No Hard and Fast Boundaries

August 14, 2005 (Thirteenth Sunday after Pentecost)

by The Rev. Jerry Kolb

• Isaiah 56:1(2-5)6-7
• Psalm 67
• Romans 11:13-15,29-32
• Matthew 15:21-28

(From The Lectionary Page)

From the very beginning, life among the people of God appears to have been a real challenge for those who liked things neat, clean, tightly packaged, clearly delineated, settled once for all time. If we need to know where the circle ends, where the line is drawn, whose voice is “legitimate,” then today’s scripture readings don’t give us a lot of consolation. It seems that, in the divine scheme of things, there are no hard and fast boundaries. There are no voices unworthy of being heard. Matthew’s Gospel reflects the encounter in the early church between Jews and Gentiles. The lines between ‘insiders’ and ‘outsiders’ quickly proved to be problematic. In today’s reading, the outsider (not only a sinful Canaanite in Jewish thinking, but a woman!) challenges Jesus and the prevailing view about legitimate belonging. The insider disciples presume to know where the boundaries are and they assume the role of guardians of the way things are “suppose to be.” They know whom salvation is for, whom Jesus is for, and where that leaves everyone else.

There is a ring of familiarity about all this. The voice of the stranger – the ‘Foreigner’ in today readings – is always popping up just about the time things seem to be going smoothly. I can’t help but think of several examples of that in our current life as Episcopalians: some of our brothers and sisters in the Church are calling out to us and saying that ‘we have left the true faith’ and because of that we are going to affiliate with the Anglican Church in Africa!’ The issue of Homosexuality within our church has prompted some of this. How we understand the Bible is another key issue. But these issues are not issues in our church only. We have read in this week’s papers about the vote within the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America on the struggle of how to deal with homosexual clergy. Southern Baptist are relieving seminary professors who will not sign statements accepting the ‘literal’ translations of scripture. Many other denominations are tackling the same or similar issues. All of this brought about by those who we would consider to be ‘outsiders,’ people who think differently than we do, who are very much treated, in my opinion, like Foreigners. This is especially true of our gay and lesbian brothers and sisters. They, like the Canaanite woman are crying out for the full measure of Christ’s love and grace. Our responses to both of those voices, those who accept holy scripture as literal fact as well as those who find themselves attracted to people of the same sex, are usually variations on the response of the disciples: “You don’t belong here” or “You can come in, but this is how we do things.” We tighten up the circle; we strengthen the boundaries between the chosen insiders and everyone else. I believe that we must listen to both sides and see what it is that God has for us to learn from the cries of those who are ‘strangers’ to us.

Just look at what the Canaanite woman’s plea does. Not only is her daughter healed, she performs a ministry for Jesus. She becomes the spokesperson who prompts a release of divine grace in the dramatic healing of her daughter. She becomes the voice of all people and stakes her claim on the mercy of God. Just as others minister to Jesus by providing food, water and shelter, she ministers by building a bridge across ethnic barriers. She found her place at the table, and nothing and no one could keep her from the nourishment she sought and found in Jesus Christ.

In the same way, voices that we find ‘strange and uncomfortable’ within the church may well open new doors for the church, may release even more of God’s divine grace and may even help all of us to better understand God’s will for each of us. I want to quickly say here that I personally don’t like what I hear from those Conservative Christians. What I am saying, and what I think today’s Gospel says to us, is that we need to be open to hear those who we consider to be ‘outsiders’ –those who opinions differ from ours - whoever they may be. God may be speaking to us through them.

It has been suggested that the purpose of the stranger is to wake us up. “Stranger” is related to the Old French word “estrange” or “extraordinary.” Perhaps the outsider is sent to us by God to shake us up, to call out from us something fresh and fabulous. Those new members who join our parishes with their own ideas may be sent to stretch us, to open us to possibilities we’ve become too complacent to imagine. Those voices challenging the institution of the church from the edges (or even the outside) may be divinely placed burrs under our communal saddle to make us sit up and take notice of something new. The Canaanite woman already possessed, surprisingly, the God-given seed of faith when she approached Jesus from the “outside.” And you can bet that her bold demand shook things up a bit in that early circle of Christians!

“Foreigners” come in all sorts of packages. They may be young and inexperienced; senior and seasoned; male or female; of any economic, cultural or political stripe; educated in prestigious institutions or, as my father used to say, “the school of hard knocks,” as well as from anywhere on the theological spectrum. And the more they advocate, beg or challenge, the more dangerous they appear to us.

It’s easy to disparage the disciples’ reaction (“Get rid of her – she keeps shouting at us!”) to the Canaanite woman. It’s even easier to react exactly that way on the conviction that we are protecting some unchanging reality or truth. Those of us on the inside get awfully attached to how we think things are or, more shockingly, perhaps, how we think God wants them to be. Isaiah offers us a dose of reality. This mornings Old Testament lesson points out that Foreigners, who presumably bring their foreign wives and ways with them, are also acceptable to the Lord. And Paul, in the Epistle reminds us that we insiders are really no different from those we disparage.

Let me close with a story from Anthony De Mello, S.J. book ”Awareness: the Perils and Opportunities of Reality.” Anthony is a Jesuit from India and brings much of that culture to his spirituality and writing.

“A man found an eagle’s egg and put it in a nest of a barnyard hen. The eaglet hatched with the brood of chicks and grew up with them. All his life the eagle did what the barnyard chicks did, thinking that he was a barnyard chicken. He scratched the earth for worms and insects. He clucked and cackled. And he would thrash his wings and fly a few feet into the air.

Years passed and the eagle grew very old. One day he saw a magnificent bird above him in the cloudless sky. It glided in graceful majesty among the powerful wind currents, with scarcely a beat of its strong golden wings.

The old eagle looked up in awe. “Who’s that?” he asked.

“That’s the eagle, the king of the birds,” said his neighbor. “He belongs to the sky. We belong to the earth – we’re chickens.”

So the eagle lived and died a chicken, for that is what he thought he was.”

Perhaps a ‘Foreigner’ or an ‘Outsider’ can help us to know who we really are --- as well as who God calls us to be!

Amen!