David Letterman has made famous the
Top Ten List. I don’t know who came up
with this one, but here ten things ministers never hear in church, but wish
they did:
10. Your sermon was so enthralling I didn’t even
notice that it lasted 25 minutes.
9. I got here early just to make sure I could
find a place to park.
8. I can play golf any other day of the
week. On Sundays I would much rather be
in church.
7. I’ve decided to give our church the $500 a
month I used to send to TV evangelists.
6. What do I have to do to become the teacher for
the Junior High Sunday School class?
5. I say
the diocesan minimum salary guidelines are nowhere near generous enough.
4. Father, we’d like to send you to a seminar in
the Bahamas.
3. I just love it when we sing hymns I’ve never
heard before!
2. Since we’re all here, let’s start the service
early.
1. Hey!
It’s my turn to sit in the front pew.
Well, since
we’re talking about things you don’t often hear in church, try this one on for
size: Jesus really blew it in today’s gospel reading. There are not many times when you can say
that, but today is one of them.
Just before the
reading begins, some religious leaders attack Jesus because his followers do
not observe all the ancient rituals and traditions. Specifically, they do not go through a
ceremonial washing of hands prior to eating.
We hear in this morning’s reading how Jesus turns this attack into a
time of teaching and challenge. In a previous
confrontation, Jesus said these religious leaders are like white-washed tombs –
clean and tidy on the outside, but full of dead bones on the inside. Here Jesus elaborates on this theme, saying
that it is not what you eat that makes you unclean in God’s eyes, it’s what you
say and do. It is not your outward
appearance that makes you holy, but rather inner transformation. What God sees is not the outer description of
who you are – gender, race, ethnicity, class, education, and the like – but the
inner state of your heart and how that affects your actions.
Well, this
teaching of Jesus is wonderful news for the crowds that follow him and not such
good news for religious specialists who fall back on their training in, what
those of us who participated in this summer’s survey of the first books of the
bible learned to be, a very complex set of exacting rules and regulations
regarding ceremonies and rituals.
Imagine how liberating it must have been to be freed from that and
pointed toward a holiness grounded in actual ethical behavior rather than
strict adherence to religious practices.
At least one
person was listening to Jesus and becomes empowered by his words. She is a mother whose daughter is “tormented
by a demon.” She is also a Canaanite,
which means she was not born as one of the Chosen People of Israel. We read this summer about how Judah (one of
Jacob’s twelve sons) married a Canaanite woman and was somewhat shunned by the
family as a result. Such things simply
were not done. It was akin to marrying
out of your station and class. But this
particular woman must have heard in Jesus’ words something that gave her hope
he would treat her differently. If a
person’s heart is what really matters to God, then she reasoned the external
differences could be be eclipsed.
So she
approaches Jesus and asks for help. What
does he do? Amazingly, at first,
nothing. He ignores her, but she keeps
pressing for attention. The disciples
think her to be a problem and a pest and they try to persuade Jesus to do
something, anything. He responds to
them, “I was sent only to the lost
sheep of Israel.” In other words, this
is not a part of my mission. Put starkly,
he says she is not worthy of my time.
And yet still the woman persists.
She kneels in front of Jesus and begs, “Lord, help me.” His response is harsh and it is
shocking. Looking down at the Canaanite
woman, Jesus says, “It is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to
the dogs.”
How incredibly
insulting is that! Then as now, being
called a dog is no compliment. How can
these words be spoken by the same person who just verses before said, “What
comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart, and this is what defiles”? Through baptism we enter into a covenant with
Jesus to respect the dignity of every human being. This does not seem to be a good example of
that, does it.
Some scholars defend
Jesus by suggesting he was merely testing the woman’s faith and resolve. Others posit that he was engaging her in a
kind of clever banter favored by teachers of that era. Frankly, the cold, hard truth is that Jesus
just plain blows it on this one.
The grace that
is to be found in this story emanates not from Jesus, but from the woman’s
gritty determination. Had it been me, I
would have sulked away after receiving such a dismissive put-down. Perhaps some of you would have errupted with
a steam of angry words and cursing. The
Canaanite woman does neither. The writer Ambrose Robinson says, “Courage is
not the absence of fear, but rather the judgment that something is more
important than fear.” For this woman,
clearly the thing more important than the fear of further insult is her
daughter’s overriding need and so she finds the courage to say, “Lord, even the
dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their master’s table.”
For Jesus, this moment becomes a conversion
story of sorts. In an instance he
perceives that his focus has been too narrow and too provincial. His eyes are opened to the wider world around
him and he perceives that his mission is to build faith and respond to it,
whenever it appears, wherever it might be, in whomever it can be found. Jesus marvels at the woman’s faith and grants
her request immediately.
While there is much that we can say about
this episode, this morning I am drawn to the woman’s secondary status in that society
and her patient, persistent response to Jesus’ resistance. It has something to say to the people of
Ferguson, MO as they demand justice for the shooting death of Michael
Brown. It says there is a right way to
persist and many that are wrong. It also
says it may take time and patience for peoples’ eyes to be opened so that a
willingness to facilitate justice emerges.
Looting and rioting do not enable this.
But based on the way the Ferguson police have conducted themselves,
something is amiss in this town.
Something has been simmering for a long time and hopefully the weight of
public attention will demand that everything there be brought into the light.
The woman’s response also says something
about what is transpiring in Iraq.
America, understandably exhausted by its long, protracted military
involvement in the region, has been loathe to reengage in the current
crisis. But it is clear that the United
States cannot turn a blind eye to the humanitarian crisis unfolding as a
radical, Islamic group seeks to institute totalitarian rule through genocide.
Perhaps the most difficult struggle we face
in the face of these kinds of challenges is the temptation to become jaded; to
shrug our shoulders, pull the covers up close to our faces, and say it has
nothing to do with us. Because today’s
reading holds that even the dogs deserves the crumbs that fall from the
master’s table, we Christians have an obligation to stand with all who are
treated no better.
For me, at least, how we make our stand
matters. I thought about this when I
read a quote falsely attributed to Kurt Vonnegut making the rounds on social
media this past week:
“Be soft. Do not let the world make you hard. Do not let pain make you hate. Do not let bitterness steal you
sweetness. Take pride that even though
the rest of the world may disagree, you still believe it to be a beautiful
place.”
There is something in this that captures
the essence of the Canaanite woman, don’t you think. It is not enough to stand and fight. You must stand in a place of hope and peace
and faith grounded in a strong belief that the world is a beautiful place,
knowing that no amount of ugliness will make you an ugly person. After all, it is not what is on the outside
affecting a person that makes him or her clean or unclean, it is what is on the
inside that matters most. We are not
reactive people who respond in kind, but kind people who respond with God’s
love that fills our hearts. Others may
choose to live outside in, but we are a people who live inside out.
