Who am I in this story?

Christ Church, St. Joseph, La., 9 September 2012                      
                                                                 

Who are you in this story?                                   

I mean the one about Jesus and the Syrophenician woman, the one he calls a dog.

Of course, it would be easier to skip right over that and go to the much lovelier story of healing a deaf-mute and being very modest about it. We admire that. But… we’re not going there just yet. Jesus’ obnoxious behavior has something to teach us.

You see, I don’t think there’s any way to gloss over what Jesus does in this story. In fact, in the context of his time, what he said was even harsher than it would be today.

Today we love our pets. Our dogs are part of the family. We pamper them with treats and toys. We are, perhaps, more willing to spend money on pet health care than in taxes to provide health care to poor people.

The American Pets Products Association estimates that U.S. Americans will spend $52.87 billion on their pets this year!

Source: Supply and Demand

 But in Jesus’ time, dogs were not pets. They were scavengers, as the woman in our story well knows and rightly states. Even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs, she says (Mark 7:24-37, NRSV).

While in the Dominican Republic in the spring of 2010, I and several other deacons from our group went for a walk to the seashore one evening. And while standing there enjoying an evening breeze, we watched a scrawny, mangy dog root through an overturned trashcan and hungrily consume every scrap of garbage that turned up.

It was sickening. But in a subsistence economy, as in Jesus’ time and in poor countries today, it is not uncommon.

Jesus calls the woman a dog and it was more scandalous then than it is now.

We are followers of Jesus. We seek to emulate him. We try to live our lives after his model. When we have a difficult decision to make, we might well ask ourselves, What would Jesus do?

Of course we know that Jesus understood his ministry to be to the Jews. But if you identify with Jesus in this story, you have to own his narrow-mindedness. His lack of empathy. His self-righteousness. His rather contemptuous treatment of the Gentile woman.

Or, perhaps you identify with the woman in the story? She was desperate! She certainly would have known the social class system of her day. She had no business pursuing a Jewish man into a Jewish home seeking his help. She had absolutely no rights in that situation and no reasonable expectation that this Jewish rabbi with healing powers, whom she had heard about, would give her the time of day, much less help her.

But she was desperate… not for something for herself, but for healing for her tormented child. If you identify with the woman in the story, you must own her desperation, her willingness to throw herself on the mercy of a stranger, and even her immediate acceptance of his humiliating treatment of her.

She does not resist. She claims no rights and expresses no anger. She says not a word about unfairness. Rather, devoid of ego and with humility she accepts her lowly state and asks again for mercy.

So… who are you in this story? The teacher and healer so sought after by the crowds that his popularity has gone to his head? Or the powerless woman under the table groveling for the scraps of his favor? Not a pretty choice, if you ask me!

But then something quite miraculous happens. The proud young man actually hears, sees and learns something… from precisely the poor, low-class woman he has been looking down on.

See, Jesus was not born knowing all he needed to know about God’s plan for the world. He was, after all, fully human. A wise, deeply spiritual human, our Scriptures tell us, but nevertheless, fully human. Therefore, he had things to learn, as all human do.

He knew he had been called to bring the Good News of God’s liberating love and grace to the Jewish people. This is not the only passage in the Gospels that reveals his awareness of that.

As a devout Jew, which Jesus was his entire life, the rules regarding his interaction with this woman were very strict. He could not touch her. He should not even be interacting with her. She was an obstacle preventing him from being about the work he knew he was called to do.

Yet, he was Jesus, who taught and modeled God’s love, compassion and mercy. Thus when the Gentile woman humbly accepts the lowly status he has conferred upon her but with a touch of chutzpah asks for the very scraps he has said is all she deserves, Jesus himself is touched and transformed.

It is as if Jesus himself sees the wideness of God’s grace and mercy for the first time.

As if Jesus realizes that the Good News is not only for the Jews, but for all people.

As if he understands that God loved the world, as his disciple John would write after his death, not merely the Jewish people.

Author Heidi Husted wrote about Jesus’ encounter with the Syrophoenician woman in an article published in Christian Century. She said this:

The day the gospel went to the dogs was the day it came to us. We are some of the “dogs” who have received the good news of the gospel! When Jesus opened himself up to mission to the whole world, he opened his church to the world. Now we are to open ourselves to the whole world in mission.

When was the last time you allowed yourself to be transformed by one of the people of the world to whom you are called to minister?

What have you learned about the width and depth of God’s grace and mercy from one who is poor? Lower class? An immigrant? Someone who does not live the way we good Christian folks live and think others should live?

May God bless us all—as He did Jesus—with the gift of a transforming encounter with precisely the person we are most likely to view with disdain.

AMEN

 

This fellow, Jesus: A sermon for 14 March 1020

“This fellow welcomes sinners and he even eats with them.” (Luke 15:2, NRSV)

The “fellow” is, of course, Jesus, who is once again in today’s Gospel demonstrating his refusal to conform to the norms and standards of polite society.

Today we think little about who is partaking of food with us. We go to dinner parties where we don’t necessarily know the name of the person seated to our right, much less whether they live a moral life. We go to receptions and buffets, take food from a common table, and eat while sitting or mingling with people we’ve never met before. We eat in restaurants and fast food joints within earshot and arm’s length of complete strangers.

It was not so in the time of Jesus. The rules for meals, food and what is called “table fellowship” were detailed and complex. They had to do with “purity” as the Jews understood God to have demanded it. But they also had to do with social identity, social boundaries and social conflict.

And the Pharisees were quite right to have been scandalized by Jesus’ behavior, because he rejected those rules over and over again. Whenever Jesus was at the table, regardless of whose house he was in, all who had come to hear him preach and teach—tax collectors and sinners, truly immoral people—ALL were welcome.

Moreover, Jesus not only modeled radically inclusive behavior, he taught it. The parable of the prodigal son is one such teaching, and I daresay its message is difficult for us to swallow.

We certainly like parts of it: The father’s compassion warms our hearts, and we pray that we might be similarly compassionate. Most likely each of us has gone astray at some point in our lives, in a way that helps us identify with the wayward son, and we repent and pray for forgiveness.

And if the story stopped there, we’d most likely be fine with it. After all, it’s a pretty familiar and reassuring picture of the Christian faith. We have a loving and compassionate father who gives us good things, and even though we fall short and go astray, again and again, we’re pretty good at repentance. We confess our sins most every Sunday, with confidence that we will be forgiven once again. And we go to sleep at night trusting that we will be welcomed to that grand and glorious feast our father has prepared for us—the feast we call “the Kingdom of God.”

But the story doesn’t end there. Jesus just couldn’t leave well enough alone. He had to introduce the troubling matter of the elder son, the one who was faithful, who tended the flocks and worked the fields and did all he was supposed to do… while the younger son squandered his inheritance.

Here’s the picture: We are standing outside a huge tent in the ancient Middle East. A fabulous party is going on inside. We can hear musicians playing and people laughing. The smell of roasted calf wafts on the evening breeze. A steady stream of servants carrying trays piled with fruit, baskets of bread and jars of wine enter the tent.

The elder son stands outside, refusing to go in. He is indignant, and who can blame him? Even though he has been faithful, good and hard working, the father has never thrown a feast in his honor! He feels cheated, disgraced, angry, resentful.

The father comes out and pleads with the son. I really do love you, he says. In fact, everything I have is yours. But that’s your brother in there! He was dead and now he’s alive again. Come, celebrate with us!

Who does each of us identify with in this picture? Or, perhaps the better question is when has each of us been in each of those positions?

I doubt any of us has any trouble remembering when we have been the younger son who has sinned and needs forgiveness. I’m sure each of us has also been the one to forgive and to invite someone who has sinned against us back into fellowship.

But the position of the older son is a good bit harder for us to deal with. After all, he is in the right! He earned his self-righteousness! He shouldn’t even be expected to share the same tent with his unworthy brother, much less a feast celebrating that brother’s return.

In fact, it’s not the older son and his behavior that makes us uncomfortable. What makes us uncomfortable is that Jesus didn’t make him the hero of the story!

In truth, even though our rules for sharing food have relaxed, we have invented all kinds of ways of separating ourselves from those we deem less worthy, and of drawing a wall of exclusivity around our precious righteousness. That’s self-righteousness. We take righteousness, a gift from God to be expressed in our love for each other, and turn it into self-righteousness, a thing of our own ego created by our uncanny ability to divide the world into us vs. them, good people vs. bad people, saved vs. sinner, right vs. wrong.

And we, dog gone it, are right! So.., we’re not going to give our money to that organization because it serves people who make irresponsible decisions. We’re not going to support that legislation because, no matter how many people it might help, it just might help someone whose manner of life we deem wrong. Or, we’re going to go over there and form our own church or order or club or whatever, because this church or order or club just insists on admitting unworthy people or just won’t behave the way we think it should.

A Presbyterian pastor and teacher by the name of David Bales summarizes the challenge Jesus poses to that way of thinking. He says:

Jesus is simply indiscriminate about whom he spends time with, and whom he even eats with. His fellowship isn't closed around the "good" or even those attempting to be good. Jesus accepts people before they're good. By word and deed Jesus undermines social boundaries. He challenges religious exclusiveness. His table fellowship is non-hiearchical [and] radically inclusive, and [it] demonstrates what he believes about the kingdom of God.

It seems to me that the main agenda of most Christians most of the time has been, and is, to tame the Gospel message. I think we really, really, really want Jesus to be middle class. We really, really wish we knew if he was Democrat or Republican! We are sure he is “on our side” in international conflicts.

And then we are confronted with teachings like this one, which portray the Kingdom of God as radically non-hierarchical and radically inclusive. The question is, what will we do?

Will we stand outside the tent, pouting and petulant, reassuring ourselves that we stand on principal and that we have earned our right to be offended? Or will we accept the forgiving love of the father, lay down our self-righteousness, and enter into the feast with all of the other sinners?

AMEN.