|
The Rev. Richard Floyd Ridgefield-Crystal Lake Presbyterian Church August 14, 2005 Ordinary 20 (A) Matthew 15:21-28 Now wait a minute. Are you sure you read that right? It’s a good thing we stuck a song in between the scripture reading and the message. Maybe that will help us to forget what we just read. Can that really be in the Bible? Did Jesus really refuse to heal the woman’s daughter because she was a Canaanite? Did he really call her dog? Can you believe that’s in the Bible? Just out of curiosity: have any of you ever heard someone preach on this story? I can use all the help I can get. If you take it at face value, this is a really difficult story. So we’re tempted not to take it at face value. There are lots of ways to fix it, to make it less difficult. Maybe Jesus was only joking. There was a twinkle in his eye; he was just playing around. Or maybe Jesus was only testing her. He was going to heal the woman’s daughter all along, but he wanted to test how deep her faith was. Or maybe Jesus was tired and discouraged and here was this woman harassing him and howling at him and she was a dirty, rotten Canaanite besides and Jesus finally got tired of the whole thing and told her go away and leave him alone. That may get closer to what the story actually says. And that’s pretty shocking. Because it’s like for a moment Jesus forgot who he was supposed to be. He forgot to be gentle Jesus, meek and mild, loving and healing everyone. Instead, for just a moment, he was—well—just like you and me. You know, judging people. Putting people in boxes, boxes that tell us who’s who and what’s what, that tell us who we have to care about and who we can ignore. Flannery O’Connor has a story called “Revelation.” And that’s a perfect title. She tells about a bigoted, judgmental woman named Ruby Turpin. As far as Ruby’s concerned, there are only three kinds of people in the world: blacks, white trash, and good church-going people like her. (O’Connor uses some more colorful language for these people, but you get the point.) One day Ruby was sitting in the doctor’s office. And she saw a scruffy-looking young woman with a bad complexion reading a book. Ruby immediately knew which box she belonged in. “White trash” she said. And suddenly, without warning, the young woman jumped up and hit Ruby on the head with the book and said, “Go back to hell where you came from, you old wart hog.” The girl was quickly subdued and taken away, leaving respectable old Ruby shaken, but with her prejudice still intact. We don’t like to admit it, we don’t like to talk about it, but we at least understand that kind of prejudice. It’s all over the place in our world. It’s all over the place in our churches, too. It just seems to be human nature to put people in boxes, boxes labeled “black” or “Hispanic” or “Muslim” or “poor” or “gay” or “liberal” or “conservative” or sometimes in this congregation “NewWay” or “traditional”. We put people in boxes so we don’t have to deal with them as human beings, so we can dismiss them without a second look. We know we do this. But it sure is troubling to see Jesus do it. Here’s a woman whose daughter is being tormented. Why waste time joking around or trying to test her faith? Just heal the woman’s daughter! Oh, that’s right, she’s not a Jew. And Jesus said he came only for the lost sheep of Israel. Not only is she not a Jew, she’s a Canaanite. Canaanites and Jews especially hated each other. Jewish law said good Jews shouldn’t waste their time on dirty, rotten Canaanites. So Jesus was just playing by the rules when he told her to go away. But the woman won’t leave. She keeps pleading and pestering. And finally Jesus has had enough. It’s not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs. That was pretty much a slap in the face. That should have chased the woman off. But she stands her ground and shoots back: even dogs get to eat the crumbs that fall from the table. I think Jesus is amazed, amazed because the woman is still there, amazed because she won’t give up, amazed by her faith. And maybe most of all: amazed to hear God speaking to him through her! This Canaanite woman is giving Jesus a revelation. You remember old Ruby Turpin from O’Connor’s story? She could have had a revelation when that girl jumped up and smacked her on the head. But she refused to be changed by it. Here this Canaanite woman smacks Jesus on the head, and the whole world changes. Jesus praises the woman and heals her daughter, and the whole gospel seems to move in a new direction from this point on. Jesus goes on to heal many people, and it never tells us they were only Jews. And never again does he say he’s come only for the lost sheep of Israel. I know it’s shocking—can we even entertain the idea?— that this Canaanite woman was the catalyst for a massive expansion of Jesus’ ministry. Is it possible that, through her, Jesus had a revelation, Jesus came to see that this amazing thing God was doing was bigger than he had ever imagined? See, the thing is, God’s grace is hard. We love to sing about it and talk about it, but the truth is, grace is very challenging. Because it’s like the energizer bunny— it just keep going and going and going. Once you let it loose in your life and in the world, it won’t stop. It takes over everything, changes everything, blasts through every prejudice, collapses every box we try to put people in, demands love and healing for everyone and everything. God’s grace is so radical, even Jesus seems not to have seen how far and deep and wide it would go— at least until God gave him a wake-up call, through a pesky Canaanite woman who would not give up. Jesus saw God in her. She was a revelation. Speaking of revelations, let’s go back to Ruby Turpin for a minute. Later in the story, Ruby has another revelation. I’m quoting O’Connor here. “One evening Ruby stood beneath a crimson sky, and noticed the sky was marked by a long purple streak. Suddenly she saw life in a way she had never seen it before. She saw the streak as a vast shimmering bridge extending upward from the earth through a field of living fire. There was a vast horde of souls on the bridge, rumbling toward heaven. There were whole companies of white trash, clean for the first time in their lives, and bands of blacks in robes, and battalions of freaks and lunatics shouting and clapping and leaping like frogs. And bringing up the rear of the procession was a tribe of good church-going people, like herself, who had always had a little bit of everything and the God-given wit to use it right. She leaned forward to observe them closer. They were marching behind the others with great dignity, accountable as they had always been for good order and common sense and respectable behavior. Yet she could see by their shocked and altered faces that even these virtues were being burned away.” She saw a vast horde of souls rumbling toward heaven. That sounds like a revelation of a love that does not, that cannot, distinguish between blacks and white trash and respectable church-going people, or between Jews and Canaanites. It’s the kind of love God has for people everywhere— God’s grace, which falls like rain on everyone, a grace that will not be hemmed in by the borders of nations or the boundaries of prejudice. It’s still a troubling story. It gives us a picture of love which moves beyond all our comfortable boundaries. It also gives us a picture of Jesus maybe we’d rather not see, a Jesus who needed a revelation of his own to fully grasp what God was doing in him and through him. God’s grace is hard, almost beyond belief. The only reason we have the slightest inkling of what grace is and how far and deep and wide it goes, is because when God gave Jesus a revelation, through a Canaanite woman no less, Jesus responded. In the end, Jesus gave his life away out of love for all people, Jews and Canaanites, blacks and white trash and respectable church-going people, and everyone in between. And he calls us to do the same, to give our lives away out of love for all people, to touch everyone and everything with God’s grace. That’s our calling; that’s our hope; that’s our revelation. |