Sunday, August 14, 2005
Bishop E. Roy Riley
ELCA New Jersey Synod

Texts:

Romans 11:1-2a, 29-32

I ask, then, has God rejected his people? By no means! I myself am an Israelite, a descendant of Abraham, a member of the tribe of Benjamin. God has not rejected his people whom he foreknew.

... for the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable. Just as you were once disobedient to God but have now received mercy because of their disobedience, so they have now been disobedient in order that, by the mercy shown to you, they too may now receive mercy. For God has imprisoned all in disobedience so that he may be merciful to all.

Matthew 15:21-28

Jesus left that place and went away to the district of Tyre and Sidon. Just then a Canaanite woman from that region came out and started shouting, "Have mercy on me, Lord, Son of David; my daughter is tormented by a demon." But he did not answer her at all. And his disciples came and urged him, saying, "Send her away, for she keeps shouting after us." He answered, "I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel." But she came and knelt before him, saying, "Lord, help me." He answered, "It is not fair to take the children's food and throw it to the dogs." She said, "Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters' table." Then Jesus answered her, "Woman, great is your faith! Let it be done for you as you wish." And her daughter was healed instantly.

Wow! A microphone for more than two minutes!

Grace, mercy and peace be unto you from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ through the Holy Spirit. Amen.

This past Monday there was a story and picture in USA Today that I cut out, and I've had it on my table in front of me all week. The picture is of a small boy whose eyes are wide with a mixture of hope and fear. The headline reads, "Niger is dying, and the world is merely watching." I kept that picture in front of me all week to remind me that something must be done - by me, by this church, by all of us. Something more than discussion, more than just a memorial, more than a $17,000 dollar offering for World Hunger on Friday, though that was an important step. Something much more, because this little boy and his whole African nation is dying of hunger.

A long time ago, in a place a long way from here, there was a woman whose little one - whose daughter - was desperately ill, probably dying too. The mom had done all that she could do; nothing worked. So she leaves her daughter and strikes out on her own, looking for help. This is anxiety that we all know and have felt, when a little child - a child, a grandchild - any little one - is suffering, and there is no answer to what is wrong. Why won't the fever break? What is happening inside of that frail little body? Why can't the doctors and nurses solve this riddle? The demon won't let go. Mom is desperate!

Somehow she learns that Jesus is nearby. He's a healer. He is Jewish. Doesn't matter. Nothing else matters - male, female, Jew, gentile - nothing else matters when a child is at risk. Social customs and proprieties be damned! Mom is on a mission.

Jesus is on a mission, too. And according to Matthew's Gospel it doesn't seem to be going very well. Everywhere Jesus turned there were crowds of people clamoring just to touch him. He tries to teach thick-headed disciples how to do this work, but they just don't get it. Peter wants to walk on water; he can't do it. Jesus goes to his hometown and his boyhood synagogue - a safe place - but old friends and acquaintances take offense at him. Then he hears that his colleague John the Baptist has been beheaded by Herod. And when he tries to go away and grieve, the crowds find him. They come from every direction, and the religious leaders, the pharisees come, too, with their riddles and their barbs and their accusations. "Why do your disciples not wash their hands before they eat? Why do they not follow the tradition of the elders?

These religious leaders must be addressed theologically. The poor must be addressed compassionately. The disciples must be addressed imaginatively. His mother and his brothers and sisters must be addressed reassuringly, for they think he may have lost it. So much to address. Heavy things - matters of justice and peace, life and death - the needs of a whole world press in on every side. There is no end to it! And so, the Lord leaves that place, according to Matthew's Gospel, and heads for the border, toward the region of Tyre and Sidon. Toward the border, or on the border, or just beyond the border of Phoenicia then, Lebanon today.

And there, waiting for him, is a Palestinian woman, a Canaanite, the enemy people of the Promised Land. The One who, according to his own words, was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel, is about to meet the traditional enemy face to face.

"Have mercy on me, Lord, son of David. My daughter is tormented by a demon." Jesus did not answer her at all. The woman didn't stop crying out. Jesus still does not respond to her. The disciples, the church, have had enough. "Lord, send her away; she's shouting after us!" Jesus responds, "I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel." But the woman is undeterred. She falls down on her knees right in front of Jesus and begs, "Lord, help me!" And Jesus answers, "It is not fair to take the children's food and throw it to the dogs."

Did Jesus actually say that? Can this whole encounter be any more out of character for the Jesus we thought we knew? What if Jesus was having this conversation largely with himself, and not the Canaanite woman? What if the initial silence and then the reference to his mission to the lost sheep of Israel, and then the conclusion that the bread designated for the children of Israel shouldn't be thrown to he gentile dogs - what if this is about Jesus thinking through this encounter out loud?

I was born and raised in South Carolina, in the segregated South. My parents taught me to love everyone and to hate no one. But there were boundaries that must not be crossed. The boundaries were in certain parts of town, and at water fountains and public restrooms and restaurants and on buses, and especially there were boundaries about personal relationships. The community, the state - even the church - taught me these boundaries right alongside of the Gospel mandate to love one another.

I'm not the only one who was raised this way. If we are as confident about Jesus' true humanity as we are about Jesus' true divinity, then we can believe that Jesus grew up in a community that taught him boundaries between gentiles, Canaanite Palestinians and Jewish people. These were God's rules as best the people could understand them. Holiness for God meant exclusiveness from others, and all of it was unclean. It was clear. It was ordained by God. Every Jewish boy learned it.

As far as we know, this unanticipated visit with the Canaanite woman was the only time Jesus ventures across this boundary. Matthew's Gospel earlier describes a similar encounter with a gentile - a Roman centurion - but Luke's Gospel says that the Jewish community entreated Jesus to heal the centurion's servant because the centurion was one of the good guys. He got a pass from the Jewish community. There was no such pass for the Canaanite woman. She was kneeling before Jesus, her tear-streaked gentile face looking up at him. And the experience of this woman's heart, which is filled with some kind of God-given faith that Jesus can save her daughter - the experience of that heart seems to overcome a whole childhood of learning that you don't cross this boundary.

To have a Savior so divine and yet so human as to have experienced the struggle and pain of growing out of what seemed so trustworthy as a youth! Wow! What if it were so?

She's kneeling before Jesus, her tear-streaked gentile face looking up at him, and Jesus' experience of this woman's heart, which is filled with some kind of God-given faith that Jesus can save her daughter - the experience of it is so dramatic that the healing flows long distance to wherever her little daughter was lying helpless, and Matthew's Gospel says the sickness left her instantly.

"Great is your faith," Jesus says to the woman. "Great is your faith; be it done for you as you wish." In that moment, would you have rather been: a. back at the home of the Canaanite woman, to see the healing suddenly arrive for her daughter; or b. would you rather have been looking at the faces of the disciples when Jesus exclaimed to the enemy, "Great is your faith"?

In other words, do you want to see the end of a miracle, or do you want to see the beginning?

Jesus' experience of this woman's heart, which is filled with some kind of God-given faith that Jesus can save her daughter - the experience of it is so dramatic that the healing flows long distance to wherever her little daughter was lying helpless, and Matthew's Gospel says, "the sickness left her instantly."

And here's the ironic reflection of this Matthew story in this Lutheran church: We have pretty much mastered the miracle of distance healing. Lutheran World Relief, Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service, Lutheran World Federation, ELCA World Hunger Appeal, International Disaster Response - tsunami relief the all-time example. We have pretty much mastered the miracle of distance healing What we struggle with is looking into each other's eyes and connecting heart to heart, to learn what is there. To learn who is there.

We can make jokes about our various pieties - Norwegian, German, Swedish, Southern, Midwestern. I'm the victim of two of them. But there was a point where Jewish disciples had to get over Jewish piety and the tradition of the elders so that they could at least try to see into the hearts of others the way Jesus would look at them - with eyes focused by God's amazing grace!

Matthew's Gospel begins to open this new door in this remarkable encounter between Jesus and the Canaanite woman. It's notice given to amend the mission to the lost sheep of the house of Israel, and the amendment reads as follows: "Article 28.19: Go into all the world; make disciples of all nations."

Matthew wasn't the first to give notice of this amendment to the mission; it was Isaiah, speaking to God and for God, and saying to Israel in the 49th chapter, "It is too light a thing that you should be my servant, to raise up the tribes of Jacob and to restore the survivors of Israel. I will give you as a light to the nations, that my salvation may reach the end of the earth. And the echo for that announcement was read in the first lesson for today. Did you hear it? "Thus says the Lord God who gathers - who gathers the outcasts of Israel. I will gather others to them besides those already gathered."

Thus says the Lord God, who gathers - who gathers not according to adherence to the purity laws of the pharisees or the judgments that we place on one another. The God who gathers comes looking for faith - faith that the Spirit of God is giving like a sower who lavishes seed on every soil. The gift of faith spills out into the world, and great God of mercy, it sometimes falls into places we might never expect. Into Canaanite hearts! And souls only God can see and understand! Faith as small as a mustard seed. Trust as simple as that of a child. Belief growing secretly in the heart that nurtures a body and soul into acts of love and mercy and justice, and distance healing and even mutual conversation and consolation of one another one-on-one.

This Canaanite woman's heart, filled with some kind of God-given faith that Jesus can save her daughter. This faith connects the power of Christ's healing love right into her life, and her daughter is healed, and the woman's life is given back to her.

In this tiny story - this border incident between Jesus and a Palestinian woman - is written the promise of healing and life restored. Not just for one mother's child, but for the children of Israel and for all God's children to the ends of the earth. With arms wide open, God will gather them. With arms nailed open on a cross, Christ gathers us. We are healed! Life is restored! And the gift of faith makes it so and overflows into acts of love and mercy and justice and peace, and distance healing for the children of Niger and every child of God - every child! Every child! Le it be so! Amen.