Today’s Gospel always gives me heartburn. Calling a woman a dog and refusing to heal her child seems inconsistent, to put it mildly, with Jesus’s teachings on universal welcome and abundant grace. Why the sudden parsimony over scraps when you just fed five thousand with a few loaves and fish? And didn’t you just roast the Pharisees for putting appearances above acts of faith? And now you turn someone away because she looks a little different? What lesson are we supposed to take from that?

There are many excuses for Jesus’s conduct out there. Some remind us that He has little time and a lot of world to save. The most efficient – and fair - path is to focus on those folks who have spent a few millennia getting ready for you. I must have missed the Jewish fast-pass lanes at Capernaum, but that “Jesus for Jews” reasoning doesn’t stop Him from saving the centurion’s servant or telling His disciples that “many will come from east and west and will eat with Abraham…in the kingdom of heaven” (Mt. 8.5-13). Some frame the incident as a teaching moment: we are all dogs before the throne of God and humility will save us. Very likely true, but not particularly empowering or inspiring. Others merely note that with a smorgasbord of slurs before Him, Jesus opted for the relatively mild “dog,” or more accurately, “puppy.” Well, doesn’t that make you feel warm all over?

We could stretch for other excuses, but at the end of the day that’s all they would be: excuses, and not very satisfying ones at that. Maybe, for a change, we might consider this moment through the eyes of a savior who was as much the Son of Man as the Son of God – a man constantly pestered for miracles, rejected by his neighbors, and disappointed by his best friends, looking for a little R&R by the sea when this lady shows up. Imagine you’re on vacation from the world’s most-demanding job. After driving 18 hours with a miserable 4-year-old and even more miserable 14-year-old, you unpack the car and run upstairs to change when you find a work emergency waiting on your phone. Do you jump into action? Or do you say “hey, not my problem” and pretend you’ve got no service?

Obviously, Jesus does the right thing – He always does the right thing – but that doesn’t mean it was always easy for Him. The path to Tyre and Sidon is no path to Calvary, but there might have been days when it felt like it. Difficulty, as my Amazon Prime yoga instructor likes to remind me, is subjective and changes from day to day. When it takes superhuman strength to roll out of bed or divine intervention to make a snarl a smile, it’s reassuring to think Jesus felt the same. There are more and more of those days as the virus complicates the simplest tasks, and you might feel like a champ when you manage to pick up groceries or, say, turn in a blog post 5 days late. Celebrate those victories, however small, but know you are called – and equipped – to do so much more.