"Do not be afraid; I am the first and the last, and the living one. I was dead, and see, I am alive forever and ever; and I have the keys of Death and of Hades. Now write what you have seen, what is, and what is to take place after this." Rev. 1:17-19.

Saturday, August 19, 2017

Advocates






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.
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.


[1]  Karoline Lewis, “Getting Great Faith,” found at https://www.workingpreacher.org/craft.aspx?post=3298
[2] http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/columnists/glanton/ct-charlottesville-heather-heyer-dahleen-glanton-met-20170814-story.html
[3] John 14:15-17

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