Day 4

 

Going to the Dogs

 

"It is not right to take the children's bread and toss it to their dogs."

 

Matthew 15:26

 

 

Both of my grandmothers could really cook. My mom's mother, who my siblings and I called Mar-Mar (don't ask how that got started because I don't know, but I do know she was proud to be called that), lived in the same city as we did so we saw her quite often. My dad's mom, T-Mar, lived a couple of hours away from where we did so we didn't see her as much. (The one we saw often was Mar-Mar so the one we didn't see as much was Two-Mar, which was somehow shortened to T-Mar. A name she proudly bore as well.) Not seeing T-Mar as much must have led her to cook prodigious amounts of food for our visits.

 

I can remember meals at T-Mar's where there was a large turkey and a large ham for nine people. Everyone would have their favorite dessert too. At any given meal there was strawberry pie, pumpkin pie, brownies, cherry pie and ambrosia (whatever that is).

 

Not only did we eat well there, her dogs ate well too. Her dogs had bacon and eggs and toast with jelly for breakfast and ate off of china. It was the old china, but it was china. They were big ol' slobbering outdoor boxer dogs named Fritz and Bozo. I didn't realize until much later when I saw other people's boxers that boxers were not supposed to be such big heavy dogs. Those dogs easily weighed more than I did as a kid.

 

T-Mar would not sit down at the table while we ate. She was always up filling some one's plate or making more food. Every night before bed she would make all us kids a milkshake like she was topping off a gas tank. One night my dad came in the kitchen as us kids drank our milkshakes and said he was going to get a bowl of ice cream. T-Mar started to get it but Dad said, "No, Mom, you've been waiting on us hand and foot. You sit down. I'll get my own ice cream."

 

He got his bowl of ice cream and sat down at the table and began to eat. He made a few faces and said, "Mom, where did you get this ice cream? It tastes kind of funky."

 

She said, "I got it at the store yesterday, so it should be good. Which carton did you get your ice cream from?"

 

"I got it from the carton on the door," my dad told her. "There wasn't much left in it so I thought I would finish it off."

 

My grandmother's reply was priceless. "Oh, that's the dog's ice cream. They eat right out of the carton."

 

In Matthew 15 Jesus has a conversation with a Canaanite woman who is requesting that her demon possessed daughter be healed. Jesus tells her he was sent to to help the lost sheep of Israel, God's people. She was not an Israelite, but she was asking for help. It is then that Jesus tells her, "It is not right to take the children's bread and toss it to their dogs."

 

Let me explain something. Israelites did not like dogs. They did not have pet dogs. They called gentiles "dogs."  So when Jesus talks about the "children's bread" the children are God's children, the Israelites. The dog the bread is tossed to is a gentile. Don't get all bent out of shape about this. First of all he calls the Israelites sheep so being a dog isn't that bad. And in Greek (which the New Testament is written in) there are two words for dogs. One means a mangy old mongrel, the other means a house pet. Jesus doesn't call her a mongrel, he calls her a house pet.

 

The point Jesus is making is that he came to God's people first. The rest of us are just house pets that get asked to be a part of the family. Jesus heals the woman's daughter. The woman found out, like my grandmother's dogs, that being the right person's pet is better than being in the wrong person's family. And I, for one, am glad that Jesus looked down on this slobbering little kid named Jess and made me a part of his family.

 

Upon Further Review:

 

Read Matthew 15:21-28

 

• What was Jesus' initial reaction and what was the disciples initial reaction?
• In what manner did the woman come to Jesus?
• Do you think Jesus healed her daughter because of her persistent faith?