” she says, “[particularly Black women’s words] are too often met with silence or are interrupted or disrespected, by men and sometimes by other women.”[4] Smith writes, “Those times in my life when I asked for information or help and received nothing but silence, I would have preferred a curt: “’[Heck no”] H*ll, no.’”[5] (Smith doesn’t use the word Heck in that “Heck no.”) “Jesus answered not a word.”
And the disciples chime in – “Jesus, make her go away.”
And Jesus verbalizes his “no.” “I was sent only for the lost sheep of Israel.” Only them. Not you. Now, I have no qualm saying that Jesus gets this wrong – because that... is completely the opposite of what Jesus has been saying for all of the Gospel of Matthew up until now. We are meant to notice this – we are meant to notice that something is bad wrong here. The correct answer to this woman’s plea for help is not “no.”
The woman persists: “Jesus, help me.”
And Jesus... doubles down. “It is not right to take the children’s bread and give it to the dogs.”
Now, you won’t believe the contortions that some scholars make to say, “Oh, Jesus, didn’t mean that. He was only joking...” when he calls her a dog. Now, apparently, the Greek word here is for the type of dog you’d keep in the house as a pet. But seriously, some scholars say – and these are quotes: Jesus says this “with half-humorous tenderness.” When he likens her to a dog. They write, oh no, this is just a “teasing challenge” that Jesus says “with a twinkle in his eye.”[6]
Please. No, no, no. That misses the point.
The Gospel of Matthew is showing us the broad of expanse of the New Humanity that God is birthing into the world in Jesus Christ. This story lets us see Jesus get it wrong.... so that... we can see this woman set him right. She aligns us with God’s good and loving will for the world.
Back in November, you may remember, I went to Louisville to participate in the denomination’s gathering of LGBTQIA+ Presbyterians, and I got to hear Bishop Yvette Flunder preach on this text. Bishop Flunder pastors the City of Refuge community here in the Bay Area, and she’s amazing. I wish you could have heard her. As Bishop Flunder describes this moment, “this woman has heard that there is a stranger in this city and he is healing” – proclaiming a good news that he says is for everyone – and she comes seeking healing for her daughter.[7] But when Jesus ignores her plea... and then says no.. this marginalized woman responds, with the truth of lived-out-experience. As Bishop Flunder describes it, the woman says: “Jesus, I did not come to see you today because you are a star – because everyone is talking you up. I came to see you today because I need a healing in my family.” She knows... and she speaks what is true into that room... that back home her daughter is “suffering terribly”... and that Jesus has been saying that God’s salvation and healing is for her too. To his little dog comment, this woman looks Jesus straight in the eye and says, “Yes, lord, but even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from the master’s table.”
And Jesus says, “You know... you’re right. You have great faith. Scratch that “no” – Yes.” And her daughter is healed in that very moment.
In this story, we see power-over at work – how it grinds down on folks – ignores them, boxes them out – how it is indifferent to real human need – by espousing an old righteousness that puts almost everything else above human need. But this Canaanite woman voices and embodies this New Righteousness we talked about a couple weeks ago – exceedingly good and exceedingly generous – a New Humanity embodied and aligning itself with God’s good and loving will for the world in relationships of mutuality, caring, healing, justice, and human decency.
Jesus makes a mistake here, and it is a particular mistake. It is the mistake of privilege and presumption. It is the mistake we make when, out of our privilege, we assume that we know what we don’t really know and what we have not lived. It is the mistake we make when we assume that the old systems and structures – too often driven by power-over – have all the answers. It’s the mistake we make when we forget that the ones who know best are the ones who experience the impact and harm of those tired old systems in their daily lives. Who gets it right in this story? This woman who has the least amount of power in the room, but who has experienced that power-over more acutely (at this point) even than Jesus. Jesus makes a mistake, and learns from her.
We’re reading this on Martin Luther King, Jr., Weekend – and lots of folks around the country will be reading from Dr. King’s Letter from Birmingham Jail.[8] Fewer of us, will be remembering the mistake of privilege that some well-intentioned liberal religious leaders made that compelled Dr. King to write.
As 1962 opened, Birmingham, Alabama, was a dangerous place for Black folks to live.[9]The violence of segregation was in full force. There had been bombings in Birmingham – it was known as Bomb-ingham. And Birmingham was ruled with an iron fist by Bull Connor.
Dr. King and others developed a plan to confront the injustice in Birmingham through sit-ins, a boycott, mass marches, and then ultimately bringing folks from all over to protest. In preparation, Dr. King came preaching, speaking to the Black community and to white liberals and moderates, saying, “The church that overlooks all this is a dangerously irrelevant church.”
On April 3, they started to roll out their Birmingham plan with lunch-counter sit-ins. On April 6, they began the mass marches.
And Bull Connor and George Wallace went to quash every bit of that. They knew they’d be jailing folks, so they got the Legislature to raise bail levels, for Birmingham only. They contemplated sending troops in. (You see, there really is a playbook that the powers work from.) Bull Connor brought out the police dogs, and ultimately convinced a state judge to enter an injunction prohibiting protests. (very unconstitutional, by the way)
Dr. King joined the marches on Good Friday and was arrested and put in Birmingham Jail. And he wrote a letter because of something he read in the paper, sitting in that jail. The headline read: “White Clergymen Urge Local [Black Community] to Withdraw from Demonstrations.” They were clergyman who professed to be progressive – eight of them, Christian and Jewish – one Presbyterian – the Pastor of First Presbyterian – which you know is Jeff’s and my home church in Birmingham.
In the midst of the suffering of segregation, while Dr. King and many others were sitting in jail, while Bull Connor controlled the streets with his police dogs, here is what they wrote:
We the undersigned clergymen are among those who issued "An Appeal for Law and Order and Common Sense..." We expressed understanding that honest convictions in racial matters could properly be pursued in the courts but urged that decisions of those courts should in the meantime be peacefully obeyed...
However, we are now confronted by a series of demonstrations by some of our [Black] citizens directed and led in part by outsiders. We recognize the natural impatience of people who feel that their hopes are slow in being realized. But we are convinced that these demonstrations are unwise and untimely.
We... strongly urge our own [Black] community to withdraw support from these demonstrations, and to unite locally in working peacefully for a better Birmingham. When rights are consistently denied, a cause should be pressed in the courts and in negotiations among local leaders, and not in the streets. We appeal to both our white and [Black] citizenry to observe the principles of law and order and common sense.[10]
These were white liberal religious folk – religious leaders no less. And we know... and history has shown... that they got that wrong. Bad wrong.
Dr. King wrote back: He reminded his clergy colleagues that he was in Birmingham because injustice was in Birmingham. “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”[11] Dr. King described the ethic and strategy of Non-Violent Direct Action – how it was necessary to bring to light injustices too long ignored. And he noted his disappointment with the white church and white clergy who said mild and pious things, but invariably ended their advice to “Wait,” which almost always means “Never.”
You don’t know, he said. “History is the long and tragic story of the fact that privileged groups seldom give up their privilege and power voluntarily.... Freedom must be demanded by the oppressed.” “Justice too long delayed is justice denied.” He told them of the suffering they had never experienced first-hand: vicious mobs beating and lynching your family and friends; hate-filled police with police dogs, beating and kicking and killing with impunity; a mass of people living in “an airtight cage of poverty.” He expressed his moral and existential frustration with the white moderate “more devoted to order than to justice.” “I would hope that the white moderate would understand that law and order exist for the purpose of establishing justice.”
Dr. King challenged them. He corrected them. He urged them, with insistent love, to change and to act. The white liberal-to-moderate clergy had got it wrong. They had presumed that they knew best because they had lived their whole lives protected by privilege from the violence and indignity of racism. But they didn’t know – in their hearts or in their bones – the harm and hurt that they were asking folks to endure.
For white liberals – and for any place that we hold privilege – this is an essential part of our anti-racism work – of our ethical, and moral, and Christian obligation (1) to look at the world with clear and honest eyes – even if – and especially when – that means looking at ourselves – and (2) to learn what it is to be fully human from those on the margins of power, who know what power-over does, more intimately than we ever may.
We are talking about learning by living – by living out the fullness of our humanity. We walk through life with frames through which we see the world, and then life gives us something that rocks our worldview, and we have to – we need to – take it apart, and with humility and openness, seek the truth we need to learn, the partners we need to hear.
We’ve named some tools for that this morning. There’s our necessary power analysis – Who has the power, who doesn’t? How is that power at work? And there’s the gift and discipline of naming what we may not know because we have not lived it out, and to look to those who know in their bones who power-over works – and what is needed to dismantle and heal the harms that oppressive systems do.
When I heard Bishop Flunder talk about this Scripture back in November, she said, “We talk about Jesus, fully human, fully God. Well, this story lets Jesus have as much human as Jesus has God.” And then she went on, “I need to know that Jesus has been through something.. to be able to own and learn from my mistakes.”
I sometimes wonder how stories like this ever got into the Bible. I mean this morning’s Scripture is not particularly flattering for Jesus – this is after all his Gospel they were writing.
But I imagine, that in the aftermath of Jesus’ death, and in trying to make sense of that, and Resurrection, they tried to remember what they had experienced: Do you remember the time that Jesus got it wrong? Do you remember the time that the Canaanite woman got it right, the time she had the answer, the time she schooled Jesus? Do you remember the time that Jesus listened to a marginalized woman, changed his mind, and learned? This New Humanity... it includes her too... and maybe even you... and me... maybe even everyone.
Hmm. Maybe Jesus got it wrong in this story.... because we all have something to learn.
© 2026 Scott Clark
[1] For general background on this text and the Gospel of Matthew, see M. Eugene Boring, “The Gospel of Matthew,” New Interpreters’ Bible Commentary, vol. viii (Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1995), pp.134-37; Mitzi J. Smith, Commentary on Working Preacher at https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/ordinary-20/commentary-on-matthew-1510-20-21-28-4 ; Herman C. Waetjen, Matthew’s Theology of Fulfillment, Its Universality and It’s Ethnicity (London, UK: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2017); Carla Works, Commentary on Working Preacher at https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/ordinary-20/commentary-on-matthew-1510-20-21-28-5
[2] See https://www.togetherweserve.org/post/get-out-the-map-matthew-2-epiphany-sunday ; https://www.togetherweserve.org/post/beginning-with-who-we-are-matthew-3-13-17-1st-sunday-after-epiphany
[3] Mitzi J. Smith, Commentary on Working Preacher at https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/ordinary-20/commentary-on-matthew-1510-20-21-28-4 ; Waetjen, p.177.
[4] Mitzi J. Smith, Commentary on Working Preacher at https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/ordinary-20/commentary-on-matthew-1510-20-21-28-4 .
[5] Id.
[6] See Boring, p.336, including footnote 343 (listing and critiquing these perspectives).
[7] These quotes are taken from notes I took at Bishop Flunder’s keynote sermon, November 19, 2025.
[8] For the text of his letter, see Martin Luther King, Jr., “Letter from Birmingham Jail” in A Testament of Hole: The Essential Writings and Speeches of Martin Luther King Jr. (J.M. Washington, ed.) (San Francisco, CA: HarperCollins, 1986), p.289-302.
[9] Much of this history is drawn from Taylor Branch, Parting the Waters: America in the King Years 1954-63 (New York: Touchstone Books, 1988).
[10] For the text of the letter, see Jemar Tisby, “The Letter from White Clergymen that Prompted MLK's ‘Letter from a Birmingham Jail’" at https://jemartisby.substack.com/p/the-letter-from-white-clergymen-that
[11] See Martin Luther King, Jr., “Letter from Birmingham Jail” in A Testament of Hole: The Essential Writings and Speeches of Martin Luther King Jr. (J.M. Washington, ed.) (San Francisco, CA: HarperCollins, 1986), p.289-302.
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