Referencing Matthew 15:21-28, the author says:

This not a story for people who need to think that Jesus always had it together, because it looks like we’ve caught him being mean to a lady because of her ethnicity. At first, he ignores her cries. Then he refuses to help her and compares her people to dogs.

But she challenges his prejudice. And he listens to her challenge and grows in response to it. He ends up healing her daughter. What we may have here is an important moment of self-discovery in Jesus’ life, an enlargement of what it will mean to be who he was. Maybe we are seeing Jesus understand his universality for the first time.

It has been pointed out that the authors of these meditations incorrectly attributed the scriptural reference, and even left out a verse in the quotation they use.  So we can question the professionalism of the publishing team that put this together.

I think, however, that dismissing the scriptural interpretation here as “twisted leftist Screwtape revisionism” misses the point.

Some would reject this meditation outright, on the basis that it claims Jesus didn’t always “have it together.”  Why is the implication that Jesus was not perfect so threatening to the majority of Christians?  Can he truly have been both God and Man, if he was without sin?  Is it not sin that defines humanity in the Biblical worldview?

If I was discussing the Wedding at Cana and suggested that there was plenty of wine until Jesus and his buddies showed up, and that perhaps Jesus was a bit of a drunkard in his youth, I don’t believe the reaction would be so vehement.

Surely the fact that the issue of racism is being raised makes this sting a bit more.  As Attorney General Eric Holder recently noted, we are “essentially a nation of cowards” when it comes to discussing race, and I think the knee-jerk responses here validate Mr. Holder’s claim.  Discussions of race have become so reactionary and convoluted that we now talk of “reverse racism,” and the very act of pointing out or denouncing racism can get one painted with any number of broad brushes.

It seems to me, if you set aside any dogmas about Jesus, the story is one of personal growth, as the meditation states.  Racism is a strong word, but there is a clear indication in the scripture that the woman is initially discounted because of her ethnicity.  Jesus transcends a culturally-inherited bias, and heals the woman’s daughter.

Unfortunately, as usual, it appears most followers of Christ are more interested in arguing fine points of dogma and creating divisions amongst themselves than walking the talk of “love thy neighbor”.