Matthew 15

Book of Matthew: Chapter 15

The Faith of a Canaanite Woman (Matthew 15:10-28)

Intergenerational worship

Intergenerational worship ideas from Intergen Australia - compiled by Chris Barnett

Gospel Conversations

The story of Jesus and the Canaanite (or Syro-Phonecian) woman is one of those that tends to strike dread into the heart of the preacher. What do we do with this Jesus who seems to be acting so out of character with all he is and tells others to be? Join Rev. Michael, Bishop Kelvin, Rose and Rev. Anne from the Dunedin Diocese, as they puzzle out the story from some very different angles.

Children's talk

How far would you go to help a friend?
What would you be willing to sacrifice? (pause for discussion)
How far would you go to help someone that you didn’t like? (Pause)

In today’s story, a woman whose daughter was full of demons was desperate to get Jesus to help her. Well, we know Jesus loves everyone so it would be normal to think that Jesus would help the woman. However, there is something that this story is trying to get across that has nothing to do with the daughter with demons being healed. In Jesus’ time, people who were Jewish believed that there were two kinds of people; those who were Jewish and those that weren’t. And Jews didn’t mix with non Jews. The woman in today’s story wasn’t a Jew and she would have known that Jews didn’t like mixing with non Jews. But she took a risk for her daughter and begged Jesus to help heal the daughter.

At first Jesus didn’t answer her, but she kept asking, risking being embarrassed, verbally abused or worse because of her faith that Jesus could help.

Finally Jesus told her that ‘It isn’t right to take food away from children and feed it to dogs.” This is quite important because Jewish people sometimes referred to non Jews as dogs as a kind of insult.

Yet even after this, the woman still persisted and replied that even dogs get the crumbs the fall from the table.

Then Jesus did what we would expect, he healed the daughter.

Although we today may not see this as remarkable, it would have been a big deal to the disciples because Jesus made two important statements with this act. One, he confirmed that he had been sent primarily for the Jewish people. But Jesus also showed that we need to break through walls such as Jew versus Non Jew.

A lesson for us today is perhaps to look at our own lives and pin point places that we may have been using differences with other people as an excuse for not getting to know them. If Jesus can do it, so can we.

Questions to talk about

How far would you go to help a friend?
How far would you go to help someone that you didn’t like? Why?
Can you think of any examples – maybe from the news, around the world or in your own context- where people are being hurt just because someone doesn’t like them?
What can we do – as individuals, and/or as a group- to help those people?

Craft - giant celebration you card

What you need:
A large piece of paper, a large envelope, stamps, magazines/newspapers, felts and crayons, glue, scissors

Preparation:

The whole point of this exercise is to create a big group letter/card to send to someone celebrating who they are. It is a good idea for you to prepare earlier two or three ideas for people you could send it to. You might like to choose someone in the parish that the children don’t know very well. You could find out what rosters they are on for the parish, and what they do for a job etc
Or you might like to choose articles from the newspaper that talk about people who have been hurt that you could send a letter to.
Or pick a local hospital, vet, shopkeeper, person in the community and do it for them. You will need an address for them if they aren’t in dropping off distance.

What to do:

With the children’s help, choose who you want to do the giant celebrating you card for.
Get the children to brainstorm about that person. What they know about them, what they do, why they wanted to choose this person etc.
Decorate the card.
Inside get one of the older children (or yourself) to write a message to the person. You might like to explain why you are sending them this card! Include an appropriate bible verse if you like. Get all the children to sign it.
Decorate the envelope. Put the card in the envelope and post or deliver it.

Game - my name is ... and I like ...

Preparation: you need a circle of chairs or cushions. There should be one less than the amount of people in the group

What to do: Have everyone sit on a chair including any leaders. The person who is running the game should stand in the middle of the circle. Explain that the person in the middle is to complete the following ‘My name is ……… and I ………….’. eg My name is Annette and I like the colour red.

If anyone sitting in the circle agrees with the statement (eg they like red too) then they must get up from their seat and swap places with someone else. The person in the middle has to try and get a seat. Who ever is left without a seat becomes the person in the middle and starts the next round by saying ‘My name is …….. and I ………..’

This is a great name game, and gets rid of lots of energy. It’s also a great game for getting to know people.