We have heard two of the readings from the lectionary today – one from the gospels and one from the epistles. The Old, or Hebrew, Testament reading on the lectionary is part of the story of Joseph in Egypt (he of the technicolour coat) in the book of Genesis. I will refer to it later. The three readings took me on a line of thought about inclusion and exclusion; about why our belonging to or supporting one group often leads to excluding or belittling those from other groups. The bible is in some ways a mirror for society – its stories show very human strengths and weaknesses, both the best and worst of humanity. In sport, our competitive traits can be channelled in a positive way; behind each of today’s readings there is a more destructive aspect of competition.
The gospel reading from Matthew is a curious one. It appears to show Jesus in a poor light, or at least as a very fallible and human character. Jesus has travelled from Galilee to the coast, we are told, and he is approached for help by a local woman whose daughter has some kind of illness (described in the medically illiterate language of the day as a demonic “possession”). How would you characterise his response? Let’s be honest – it’s dismissive and racist. ‘But she came and knelt before him, saying, “Lord, help me.” 26 He answered, “It is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.” ’ (15:26)
There’s no cultural excuse for implying that the woman was a dog – in the Torah, dogs are seen as threatening (enemies and evil-doers were characterised as “dogs”) and associated with carrion and death (i.e. unclean). Indeed, there is another reference earlier in this gospel among the teachings of the Sermon on the Mount: “Do not give what is holy to dogs, and do not throw your pearls before swine, or they will trample them under foot and turn and maul you.” (7:6).
There was history between Judeans and Canaanites, a long history of peoples living in the same land. The Hebrew bible portrays this history from one viewpoint – that of the victor. As the Israelites saw it, their God, Yahweh, had given the land to them. In Genesis 12, Yahweh, the God of Israel, promises to bless Abram and make a great nation of him. When Abram travels through Canaan, Yahweh promises, “To your offspring I will give this land” (vs 7). But, as the writer also notes, “at that time the Canaanites were in the land” (vs 6). The theme of Canaan being given by God to the Israelites is threaded throughout the Torah (the first five books of the bible) and the “Deuteronomistic history” (the books of Joshua, Judges, Samuel, and Kings).
These myths of origin, or founding myths, were compiled much later than the stories they tell, and not in the order they purport to tell them. Describing events that might have happened between perhaps 2000-1250 BCE, the first five books (the Torah) a were probably not written down until the Babylonian Exile during the fifth century BCE, although they were probably based on elements of earlier works. In academic circles, origin myths are narratives that explain how a particular reality came into existence. They often serve to justify the established order by attributing its establishment to sacred forces.
So, who were the Canaanites? Worldhistory.org writes that: “The indigenous people of the land of Canaan were never a unified ethnic group nor did they worship the same gods in the same way… There is no record of any king ruling a unified nation but only of men governing their own city-state and however much land around it they could hold.” Of course, origin myths may contain elements of truth. In the Torah, the Israelites and Canaanites are portrayed as sharing an ancestor, Noah, and it is likely that the Israelites were themselves originally just one of the many Canaanite tribes.
The representative ancestor of the Israelites, Abram, is portrayed as descended from one of Noah’s sons, Shem. The Canaanites are portrayed as descended from Noah’s youngest son, Ham, whose descendants are cursed because he had the misfortune of seeing Noah naked while he lay in a drunken stupor: “Cursed be Canaan; lowest of slaves shall he be to his brothers…. Blessed by Yahweh my God be Shem, and let Canaan be his slave” (Genesis 9:25-26). This story creates the image of the Canaanites as born bad and provides justification for their subjugation by the Israelites. Around 500 years after the book of Genesis was written, as our gospel reading shows, the descendants of the Israelites continued to look down on the Canaanites; and of course, another 2000 years on and there is still (or again) enmity between them.
In another part of the myth, Joseph’s family move to Egypt because of a famine and later Moses leads his people out of Egypt to take possession of the land their God has promised them. It is very likely that some of the Israelites moved to Egypt because of famine and later returned, and their story was absorbed into the tribal history. What we remember is the dramatic telling of God sending plagues on Egypt to force Pharoah to “let my people go”. The real story may be more prosaic and told in three verses at the start of the book of Exodus (1:8-10): 8 Now a new king arose over Egypt who did not know Joseph. 9 He said to his people, “Look, the Israelite people are more numerous and more powerful than we. 10 Come, let us deal shrewdly with them, or they will increase and, in the event of war, join our enemies…” An immigrant population had become established in Egypt and became the target of a paranoid king’s fears. When a series of natural disasters hit Egypt, the immigrants were blamed. An old, old story, but still very relevant today. The exodus from Egypt coincided with or became an opportunity for expansion in Canaan, which was presented as a God-given conquest. The Israelites were both subject to racial/ religious prejudice and perpetrators of it.
In the book of Numbers (33:50-53) Yahweh speaks to Moses, saying, 51 “Speak to the Israelites, and say to them: When you cross over the Jordan into the land of Canaan, 52 you shall drive out all the inhabitants of the land from before you, destroy all their figured stones, destroy all their cast images, and demolish all their high places. 53 You shall take possession of the land and settle in it, for I have given you the land to possess.” The area is defined in some detail in Chapter 34 and covers almost the entire modern Israel, Lebanon and Palestinian territories. In the stories of conquest in the books of Deuteronomy and Joshua, Moses leads his people to control of the area east of the Jordan and Moses’ military commander and successor, Joshua, subsequently crosses the Jordan to conquer Canaan. The book of Ezekiel, which was written about the restoration of Israel after the Babylonian exile, contains the same promise and very similar area of land (Ezk 47: 13:21).
These stories involve a lot of migration, to and fro across Canaan, and between Canaan and Egypt. It is likely that the early Israelites were a nomadic people, but the big movements are driven by a series of famines. Genesis 12 tells how Abram goes to Egypt “to reside as an alien” when there is famine in the south of Canaan. He is sent away when a series of plagues affect the Pharaoh, but when he journeys home with his nephew, Lot, they have too many livestock for the land to sustain and “strife arose between the herders of Abram’s livestock and the herders of Lot’s livestock” (13:7). They agree to split up and settle – Abram in Canaan, and Lot to the east. In Chapter 26, Isaac leaves his home area because of famine and settles as an alien in the southwest, among the Philistines. They become jealous when he is successful and they send him away. And then of course in the story of Joseph in Egypt, there are seven years of famine which affects both Egypt and Canaan. This is a complex story of tribes competing for resources, with fortunes rising and waning and peoples migrating to find food in times of scarcity. It is a story of competition, and not a healthy competition. Times of crisis can draw a community together but can also lead to a closing of borders. In times of scarcity, we have to compete for resources and we perceive others as a threat to our success or even survival; again, we feel like closing the borders.
The stories of the Israelites date from the Bronze Age, when links between climate and famines, shortages and overpopulation, nutrition and disease were understood as expressions of the will of the gods. We have a modern scientific understanding of these factors and events (although not everyone choses to listen) but scarcity and competition are baked into our economic and social systems. Economists tell us that we need a certain level of unemployment because otherwise businesses will struggle to find workers and wages may go up, driving inflation. Unemployment benefits are kept low to encourage people to look for work, so we are put under stress in a competitive job market. We are told the country can’t afford higher pensions and, in the future, may not be able to afford even the current level because of the aging population, so we must save for our retirement. But who knows how much we may need and how long we may live? We live in an age where we are surrounded by abundance but constantly fear scarcity, and I think this underlies a lot of our reactions to other groups, including immigrants.
There is enough food in the world for everyone to eat but not everyone can access it. There is enough wealth in the world for everyone to have a reasonable quality life, but it is far from equally distributed. It is a world of rich and poor, a world of oligarchs and subsistence farmers, of CEOS and the unemployed. Despite the historical setting, the human stories in the bible are not so different. It was a time of kings and pharaohs, and slave labour. We all know the heroic story of Joseph from the musical if not the bible, but if you read the story more fully, Joseph was an early oligarch. When famine came to Egypt (Genesis 47) he used his power and wealth to gain ownership of all the livestock and all the land (except the priests’!) and the people as slaves, before giving them seed to grow provided 20% of the yield was paid to Pharaoh. Again, in the Hebrew telling of the story, Joseph is given religious justification for his rise to power and wealth. [*] From today’s lectionary “Thus says your son Joseph, God has made me lord of all Egypt…”. Remember, these bible stories are looking backwards and seeking explanations and justification for existing situations – why did the Israelites live where they did? Why were the Canaanites their traditional enemies? Why was the king/pharaoh/oligarch (delete as appropriate) placed in charge of everyone? And so on. The religious justifications for land occupation continue to haunt us today.
I imagine every culture has its own myths of origin. The Romans saw themselves are divinely granted the right and duty to “rule the earth, spare the defeated and crush the proud” (Virgil, The Aeneid). The British Empire was similarly held to be civilizing mission, transforming humanity, allegedly bringing 700 million colonized subjects, who were considered “backward” and “childlike,” into the modern world. (Elkins, Time Magazine, 2022). What are New Zealand’s myths of origin, those stories which justify the colonisation of the land and support the status quo? That the treaty was written in English? That the British Lieutenant-Governor, William Hobson, made a pledge when he said “He iwi tahi tātou” (We are now one people)?
Myths of origin can provide unfounded justification for our actions and define our prejudices – how we see others. These attitudes can persist, as we have seen, for centuries or even millennia. Was Jesus displaying a commonly held racial prejudice when he replied to the Canaanite woman? If you are uncomfortable with this very human portrayal of Jesus, you could try a standard get-out clause: Jesus only said this to test the woman’s faith, to see what her response would be. But not even the gospel writers use that option on this occasion. The story told in Matthew’s gospel is also found in a simpler form in Mark’s gospel (7:24-30). Remember that most biblical scholars accept that Matthew and Luke both had a copy of Mark’s gospel to use as a basis for their own. Mark’s original goes straight from the woman’s appeal for help, to Jesus’ answer about throwing the children’s food to the dogs. Matthew amplifies Jesus’ attitude by inserting the phrase “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel” (v24). Notice, too that Matthew portrays the woman as making a nuisance by shouting; and he calls her a Canaanite and describes the crumbs as falling from the master’s table – linking back to the stories from Torah. Mark uses contemporary labels of gentile and Syrophoenician, and the children’s crumbs. And yet, Matthew retains Mark’s sequence of stories in his gospel. Just before today’s reading Jesus condemns the Pharisees for old attitudes placing tradition above the need to be fed; and just after comes the story of feeding the four thousand – look, there is food enough for all and some left over! Mark’s story and Matthew’s elaboration of it, probably reflect debates going on in the early communities of Jesus followers.
The Westar group of about 200 scholars who formed the Jesus Seminar in the 1980s and 1990s, reviewed every saying of Jesus reported in the gospels and considered that in this case “it is highly probable that the words attributed to Jesus were created along with the story”. As the Seminar reports, “One branch of the early Christian movement aimed its evangelistic efforts at the Judean community in Palestine. This branch was led by Peter, then later by James, the brother of Jesus.” A second branch of the early Christian movement was established by the apostle, Paul, “who understood his missionary work to be focused on pagans or gentiles…. In the judgement of the Fellows of the Jesus Seminar, Paul is closer to Jesus on this point than were Peter and James.” (The Five Gospels p204).
Matthew’s gospel is thought to have been written for a community in Galilee, still close to the origins of this early Judean group, and its author may have been facing stronger debate about whether gentiles were in or out. Although there are several possibilities for the other three gospels, Mark, Luke and John are thought to have been written much further afield, for communities in gentile (dominantly Greek and Roman) provinces: Antioch, Ephesus, Corinth and Rome are all possible locations and all lie along the paths of Paul’s missionary journeys. When we look at the attitudes conveyed in the story of the Canaanite woman, we see Matthew arguing that the Israelites were the focus of Jesus’ message (and he also has Jesus say in Chapter 10:v5-6, “Do not take a road leading to gentiles, and do not enter a Samaritan town, 6 but go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel”). Mark is fairly neutral – Jesus readily changes his mind. In the third synoptic gospel, Luke omits the story, and it is not found in the gospel of John either. Luke may have thought it unduly offensive to his gentile audience. Luke’s double-volume work, Luke-Acts, describes a history of the early Christian movement from Galilee through Jerusalem to Rome, aligning Jesus and Paul in taking the message of the Kingdom of God (God’s reign) first to the Jews and then the gentiles.
Paul’s letters give us some insight, before any gospels were written, of the debates over how Jesus’ message should be spread, who it was aimed at, and who it included. Our second reading today was from Paul’s letter to the Romans, or more specifically to a small group of Jesus followers in Rome around 55-57CE, some 15-20 years before Mark’s Gospel was written. By some estimates (Dewey, Hoover et al. 2010, The Authentic Letters of Paul) there may have been 15-60,000 Jews living in Rome at the time and the Christians would have been a small sect within that group, most likely associated with the synagogues, and supported principally by Gentile sympathisers. For most of the First Century the Jewish religion was considered by the Roman world as an “honourable religious tradition, ancient in lineage, which provided the basic tools to construct a civilised society” (which, for Greeks and Romans, was an essential characteristic of religion). There is good archaeological evidence of financial support from gentile “God-Worshippers”, or “God-fearers” in the form of inscriptions of benefactors for synagogue construction. Literature from the time (Josephus) tells us that Nero’s wife, Poppaea, was a “God-Worshipper who pleaded on behalf of the Jews” in respect of a building project.
It is likely that Paul took his message of good news to these synagogues. Where more natural for Paul, a Pharisaic Jew, to visit and seek community, shelter and, probably, work when visiting a new city, than a synagogue? And his letter to the Romans assumes a mixed community of both Jews and gentiles. Paul’s letter is carefully crafted rhetoric and imagines arguments between these groups as a way of teaching his message. He starts with the argument that his message is first for the Jews and then for the gentiles (2:10), but then a large part of the letter argues that all are called to be God’s children (8:16-17), that there is no distinction between Jew and gentile (10:12). Then in chapter 11 (today’s reading), Paul considers the reaction of fellow Jews who might feel they were diminished because the gentiles were now included in God’s favour. Paul now argues that all are equal in falling short of God’s standards – first the gentiles, then the Jews.
Paul’s letter was aimed at a First Century Roman audience, but it feels all too familiar – one pre-eminent group is put out by another’s elevation. The white nationalism seen in the US and to a lesser extent elsewhere seems to derive from a fear of loss. Those who have done well historically feel they are losing their place because of attempts to support those who have done badly, or to support newcomers. Why do people feel excluded when others are included? Paul says, it doesn’t have to be one at the expense of another – there is room for everyone.
Returning briefly to the gospel story. If we take it at face value, Jesus – who in other stories healed a Roman centurion’s daughter, who told a parable to show that Samaritans were as capable of good as fellow Jews, who chastised his disciples for calling on God to destroy a Samaritan village, and who asked for a drink from a Samaritan woman – this Jesus had at his core an element of racial prejudice against Canaanites. What does it say to us? Well, for one thing we need to examine our thoughts and actions very carefully when talking about or dealing with people from other cultures. An aunt of mine by marriage died recently after needing care at home for several years. This aunt was sweetness and light to all our family despite battling a physical disability throughout her life. She did a lot of good in her life advocating for disabled people’s rights and had many friends. But when she had to be looked after by carers at home in the UK, we discovered she had a racist streak we had never seen. Her frustration at her situation was turned against immigrant carers (which was most of them, mostly from African countries) in ways she didn’t express to her white carers. My aunt’s brother told us that, growing up in East London in the 1950s, their mother had the same attitude towards immigrants – and so the curse passes from generation to generation.
But the reading also says to us, even if we have these attitudes deep down, for whatever reason, we can acknowledge we are wrong. Not double down and refuse to be corrected. And we should be prepared to be told we are wrong by people whom we might normally ignore. As New Testament Scholar, Joanna Dewey writes: This is the only instance in the extant tradition of Jesus being taught by someone, and that someone is a woman who should not properly be speaking to him at all.
We can also beware of being manipulated by those in power or those seeking power. Throughout the ages, political leaders (from pharaohs to foreign ministers) have sought to put the blame on others – the blame for natural disasters, for systemic failures, or for their own shortcomings. We must be awake to when the political message is a diversion from the real problem, especially when it calls on our baser instincts and buried prejudices.
As political and social commentator, Dr Harpreet Singh writes: “We have been down this road before. Indian, Chinese, Pasifika, immigrant, non-white: minority communities in New Zealand have always been targeted when politicians want an easy scapegoat…. When national leadership treats entire communities as second-class citizens, it gives permission for discrimination to thrive. You do not have to accept this. You do not have to tolerate it. Use your vote to reject political scapegoating and hold them accountable at the ballot box.”*
Paul’s message is that we are all equal in God’s eyes. Jesus showed that we can make God’s realm a reality in this world, not in some heavenly reward after we die. We just have to live the dream.
* Dr Harpreet Singh, substack and Facebook posts, 6 August 2026