THE GREAT DISPUTE OF THE SAMARITAN WOMAN AT THE WATER WELL WITH JESUS

«The game knows how to rise to heights of beauty and sanctity that seriousness does not add» (L. Huizinga, Man playing)

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When I was little, centuries ago, there was a game called steal the flag. Two contenders, once called by those who held a flag hanging between their fingers, usually a handkerchief or cloth, they ran towards him and had to take the flag away without letting the other touch them. Now, among the rules, there was the one where you could cross the middle line with your hands to be quick to touch the other, you could meet him with your gaze and provoke him with feints, but you could never, ever cross your feet beyond the median line that served as the border between the two teams, under penalty of losing the point and general disapproval.

Who knows why this old game came back to me from summer camp having to comment on today's evangelical page on Sunday. Maybe because we're talking about who, violating rules and opportunities he crossed boundaries. And then let's play; here is the evangelical page.

"During that time, left from there, Jesus retreated towards the area of ​​Tire and Sidon. And here is a Canaanite woman, who came from that region, he cried: « Have pity on me, man, son of David! My daughter is very tormented by a demon". But he didn't even say a word to her. Then his disciples approached him and begged him: “Esaudian, because he comes after us shouting!”. He replied,: “I was not sent except to the lost sheep of the house of Israel”. But she approached and prostrated herself before him, saying: “man, help me!”. And he answered: “It is not good to take your children's bread and throw it to the dogs”. “It's true, man” – said the woman –, “yet the little dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters' table”. Then Jesus replied to her: “Donna, great is your faith! Let it happen to you as you wish”. And from that moment her daughter was healed." [Mt 15, 21-28].

The whole pericope is a splendid play of roles. Matthew writes that Jesus started from one place, in Greek we have «went out of there». Where and what did he walk away from?? From the town of Genezareth where he had a lively clash with the Pharisees and their twisted and interested interpretation of the Mosaic Law. But he had also had to deal with the misunderstanding of his own disciples. He will say about the first: «Leave them alone! They are blind leaders of the blind. And if the blind lead the blind, both will fall into a ditch!» At the second he dejectedly affirms: «Even you are not yet capable of understanding?» [Mt. 15,14].

Having emerged from this geographical and dialogic situation moved towards a border area, near the towns of Tire and Sidon. The Gospel does not say that he crossed the border to tread Phoenician land, therefore pagan, but who headed towards it. Instead, she is a woman who crossed the border - in Greek we have the same aorist used for Jesus who "went out" from Genesareth - to approach Him with a request. This is important because in the Gospel passage Matthew puts the phrase into the mouth of Jesus: “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel”, while elsewhere he had told his disciples when sending them on a mission «Do not go among the pagans and do not enter the cities of the Samaritans; turn instead to the lost sheep of the house of Israel" [Mt 10,5-6]. Matthew takes care to specify that Jesus is not in pagan territory, but still in the land of Israel and meets this woman who, she does, has crossed the borders of its territory of origin. All this contributes to preparing a story in which Jesus appears guided by a very rigorous sense of Jewish belonging, even intransigent.

Who is this woman crying out after Jesus? Matthew calls her a Canaanite. Describe the complex historical story here, social and religious nature of the territories and populations that refer to Canaan exceeds the scope of this commentary. Suffice it to say that the mention of Canaanite serves the evangelist to express the distance between this woman and Jesus, simultaneously reviving the ancient enmity between Israel and the Canaanite populations. With a simple note Matteo makes us feel the weight of a story and a tradition that encapsulates the two characters within narrow confines. Let us also keep in mind Marco's account of the same episode, where he is pleased to offer further details: «This woman was a Greek speaker and of Syro-Phoenician origin» [MC 7, 26]. These two specifications of Mark multiply the elements of diversity of the woman and make the encounter between the Galilean Jesus and this woman particularly intriguing. In addition to the gender difference and the fact of being foreign, perhaps a difference in socio-economic status should be taken into account. According to Theissen[1] the woman belongs to the high and wealthy class of urbanized Greeks living in the border area of ​​Tire and Galilee with which the poor Jewish farmers were in conflict, whose agricultural work also served to support the inhabitants of the city[2]. The Marcian editorial team suggests that perhaps a moral distance should also be taken into account: the term sirofenicio had, in Latin satire, the value of a disreputable person[3]. And finally, or first of all, Marco highlights the linguistic difference: «he was a Greek speaker». Ellenís (Greek) indicates linguistic-cultural belonging, while syrophoiníkissa designates the pagan lineage and religiosity. They talk to each other: in which language? Who speaks the language of the other? Jesus speaks Greek? Or the woman speaks Aramaic? Anyhow, there must have been mutual adaptation to each other's language, the effort of leaving the mother tongue to express oneself in the language accessible to the other. All these details, some real, others probable, they serve to describe everything that separated the woman from Jesus, its otherness, we would say today, compared to the Nazarene, even in the possibility of understanding each other through a language. Yet this woman will use a code that Jesus knew well and that he encountered several times, that of need, towards whom the Lord felt profound compassion. But here everything is expressed in a very original and interesting way also for us who listen to this Gospel today.

The woman brings the situation of her sick daughter to Jesus' attention, he does it by shouting. Later in the Gospel there will be a father who will speak heartfeltly to Jesus about his very suffering son[4]. Both ask the Lord for "Mercy" (Have mercy on me). An expression that we find in the Psalms and in Matthew on the lips of two blind men [cf.. Mt 9, 27] and two other blind men [Mt 20, 30-31] Both scenes, of the Canaanite mother and the aforementioned father, they convey particular emotion and pathos since they are sick children; in this way readers also spontaneously take the side of the person making a pressing request for help and understand the insistence that borders on annoyance.

In the Matthean redaction which differs from the Marcian one, a long process is described that makes the scene palpable, almost as if we were inside it. At first Jesus closes himself in a hard and obstinate silence [cf.. Mt 15,23], then he gives a dry response to the disciples with a theological tone: «I was sent only to the scattered sheep of the house of Israel» [cf.. Mt 15,24], finally he addresses a harsh response to the woman personally [cf.. Mt 15,26], who had also addressed him with messianic titles: « Have pity on me, man, son of David".

Thus the woman receives a "no" three times from Jesus, despite the urging of the disciples who wanted to take the trouble away: «Esaudiscila, because he comes after us shouting!». In this way the role play turns on, leveling up, the ecclesial and theological one. For real, as Gregory the Great said, the Gospel «while narrating the text reveals the mystery» – «while he proposes the text he reveals the mystery» and again «it rises from history into mystery» – «from history one rises to mystery»[5].

Jesus' response to the disciples describes the boundaries within which its mission lies, suggesting that the decision comes from above, by God. The salvific and messianic work which in the biblical tradition was defined as "the gathering of the missing"[6] [cf.. Is 27, 12-13] regard, in the intention and words of Jesus only Israel: “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel”. A theological response that appears as a brake and an insurmountable obstacle, since the messianic mandate that Jesus welcomes from God and makes his own up to the most extreme consequences is involved. But the woman who previously had already crossed a line, the geographical one, moved by need and pain for the daughter she had given birth to with her mother's body, he now blocks the way to Jesus by placing his own body as a boundary: «But she approached and prostrated herself before him, saying: "Man, help me!». The solution that opens us to the mystery, as I said a little while ago, it is in the very words of Jesus that at first glance appear harsh and insensitive: «It is not good to take your children's bread and throw it to domestic dogs» [Mt 15,26]. At the time of Jesus the separation between "sons" and "dogs" was the distinction that separated the members of the people of Israel from the Gentiles. Something is therefore beginning to be outlined and understood. The distance between Israel and the pagans was enormous from many points of view and appeared unbridgeable. And it was also the first major problem of the early Church solved in Jerusalem [cf.. At 15] unless after conflicts, different points of view and clashes among which the most striking one broke out between Paul and Peter: «But when Cephas came to Antioch, I opposed him openly because he was wrong » [cf.. Gal 2, 11]. And Matthew has disciples among his readers who now come from both Judaism and paganism.

With his words, Jesus suggests that there is a plan of salvation which cannot be distorted, but a new situation arises and cannot be overcome, because the body of the foreign woman, canaanite, Greek-speaking is right there in front of you and is unavoidable, like the fact that pagans during Easter were baptized and believed in the risen Jesus. Now it is Jesus himself who defines the pagans, as an Israelite, like «kynaria – kynaria», that is, domestic dogs, therefore not stray dogs that go everywhere, even to eat forbidden impure things. They are those who are in the same house as the children who are the heirs. Mark in his Gospel makes Jesus say: «Let the children get their fill first, because it is not good to take the children's bread and throw it to the dogs" [MC 7, 27]. There is a first that must be respected, there is a divine will expressed by "it is not good", but the dogs are there now, in the same house as their children.

The woman's response is grand and beautiful, because by entering into the perspective of Jesus he shows that he has understood his intention and the will of God who sent him and explains with his words how much bigger it is than you think, since in the same house, which is now the Easter Church, Matteo's, of Paolo and also ours, there is room for everyone. The woman said: "It's true, man, yet the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters' table". In his words, the same messianic project can no longer be seen only temporally - there is a before and an after - but also spatially since there is a single house where there is a table where salvation has arrived and is offered to all, even for those who didn't seem to have the right to it.

«”Donna, great is your faith! Let it happen to you as you wish.". And from that moment her daughter was healed.".

The evangelist's editorial comment it is extremely consolatory as it unties every narrative and emotional knot by revealing that the daughter is healed. Some commentators sometimes say: there, the woman forced Jesus' hand. To use the initial metaphor of the game: “he stole”; it is she who performed the miracle. I don't believe it because, with this one ploy, we would betray the Gospel and its leading us towards the deepest mystery in which we too are involved, that is, that of faith in Jesus: «Donna, great is your faith!». It is this trust that allows us to see new things or look at them differently and Jesus sees them with us. A mystery that endows the Church with the hermeneutic capacity of the time it lives in, especially ours which seems to take on a distance from it, while probably, eat the canaanite, asks for a new word, asks for help and acceptance.

In this sense, the work of another woman appears enlightening, the Mother of Jesus, than at the wedding at Cana, despite what we sometimes still hear preached, he did not force Jesus' hand to complete the sign of the good wine until the end. But he made it possible, because Jesus found a new community, just nascent, symbolized by the Mother and the disciples present at the wedding, whom she preceded and accompanied on the journey of faith. Her, eat the canaanite donna, presented a situation and a need: «They have no more wine» [GV 2, 3]. Thus Jesus manifested his glory in Cana because he found a community that, albeit in initial faith, he was available and welcoming towards the novelty expressed by the gift of wine: «And his disciples began to believe in him»[7]. The canaanite donna, pagan, so distant and different from Jesus, brought by need, he went beyond the saving time by anticipating it, prefiguring an open community capable of welcoming even those who come from far away. His faith is truly great.

Happy Sunday everyone.

from the Hermitage, 20 August 2023

 

NOTE

[1] Gerd Theissen, The shadow of the Nazarene, claudian, 2014.

[2] Marco, referring to the bed where the woman's sick daughter lay, speaks of kliné (bed), a real bed and not just a poor couch (MC 7, 30).

[3] The Syrophoenician region was established by Septimius Severus in 194 D.C.. In the eighth satire Juvenal speaks of the Syrophenians as owners of taverns. In particular it describes an effeminate one, miserly, Jew (see Juvenal, Satire, Feltrinelli, 2013).

[4] Mt 17, 14- 15: «A man approached Jesus and fell on his knees and said: “man, have mercy on my son! He is epileptic and suffers a lot; often falls into fire and often into water".

[5] Gregory the Great, Homily on Ezekiel I, 6, 3.

[6] «It will happen that, on that day, the Lord will beat the ears, from the River to the torrent of Egypt, and you will be gathered one by one, Israelites. It will come to pass that on that day the great horn will sound, the lost will come to the land of Assyria and the lost to the land of Egypt. They will prostrate themselves before the Lord on the holy mountain, to Jerusalem".

[7] GV 2, 11 episteus – they believed – is an ingressive aorist: they began to believe.

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San Giovanni all'Orfento. Abruzzo, Mount Maiella, it was a hermitage inhabited by Pietro da Morrone, called in 1294 to the Chair of Peter on which he ascended with the name of Celestine V (29 August – 13 December 1294).

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