Proper
15 A RCL
Rev.
Adam T. Trambley
August
20, 2017, St. John’s Sharon
This morning’s gospel has a lot to say to us about the some of the
issues that have been filling up our newsfeeds over the past week.
Before this morning’s gospel, Jesus was busy. He fed five thousand people. He healed the crowds. He had a fight with the Pharisees and the
scribes, and then he had to explain what he meant to his own disciples. So Jesus decided to get away. He goes to the district of Tyre and Sidon,
which are on the Mediterranean coast.
Personally, I think preachers getting away for some time on the
Mediterranean coast should probably happen more often than it does. Tyre and
Sidon are Gentile territory. Nobody is supposed to recognize Jesus there, so he
can have a little time to recharge. In
the middle of his “me” time a Canaanite woman of Syrophonecian origin starts
crying out to him for help. She is
literally shouting, “Have mercy on me Lord, Son of David; my daughter is
tormented by a demon.” Jesus goes
through a series of four responses to her, which are not dissimilar to the
responses any of us might make to people that we don’t want to deal with,
especially when they are different from us.
First, Jesus just ignores her.
The Bible says, “But he did not answer her at all.” Maybe if I pretend I can’t hear her, she will
just go away. We know that strategy
never works, and it doesn’t here, either.
Then Jesus says, “Not my problem.”
The woman keeps screaming, and Jesus’ disciples tell him to deal with
her. Of course, they want him to deal
with her by sending the woman away so they can get some peace. Hard to chill with your hummus margarita when
some hysterical mother is shrieking about her demon-possessed daughter. Jesus says, “I was sent only to the lost sheep
of Israel.” Jesus is not saying that no
one will be sent to her. He’s only
saying that it isn’t my job.
Of course, this Canaanite woman isn’t having any of these theoretical
distinctions on the nature of Jesus’ vocation.
She gets right in front of Jesus, kneels down, and says, “Lord, help
me.” She’s not going to be ignored, and
she now is Jesus’ problem, one way or the other. Jesus finally responds to her, and he
responds with probably the hardest saying of his in the entire Bible. He says something we all wish he hadn’t
said. He says, “It is not fair to take
the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.”
Yep, he just called her and her daughter dogs. Apparently in his mind, like in the minds of
many at the time, there were the children of Israel and there were the gentile
dogs. He’s trying to recover his
strength to do his work for the children of Israel, who are his people whom he
loves. Still, we don’t expect this kind
of prejudiced, bigoted dismissal of someone in extreme pain from Jesus.
Gratefully, this name calling is not Jesus’ final response. After Jesus says this dog stuff, the woman
gets in his face. “Yes, Lord,” she says,
“yet even the dogs eat crumbs falling from their masters’ table.” This response is not necessarily a
revolutionary manifesto of equal rights, but she doesn’t much care what Jesus
thinks about Canaanites generally, or even what he thinks of her, she just
wants her daughter healed.
Now when people who are different, especially people who the
culture tells us are inferior, make bold statements like that, we can generally
make one of two responses. One is to be
affronted that someone would step out of line like that. The dismissing term that often gets used is
that someone is “uppity”, meaning they are speaking above the station we
believe they belong in. Usually “uppity”
is a racist word, and if you disagree, think about the last time you heard a
rich, white man called “uppity.” In the
gospel, Jesus could have responded with scorn to this uppity Canaanite woman
who had the audacity to speak so directly to him.
But Jesus didn’t respond in that way. Jesus responded the right way when people who
are different than us make those kind of strong statements. He listened, and he learned, and he loved
more effectively. Jesus acknowledges her
strength by commending her faith and healing her daughter. He sees the child of God before him, learns
something about who she is, and about who he is, and loves her the best way he
can.
Make no mistake, this episode was a turning point for Jesus. Jesus learns and grows from this
encounter. His statement that he was
sent only to the lost sheep of Israel, implying that he can ignore all the
Gentiles, goes out the window after this.
He heals this woman’s daughter, but he doesn’t just stop with her
daughter. The rest of Matthew chapter 15
talks about ways that he is ministering to a bunch of gentiles.
After his Mediterranean vacation, Jesus goes to the Decapolis and
the Sea of Galilee area. That area is
his home, but it is also an area that is filled with Gentiles. When he goes back, he heals everybody. Great crowds come to him and he heals the
mute and the blind and the lame, and everyone is amazed. Then Jesus performs a Gentile-focused
miracle. The crowds have been with him
for three days and they are hungry. We
know how this goes. The disciples tell
Jesus to send them home. Jesus says,
“What food do you have?” The disciples say,
“seven loaves and some fish.” He takes
the bread, blesses it, breaks it, and distributes it. Then the disciples collect seven baskets of
leftovers from the four thousand people that were there. We know that this feeding miracle is to the
Gentiles because of where the miracle happened, but also because of the numbers
involved. Jesus earlier fed five
thousand, and they collected twelve baskets, and twelve is always indicative of
the twelve tribes of Israel, either as Israel or as reformed in the church
through, for example, the twelve apostles.
In this second feeding miracle, however, we hear a lot of sevens, which
was a number representing completeness or perfection. Everything was brought together here. The four thousand people reinforces that, since
the implication is that people came from the four corners of the world. To us, given how we write, we’d wonder why
Matthew didn’t just say, “there were lots of Gentiles there,” but given the
conventions of first century Jewish writing, Matthew is saying that. The encounter with the Canaanite woman in
some way caused Jesus to grow and develop his understanding of who he was and
his ministry, such that he can go from saying, “I was sent only to the lost
sheep of the house of Israel,” to telling his disciples to feed four thousand
Gentiles beside the Sea of Galilee.
So what does this gospel encounter between Jesus and the Canaanite
woman have to say to us this morning? I
think at least two important things.
First, this gospel says that we have to deal with our own
prejudices. We have them and they are
wrong and we need to deal with them.
Jesus was by all accounts a whole lot better than any of us. Yet even he had picked up the attitudes of
his time and his people, and he had to overcome them. We lie if we think we have haven’t
internalized on some level the various prejudices, stereotypes, bigotries, and
ignorances that form the racism prevalent in our day and age. Jesus had internalized the ones in his day. Anyone who says they aren’t on some level
racist is saying that they are better than Jesus, and I doubt that. Anyone who says that Christians wouldn’t be
racist needs to read to our history alongside this week’s newspaper. This gospel story isn’t in the Bible because
we need to see Jesus growing in his understanding of his ministry. This gospel story is in the Bible as caution
for any of us who think we don’t need to deal with the ways we live out our own
prejudices and hurt other people.
Second, this gospel shows us how we can begin to deal with our
prejudices. The best way we can
recognize and deal with them is by encountering other people and listening to
them. Jesus learned by being confronted
by the Canaanite woman who was in his face and totally honest with him. We are only going to learn through some kind
of dialogue. Even with the best
intentions, we will still probably say and do stupid and sometimes hurtful
things, just like Jesus did. While those
bumbling mistakes are really not OK, they are probably the only way
forward. We have to get together with
people who aren’t like us, bumble around as best we can, and really
listen. In that listening comes
learning, both about them and about ourselves.
As we learn, we can ultimately come to love, and love is always the goal
of Christian life. This work of
overcoming racism and building loving relationships is not easy – anyone who is
married can tell you that getting to a deeper, loving relationship is hard
work. We might have to hear things about
ourselves we don’t want to hear. We
might have to acknowledge the pain we have caused. We might have to acknowledge that moving
through reconciliation to love might cost us something, maybe a lot. As one colleague said, if this work seems
easy, we aren’t doing it right.
As individuals, we are called to make the time to be with people who
are different from us, especially those who are different from us that may not
have their voices heard. We are called
to go across racial divides, cultural divides, linguistic divides, and even
religious divides, just like Jesus did.
We are called to make time for people on their terms, to listen to them
seeking not to be understood but to understand, to learn whatever we can, and
to love them in the ways that they most need to be loved. This work can happen in many contexts. One of the reasons we take mission trips to
places like New York City or the Dominican Republic is to be able to undertake
this work, but it also can and should happen much closer to home.
As a community of faith, we are also called to undertake this work, which we do on a number of levels through different ministries. However, we are also going to do take a specific step next week as a response to the racism that has been proclaimed more openly of late. We know that racism has always been present, but in recent days it seems to be acquiring a sheen of acceptability that must be countered. So St. John’s is taking a field trip. Next Sunday, after the 10:00 service, anybody who can go is invited to join us at 11:00am at the Second Missionary Baptist Church in Farrell on Spearman Avenue. The address and directions are in the bulletin. The drive there is less than ten minutes, and we’ll streamline our 10:00 service next week so we can join them in a timely fashion. The pastor at Second Missionary Baptist is Pastor Russell Penn who I’ve gotten to work with on a number of things over the years and is a true brother in Christ. They are a very hospitable congregation and want to welcome us. I don’t know where this will go, but hopefully we can start building deeper relationships that God can use for something good.
Just so you have as sense of what will happen at the service,
first of all, God will show up, because you can’t do this kind of thing without
God showing up. They don’t have a liturgical service like ours, but there is
about an hour of worship, singing, and praying, and then the sermon is at the
end. Usually Pastor Penn is in the
pulpit by noon or so and preaches about a half-hour, which means you can expect
to be done by around 12:30. Some things
will be different, some might be the same.
Our goal is to go, to listen, to learn whatever God has for us, and to
love them as best we can. Part of that
love is just being present with them as brothers and sisters in Christ at a
time when too many people are saying they aren’t really our brothers and
sisters. Another part of that love would
be bringing something to put in the collection plate, because that is part of
what we do in church, and we want to bless them every way we can. If you have other questions, let me know, but
I hope you’ll plan to come down with us next Sunday. You can come to 8:00 and then go there at
11:00; you can come to 10:00 here and then go down to Second Missionary Baptist
at 11:00; or you can just go there at 11:00, and your Sunday morning obligation
is certainly fulfilled. When you get
there, just go in, find a seat, and join in.
We don’t all need to sit together or be in one place. Some things will
likely feel uncomfortable, and that’s OK.
Our comfort isn’t nearly as important as God’s call to us or God’s love
working through us.
