That time Jesus did a growth

What if true holiness is not rigid perfection, but listening and changing your mind?

Matthew 15:21-28

The Faith of a Canaanite Woman

²¹ Leaving that place, Jesus withdrew to the region of Tyre and Sidon. ²² A Canaanite woman from that vicinity came to him, crying out, “Lord, Son of David, have mercy on me! My daughter is demon-possessed and suffering terribly.”

²³ Jesus did not answer a word. So his disciples came to him and urged him, “Send her away, for she keeps crying out after us.”

²⁴ He answered, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of Israel.”

²⁵ The woman came and knelt before him. “Lord, help me!” she said.

²⁶ He replied, “It is not right to take the children’s bread and toss it to the dogs.”

²⁷ “Yes it is, Lord,” she said. “Even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their master’s table.”

²⁸ Then Jesus said to her, “Woman, you have great faith! Your request is granted.” And her daughter was healed at that moment.

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In this passage, Jesus commits a Christological heresy. Rude of him to be honest! You’d think the Son of God would have more respect for our well-honed theological formulations, but in this inconvenient passage, Jesus has the nerve, the absolute gall, to evolve toward greater consciousness. Many interpreters have bent over backwards to unsee it, but when scholars study this passage without the blinders of dogma, the Bible is clear: Jesus does a growth.

This passage is an excellent example of how preconceived ideas of what Jesus is supposed to be like override what the text actually shows us. In this passage, Jesus is confronted with a cultural blind spot. As a Jew under Roman occupation, Jesus experienced forms of oppression and marginalization. But as a male Rabbi, he also experienced privilege within his culture, especially compared to women and Gentiles. For the Canaanite woman in this story to even approach someone like Jesus would have been shocking. Matthew calls her a “Canaanite” on purpose—by Jesus’ time, there were no more Canaanites as a people group. But for Matthew’s Jewish readers, this was a loaded word. The Canaanites were the ancient enemies of Israel, the ultimate outsiders. By calling her a Canaanite, Mathew saying that she was not only foreign, but unacceptable; he is setting up his readers to respond to her just as Jesus does.

At first, Jesus follows the script of his own culture: He ignores her. When she persists, he says he is only sent to Israel. When she keeps pushing, he dismisses her with an insult—comparing her to a dog. Some commentaries have a very difficult time with this side of Jesus, and they try to tap-dance around the text by saying that maybe he was just testing her. But his use of “dogs” was a common insult for foreigners that reinforced the boundary between Jewish insiders and Gentile outsiders—this is no test, it’s a rejection based on her marginalization. Jesus is, as Sharon Ringe puts it, “caught with his compassion down.” But she does not accept his exclusion.

She flips the metaphor, claiming even the dogs get the crumbs. In that moment, she embodies what Dr. Mitzi Smith calls 'womanist sass.’ Womanist theology considers God from the perspective of racially marginalized women, just like this Canaanite woman, who are historically dismissed. For the silenced, speaking up to power is resistance. Her sassy response is a bold refusal to accept the status quo. She dares to talk back, take up space, and challenge the hierarchical power dynamic that Jesus was caught up in as a male and a racial insider. In doing so, she was reaching across a cultural boundary, despite Jesus’ otherness to her, and calling Jesus into a fuller vision of God’s kingdom. Jesus’ eyes are opened (such is the power of sass). He sees her humanity, and he does something remarkable: He changes. He moves from exclusion to connection. He is softened and transformed by her faith. This woman of color called Jesus back into the Kingdom of God.

‘The one with the crumby dog’ by Ally Barret

Perhaps you are struggling with a Jesus who can be transformed. But if we believe that Jesus was fully human, why are we so resistant to the idea that Jesus may have actually learned something from this woman?

To Encounter God is to Change

We don’t like to admit change for ourselves, and we are certainly uncomfortable seeing it in Jesus. We don’t even like our politicians to change—we call them flip-floppers. And yet, I wish more of them would flip-flop towards justice and equality! Change is essential, and should be welcomed. To be alive is to change. And certainly, to encounter God, is to encounter change.

The God of the Bible, especially the God we meet in Jesus, is not the static, rigid god of fundamentalism, but a fluid and dynamic Spirit of energetic love, always urging humanity forward into greater degrees of belovedness. God is not just found in the past, in a fixed tradition, but in the becoming— as we move toward love, we rise and converge to meet God.

The Holiness of Softening

Growing up, I was taught that holiness looked like rigidity—holding fast to the objective, unchanging truth, refusing to waver. It meant standing on God’s inerrant word, unmoved by culture. Today, many conservatives warn against “toxic empathy,” accusing liberals of emotional manipulation in advocating for marginalized groups like trans people. But what if holiness is not found in an unbending principle? What if true holiness is becoming softer, not more rigid?

What if we are at our most holy when we are struck by the divinity and humanity in another, and our hearts open to someone we had previously excluded? What if holiness is not holding the line, but erasing it?

We are taught to fear change—to a fundamentalist it sounds like compromise. When people come out of the closet or transition their gender, they often lose friends and family. I’ve heard many stories of parents whose children came out, and they were warned by religious leaders not to affirm their children— that would be letting emotions drive their beliefs. They were told that faithfulness meant refusing to change for the sake of their child. But what could be a better reason to change than our relationships with fellow divine image bearers? The greatest reason to change is the person in front of us.

Icon of Jesus and the Canaanite Woman

When I look back on my deconstruction journey, I see that engaging in empathy, stepping outside the cultural blinders of my own privilege, and changing for the sake of others—this has been the most holy thing I have done.

An Ever-Widening Embrace

One beautiful thing I’ve noticed is that this kind of change (you could even call it repentance) is a skill, a practice. We get better at it the more we do it, and every time we get closer to the heart of God. My friend Stan Mitchell once told me that as a kid, he didn’t just believe non-Christians were going to hell—as a dyed-in-the-wool Pentecostal he even believed that the Baptists were going to hell! He said the most important change he ever made was the very first one: simply deciding that maybe the Baptists could be real Christians too. And once he made that shift, it wasn’t so hard to ask, “Could maybe even the Catholics count?” And if he could loosen up his dogma enough to make room for them, why not faithful people from other religions? Why not queer people? Why not… everybody? Stan ultimately saw what Jesus saw—The divine embrace of grace is wide enough for everyone.

So does Jesus sin in this story? It’s an interesting question, but one that this passage doesn’t quite answer. Sin is often framed as separation from God, yet here Jesus’ growth brings him closer to the kingdom vision of radical love. If Jesus did not learn and grow, he would not be fully human. If he did not have cultural blind spots to recognize and prejudices to wrestle with, he would be nothing like us. We will all be confronted with these prejudices and blindspots—changing is not the sin; the sin would be not to change. Jesus turns away from an exclusionary mindset, and abandons a worldview that categorized people by their race or gender and instead embraces humanity and connection. Jesus “repents,” and he does it for the best possible reason: the person in front of him.

The change Jesus models for us is the one he invites us all into. It is an essential act, maybe the essential act of true spirituality. It is fundamental to the kingdom of God. Every one of us has a different set of people who are “in” and “out.” But the kingdom of God is found in the movement—

from exclusion to embrace,

from judgment to curiosity,

from certainty to openness,

From fear to love.

Holiness is not standing still. We join Jesus in becoming.

And if we resist? If we get stuck? Well, thank God for those who will sass us into the kingdom.

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For this breath prayer, consider whose voice you would be most likely to ignore? Who would heart be tempted to dehumanize? Visualize seeing them, hearing them, and honoring God in them. As you breathe, picture the expansive embrace of grace widening.

Inhale: Open my heart…

-HOLD- (4 seconds)

Exhale: …to those I resist.

Inhale: Teach me to listen…

-HOLD- (4 seconds)

Exhale: …and be transformed.