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Below, for your consideration and reflection, is the sermon from Bethel's August 14, 2005 Sunday worship service. Dogging Jesus Isaiah 56:1-8; Matthew 15:21-28 Bethel 8/14/05 The Reverend Marc Sherrod, ThD News reports from outside Crawford, Texas where President Bush is spending his annual five weeks vacation, include a story that is gaining increasing national and international attention. The story is about 48-year old Mrs. Cindy Sheehan from Washington State, who lost her 24 year old son, Casey, in the Iraqi war last year. She is camped several miles outside the Bush ranch wanting a face-to-face encounter with the President to tell him that he really must pull all American troops out of Iraq now. She says she won’t leave until she speaks with him. You’ve probably read about her. Some editorialists have blamed all the attention she has gotten on the White House Press Corps, now ensconced in Crawford, who have little to do while the President relaxes at his ranch. Others wonder why the President doesn’t just have her over to his ranch for a cup of tea and an expression of sympathy, and then let her say what she feels she needs to say. But as public sentiment shifts away from support for the war in Iraq and as the number of American dead approaches 2000, over 13, 000 wounded, probably anywhere from 25,000 to 2 or 3 times that number of Iraqi civilians killed, her solitary and dogged protest and pursuit of a hearing from the President has touched a raw nerve. Mrs. Sheehan reminds me of another woman who was no less dogged in her desire for an audience with someone we believe was much more important than even the President of the United States. The encounter Jesus has with an unnamed Canaanite woman, in our text from Matthew’s gospel, takes place outside Jewish Galilee, as Jesus has moved into the Gentile region of Tyre and Sidon. Away from the safety of home, not to mention the purity laws that keep life clean and godly, it would seem that he is especially vulnerable to trouble. Whenever I have a hard time imagining how hard it was, even for Jesus, to cross borders and to enter an environment where ethnic hostilities and prejudicial assumptions were rampant, I have only to stop and recall a refugee family from Bosnia that a church I once served took in through a refugee resettlement program sponsored by the United Nations. To have one’s life threatened merely because one is of a rival ethnicity or is not a Christian but a Muslim, as this family was, could leave even the best of us bitter and angry. So it was that Zekia Selkonivich, whose husband, an Olympic athlete, and who was presumed murdered . . . so it was she fled for refuge, eventually to the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia, with her elderly father, her toddler son and her infant daughter. She made it to safety, from one refugee camp to another in Europe, and eventually to the U.S., because of her dogged persistence in demanding a place of shelter and safety for her family. She survived because she would not accept canned responses to hard questions, and because she would not take “no” for an answer. If ever you doubted your ability or this church’s ability to do anything we felt God was leading us to do, you would rightly be truly ashamed after meeting Zekia and hearing her story of sheer determination and the overcoming of incredible obstacles. Mrs. Sheehan. My friend Zekia. They remind me of this Canaanite woman. In that ancient society, she was even worse than the despised Samaritans. She is the archetypal other, a Canaanite and a woman, and as such, should be allowed nowhere near this pious Jewish man. And to add irritation to potential injury, this woman is a screamer. She shouts. She dogs Jesus and his followers with her cries. And even though she is not Jewish, she doesn’t mind pulling out all the stops and attempting a high form of Jewish flattery in order to get his attention. She says, “Lord, Son of David, have mercy on me.” What’s more, she’s not afraid to disclose the worst about her family, whatever it takes to gain a hearing. “My daughter,” she reveals, “is suffering terribly from demon possession.” She hopes that the combination of religious flattery and brutal honesty will get her somewhere. What do you do with a pushy Canaanite woman who won’t shut up? Well, first, Jesus tries to ignore her; his disciples urge him to send her away; and when the itinerant rabbi finally speaks his mind, he also puts her down: “I was sent only to the lost sheep of Israel.” We students of Matthew’s Gospel know that this gospel, more than the others, focuses on Jesus as the Messiah who fulfills the Jewish law and prophets, that he is the one who is Israel’s hope and consolation. Jesus, in effect, says to her: there are plenty of lost sheep from my own fold to attend to – let the Canaanites deal with the Canaanites. But this woman will not take a snub for no. She advances toward him, kneels down in the traditional position of a supplicant, and begs: “Lord, help me!” We who think of Jesus as always compassionate and always merciful should be shocked at what happens next. His response to her begging is not only negative, it is an outrageous put down, the equivalent of slapping her in the face. Woman, what part of “no” don’t you get? My flock consists only of Jews, the ones who are children of Abraham. Why on earth should I take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs, like you and your daughters and other Canaanites? Why throw pearls to swine, to borrow another analogy he once used in a different context? A kneeling woman does not have far to fall, and by all rights, that insult should have floored her on the spot. What else is there for her to do but slink back into the crowd and take her place in the filthy streets among the dogs where she belongs – just as he said Did finally a wry smile cross the face of Jesus? Was there a slight shake of the head at her dogged determination and cunning word play? Did he accord her the ancient Palestinian equivalent of, “you go, girl!” We don’t know what he felt at losing an argument. It is unprecedented in scripture. But what is clear is that he recognized truth when he heard it and saw a gentile ready to be part of a flock much bigger than the one even he had been sent to. “Woman,” he says, “you have great faith! Your request is granted.” This story reveals the surprising truth that Jesus can change his mind. I suspect, at least when it comes to Christology or our doctrine and Church teachings about who Jesus is, that Hebrews 13:8 has greatly influenced us. That verse reads: “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, and today and forever.” The orthodox view of the Trinity is that Jesus, as the second person of the Trinity, and especially in view of his divine nature, is like the Rock of Ages, he is beyond changing, always the same His sacrifice on the cross is a once and for all, unrepeatedable event. And so we believe that it is. But what of his humanity, which he shares with us in his incarnation? Is it possible to be human, and to remain the same? We know he got tired and needed to be alone, that he had emotional outbursts such as when he argued with Pharisees or drove out moneychangers from the temple; we know he felt deep grief over the death of his friend Lazarus at Bethany and even grief for himself in the garden of Gethsemane. But what about his psychological development? Does this mind-changing encounter with a Canaanite woman make him any less a Savior figure? Take note: not only does he change his mind, but he so does in a breathtaking 180 degree turn. Most astonishing of all, it is a pagan who makes him do it. If Jesus is allowed to change his mind, what does that say about the rest of us – from the highest office in the land to the lowliest pew in Kingston? Jesus learned something new, and thus became someone different. This story pushes us to realize that the gospel is always more expansive and more inclusive than we first thought. The gospel, apparently, is even more expansive and inclusive than Jesus first thought. If you study the history of Christianity or the history of preaching, you will not see this story about the Canaanite woman often featured in sermons. Why? Because this story not only undercuts the theology of an unchanging Jesus, but it also makes the daring claim that people on the outside are ultimately just as important as people on the inside, that God’s children are on all sides. Jesus thought, here in this story, that only Jewish children mattered, the children of Abraham; but this Canaanite woman convinced him otherwise. Deep down, we might think God’s children have to be U.S. citizens or westerners or self-sufficient or educated or straight or any number of categories or labels our society creates to differentiate between insiders and outsiders. But dare we consider that the kingdom just might come through the dogged persistence of desperate mothers and demon-possessed daughters, war protestors and political refugees, all those people who don’t fit into our neat little boxes? Here’s the way Clarence Jordan of the Koinonia Farm in Americus, Georgia, paraphrases this passage in his Cotton Patch version of Matthew: Jesus left there and arrived in the region of Dalton and Calhoun. Then a black woman, from those parts came up and started pleading with him, “Please, sir, help me!” My daughter is badly demon possessed.” But he didn’t answer her a word. Then his students came along and advised him, “tell her to scram, because she’s making too much noise!” He replied, “I was sent only to white needy people.” But she came and humbled herself before him and said, “Sir, please help me!” He answered, “It isn’t right to take the bread from the children and throw it to the puppies.” She said, “Yes, but even so, sir, the puppies do get the scraps from their masters’ table.” Then Jesus said to her, “Ma’am, you’ve got a lot of faith. You may have whatever you want.” And her daughter was healed from that instant. Like the miracle of faith experienced by this mother and her restored daughter, it takes deep faith and quite a bit of humility to come to a new outlook. The Methodist bishop William Willimon tells about two conversations he had – one with the rector of a large, downtown Episcopal Church and the other with a Southern Baptist pastor, both of whom said the same thing in different ways. (Note that Presbyterians could easily be substituted as either of his conversation partners) Bishop Willimon knew that this Episcopal church welcomed gays and lesbians into their fellowship, and so he asked the rector, “do you get any resistance to their being here?” “Resistance?” the rector responded. “I suppose so, but that’s part of the job, isn’t it? After all, they weren’t my idea, they’re not my group.” “What do you mean by that?” “I mean by that just what I meant when one of our members came to me to complain about ‘why you want to have those people come to our church.’ I asked him, “I want to have them? What on earth do you mean by that? Their presence here is not my idea. I didn’t invite them. Why on earth would I want them. Let the record show that I didn’t invite you either. Why on earth would I have invited you. Let’s get this straight once and for all, this is God’s church, not mine, certainly not yours. This is God’s idea of a good time, God’s idea of a fun bunch of people. Later, Willimon was talking with a Baptist pastor who said, “do you know what is for me the most comforting passage in all of scripture right now? It is there in the Gospel of John where Jesus says, “I am going to prepare a place for you . . . because in my father’s house are many rooms.” “Comforting?” Willimon asked. Yes, comforting. We usually read that passage from John at funerals. But it ought to be read as a comforting word a major church meetings. Too many people in my denomination want a smaller church with fewer rooms. They want a room just big enough to hold them and their close friends in faith. But Jesus has promised that his Father’s house is a great, big house, one with lots and lots of rooms. That’s a great comfort in a time when there are many who want to scale down the church. (The Last Word, 131-32) And so it was that even Jesus came around and realized that there was room for a pagan Canaanite woman and her daughter at his table. May it be so for us as well. Amen.
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