August 14, 2011
Isaiah 56: 1, 6-7 + Psalm 67 + Romans 11: 13-15, 29-32 + Matthew 15: 21-28
Just a couple of weeks ago I was sitting in the narthext with a group of people after some meeting, and there was some reference to this Gospel text in our conversation. The one who brought up the text expressed considerable surprise and shock over the way Jesus is portrayed by Matthew, and I sent a little prayer of thanks to Matthew saying: “You did it! After all these years it still works!”
This Gospel is not simply about that woman. If it were, she would have a name, but she is nameless. It is just as much about the disciples as it is about her. The real confrontation here is not between Jesus and the woman. It is between Jesus and his disciples. He is confronting their attitude. He knows them. They are a product of their age and their culture. Their prejudice and racism toward this Canaanite woman is inconsistent and at odds with the Reign of God Jesus has come to announce. He will not tolerate their attitude and their behavior. He is an obsticle to that Reign of God.
So what he does is show them what they look like. He imitates their behavior back to them. He becomes like a mirror to them and shows them what they look like and what they sound like. He plays into their disgusting racism and prejudice. It’s as though he says: “Come on guys. Show me how much disgust and loaving you have in you. Show me how you think you are so special and so privileged.” It works, they do it! “Get rid of her.” “Send her away! Send her back home where she came from!” (Forgetting that they are in her home, in the region of Tyre and Sidon, and not getting the point that Jesus is at home everywhere and pays no attention to boundarys and boarders.)
As soon as he gets them to say what they really think and feel about her revealing how far they are from faith and embracing the Reign of God into their lives, he drops the Good News on them: praises her faith (not theirs), grants her request (not theirs), and leaves them standing there probably with their hands over their mouths and eyes wide open thinking: “Ooops! Something is wrong here, and it is not her.”
Time and time again, I have said to you from this ambo: three layers to the Gospel.
We may not stop until we get to the third layer.
The first is the historical incident that Matthew recalls. Since it also occurs in the Gospel of Mark, we can be fairly certain that something like this actually happened.
The second is the layer of Matthew’s time when the Jewish Christians were having a hard time embracing Gentile converts, with the thought that they were special and the Reign of God was all theirs: an attitude that finally boils over when Peter and Paul get into it over how “Jewish” the Gentile converts must become.
The third layer is how we hear and how we tell this Gospel. In the telling today, Jesus still speaks, and we must take the couage to both admit we are these disciples and look at how he mirrors our attitude and embarrassses us with our prejudice and privilege. There are social and political implications at every level of this gospel. They are undeniable and unavoidable. A Jew crossing that border is a social and spiritual transgression and a political issue. A woman from that side confronting a man from the other side in her territory is unimaginable at that time. It is socially and politically outrageous! It more than rocks the boat. It shakes up everything: politically, socially, economically, and spiritually. For you see, Faith has something to do with all of those things.
Where ever this Gospel is proclaimed today, disicples of Jesus Christ must hear themselves again both in the attitude and the words of the apostles, and see themselves again mirrored in the words and attitude of Jesus. There is no avoiding or denying the reality that this Gospel scene is being lived today everywhere in this world. London burns last week, and people die from the heat here in Oklahoma without air condition while the privileged build walls and close briges and gates to keep those Canaanites from having what the priviledged think is their own. We are living this Gospel scene. We tax the poor and the growing nearly poor so that the privileged can entertain themselves. Tax money builds stadiums and arenas for games that most of those taxed cannot afford to attend. Of course they are tricked into voting for these projects with the promise of jobs which turn out to mean sweeping up the arena floor in the middle of the night at minimum wage which is below the poverty level. Meanwhile we have no money for education and no money to loan to our young people who want and need that education. We avoid addressing immigration issues because it may mean a change in our attitude and behavior toward those who are differenct from us just like these apostles in the Gospel; and so we say: “Send them home.” This is not what Jesus says. This not how it works in the Reign of God. That woman, that foreignor, that poor person who had to ask someone from outside to help her got what she needed right then. Jesus did not say: “Just wait till after the end of the world. Then everything will be alright.”
This is a hard Gospel to hear and even harder to preach. The easy way would be to go all pius and tell you it’s about perservering in prayer and send you home with a prayer book; or turn it into some kind of sermon on her faith never questioning ours. Well, I do not think we cannot afford to take the easy way out or look for the least difficult meaning as a way of avoiding what the Gospel asks of us: change, conversion, justice, openness to the Reigh of God today. If we refuse this real meaning of this story, we may very well end up being in the role of that woman one day, and then instead of mercy, we’ll get a taste of and hear the sound of our own words spoken then to us: “Send them away.”
Great faith in great people is the sound of voices crying aloud again and again and again and shouting loudly for justice. The priviledged can either get defensive and hold tighter to what they have for the time being, or they can pay attention to Jesus who was also privileged with great gifts and great power.