Jesus Sounds Like Me

          Proper 15: Genesis 45:1-15; Psalm 133; Romans 11:1-2a, 29-32; Matthew 15:10-28

          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 forever. Amen.

          Ferguson, Missouri.

Gaza.

Ukraine.

Iraq … 

"O, how good and pleasant it is, when brethren live together in unity ...?!"
It seems as if hatred between neighbors has once again risen to the surface of the globe like deadly toadstools on a foggy morning. Race, religion, economic status, and nationality divide us at home and abroad. Such hatred certainly is not new. While on vacation in Geneva, I visited a museum about the Reformation and spent several hours reviewing the violence that seethed between Catholics and Protestants, as well as between varieties of Protestants, for hundreds of years, all over Europe. While the media of the day used the new printing presses to spread caricatures of opposing groups roasting in hell and sprouting demon horns, governments used religious differences to jockey violently for secular power.

          In the Middle East, the Holy Land of Islam, Judaism, and Christianity, neighbors have been fighting and hating for as long as we have historical documentation. Our collect encourages us to follow Jesus as an example of Godly life, but what about the Jesus that we see in today's Gospel? Even our Lord Jesus seems to have struggled with our human drive to exclude “the other.” It is hard for me to hear his harsh and angry words in today’s Gospel lesson from Matthew. In opposition to the compassion that I admire in him—the compassion that he shows to Jewish women in need—even adulteresses and those who are poor and unclean—Jesus snaps at the Gentile woman who kneels at his feet, even when she calls him Lord and begs for God’s mercy for her sick daughter.

“Dogs!” he names her and her daughter, as he bluntly refuses to help them. Dirty, Gentile mongrels. Dogs in Jesus’ world were not the cute, tame pets that we enjoy today. While Gentiles might have let their dogs in to clean up under the table during meals, good Jews kept their dogs outside. They roamed and scavenged like the farm dogs that my daughter encountered when she lived in Peru. You would toss scraps out the door for them to eat every night, but you couldn’t go outside, she explained to me, without the protection of several hefty rocks to throw at the dangerous and snarling family dogs who prowled around the house.

“I have enough to do taking care of my own people,” Jesus grumbles. “There’s nothing left over for Gentile dogs like you.  My people are ‘children.’ Yours are animals. My people are in. Yours are out.”

It almost looks as if Matthew has made Jesus here an example of the very defiling language that Jesus himself has just condemned at the beginning of our lesson. “What comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart, and that is what defiles,” he cries. “For out of the heart come evil intentions, murder … false witness, slander.” Jesus certainly shares our common humanity with the drive to exclude, lodged within his own heart.

While we might be shocked at Jesus’ language and at his all too human reaction, the twist in today’s lesson is that it is the faithfulness in the heart of the Gentile woman that brings grace to the situation, even enlarging Jesus’ heart and mission. Because of her faith, Jesus learns and grows. What is it exactly, in the woman’s petition, that is able to breach the boundaries that Jesus sets on his 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?

Professor Karoline Lewis names all kinds of possibilities: Is it the Gentile woman’s persistence? 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, “Kyrie Eleison,” “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? Is it because she is willing to move past the boundaries that we human beings place on others and on ourselves?[1] The Gentile woman’s faith is probably made up of all of these things, but one thing stands out to me: her lack of fear.

Just last week, we heard Jesus upbraid Peter for his “little faith,” as his fear got the better of him in his attempt to cross the waves to come to Jesus. Remember? It was the blowing winds, those turbulent winds of the world, that unnerved him, and he stumbled. He lost his focus on Jesus, and he sank. The Gentile woman in today’s story, however, is somehow able to push aside 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 as vulnerable as Peter treading across those waves. She must have felt as battered as Peter by the hostile winds of the world around her. And yet, intently clinging to Jesus as the only hope for her daughter, she is somehow able to push through her fear. “Woman, great is your faith,” Jesus says to her. “Let it be done for you as you wish.” Unlike Peter, the Gentile woman does not sink.

Whenever I think about the faith of people like today’s Canaanite woman, or about the faith of those who defied the Nazi’s in World War II, or about the faith of the Christians in Iraq today who face exile and death rather than abjure their beliefs, I tend to hold my own faith up in limp comparison. “I would be afraid to do that,” I shrug sadly. I tend to forget that courage is not lack of fear. It is acting in spite of fear. The point of today’s lesson is not to start us picking at our own “little faith.” I believe that the point of today’s lesson is to fill us with the courage to venture, ourselves, across the scary, windy seas that divide neighbors not just around the world, but right here in our own community. As the Gentile woman transforms Jesus, she can transform us, as well.

As I was working on this sermon, I received an email from Harvey Roberts. Harvey was one of the many parishioners who attended a meeting on Monday with the principal at Zachary Taylor Elementary about our tutoring program there. Harvey told me that the group was astounded to hear that nearly one in six students at Zachary Taylor this year have English as their second language. Most of these children are Hispanic, but there are a growing number of Arabic-speaking students as well. One in six! Here, in our East End suburb. Harvey writes what I thought as I read these statistics: “I was struck by how God brought this team together.  We may not realize it from our own population [at St. Thomas], but the population of our community has changed.  We are a white suburban parish in a markedly diverse international community.  Does it surprise you that we have a little disconnect here?  Not me, not any more. The Lord is asking us to open our hearts.”

We say as a parish that we want to reach out to the community. We say that youth and young families are the priority for us. But we do we mean youth and young families like us? White, Christian, hopefully Episcopalian? People who will come to church and pledge and make other kids like ours want to come to our parish? We have enough to do helping people like us, right, teaching our own young people, without throwing our resources to people who won’t amalgamate? Arabs won’t increase our average Sunday attendance. Spanish speakers won’t want to sing our hymns. Goodness, we can’t even talk with them. How are we going to reach out if we can’t communicate? We can’t afford to pay for the staffing to meet our own needs …. Why would we want to spend money on helping outsiders? Sounds kind of like Jesus in our Gospel lesson, doesn’t it?

          We may not hate and kill those who are different like they are doing in Ferguson or Iraq or Gaza, but we still fear them. Don’t you feel your stomach churning as I talk about opening up our hearts—and most of all our meager resources—to very strange strangers? I know that mine churns like crazy at the very idea!

And yet-- the Gentile woman finds courage in her confidence that there is enough power and love in Jesus to go around.[2] Somehow, she recognizes that even a crumb of Jesus’ power is enough to save her daughter from the demon. She doesn’t ask Jesus to ignore his own people in order to help hers. She doesn’t make God choose sides. She simply places hope in the never-ending supply of God’s love and grace and power. Can we do the same? God will take care of the success; God only asks us to be faithful.[3]

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[1] Karoline Lewis, “Getting Great Faith,” found at https://www.workingpreacher.org/craft.aspx?post=3298

[2] Carla Works, found at https://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=2145

[3] “We are not here to be successful; we are here to be faithful.” Well-known phrase attributed to Mother Theresa, among others.