Many people want to be the people other people think about.
There’s a preoccupation with being the topic of every conversation, the focus of every moment, the Main Character. Part and parcel: certain phrases we toss about on social media posts, in self-help books, and in our real world conversations.
Likely you’ve heard them:
"If you can't run with the big dogs, stay on the porch!"
"Go big or go home!"
"Cookies are for closers!"
There are many, rendered all sorts of ways, but their messaging boils down to one thing: You should really want to be one of those people—a closer, a winner, a big dog.
But there's another, darker, side to that message: If you’re not a winner, you are, somehow, lesser. There’s a not-so-subtle subtext that you're either among the elite, or . . . you're not worth our consideration.
It's not really a new thing. We've been caught up with being exceptional for quite some time. Decades. Centuries. Millennia.
In Matthew this week, Jesus is confronted by a non-Jewish woman. She is seeking His intervention on behalf of her daughter who is besieged by demons.
Jesus ignores her. (Wait. What?!)
But she keeps following Him, calling after Him, never letting up, really advocating on behalf of her suffering child. Even His disciples beg Jesus to address her—specifically, to send her away. Eventually, Jesus does engage with her, but the reader gets another shock.
Jesus does not give her what she's asked for.
He tells her that He was sent to the "lost sheep" of Israel. In other words: "Not you." Then, when she persists, Jesus adding insult to injury, calls her a dog. He tells her it would not be right for the "little dogs" (house pets—as opposed to the big, feral dogs that ran in packs in those days) to have the food intended by the master for His children. He is telling her she is one of the "little dogs," and, therefore, not due anything from Him
Jesus is astonished by her response: "Even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from the master's table."
How often do you think Jesus is astonished by something we say or do? I can’t imagine it’s often. Here, Jesus is so affected by her perspective, He praises her faith. Hers is a faith that existed despite the absolute absence of any reason to believe it would produce a benefit for her or her daughter. In His astonishment, He grants her request.
We need to be like this woman—one of the "little dogs” in this world. We should seek Jesus even if we are convinced that we are in no position to demand His attention, much less His action on our part.
Life is not about whether we're winners or losers, whether we're closers, or even if we can run with the big dogs. Desiring excellence can be a good thing. But it raises the question: With whom do we associate when we pursue that desire?
Maybe we should have been running with the little dogs all along.
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"The task is, not so much to see what no one has yet seen; but to think what nobody has yet thought, about that which everybody sees."
—Erwin Schrödinger
PHOTO: Adobe Express filtered through Photoshop Express
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Join us Friday morning for DaySpring’s Lectionary Breakfast. We meet at 8:00 on Zoom* and in Waco in the back function room at Our Breakfast Place. Good food, good folk, spending an hour with a good God.
Blessings,
Steve
*Zoom link (Zoom allows you to mute the camera and the microphone if you don’t wish to be seen or heard):
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/89947678414
SCRIPTURES FOR SUNDAY AND THE COMING WEEK
Find them here:
https://lectionary.library.vanderbilt.edu/texts/?y=17134&z=p&d=69
Print them from here:
https://lectionary.library.vanderbilt.edu/wp-content/uploads/pdfs/Ax_Proper15.pdf
Genesis 45:1-15
Psalm 133
Isaiah 56:1, 6-8
Psalm 67
Romans 11:1-2a, 29-32
Matthew 15: (10-20), 21-28
Proper 15 (20) (August 16, 2026)
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