Kanohi ki te kanohi means face-to-face. It also, somewhat like in English, carries the sense that not only are two individuals literally seeing each other, but that through physical presence a relationship is being built. And with relationship comes commitment.

In my August reflections, I’ve been exploring the edges of prayer. The edges of language, the edge of image, the edge of knowinglessness. Through this lens of prayer, I want to look at two familiar passages of scripture today.

The first comes from the Jacob saga. You remember him. Jacob the trickster. The son of Isaac, who through sleight of hand acquired the patriarch’s blessing that was the due of his twin Esau. An irrevocable blessing, as some inheritances are.

But tricksters always think gain is about winning. And sometimes the consequences of their trickery come back to haunt them. Like in the reading today.

Esau, the brother, the twin Jacob stole from, is now, many years later, advancing towards his brother with 400 armed men. And Jacob is worried. He can’t match Esau’s might. There is no tricksy way out.

He can ply his brother with gifts (which he does). He can try to say sorry (which he sort of does and doesn’t. Jacob doesn’t really do humble). Or he can pray toa God that he believes is more powerful than 400 armed men, that is to say, petition the God like he’d petition a monarch. (Jacob, in all humbleness, reminds the deity that he’s promised to save Jacob’s hide).

And because Jacob is wily, and despite his petition to Esau and to God, Jacob implements Plan B. Which is to save his sons, wives, concubines, daughters, cattle and the like. His resources, including his after-life (the sons), so to speak. They all cross the ford of Jabbok, leaving Jacob alone on the far side.

Then the story gets interesting.

The name of the ford gives us a clue. Jabbok means ‘cross-roads’. Jacob is at across road. But what sort of cross?

The text says ‘And there ‘someone’ (a mortal) wrestled with Jacob until dawn,’ eventually wounding him in the hip. And, we might ask, where did this mortal wrestler come from and who is he/she?

The tradition has called this mysterious stranger an angel, or God in human form. But the Hebrew text has a dizzying verbal construction leaving the reader (and later translators) with the idea that Jacob and the Other are mirror images of one another – Jacob in effect wrestling with himself, or figuratively wrestling with his twin Esau. Indeed, in the next chapter Jacob says of Esau, ‘seeing your face is like seeing the face of God’. v.30 And Jacob named the place Peniel - “Face of God”- because I have seen God, kanohi ki te kanohi, yet my life was spared.

What does all this tell us about prayer? Or better, this type of prayer, for not all prayer is so dramatic, or so crisis initiated.

Firstly, God is not who we think God is. God is not a monarch on high who is going to weigh up our petitions and exercise mercy or not.

Secondly, God is not absent either. Just because we petition the deity, (in Jacob’s case ‘bargaining’), and the deity seemingly ignores us, doesn’t mean the deity is not present.

Thirdly, this deliberately created confusion around the identity of the Other is in effect to say Jacob was wrestling with himself, with his divided self, with his past, and with his brother… and through all and in all was ‘the face of God’. There was no separation. God was closer than his breathing, through all and inall, including his past and future.

As it was for Jacob, so it is for us.

Lastly, Jacob does not come away from this kanohi ki te kanohi unmarked. He is changed. He will walk differently in the future. Not that he won’t continue to make ego-driven mistakes. But he is changed from this encounter with self/twin/God. This kanohi ki te kanohi has established a different kind of relationship, especially with the deity, but will Jacob have the commitment that this relationship can demand?

The second reading today is Matthew’s account of Jesus and the Canaanite (in Mark, Syro-Phoenician) woman.

There is very clearly a racial slur in this passage. Said by Jesus to the woman. And that’s a problem for all of us who want to think of Jesus’ as perfect, or sinless, or the second person of the trinity. Jesus is not meant to call anyone, particularly a gentile, a ‘dog’.

Now all sorts of commentators have wriggled and squiggled around this, a bit like New Zealand First voters squirming around Winston’s racial slurs. ‘Oh, he meant this…’ ‘Oh, you don’t understand him…’ Some of which might be true. But it is also true that the recipient of the slur feels degraded, more vulnerable than they were before the utterance was made. And so too all other gentile women. Of whom there were many.

I think readers of the Bible need to let the characters be products of their time. We don’t have to, for example, agree with everything Jesus allegedly did and spoke. Or agree with everything Paul allegedly did and spoke. Or Mary. Or Peter. Or any other character.

That’s not to say we can’t uncover some of the interpretive layering that have been put upon the authentic Jesus or Paul or others. That’s not to say we can’t re-imagine Jesus or Paul or others taking sides in one of the many moral and politic debates of today. As long as we’re aware of what we’re doing. As long as we are aware that we are reinterpreting the Bible for our time. As the Church has always done.

It’s similar to Christopher Nolan reinterpreting the Odyssey, trying to connect Homer’s poem to today’s issues and sensitivities, and engaging with the critics of such an interpretive enterprise, without pretending that his version of the Odyssey conveys the same messages as Homer’s.

Back to the text. More remarkable than the racial slur, is the woman’s response. Rather than take the hit and cower, or turn away, she responds to his face. V.27‘Yes, Rabbi, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters’ table.’ She takes the metaphorical base of the slur, remoulds it, and serves it back. She engages in rhetorical combat and bests him.

Most women of that time, and most women in history, when confronted by a patriarchal putdown don’t answer back to power. For the results usually aren’t good. Rather you put your head down and survive. But not this time. Not this woman.

She turns this common insult (insulting to dogs too – just saying) into enjoining a practice of mercy (which the dogs would appreciate – just saying).  And mercy, as Rabbi Jesus well knows, is along entrenched biblical teaching and practice.

Remarkable too is Jesus hearing the response from the woman, quelling any threat to his mana he might feel, responding enthusiastically to her affirmation of mercy(for isn’t mercy at the heart of everything Jesus was on about?), and responding enthusiastically to her strength in crossing the gender, religious, racial, and maybe class barrier to speak her truth. To all present he proclaims about the woman: “Great is your faith!”

Kanohiki te kanohi. Face to face. Male, Jew, exalted faith leader, blessed by God comes face to face with female, Gentile, mother worried sick about her daughter. Different faces different. They argue, as difference usually does. The woman wins the rhetorical exchange, which is unusual. The man concedes and praises his opponent. Which is maybe more unusual. They part on good terms. End of story? Remember my question earlier. Kanohi ki te kanohi is about relationship. Will Jesus or the woman have the commitment that the consequences of this relationship can demand?

Let’s put on again the lens of prayer. What is prayer here?

Here’s a list of maybes:

-       Maybe prayer is seeking health for your child no matter where it will lead you.

-       Maybe prayer is an action of courage – to go, ask, to have the door closed in your face, and to stick your foot in the doorway, stopping the closure, and push back.

-       Maybe prayer is knowing that at the heart of all life that is worth living there is mercy, and for all to know redemption all will need to know mercy. Even exalted faith leaders.

-       Maybe prayer is disruption. You are going where you need to go (‘to the lost of the house of Israel’ v.24)when a bothersome woman, with a bothersome need, who is not on the runsheet, affronts you, and she will not be brushed off.

-       Maybe prayer is conceding that you may be wrong, probably are, and the best you can do for your injured pride is praise the one who gave you the injury.

-       Maybe prayer is being face to face, kanohi ki te kanohi, with need, feeling overwhelmed by it, and hiding that feeling by brushing off the bothersome.

-       Maybe prayer is all these things. And maybe God is through all and in all these things.

I’m guessing. And hoping.

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