Because being a person of faith requires a certain amount of imagination, let us imagine that the person Jesus encounters in the region of Tyre and Sidon was not a lone woman who needed help but an entire desperate ecosystem. The people in this region on the Mediterranean coast were Canaanites, foreigners to the Israelites, almost non-human, creatures to be avoided. Let us imagine the people of Tyre and Sidon as if they harbored danger for the followers of Jesus who at that time were largely Israelites.

If you can do that imagining, let us then see what the woman says as if it is not she who is speaking but other non-humans, other foreigners: the desert itself, the shrubs, the water table, the air above the hot sands, the occasional rain, the insects, scorpions, snakes, and mammals. They shout: “Have mercy on me, Lord, Son of David!”

Why do they shout? They see no hope for their descendants. “My daughter is tormented by a demon.” The water tables that are drying up, the ocean waters that are rising, the pollution of waters all spell fear for the waters of the future. They are tormented by demons.

Jesus, let us imagine, does not know what he can do with this demand to have mercy. It is a cry that cannot be ignored. Its importance is too obvious. Her daughter is not capable of withstanding the forces that attack her. The daughter is wasting away. The demon will not desist. The mother cannot bear to watch what is happening to the promise of the future, the potential of promised life-to-come. If her daughter dies there will be no grandchildren. Her hoped-for identity as grandmother would come to nothing, so she is crying out.

Jesus appears to think he is helpless. He doesn’t say a word to her.

His disciples are even less capable than Jesus in the face of this demon and the woman’s demand. The disciples turn to the easy response: make the woman go away. She annoys them. They cannot bother to listen or to imagine what her pain might be. They have no interest in engaging her, examining her situation, looking at the reality of her claims. Their self-absorption means that all they can muster is to get her to shut up. “She keeps shouting after us.” Jesus, make her stop! they say.

(It is, indeed, tiresome to be constantly bombarded with concern about climate. We don’t know what to do. We shrug. We turn away. We get in our cool homes and vote against what would bring relief to the waters and the trees.)

Jesus doesn’t just do as the disciples require, though; he steps back from the immediacy of the situation to re-situate himself in his calling. He tells her he isn’t supposed to pay attention to her. He’s got other people he has to take care of.

Could it be that this response from Jesus is what we are doing with the cries of the natural world? We have other issues to care about. We have to keep the engines of the economy pulsating. We have to reach into Earth’s treasures so we can build the tools that make our lives convenient: cars and cellphones, bulldozers and chain saws to cut down forests, nuclear weapons, nuclear power, and more. We complain about wind turbines and use the death of  birds as an excuse to oppose them, even though prowling cats are a greater threat to birds. We have to keep burning fossil fuels that hasten atmospheric chaos because we don’t like change. We idolize the systems that we have already set in motion.

Could it be that the woman knew––out of her unspeakable panic––how to help Jesus turn to a new identity as the itinerant preacher and teacher he had come to be?

She gets down on her knees.

(Could we imagine the mountains and the trees not only clapping their hands in praise of the Lord but also getting down on their knees to beg for relief from our disregard?)

She says, “Lord, help me.”

Still Jesus does not extricate himself from the path he is on, his sense of mission. He wasn’t sent to help her. He was sent to care for the people who matter: “the lost sheep of the house of Israel.”

Who in our world are the people who matter, according to our policies, our laws, our law-makers, and our loudest religious leaders? Let us honestly say: the ones who matter are not the poor, the unsheltered, the deported, the dejected, those who have no health care in our time, the islanders whose land is sinking beneath rising seas, climate refugees refused entry at our borders, and everywhere the children. Nor are those who matter the mountains, the seas, the insects, the mitochondria, the endangered everywhere.

We do not care about the woman and her daughter. We do not care about the trees on their knees in front of us every day dried up from heat and drought, burning with wildfire. We do not want to listen.

Finally, Jesus remembers the words of Isaiah to the people when the exiles returned to Jerusalem, finding it still in ruins. Through Isaiah, the Lord said: “Maintain justice, and do what is right…” (Isa 56:1)  

Suddenly, the story shifts.

The woman argues a fine point, throwing back at Jesus the label he has put on her: dog. Compared to the people of the house of Israel, the people who matter to him, she is a nothing who is willing to beg for crumbs. She accepts the name he gives her. She re-directs her detractors force by giving in.

Jesus wakes up. He sees the greatness of her faith. He sees her humility.

The woman gets her hope. Her daughter is healed.

Can we imagine the humility of the natural world as a gift from God? The waters and the forests take our abuse and continue to give us food and shelter and beauty. They are beaten by storms and by our greed. Yet the trees continue to send down their roots, the waters roam over fields and filter through soil and rocks, the fish and mammals and birds find mates and give birth.

Can we imagine the trees clapping because our hearts have been turned to their welfare in the present time and for the future? Can we imagine the rivers gurgling with joy over our promises to help them heal? Can you and I imagine a world in which the word of the Lord blesses the foreigners, brings the forgotten ones to the holy mountain, a place of prayer for all peoples? When we imagine it, we are one step closer to healing the woman’s daughter, giving her, which means us, a living future.

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Hymns to consider:

In ELW:

606      Our Father, We Have Wandered

837      Many and Great, O God

881      Let All Things Now Living

In All Creation Sings:

1065    Can You Feel the Seasons Turning

1070    The Heavens Tell of Your Creative Glory

1071    In Sacred Manner

1072    Abba, Abba, Hear Us