August 17, 2008
(Fourteenth Sunday after Pentecost; Proper 15)
A Higher Mission
by The Rev. Bryan England, Deacon
Genesis 45:1-15 • Psalm 133 • Romans
11:1-2a, 29-32 • Matthew 15: (10-20), 21-28
(From
The Lectionary Page)
Keith Oliver lived about a month after Jean entered into glory. I will be lucky to last half that long, should I outlive Linda. As my spiritual advisor said, she is the love of my life. We celebrated our twenty-second wedding anniversary yesterday, while I was writing this sermon. She is also my own best critic, and she reads every word of my sermons before I give them. So I handed this over to her yesterday and, after she read it, asked her, “What do you think?” “You’re going to [blank] people off.” “What, again? I thought this one was a no brainer!” “You will, by just bringing it up,” she replied. Oh, well. That’s my job as a deacon, so get ready. Here we go, again.
It is easy to understand why someone could find today’s gospel lesson disturbing, especially in light of the portions of the collect of the day which hold up Jesus as “an example of godly life,” and calls upon us to “follow daily in the blessed steps of his most holy life.” Frankly, I don’t find Jesus’ treatment of the Canaanite woman in today’s gospel lesson to be especially “godly,” or “holy.” Rather, his response to her is what one would expect of a pious Jewish man of that era, in other words, a Pharisee.
Matthew’s account, which is also found in Mark’s gospel, tells us that Jesus left the area of the Sea of Galilee and went to the area of Tyre and Sidon. These were Phoenician cities just beyond the northern border of Israel, and as such, the inhabitants were pagans, worshipping Phoenician gods.
Jesus and his disciples were approached by a woman. Mark described her as a Syrophoenician, but to Matthew’s eyes, she was a Canaanite. Matthew’s Jewish audience was keenly aware of the enmity between Jews and Canaanites that was grounded in the first book of their Torah. Canaan was the son of Ham, who saw his father naked, and who was cursed by Noah to be a slave to his brothers. Abraham was promised the land of Canaan for a perpetual holding, and the Hebrews under Joshua believed they were commanded by God to annihilate the Canaanites as they took over their lands and cities. Indeed, their continuing presence in Palestine was an indicator of the failure of Israel’s divine mission to remove them from the land entirely. To Jewish eyes, Canaanites were even worse than Samaritans. And the feelings were mutual. Writing about that time, the Jewish historian Josephus wrote, “Of the Phoenicians, the Tyrians have the most ill-feeling towards us.” The analogy to the animosity between modern day Israelis and Palestinians is too close to be anything but profoundly sad.
Given this mutual hostility, why would this woman approach an itinerate Jewish rabbi? Desperation. “Have mercy on me, Lord, Son of David; my daughter is tormented by a demon.” With nowhere else to turn, this woman could easily believe the far fetched tales she had heard coming from Galilee. She could forget the animosity between Jew and Gentile, even between man and woman, on the remote chance of returning her daughter to wholeness.
Yet, Jesus ignored her cries for help. If you believe in a Jesus who from birth knew his place in the universe as redeemer of the world and Son of God, always merciful, always compassionate, you can really wrap yourself around an axle trying to explain Jesus’ reaction to this woman. Firstly, he just ignored her, but she would not be ignored. Finally, the disciples urged Jesus to send her away, but he replied to them, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” Jesus had a concept of what his ministry was, and it didn’t include a Canaanite woman, or her daughter.
The Canaanite woman would not take no for an answer, however. She came and knelt before Jesus and said, “Lord, help me.”
Writing in The Christian Century, Peter S. Hawkins said, “Jesus’ response is not only negative, it is an outrageous put-down. Perhaps she doesn’t understand; he’s a shepherd, his flock consists of Jews, it is they who are the children of Abraham and therefore of God. Why on earth would he throw pearls to swine or ‘take children’s food and throw it to the dogs?’”
Other commentators have tried to explain away Jesus’ response as a testing of the woman’s will, or that the word translated as “dogs” actually meant “household pet” rather than the derogatory “cur,” but Hawkins will have none of it. “A kneeling woman does not have far to fall,” he wrote, “and by all rights that insult should have floored her on the spot. After all, what is a desperate Canaanite to do after such a slap but slink off into the crowd, take her place in the filthy streets among the dogs where she belongs, and go back to the daughter still in a demon’s grip.”
But even in the face of Jesus’ rejection, she would not give up. “Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from the master’s table.” She is not asking to be invited to the table, she just wants the scraps gathered from underneath. She is not asking for justice, she is asking for mercy.
Her response clearly brought Jesus up short. It changed his world view. Again quoting from Hawkins, “What’s clear is that he recognized truth when he heard it and saw a gentile ready to be part of a flock much bigger than the one he had been sent to.” Presented by this pagan’s faith in a god that wasn’t hers, he had to reevaluate his call to ministry, reevaluate the character of this flock, reevaluate his mission on earth.
In the words of the Bard, “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.” And that’s the comforting thing about today’s gospel lesson. If Jesus, the divine Son of God, can be forced to reevaluate his call to mission by a pagan woman desperate to heal her suffering daughter, can we not be forced to reevaluate our sense of mission by the cries of a desperate world?
Perhaps, possibly, Rowan Williams can be called to a higher mission than the cementing of the Anglican Communion? Or perhaps Peter Akinola can be forced to see the face of Christ in one whose sexual orientation is different than his own? Or maybe our own Episcopal Church can be open enough to bless a union that has gone on for twenty-two years, when only one third of heterosexual unions last as long?
As a nation, can we overcome our fear of terrorism and be true to our self-proclaimed image as the land of the free and the home of the brave? Or can we overcome our greed and reverse the trends within our culture that threaten our planet? Can we reach out to the world around us and help to establish the kingdom of God throughout God’s creation?
Brian Stoffregen of Faith Lutheran Church in Yuma, Arizona, concluded his commentary on this gospel lesson by writing, “In line with an issue most of our denominations are struggling with: what if the person coming to Jesus asking for help for a child were a homosexual (or someone else outside of our ‘boundaries,’ for example, a prostitute)? While we can’t know precisely what Jesus would do in other cases; we do know that in this story he overcomes the ethnic, cultural, gender, and religious barriers humans have created.”
Maybe that’s what the collect means when it calls us to “follow daily in the blessed steps of his most holy life,” to overcome those barriers around us and proclaim the kingdom of God to all we encounter, whether they are Jew or Canaanite. I firmly believe that is precisely what Jesus calls us to.
