The video of a transgender Presbyterian preacher who is known colloquially as ‘Vicar Jenny’ made the rounds on social media after part of the presentation blasted Jesus for His supposed maltreatment of a Canaanite woman as told in Matthew 15:21-28. In the parable, Jesus first ignores the woman on account of her not being Israeli.
Slamming the Messiah, Vicar Jenny makes no equivocation about her disgust at the actions and speech of Jesus, offering no nuanced interpretation. “I know it is uncomfortable to think Jesus was wrong, but I want to assure you Jesus can be wrong because being wrong is not the same thing as being sinful. It is one thing to uphold systemic oppression; it is another thing to let it go unquestioned until it is pointed out to you, and then what matters is how you respond,” she said.
“So then the disciples come up to Jesus, and they’re like, “Would you please just get rid of this woman, this Canaanite woman? She’s got no business with us. Get rid of her. So Jesus agrees. All right, I’ll get rid of her, and he tells her, “I have not come to help you. I have been sent only to the children of Israel, but she insists, and so he gets grumpy, and he says it is not right to give the children’s bread to dogs. Dogs, in Koine Greek, the word is kynerion. In fact, this word is a derivative of kaon, which means dog. Kairion means little dog,” she continued.
Not done, the woke reverend focused on the language used. “It’s actually worse than it seems. There have been arguments that the diminutive makes it softer, right? But a slur is a slur is a slur, and dog was used as a slur during this time. It was very common in first-century Mediterranean culture for Jewish people to refer to Gentile people as dogs because dogs were unclean animals. Dogs were scavengers; they didn’t follow kosher Rules. Dogs lick the blood. Dogs, according to Proverbs, return to the scene of their own vomit, and we all know what they do once they get there,” she went on.
“So dogs had become a slur used by Judeans to refer to people who were non-Jews. Gentiles were considered unclean because they don’t follow the law. The same thing that the Pharisees just complained. Jesus’s disciples were doing, and Jesus defended his disciples by changing our understanding of the law. Now Jesus is doing it to this woman, calling a Gentile woman, a Canaanite woman, unclean, calling her a dog to her face,” she stated.
“Honestly, I don’t think calling her a little dog softens that blow. If anything, it makes it worse, because he’s talking to her in a way that demeans her. Once he has the suffering shown to him, once he has the unfairness and the cruelty shown to him, he understands, and he broadens his mission. He has listened to this woman, he has listened to the marginalized, he has listened to the one who is cast out, and he changes,” she said.
“This is why Jesus is not being sinful in this moment. He’s wrong, absolutely wrong. You don’t call people a dog, but unlike the Pharisees who refuse to change, Jesus acknowledges he was wrong and then does something about it. Matthew is showing us in Jesus a person who can learn from mistakes because mistakes are not sins. You make mistakes. I make mistakes. Even Jesus made a mistake. What mattered is how he responded to it. He changed,” she finished in the clip.