A reading aid. The German text is the original.

A woman calls after him because her daughter is ill. He does not answer her. No refusal, no explanation, nothing.

Anyone who has ever asked for something and received no answer knows this as the most uncomfortable form of rejection. You do not know whether you were heard. You do not know whether you were too quiet or wanted the wrong thing. You cannot even object, because there is nothing there to object to. Just silence.

As every Sunday, we listen to what comes across to us from the texts of the liturgy. For me, today is about what happens after the silence.

Because then he does say something, only not to her. The disciples ask him to get rid of her, she is shouting after them. To me that also sounds like wanting to stay among your own. His answer goes to the disciples: he was sent only to the lost sheep of Israel. She stands there and hears her case discussed in the third person, with a reason that leaves her nothing. There is no arguing with a remit.

She comes closer and throws herself down in front of him. Lord, help me.

Now he speaks to her. It is not right to take the children's bread and throw it to the dogs.

He calls her a dog. A woman asking for her child.

Instead of giving up, she fights. Yes, Lord, but even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters' table. She stays inside his image and turns it around.

At that he changes his position. Woman, your faith is great. Let it be done as you wish. From that moment her daughter is well.

The healing at the end is not what occupies me this Sunday. He had given his refusal a reason and stated it twice, the second time hurtfully. Then the woman he has just turned away contradicts him, and he accepts it.

Anyone who has once formulated a remit will usually defend it, and the more uncomfortable the conversation becomes, the more firmly, because after all one has reasons and has even explained them. To give way then is to admit that the explanation did not hold.

What is hard to bear is above all that the same person calls her a dog and, a few sentences later, tells her she is right. A sentence like that, from him, surely not. Reading it, you look straight away for something to take the edge off. Perhaps it was not meant like that. Perhaps he only wanted to test her. You keep looking until the picture holds together again.

We do exactly the same with people. Someone is the warm one or the hard one, the generous one or the one who always has to be right, and whatever will not fit the picture, we adjust until it does. Meanwhile both are at work in everyone, the striving for standing and the striving for belonging, at the same time and not one after the other. The sentence about the dogs and the sentence in which he tells her she is right come from the same hour and the same man.

Once someone has been filed away, we no longer expect them to turn around. And someone who notices he has been filed away rarely takes anything back.

Zugemutet reads the four texts of the Catholic lectionary each Sunday for what they say about living together. Nothing is chosen.

Here are the Text for this Sunday