| Genesis 45:1-15 Psalm 133 Romans 11:1-2a, 29-32 Matthew 15: 21-28 |
Almighty God, you
have given your only Son to be for us a sacrifice for sin, and also an
example of godly life: Give us grace to receive thankfully the fruits of
his redeeming work, and to follow daily in the blessed steps of his
most holy life; through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord, who lives and
reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.
"O,
how good and pleasant it is," sings the psalmist, "when brothers and
sisters live together in unity."
Except that they don't. From the moment that Cain snarls back at God, "Am I my brother's keeper?" up through Joseph's brothers throwing him in a pit and selling him off to slavery in Egypt, up to the latest violence in Charlottesville and Barcelona, hatred between brother and sister rises to the surface of the land like deadly toadstools on a foggy morning.
Except that they don't. From the moment that Cain snarls back at God, "Am I my brother's keeper?" up through Joseph's brothers throwing him in a pit and selling him off to slavery in Egypt, up to the latest violence in Charlottesville and Barcelona, hatred between brother and sister rises to the surface of the land like deadly toadstools on a foggy morning.
In
this fractious world, how on earth will God bring about the love and unity that
God desires for human beings? How will God turn our hatred and division into
the smooth and healing balm of love? Today's Gospel lesson gives us a glimpse
of an answer.
Jesus
is caught in the same painful web of broken relationships in which we live.
Here he is, traveling outside of his comfort zone in Gentile territory, up to
his eyeballs in disputes with the leaders of his own nation. And in waltzes a
foreigner—and a woman, at that—shouting and causing a ruckus. She is protesting
something, it seems, waving a banner in his face and crying out aggressively for
mercy. She is one of the desperate ones, one of those on the margins with no
healthcare, no hope, no standing in the community. According to Matthew, she is
a Canaanite, born of the peoples that Israel had defeated long ago and whose
land Israel took as their own. As a woman in this place and time, she should be
at home caring for her family, not parading around the town calling attention to
herself. But she is a tiger-mom with a sick daughter. She will not be silenced.
She is loud, and annoying, and no longer mindful of risk or decorum. She is like
the undocumented migrant worker in the emergency room, clasping her dehydrated
baby to her breast, demanding medical care from a system that rejects her.
"Maybe
if I just ignore her," thinks Jesus, "she will go away." We all
know how it goes … you can't be expected to do something about a situation that
you don't see, right? It's easy to ignore an injustice on the other side of
town, to bury our faces in our own lives, our own problems.
While
Jesus tries politely to ignore the woman's shouting, the disciples decide that
she needs to go.
"Israel
first," they chant. "Make Israel great again!"
"Gentiles
will not replace us!" they cry.
"Salvation
belongs to us! There might not be enough to go around."
Jesus
is caught up in the net of his culture, a product of the attitudes of his place
and time. Jesus nods. “I have enough to do taking care of my own people,"
he agrees. "There’s nothing left over for Gentile dogs like you," he
tells the woman. "My people are
‘children.’ Your people are animals. My people are in. Yours are out. We are winners.
You are losers."
Wow!
It all sounds familiar, doesn't it? “Dogs!” he names the foreign woman and her
daughter, as he bluntly refuses to help them. In Jesus' world, dogs are not the
cute, tame pets that we enjoy today. While Gentiles might let their dogs in to
clean up under the table during meals, good Jews keep their dogs outside. They
roam and scavenge around back alleyways. They might toss scraps out the door
for them to eat every night, but they wouldn't go near one without the
protection of several hefty rocks to throw if they become aggressive. Jesus is
using shocking name-calling language in this text.
Some
scholars insist that our compassionate Jesus must not have meant his insulting
words, that he was merely nudging the Canaanite woman forward in her faith, or
that he was teaching the disciples some kind of lesson. I believe, however,
that it is the Canaanite woman who teaches Jesus a lesson in this text. It is this
Gentile woman, not Jesus, who first brings grace to this situation, who allows
God's healing love to flow between two opposing peoples. Because of her faith,
Jesus learns and grows.
The
question is, what exactly is it in the woman’s petition that is able to breach
the boundaries that Jesus sets on his own mission? What is it in her that so
effectively pierces the barriers that we human beings set up between us and
those who are different? There are all kinds of possibilities: Is it the
woman’s persistence that wins the day? Her determination not to give up despite
the disciples’ rejection and Jesus’ ugly words? Is it that she honestly admits
her need before the Lord, kneeling down and humbly pleading, “Lord have mercy?”
Is it that she recognizes that Jesus is Lord and God and believes that he can
heal her daughter? Is it that she is clever with her words and able to turn
Jesus’ insult to win her argument?[1]
The Canaanite woman’s faith is probably made up of all of these things,
but one thing stands out to me: her courage in the face of fear.
The
Canaanite woman in today’s story is somehow able to push beyond her fear. She
must have been afraid. Afraid that her daughter would soon die or go mad.
Afraid of the hostile disciples and their strange language, clothing, and
religion. Afraid of the power and the hostility that she senses in Jesus
himself. Crossing the no-man’s-land between unfriendly cultures and separate
religions, she must have felt shaky and battered by the hostility around her.
And yet, intently clinging to Jesus as the only hope for her daughter, she
persists until Jesus does an about-face and answers her plea.
When I think of the Canaanite woman and her
protest, I can't help but think of Heather Heyer, the martyr of the protests
last weekend in Charlottesville. I grasped on to Heather's story, because she
was the same age as my own beloved children when she was killed. I went online
and listened to the testimony from her funeral service. I learned that Heather was
just an ordinary young woman. She'd had her ups and downs in life. She wasn't a
college graduate. She wasn't rich and powerful. Throughout her life, Heather was an advocate for others. She
worked with clients in a law firm that walked with people through bankruptcy. After
her death, many former clients wrote the firm to say how much Heather had
helped them through one of the worst times of their lives, a time fraught with
failure and discouragement.
Like the Canaanite woman, Heather was desperate for change, and
she was loud. She too faced her fears with courage. She told people what she
thought. She was persistent in her fight for others, even to the point of being
just plain stubborn. She didn't turn aside and refuse to see, and she wouldn't
let anyone else take that easy way out, either, according to her mother. I'm
sure that many of you have heard her last words, the quote that she left behind
on her Facebook page: "If you're not outraged, you're not paying
attention."[2]
Advocacy for others, reaching out in spite of
fear: That is the transforming combination that we see in Heather Heyer and in
the Canaanite woman. To be an advocate is to join in the movement of the Holy
Spirit, the true Advocate of us all. Right before his death, Jesus promised: ‘If
you love me, you will keep my commandments. And I will ask the Father, and he
will give you another Advocate, to be with you for ever. .. You know him,
because he abides with you, and he will be in you."[3]
O how good and pleasant it is, when brothers
and sisters are courageous advocates for one another, reaching across barriers
to lift up those who are being held down.
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