Sermon for August 16, 2020 - The Eleventh Sunday after Pentecost - Proper 15A - The Rev'd Elise A. Feyerherm

Isaiah 56:1, 6-8 – Psalm 67 – Romans 11:1-2a, 29-32 – Matthew 15:10-28

Our Anglican tradition follows an ancient Christian teaching, that Jesus of Nazareth is God incarnate – the Divine Word become truly human. God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, as we proclaim in the Nicene Creed. Even when we are having trouble believing that this good news is possible – and we all do – we know ourselves part of a great river of the faithful who hold each other up whenever we find ourselves unable to do it on our own. We are met daily with challenges to that faith – skepticism and even scorn from those around us; our own weariness and reasonable doubt; a world full of evil and injustice and disaster. All these things and more make it difficult to trust that God would actually become human, or, if it did actually happen, that it makes any difference at all.

Sometimes the challenge to our faith comes from within the bible itself, from the stories that have been handed down over the millennia about this Jesus, who supposedly was born of a virgin, suffered under Pontius Pilate, died, was buried, and rose again on the third day. The story we just heard from Matthew is one of a handful of stories from the gospels that can test and try our faith in Jesus as God incarnate.

It is from a certain angle a troubling story. One could reasonably say that it does not paint Jesus in a very flattering light. He ignores a woman who is clearly desperate to find help and healing for her daughter who is tormented by a demon. He implies, when he finally decides to pay attention to this woman, that she and her daughter are not really human, but on the level of dogs. Granted, he does change his mind, and the woman’s daughter is healed, but in so doing, the question is raised: if Jesus is God, can he actually be wrong? If he is wrong, can he actually be God? What can it mean, that Jesus behaves in a way that, in anyone else, we would label obnoxious?

There are ways to explain it away. Some commentators claim that Jesus is joking with the woman, with a little glimmer of humor in his eye, hoping that she will push back and show some gumption. I have to admit I have preached that in the past, explaining away Jesus’ apparent rudeness, smoothing it over, making it seem not quite so offensive. Maybe Jesus didn’t actually behave so badly – perhaps Matthew (and Mark, on whose story Matthew’s is based) exaggerated the situation in order to teach his community a lesson. Maybe he really was joking, and it sounds worse than it really was. Maybe the woman caught the glint in Jesus’ eye and was happy to play along. I have thought that in the past.

Now, I am just horrified at the idea of anyone, let alone Jesus, toying with a person who is in such pain, even if the intent is good.

Some readers of this story focus on the fact that the community to which Matthew is writing is a Jewish-Christian one, and that Jesus’ apparent animosity to the Canaanite woman is a mirror held up to expose the prejudices that would keep gentiles out of the Church. Some gloss over Jesus’ abrasiveness by reminding us that the point of the story is that the Good News is meant for all people, not only those within Israel.

I have no doubt that Matthew has a message in this story for his community, who are predominantly Jewish followers of Jesus. It makes sense to me that Matthew is reminding his people of what they should have remembered all along, what was proclaimed centuries before in the book of Isaiah, that in God’s future, all people, including foreigners who join themselves to the God of Israel, will be gathered into one flock. We all need that reminder – at least I know I do. God’s boundaries are a lot wider and more open than mine, I’m sure.

This time around, those various explanations didn’t satisfy quite so easily. I was struck by Jesus bad behavior and wondered, what if it really was that bad? What if this woman, a gentile and even an enemy, had something important to teach Jesus about his vocation and the God who was leading him? What if this encounter changed Jesus’ mind? And if so, how does that fit with our cherished tradition that Jesus is not just any old human being, but is in fact God incarnate?

So here is what I am wondering. What if this story tells us something not only about what it means to be human, but also what it means to be God?

I wonder…We might assume, and some have, that for Jesus to be fully God, there had to be no room for growth or learning or mistakes. The letter to the Hebrews tells us that Jesus was like us in every way, except for sin. Jesus’ treatment of the Canaanite woman is definitely cringe-worthy, but I wonder if what we are seeing in this story is something more profound.

Jesus is wrestling with his vocation, facing another human being who, as all human beings will do, makes a claim on him in the name of God. As fully human, Jesus always has a choice. As fully human, Jesus discovers himself – his deepest self – in relationship with another. This relationship, as all relationships, is challenging – it asks something hard of Jesus. He has trouble reckoning with it at first. But he also stays with it. And he is changed by this desperate mother, by her tenacity and love and hunger for justice.

This openness to being changed by others, I would venture, is one of the things that makes us authentically human, and is also a sign of being firmly tethered to God. When we are in relationship with others and with God, it means that we might change our minds. This is never easy. We are likely to be cranky, just as Jesus was cranky. We might even be jerks in the process. Being a jerk, as annoying as that is to others and to ourselves, is not, I think, sin. Refusing ever to be changed and transformed by those with whom we are in relationship, however, might be.

To be truly human is to be in relationship, and to be changed by those relationships. To change our minds, even, about things that are deeply important to us. Jesus models this for us.

When, in your life, have you been challenged by someone, and found yourself transformed? Could God have been in that moment? As I pondered this, I tried to think of a time when an encounter with someone really got me to change my mind, and it was difficult. I wondered, have I been closed off to the ways in which God, through others, has been asking me to change?

This worries me a little. But I wonder if my sketchy memory is due not to the fact that no encounter has ever changed me, but to the fact that every encounter has changed me in some way. We do not have to look for the dramatic shifts to discover that God is inviting us in everyone we meet to learn, pivot if necessary, and be transformed.

Jesus begins his encounter with the Canaanite woman by re-rooting himself in his deepest identity as one who has been sent to Israel to proclaim the good news of God. We can approach our encounters in the same way – knowing we are tethered to the God of Israel, loved and led and never abandoned. With this faith, we are free to meet and be transformed by all those who cross our path, especially those demanding justice and healing.

Hopefully we won’t be jerks in the process, but as Jesus shows us, even that doesn’t have to be the end of the story. Let us pray: Merciful God, you let the Gentile woman subvert your plans: give us the faith that comes from the heart and walks beyond our boundary posts that we might be surprised by outrageous grace; through Jesus Christ, son of David and light of the world. Amen.

(Steven Shakespeare, “Collect for Proper 15A,” Prayers for an Inclusive Church. New York: Church Publishing, 2009, p.33).