There Ain't Nothing Like an Uppity Woman
- 5 days ago
- 3 min read
There's a portion of a sermon I've preached at every church I've pastored. Sorry, not sorry.
I wrote it in seminary for a New Testament class who asked us to look at this story from a different perspective. I got a B, but only because there was too much colloquial language and not enough proper seminary style writing. This sermon has followed me from pulpit to pulpit ever since. Every time I read Matthew 15 (or Mark's version, where she's called Syrophoenician instead of Canaanite), I find her again: the woman who wouldn't take silence for an answer. I, of course tie it in to the life of the church I'm serving at the time, but she reminds me every time the importance of pushing back and challenging norms.
Maybe you know the story.
A mother's daughter is tormented by - something. She runs to Jesus and begs him to heal her. He doesn't answer — not a word. His disciples want her sent away. And when Jesus finally does speak, it isn't exactly warm: he tells her he was sent for the children of Israel, not for outsiders like her.
I tell this story in first person, in her voice, imagining her telling it to her husband before she ever left the house — the sighs, the doubts, the doorstep arguments, the voice in the back of her head that keeps nudging her back onto the road every time she tries to turn around: There ain't nothin' like an uppity woman.
I know that phrase has a history.
It's been used for generations to put women back in their place — to dismiss the ones who spoke up, who questioned, who refused to sit quietly where they'd been told to sit. But in this Gospel story, the woman who gets called "uppity" turns out to be one of the sharpest theologians in the whole text. She's a woman speaking publicly to a man. She's a foreigner in a religious community that wasn't built for her. She has every reason to stay quiet, and she refuses. She keeps asking. She keeps trusting that God's mercy is wider than the boundaries other people have drawn.
And Jesus lets himself be moved by her. The conversation changes. The circle gets wider.
That's why I keep coming back to her, church after church. She asks a question that never stops being relevant: Who have we decided doesn't belong?
Most of us would never say out loud that someone isn't welcome. We hold the door. We smile. We offer coffee. That kind of hospitality matters. But radical welcome asks something harder — whether people are actually heard, whether everyone has equal dignity and equal voice, whether a teenager wondering if they belong hears "yes" before they hear judgment, whether someone who's carried grief or addiction or rejection discovers that this community sees them first as a beloved child of God.
I wonder sometimes how often God sends "uppity women" into our lives — not just women, but anyone brave enough to challenge what we've assumed. The coworker who asks us to see things differently. The neighbor whose life looks nothing like ours. The newcomer who, just by showing up, reveals that our systems weren't built with everyone in mind. Those people aren't interruptions. They're invitations — invitations to become more like Christ.
Because the good news of this story was never just that one girl was healed. The good news is that God's love keeps overflowing every boundary we build. Every time we think we've settled who's in and who's out, God draws the circle wider.
There is always enough mercy.
There is always enough grace.
There is always room at the table.
There ain't nothing like an uppity woman to challenge assumptions.
To hear the sermon skip ahead to the 38 minute mark:
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