She said, "Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their master’s table."

It certainly isn’t right to take food away from hungry children and give it to dogs instead. But it seems so out of character for Jesus to throw these words into a poor, distracted, woman’s face. "He went about doing good and healing all that were oppressed of the devil." But why then is he so reluctant to heal a sick child here? Saint Paul keeps telling us that there is no narrowness at all in Christ, but how then explain his strange reluctance to go beyond the walls of nation, saying to this foreigner, "I am not sent but to the lost sheep of the house of Israel?"

One thing we may be sure of as we ponder this exchange between our Lord and this woman with a sick child. There was bluntness, but no…