Tricia's Sermon for August 17, 2008

As will become the norm here at the St. Dunstan's blog, here is yesterday's sermon by Tricia. I hope that posting it here will help foster discussion, hopefully helping us think about these ideas a little longer than just in our pews on Sunday.

The Rev. Patricia Templeton


Learning to be a Better Messiah

It was one of those times that I wished I had kept my mouth shut.

It was in a New Testament class in seminary. I have forgotten what the passage we were discussing was, but I remember being struck by a sudden insight, one I felt compelled to share.

“It seems like Jesus is growing in his role as Messiah, becoming stronger and more confident,” I said.

My professor looked at me in horror.

“Jesus did not grow in his role,” he said emphatically. “He was born the Messiah, the son of God. He did not have to learn how to do his job.”

I thought about that professor this week and wondered what he might have to say about today’s gospel reading. Because its message is pretty clear – in this story Jesus learns a lesson about being the Messiah. And he learns it from a lowly woman.

Jesus has just had yet another run in with the religious authorities, who are indignant that he and his followers to not have the proper regard for the religious purity codes.

They have been seen not washing their hands properly before eating, and eating food that may not have been prepared properly. Even worse, they have been seen eating with people who are considered unclean – like tax collectors and prostitutes.

Jesus’ reply is scathing. Purity is not determined by external factors, but by what is in one’s heart, he says.

After this conversation with the disciples, Jesus goes immediately to Tyre, in what is now known as Syria, an area that was not heavily Jewish. In Mark’s version of this story, Jesus goes into a house and doesn’t want anyone to know he is there.

In other words, Jesus wants some time away, a chance to be by himself. No confrontations, no requests for healing, no words of wisdom. Just some badly needed time apart.

It isn’t to be. Even in those days before instant communications, word somehow quickly spreads that Jesus is in town. And immediately someone appears, demanding something of him.

That someone is a Canaanite woman, not a Jew. She begins shouting, demanding that Jesus help her daughter, who is tormented by a demon, or who is what we today would call mentally ill.

Talk about impure. It would be harder for a Jewish man to come into contact with someone less pure than this – a woman, a foreigner, and a pagan. In the thinking of the time, she must have committed some grave sin to cause her child to be possessed.

And she is inappropriately assertive – it was unheard of for a woman to publicly approach a Jewish man.

But this is not just any Jewish man, this is Jesus. And since he has just declared that none of these outward appearances are indicators of what is in one’s heart, we expect that he will treat this woman with respect, as a fellow child of God.

That is why his response to her is so shocking.

At first, he ignores her – following the advice my mother used to give me about my younger brothers when they were bothering me – if you ignore them they will go away. That strategy never really worked for me, and it doesn’t work for Jesus, either.

Next he tells her that she is not his concern. “I was sent only to the lost sheep of Israel,” he curtly tells her.

But the woman is persistent. She kneels before him, begging for help.

Jesus goes from curt to downright rude and insulting.

“It is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs,” he says.

It has been amusing this week to read commentaries by learned Biblical scholars, leaping to Jesus’ defense, explaining that he wasn’t really rude, that he didn’t really mean what he said.

It was a word play that the woman would recognize, one said. Jesus was just testing her to see how strong her faith was, another suggested. He never intended not to help the woman, another declared.

But the truth is that not just one, but two gospels tell us that this is indeed what Jesus said, and he apparently meant every word of it. He was tired, he wanted to be alone, and he wanted to put this woman who was bothering him in her place.

The problem is that the woman refused to be put.

Think about what tremendous courage it took for her to approach Jesus in the first place. She knows her place in society. She knows the rules of the culture that forbid someone like her from talking to someone like Jesus.

But she is desperate.

We can imagine that she has tried every way she knows to get help for her daughter. Nothing has worked. Her great love for her ill child emboldens her to keep pushing, to refuse to walk away from even the dimmest glimmer of hope.

She doesn’t even flinch when Jesus calls her a dog.

Instead, she fires back, “Sir, even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters’ table.”

I imagine that at this point there is a long silence. Jesus must be astounded at the woman’s brashness and audacity. But he also realizes her great love and courage.

And in a moment of insight, he realizes that he is wrong – and is willing to admit that this poor woman has gotten the best of him.

“Woman, great is your faith!” he exclaims. “Let it be done for you as you wish.”

And the daughter in healed.

This unnamed, uneducated Canaanite woman is the only person in scripture who verbally spars with Jesus and wins. Religious scholars and leaders try to debate him, to trip him up, to get the best of him – but they always fail.

It is not the woman’s great intellect that challenges Jesus, but her courage and love. Because of those things, the woman and her daughter’s lives are changed forever by this encounter with Jesus.

But Jesus’ life is also changed by his encounter with the Canaanite woman. This person, who started out as an unwelcome interruption and intrusion, becomes God’s representative and bearer of truth.

She challenges Jesus to exercise his ministry in a new way, to venture beyond the familiar voices of tradition and hear a new word from God.

From this moment on, Jesus’ ministry is not the same. The Canaanite woman opens his eyes, broadens his perspective, and changes him and his mission.

Soon he tells his disciples not just to preach, teach, and heal the people of Israel, but to go and make disciples of all nations.

With all due respect to my New Testament professor, what this woman does is give Jesus a lesson in how to be the Messiah, not just to serve and save the Jews, but to serve and save the world.
I
suppose there are some who take comfort from the idea of a Messiah who comes into the world fully developed and formed, who never stumbles or falls, who never makes a mistake or needs to learn anything.

But as jarring as Jesus’ rudeness is in this story, I prefer the portrait of him it offers – of a savior who gets annoyed and tired, who says things he regrets, who sometimes wishes life were easier.
But this is also a savior who is willing to learn from experience, who is willing to admit he is wrong, who is willing to listen and change his mind.

This is a savior we can learn from and follow.

Amen.