Year A: Proper 15 | Matthew 15:10-28
St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church
August 16, 2026
the Rev. Jonathan Hanneman
To watch the full service, please visit this page.
When we approach the Gospels, many of us tend to conflate stories from one with those of another, thus giving ourselves what we imagine is a fuller picture of who Jesus was. While that’s a natural thing to do, it does sometimes lead to problems. Each Gospel arises from a particular time and perspective, and their authors are attempting to point out certain things about Jesus. And sometimes the details missing from one of the Gospels can lead us to surprising discoveries.
People, in general, don’t like change. We like things to stay the same, as far as we remember “the same” to be. A little variation’s nice, but major shifts can be too jarring and disruptive for many peoples’ taste and tolerance. One thing we certainly don’t want to think of changing is God, even the incarnate God we find revealed in Jesus. The Divine, saints, holy ceremonies, sacred teachings—we prefer to imagine those as utterly static, fixed and immutable across time and space. We sing about our “Immortal, invisible, God only wise, in light inaccessible hid from our eyes,” and continue on in that hymn to praise them with the statement “naught changeth thee.” And while we might be able to argue about that in the Person of God the Father,[1] that lack of change doesn’t reflect God the Son accurately at all. Luke makes this explicit when he describes a young Jesus as “increas[ing] in wisdom and in years and in divine and human favor.”[2]
But the most dramatic and unexpected moment of change in Jesus’ life might just come from today’s Gospel reading.
The story of the healing of the Canaanite woman’s daughter appears only in the Gospels of Matthew and Mark. Neither Luke nor John mention it, which means it’s important to approach this story within the continuity of the Gospels where it does appear. This is where the missing details I mentioned earlier actually matter.
We think of Jesus as broadly inclusive and welcoming, and we should. Throughout the Gospels we see him hanging out with rich and poor alike; befriending, comforting, and uplifting society’s outcasts; and readily crossing racial and cultural lines as he teaches and heals. But that’s throughout the Gospels as a whole.
Until today’s reading, Matthew’s Jesus has had almost no interaction with foreigners. It turns out that John is the one whose Jesus readily breaks ethnic boundaries from early in his ministry. In Matthew, the only recorded interaction Jesus has had with a non-Galilean or -Judean was the healing of the servant of a Roman centurion, who approached him on Jesus’ home turf. Up to this point, Matthew’s Jesus hasn’t even interacted with Galilee and Judea’s ethnic half-brothers, the Samaritans. In fact, all we’ve heard about Samaritans so far is Jesus instructing the apostles to avoid their and other non-Jewish settlements as he commissioned them to heal and proclaim the Good News, a demand he followed with, “go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel,”[3] the same mission he emphasizes for himself when he finally responds to the Canaanite woman’s request today.
While Matthew’s Jesus has been serving a large number of people for some time, it turns out they were still a fairly narrow slice of humanity. Born in Judea and growing up in Galilee, he was, of course, enculturated within that society. While he was broadly welcoming within his own ethnic group, he had, like all of us, learned patterns of thinking that separated his people from outsiders. Jesus was working to restore Israel, to be their Savior. Those beyond his homeland simply weren’t on his mind; they were outside his scope of practice, so to speak. If they came to him within a Judean or Galilean context, that was one thing, but in this passage he’s crossed the boundaries of what had ever been considered part of Hebrew territory and, therefore, doesn’t see himself as responsible.
We aren’t exactly sure why Jesus was in this area. Timeline-wise, this still seems to be pretty close to Herod’s beheading of John the Baptist and his ensuing math connecting Jesus with a risen John. If that’s the case, there’s a good chance Jesus is still trying to step outside of Herod’s grasp, and since the crowds made it impossible to lay low at home, crossing into this area would be the quickest way to do that.
And we need to recognize that in Matthew’s presentation, Jesus is either flippantly dismissive or straight-up rude toward this lady. “It is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs,” is the softest and most sanitized way to interpret his response. We can easily translate it more harshly, but it takes a touch of effort to make it sound this polite.
Matthew is showing us a Jesus we don’t really want to imagine, one fully and truly human, someone who’s a product of his culture and upbringing. And if this is how Jesus had remained, chances are we wouldn’t have been gathering like this today. Had anything come of it at all, Christianity would likely have remained a minority subsection of ancient Judean society. But, as it turns out, thanks to this woman’s quick-witted response, even the Son of Man can change.
This is a remarkable moment. Jesus’ self-understanding flips in an instant. Having his own words turned against him, he laughs as he realizes the Father didn’t send him simply to serve a small subsection of human society. God wasn’t, in fact, intent on promoting one people group or culture as superior to another. Jesus wasn’t called simply to restore “the lost sheep of the house of Israel,” as he had thought. No—this is where Jesus recognizes the possibility of his full mission as the Savior of the World.
I realize this idea of Jesus changing and growing is uncomfortable. We’ve been taught to imagine a perfect Savior, a being of Celestial perfection unchanged and unchanging throughout all time simply masked under the guise of moral flesh and bone. But I find this Jesus not only to be fascinating but encouraging. After all, if Jesus had room to change and grow, if Jesus could reconsider and adjust his understanding of his purpose, what does that mean for us?
Change is what the Bible is talking about when it uses the word “repent.” Repentance isn’t a big, emotional show with wailing and convulsing and flamboyant confessions. It’s simply recognizing where we aren’t quite in line with God and adjusting our path accordingly. Repentance doesn’t have to involve active moral failure. Just as Jesus was a product of his culture, so too are we. It’s no sin to understand life in a particular way or to think how society has taught us to think. We can be doing our best to follow God and still not have everything completely perfect.
Until this encounter, Matthew’s Jesus could only see the world as his upbringing had allowed him to understand it. He was sent to Israel—and not even necessarily all Jewish people of the time, just “the lost sheep,” those his society had swept aside as refuse or collateral damage in the greater culture wars of that era. But when confronted with a deeper reality—recognizing that God’s love and mercy extend beyond the boundaries of his tradition’s historical practice, Jesus doesn’t double down on his old thought patterns and behaviors. He doesn’t establish new strictures or reinforce old, crumbling boundaries. Instead, he embraces, incorporates, and then embodies the necessary change.
I find this very hopeful. For one thing, it emphasizes to me that there’s no sin in being human. Humans know only what we know. We all have our blind spots. It’s impossible to act on what we haven’t encountered or learned to see. We can walk faithfully with God without recognizing the full picture of who God is or what God has called us to. But when we do encounter new information, when we experience something beyond the limitations of our traditions or face something that changes our understanding of reality, not only does that give us the opportunity to change, it’s important that we, like Jesus, actually do so.
We live in a society deeply entrenched in partisan dogmas, one that honors people who are strictly committed to particular ideologies, whether that’s in the Church or political realm or social spheres. For most of my lifetime, refusal to change, even when confronted with reality—perhaps especially when confronted with reality—is held as the greatest of virtues. Admitting one’s own error has become the cardinal sin, the realm of degenerate “flip-floppers,” no matter what damage that error may be inflicting upon oneself or those around them.
Jesus not only calls us toward but models for us a different way, one where change—where repentance—is a virtue. We find here that when we encounter different viewpoints or new information, it’s not simply okay but actually Christlike to incorporate that knowledge into our own understanding and to act accordingly. As a single guy, I heard the pastor at the church I was attending challenging men to take healthy responsibility in their lives and relationships. After Shannon and I began to get to know each other, she pointed out where that same pastor was leaning into and promoting misogyny. Not being a woman, that thought hadn’t crossed my radar, but once I became aware of it, I learned to recognize it, challenge it, and change my own behavior and understanding accordingly. It was no sin or failure for me not to see what I didn’t know to see. But once I could see it, it would have been prideful and self-righteous of me to refuse to grow.
None of us are perfect. None of us are complete in our understanding. As he studied and practiced to become more and more like God the Father, God the Son also encountered the limitations of his own understanding. But rather than choosing to limit himself—and the work of God in the world—he allowed himself to grow, to change. His openness to learning and commitment to development led to our inclusion within God’s greater Kingdom.
I’ve said before that the god we humans want—the Top-Down Sky God—isn’t the God we have. Today I have to conclude by saying, thank God we have a God who’s not only open to, accepting of, and encouraging toward the process of growth and change but who’s willing to set that example for us!
[1] At this point in time, I would be arguing against the unchangingness.
[2] Luke 2:52 | All Bible quotations are from the NRSVue unless otherwise noted.
[3] Matthew 10:6