Sermon 8/20/17 Matthew
15:10-28
Grace and peace to you
from God our Father and our Lord, Jesus Christ.
Amen
Nevertheless
she persisted.
For
some in this room that’s a political hand grenade even to say out loud. It
either feels like a rallying cry or an offense. It may either straighten your
spine in affirmation or in irritation.
But
persistence has been happening long before it became part of the cultural and political
blogosphere or 24 hour news cycle.
SHE
persisted because her daughter was suffering. Tormented by a demon. And as a
mother, she was willing to go to any length to save her. I’ll bet we have a lot
of persistent mothers in that way here today.
She
was even willing to approach this teacher. This enemy teacher who had a
reputation for healing and for mercy.
For
that’s what he was for her. An enemy. Son of David. And she would have known
that for him, she was an enemy too. His people had hated hers for centuries.
But
somewhere along the line someone must have told her “He serves a God of
Justice. Of mercy. He will help you.” So she took a chance.
At
first anyway, he was unwilling to help. And not just unwilling. He was mean. He
seemed cruel. Not like anything she’d heard about him. He gave in to his
disciples’ shouts to send her away when she begged him for help. He called her
a dog.
Maybe
she was used to that. Maybe he wasn’t the first. Maybe she’d been called worse
even. She let it just roll off her back as if she were used to it.
But
she persisted, turning his own words and his canine image against him.
“Lord,
yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their master’s table.”
And
it seems that was when he saw it. Maybe he’d just been distracted. Maybe he had
focused too much on how his people had hated the Canaanites for centuries and
held that against her. Maybe he’d simply been testing her or giving an example
about the Pharisees he’d just condemned.
No
one knows. We can’t crawl into Jesus’ mind and discover what it was he was
thinking when he called her a dog.
But
what we can see in that moment, what he shows us in that moment is that at
least then he remembered the words from Isaiah:
Maintain justice and do what is right …For
my house shall be called a house of prayer for ALL peoples.
For
all peoples. Even foreigners. He remembered.
He
remembered this reminder of who his people were called to be. He remembered
God’s promise to Abram that his people were to be a blessing not simply to themselves
but to the nations. To the world.
He
remembered that the holy house of God is for everyone.
He
remembered what the Kingdom of God was, just as his follower Paul would later
remember and remind us that there is no longer Jew or Greek; slave or free… or I’m
sure you can come up with a few others.
We
are one.
A
woman persisted and she reminded Jesus of that message. An ENEMY woman
persisted and he remembered that message. She was audacious and tenacious;
offensive and impudent; determined, and yes…dogged.
And
Jesus heard her. Saw her. He saw a faith that he called great: the first and
only time in this gospel of Matthew that he called a faith great.
A
faith in a God of justice. A faith in a God of deliverance. A faith in a God of
ALL.
Jesus
saw this faith in this woman and his vision expanded. He remembered Isaiah. He
remembered that justice is not just a vague vision meant for a select few. It
isn’t just for our tribe or our religion or our skin color or political bent. But
it is a specific vision meant to save even a woman who was the enemy: the
outsider.
That’s
the vision we as Christians have inherited. One that says that ALL are welcome
to the house of prayer. All. All. ALL.
And
when anyone in our Christian tradition says otherwise – when they say no to
that vision of ALL, ALL, ALL, – well, there’s the rub.
What
then?
Because
I’m guessing I don’t need to tell you how wide and expansive the love of our
God is. I’m guessing you know it. I don’t need to tell you that Jesus isn’t
only like us. That God doesn’t simply share our views of the world here in
Chester County Pennsylvania in the United States of America.
I
believe we all know that already. But
is knowing it enough?
Or
must we persist in living it as if we know it as well. Showing the world we
know as well.
So when
someone claims a narrative counter to this inclusive justice of God, or
Christianity, is it enough to know that it is wrong or do we also remember to
denounce it as wrong.
To
remind those who say otherwise that for God in Christ ALL means ALL.
To
remind them that every single time we draw a line in the sand between who is in
and who is out – who is brother and who is other – God in Christ will show up
on the other side of that line and embody the very person we have named our
enemy.
When
anyone in our Christian tradition says “no” to that vision of God’s inclusive love
and justice and deliverance, we are called to resist that claim. We are called
to persist in our view of God’s expansive love, and be vigilant to help those
who are being excluded from it.
Sometimes
the voice that reminds us is from a mother crying out for justice for a suffering
daughter: pleading for healing for her child, persisting and moving mountains
to get the enemy teacher to see her. To hear her. To help her.
Sometimes
it's a Charlottesville mother crying out for righteous action after her
daughter was slain while protesting the white supremacist rally that brought
violence and hatred to that city.
Susan
Bro likely didn’t expect to wake up one morning and be a voice crying for
justice in the wilderness.
It
was her 32-year-old daughter Heather Heyer who was the activist. And unlike the
Canaanite woman, there was nothing Susan could do to save her daughter.
Yet
her daughter’s passion would move her to cry out.
“They
tried to kill my child to shut her up. Well guess what?” she said at Heather’s
memorial. “You just magnified her. I’d rather have my child, but by golly if
I’ve got to give her up, we’re going to make it count.”
She
persisted.
Any
preacher will tell you that there comes a moment at some point in their
preaching life where they have to face a choice. Where something so big has
happened in our shared experience and we face the fear of ruffling feathers if
we speak out about it.
Where
the blue and the red, or the white, black, or brown blend and meet and bump up
against each other and you realize that you can either generalize and be vague,
or you can be intentional and specific, remembering that the Gospel, with its
proclamation of unmerited grace, IS offensive by its very nature to the way the
world works.
And
then you get this Canaanite woman. And you get Isaiah, and you get the
aftermath of Charlotteville all showing up on the same Sunday and you realize
that generalizations just aren’t going to hack it.
This
Canaanite woman is a model for what it means to not be afraid to ruffle
feathers.
She
changed the mind of our Lord. She persisted and made him remember the expansive
inclusiveness of God’s dream for the world.
She
persisted and reminded him that the table is wide and open for all.
Maybe
it’s scary or off-putting to imagine that Jesus wasn’t already in control of
this situation: that this Canaanite woman needed to remind him. Maybe it is
more comforting to think that Jesus was testing her or that he was using her to
show what blind guides the Pharisees were.
Or
that by calling her a dog he was giving an example of how what comes out of the
mouth is what defiles a person.
Or
maybe, we can remember what the writer of Luke told us: that Jesus – that God
in the flesh who walked among us – grew in wisdom and stature. He learned. Just
like we do.
We
can remember, as religious writer and speaker Adam Ericksen says about this
text that: “Matthew wants us to see that ALL humans, even Jesus, need to have
our cultural prejudices challenged and uprooted.”
There’s
that word again. All.
For
the disciples, for the Pharisees this woman was a walking defilement. And yet,
through her, Jesus grew in wisdom.
Can
we?
Can
we remember through this woman’s persistence that knowing God is a God of all
is not enough? That knowing God loves even those who are different from us is
not enough?
That
when groups who claim a Christian heritage march and assert racial superiority
– when they hold Nazi flags, the symbol of the deaths of six million people, or
Confederate flags, the symbol of slavery of millions, and chant against any one
else who is other – that it is not enough simply to know that is wrong?
We
have to denounce it as wrong. We
have to say it is wrong. We
have to live as if it is wrong. As if it is sin.
This year marks the 500th
anniversary of the Reformation, and there isn’t a better time to remind
ourselves that our Lutheran heritage wasn’t always on the right side of history
with White Supremacy. Not with some of Martin Luther's own writings, and not in Nazi Germany certainly.
That cannot be our witness in this year that
marks a half a millennia of Reforming.
And so today we hear from this one woman who
persisted. Who cried out for her daughter. A woman who was the other. A woman
who wanted to be part of Isaiah’s vision.
A woman Jesus first ignored, then called a
dog, and then, as his vision opened up, he helped. And he learned from. And he
called her faith great.
From there he would go on and expansively
heal, and feed and offer the gift of his body and blood.
And he would offer it to all. Not some. All.
So we today receive that body and blood and we
will go out. Called to persist in spreading this wide, generous love of a God
for all of creation, resisting any claim to the contrary and being vigilant to
the cries of those who get left out and called “other.”
