In Cormac McCarthy’s book All the Pretty Horses, John Grady Cole meets a charming and beautiful girl named Alejandra after he’s traveled from Texas to Mexico and gotten work on Alejandra’s family ranch. They fall in love, albeit the type of love two teenagers might fall into; sudden, passionate, dangerous. Late one night, Alejandra’s Great-Aunt and Godmother invites John Grady to join her, ostensibly to play chess and drink tea, but in reality to tell him why he’s no longer going to see Alejandra.
“What do you want me to do?” he said.
“I want you to be considerate of a young girl’s reputation.”
“I never meant not to be.”
She smiled. “I believe you,” she said. “But you must understand. This is another country. Here a woman’s reputation is all she has.”
“Yes mam.”
“There is no forgiveness, you see.”
“Mam?”
“There is no forgiveness. For women. A man may lose his honor and regain it again. But a woman cannot. She cannot.”[1]
Honor. It’s something not talked about too much these days. It’s been replaced by other glories like privilege, or status, or worth. Either way, the idea of a fall from grace because of a certain type of behavior is part and parcel to every culture. There are certain things which are taboo, which you just don’t do or believe because you’ll be excommunicated, shunned, or, as we like to say these days, canceled.
It happens in every group: left or right, north or south, learned or unlearned, jock or nerd, young or old, and it has been this way for time immemorial.
This is the terrifying power of the Law on display for all to see. It is the stick by which we are measured — don’t measure up and you’re out. Sorry.
We think it’s supposed to keep us in line; that it is our great gateway to rightful living, but what always ends up happening is that we trip up and fall and fail. We break the social norm, the unwritten code, the “way we’ve always done things,” and are deemed unworthy. The Mexican code of honor functioned as the law for Alejandra because it always accused her of not being honorable.
Gerhard Forde puts it this way:
“law … cannot be identified with any set of propositions or prescriptions, be it the decalogue, or any other code. Law Is anything which frightens and accuses ‘the conscience.’ The bolt of lightning, the rustling of a dry leaf on a dark night, the decalogue, the ‘natural law’ of the philosopher … all or any of these can and do become the voice of the law.” [2]
We are afraid we don’t measure up, that we aren’t perfect, and that people, even God, will find out. So we become zealous in our rule-following, our law-keeping, with the hope that it will save us. But it never does; the law always accuses. It’s a vicious circle in which we run around trying to prove our worth, show how good we are, make sure everyone sees how much we toe the party line, whatever party it is.
For Jesus, it’s not enough to simply follow the Law. It’s not about just doing the right thing or even saying the right thing. Instead, it’s about motivation and what comes out of the heart. The sins come from deep inside, betraying the hardness of heart, which is endemic. And the one who demonstrates to Jesus and his disciples a purity of heart is the ultimate outsider, one who was unworthy in every sense of the word.
After retreating from the opposition, Jesus and his disciples go into Gentile country. They go to the borderlands where no good Jew would ever think to travel. Going to Tyre and Sidon was like going to the other side of the tracks where good and respectable people just didn’t go. All the prophets denounced Tyre and Sidon, including Ezekiel who dedicated the entirety of the 28th chapter of his book to talk about the ways God was against their kings. It was pagan land, spiritually dangerous.
And as soon as they get there a woman comes shouting at Jesus. She checks all the prejudicial boxes for the disciples. She’s a woman, seen as less than men in any patriarchal society. Matthew identifies her as Canaanite, a reference not based in actual nationality at that point, but Israel’s ancient enemy — she’s a trope of what a bad person is. And then she is acting hysterically; the screams escaping her are like those which overcome women in childbirth. She embodies the very type of person outside of the Law, one who doesn’t deserve anything, let alone grace and mercy. The disciples would have taken one look at her and thought to themselves, “Yeah, she’s gross.”
But using confessional language — language Matthew reserves for persons who see Jesus for who he really is — the Canaanite woman calls upon Jesus to help her. She realizes Christ’s ability to help her when she is in her most profound need. Have mercy on me, Lord, Son of David; my daughter is tormented by a demon. Matthew doesn’t explain how she found out about Jesus, and it doesn’t matter — she simply knows she needs help, needs grace, needs salvation and that Jesus is the one who can give it to her. She has faith.
Jesus, though, is initially silent and that silence is deafening. Whenever it seems like God is silent, it can cause a crisis of faith. It’s uncomfortable, so the disciples fill the void. For the second time in as many chapters, they advise Jesus to send those who need him “away.” They did it with the crowd whom Jesus fed with the loaves and fishes, and they do it again with this woman they’d rather not deal with.
Christ exposes their hypocrisy, hoisting their prejudices and preconceived notions of how things are supposed to be back on them. He repeats back the idea that he’s the Messiah only for people who look like them. And when pressed by the woman more to help her (still using that confessional language), he uses a stereotype slur commonly given of Gentiles, a dog. This woman was, it seems, punching above her station.
If she had any semblance of honor left, she would have gone away. She would have retreated if she cared at all about her social status. Can you imagine any upstanding Gentile begging a Jewish teacher for a miracle? Instead, she plays into the stereotype. She knows she’s an unworthy Gentile, but she doesn’t care. She needs help. She needs rescuing. She needs saving, or at least her daughter does, so in the face of all odds, with every checkbox against her filled, with no way of being uncanceled, she persists and endures.
One final time she calls Jesus by his rightful title of Lord — yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their master’s table. She knows who she is and who he is. She knows she doesn’t have a leg to stand on, but that the power of this Jewish messiah is great. She knows she is unworthy, but that he can help her. And he does.
Woman, great is your faith! Let it be done as you wish. The sovereign grace of God is given to her through her faith. She and her daughter are saved through faith. She does not run from the status the Law would deem her — unclean, lawless, unworthy. She embraces it, and Jesus reaches out to her. Regardless of the disciples’ attempt to get rid of her, Jesus lifts this Canaanite woman up as a paragon for all to admire. Out in the borderlands, we see the true embodiment of what the author of the book of Hebrews describes as faith — Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen (Heb 11:1).
Alejandra’s great-aunt thought there was no forgiveness available to her great-niece if she continued in a relationship with John Grady. She would be cast out, cut off, disposed of. But because of Christ’s death on the cross, the same sovereign grace Jesus gave to the Canaanite woman, forgiveness came to all the world. The grace of God comes to those who know they need it, regardless of if we think they are worthy, maybe especially to those we deem “unworthy” — ourselves included.
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Beautiful!