August 20, 2017
Isaiah 56:1, 6-8
Psalm 67
Romans 11:1-2a, 29-32
Matthew 15:10-28
Please pray with me,
May the words of my mouth
and the meditations of all of our hearts be acceptable and suitable in your
sight, O God, our rock, our strength and our redeemer. Amen.
Let me tell you…this
sermon did not come easy this week.
Wrestling with the texts and praying for the Spirit to intercede while
listening to and reading the news and following the current climate through
social media so many things have been swirling in my heart and mind this
week. It’s times like this when I am
thankful that our church uses a lectionary, that the texts for each week are
already decided and that the preacher doesn’t need to pick which texts to
use. It is often a surprise when we
think about the current climate, and find ourselves hearing scripture that
speaks to what is happening in our world today.
That being said, we
continue to pray for the Spirit to intercede, to open our hearts and our minds
to hear how God’s message of love and grace speaks to us this day, and how it
calls us to be the church in our community, nation and world.
This week our Gospel
lesson extends a call to us, but it does so by challenging us to think about
who we are, how we act and how God’s grace transforms us.
It’s in two parts
today. We begin with Jesus teaching his
disciples about purity. He reminds those
following him that it is not what we take in that is impure, but it is what comes
from us, that is not clean. He explains
that all the evil intentions and actions come from within.
After Jesus has had the
opportunity to teach that true purity comes from the heart, he is approached by
a Canaanite woman.
Jesus is approached by an
outsider…by someone who is not from the area, a woman without a male escort,
following Jesus, one in whom we would not expect her to believe.
Jesus silent response to
her pleas shocks us….well, it shocks me.
Earlier in this text we know that when he was surrounded by over 5,000
people, he was full of compassion for them.
He healed them and fed them. Just
last week, when Peter was out on the water and said, “Lord, save me!” Jesus
immediately responded with an outstretched hand.
You would think that Jesus
would have the same compassion for a woman with a sick daughter, yet Jesus
remains focused on what he believes his will is. He is called to save the house
of Israel, that is the group to whom he is to minister.
After some sharp
interaction between Jesus and this woman, he seems to put her in her
place. She admits her standing and her
origin, and persists that she still deserves even a crumb of this abundant
grace that God has to offer through Jesus.
Jesus finally decides that
her faith is great and her daughter is healed.
How does that strike
you?
On one level, we may be
surprised at Jesus initial harshness to this woman. Because she is not of the house of Israel,
she does not receive the grace of God?
Yet eventually, the grace
does extend to her. It pulls us back to
Isaiah, where we know that the Lord’s house will be a house of prayer for all
people.
After this healing, we do
not hear anything more about this woman.
We do not know if she evangelized about Jesus, or committed her life to
following him, we do not know what her faith outcome is from this act. Nothing is said about her response to this
grace.
Yet that’s the point,
isn’t it?
God’s grace and love
abound to each and every person, no matter what. Whether people acknowledge that gift or
respond by sharing that good news…everyone receives it.
We are reminded through
our texts today that the church is a place that welcomes the outsider, no
matter who he or she may be. The church
is not a place where only people we deem appropriate are welcome. The church breaks down the walls of prejudice
and exclusion to create a place for all to come and pray.
The church breaks down the
walls of prejudices and exclusion to create a place for all to come and
pray.
This is not something that
only happened in Biblical times, this passage speaks to us loudly and clearly
today.
Though the story of Jesus
and the Canaanite woman, we see God at work, transforming Jesus and the
ministry that he did. We see in this
story, Jesus’ humanity, that focused on the mission at hand, he too, was in
need of God’s grace and transformation.
Amy Jill Levine writes, “Jesus realizes
that he can yield his own position of authority, his own job description, for
the sake of someone who has no authority of her own, and this yielding shows he
cares about the people, and more — he listens to them. She, on the other hand,
demonstrates the model of the Sermon on the Mount: she persists, cleverly,
without elevating the violence. Everyone wins.”
Keeping that in mind, that
even in the midst of active ministry, Jesus was continually guided and shaped
by God’s mercy and grace, so, too are we.
And in today’s day and
age, we are desperately in need of God’s grace.
We know the evil that
surrounds us each day.
We have heard the hate
filled speech of white supremacists.
We have seen the evil
represented in Nazi flags and torch carrying marchers.
And perhaps, we have felt
the fear that surrounds these words and actions.
And yet, we are called to
be the church.
This week I began
rereading, Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Letters
and Papers from Prison. I came upon
this quotation,
"We are not Christ, but if we want to be
Christians, we must have some share in Christ's large-heartedness by acting
with responsibility and in freedom when the hour of danger comes, and by
showing a real sympathy that springs, not from fear, but from the liberating
and redeeming love of Christ for all who suffer.”
"We are not Christ, but if we want to be
Christians, we must have some share in Christ's large-heartedness by acting
with responsibility and in freedom when the hour of danger comes, and by showing
a real sympathy that springs, not from fear, but from the liberating and
redeeming love of Christ for all who suffer."
Transformed by love and forgiveness, we must act with
responsibility, not by silently accepting hateful words and actions by groups
like neo-Nazis and white supremacists, but by publicly denouncing them.
By saying that this place, this church is not just a
welcome place for all, but a place that welcomes those who have been hurt,
those who are broken, those in our society who have been treated unfairly, or
excluded because of the color of their skin, their gender, their economic
status or any other aspect of themselves that may make them different.
And thanks be to God for grace and forgiveness, because
we haven’t always gotten it right in the past, and while forgiveness doesn’t
change the past, it does enlarge the future.
It’s a reminder of the continual changes that we can make because we are
forgiven of our sins.
We are continually made new in Jesus Christ, to show a
real sympathy that springs not from fear, but from the liberating and redeeming
love of Christ for all who suffer.
So go, knowing you are
loved and have been forgiven and transformed.
Through the power of
Christ’s death and resurrection, we are transformed people…ready, whether we
realize it or not, to live lives, speak words and actively proclaim God’s love
and grace in a broken world.
So go, be the church.
Loved and forgiven…we are
ready to go in peace and serve the Lord…and now may the peace, which passes all
understanding, keep our hearts and minds in Christ Jesus, and let all God’s
people say amen.
