Sermon - The Rev. Dr. Paul Kolbet, August 20th 2023

Our gospel reading tells us of a Gentile woman with a sick daughter who pleads with Jesus to heal her daughter. The world Jesus lived in, however, was afflicted with many of the same prejudices, divisions, and hatreds as our world is. The vast majority of our memories of Jesus are stories where he is with his own people. There are a few stories where a true outsider intrudes. This morning’s desperate mother is one of those outsiders. Notice that he at first ignores her and does not respond at all, as if she lacked the necessary status to bring to Jesus any request at all. Jesus’ disciples urge him to send her away complaining how bothersome her shouting at them is. They want it to stop. Dismissed and insulted, nevertheless, she persisted.  

Jesus doesn’t look good in this story does he not? It is in the Bible, though, because clearly there is something we are to learn from her. Jesus explains to her that his ministry is first of all to the Jews and later it will spill-over to Gentiles like her. She can wait. Likely with her ill daughter in mind, this woman will not wait. She gets on her knees and begs for help. He, likely giving voice to what his disciples around him were thinking, says out loud, “it would not be right to give the food intended for the children of Israel to the dogs.” How very insulting! She had probably heard that kind of dehumanizing insult before and here it is from Jesus no less. (And after his big speech about it is what comes out of the heart that defiles. Maybe Jesus should listen to himself?) or, more likely, there more to the story.

When insulted is she done persisting? No, not her. When confronted with an attitude of Jesus that approaches near bigotry, she does not defend herself. She does not say, “I am as much a human being as any Jew!”  (She would have been right!). Still kneeling she says, “Lord even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their master’s table” (meaning “you treat your dogs better than me because they at least get the crumbs from the table. My daughter’s healing is only that to you”). What a disarming answer! Jesus praises her saying, “Woman great is your faith!” Jesus grants her request and heals her daughter, Gentile and all. Jesus likely already knew of her faith and of others like her. Jesus was taking the opportunity to show his closest followers that their way of looking at God and the world was too narrow and small. In fact, we’re not told anything about the reaction of the disciples who wanted her chased away like a dog, but they likely stood there ashamed. She is held up in Scripture as a forerunner of what would become the Gentile church, or what we call Christianity.

It is a hard story for us to hear though, because of what looks to us like a call to embrace humiliation. It seems to push in the opposite direction of much of how we are taught to look at ourselves and how to look out for ourselves. Our secular culture calls all of us to stand up for ourselves all the time, to demand the respect we deserve as human beings, and to insist upon our rights. But what it is unable to give us is any real explanation of what truly gives human beings value in the first place. It is merely asserted and human rights exist only to the extent that we agree that they exist. Because of this much of our secular talk of worthiness and dignity rings hallow and lots of people struggle–unlike this ancient gentile woman–with their own sense of worth.

 Amid this hollowness, one of the extraordinary things about our time is the enormous pressure put upon everybody to market themselves, that is, to attempt to manage how they are perceived by the world by promoting a certain image of themselves, and maybe even defend against would-be critics. Children in middle school often already have social media pages where they are curating pictures of themselves and their activities, presenting themselves as attractive, happy, and successful. Our media age has made it possible in a way to place an image between you and the person looking at you. That is so powerful. It used to be that to be a professional at anything was just about having a skill that people were willing to pay for. Now part of professional life is making yourself a brand. Some of the most successful professionals these days are not necessarily the best at what they do. What they are particularly good at is managing their brand, with all sorts of social media pages devoted to promoting themselves, or, more specifically, a certain highly curated image of themselves. It is time consuming and it can be all consuming. There are people now who are only a brand. That is all they do.  

The Gentile woman in today’s Gospel has no brand, she’s not managing an image when she says, “even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their master’s table.” Whatever her example may mean for our use of media to prover our worthiness, at the very least her example demonstrates the need to be somewhere where, like her, you are you, the real you, the unmanaged you, the you not burdened by the pressures of self-presentation and self-preservation.  It certainly means that that you is to the one to bring to Jesus who has no interest in our brand or image and sees through all of that anyway.

You longtime Episcopalians probably noticed that the words of this Gentile woman show up in our Book of Common Prayer uncredited to her. There is prayer technically named, “The Prayer of Humble Access.” It appeared in the very first Book of Common Prayer in 1549 and in every one since then. It is what was to be said to prepare oneself to receive Holy Communion. In the Rite I version of our liturgy it goes like this: “We do not presume to come to this thy Table, O merciful Lord, trusting in our own righteousness, but in thy manifold and great mercies. We are not worthy so much as to gather up the crumbs under thy Table. But thou art the same Lord whose property is always to have mercy. Grant us therefore, gracious Lord, so to eat the flesh of thy dear Son Jesus Christ, and to drink his blood, that we may evermore dwell in him, and he in us. Amen” (BCP 337). The instructions are that it is to be said kneeling just like the Gentile woman.

Some of you may have noticed, that there is a difference between our prayer and hers. Our prayer says that we are “not worthy of the crumbs”, while hers insists that she was worthy. Why it is that way is that the framers of the Prayer Book (who knew their Bible very well), did not want us too easily to assume that we are worthy of making her words our own, as if too easily or too cheaply we assume that we are her equals. Nearly 500 years of prayer books have assumed that we kneel next to her saying we are not even worthy of that, but please Lord grant our request anyway just like you did hers.

This determined humble woman anticipated the great Christians of the following centuries. Her confident humility exposes the empty posturing that is too common in our media age and the hallow promises of so much of our secular culture. She is such a contrast to every adult playground bully that seeks to appear powerful but in the larger scheme of things amounts to nothing. This sort of proud arrogance wants to be admired for always defending itself. People puff up like balloons, but each balloon in fact grows weaker the more air that goes into it. If we live this way, it is difficult for us to be vulnerable to God or to other people or to have any confident security that is larger than ourselves. In bringing before us this woman to be our example, Scripture wants to move us away from an empty presumption that is all bark, that is all style but no substance.

            Scripture wants to move us toward her strange confidence that is real; it has substance and not only style. The strong Christian basis of human worth, of our worthiness, is according to Scripture in the words of our St. Paul, that “while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8). Rather than asserting our own value, we delightfuly discover ourselves to be valued. That unearned, grace filled discovery, gives us such confidence in God that we are free to no longer conceal our weaknesses. It is that that allows us to own fully our faults, failures, and finitude as creatures, and to know ourselves to be loved and to find the fullness of life without continually hiding who we are through image management. It makes available to us a true closeness, togetherness, or solidarity, because we are only really loved when we are known and loved as we truly are and not just as who we present ourselves to be. In short, our Gospel reading of the humble yet confident faith of this ancient gentile woman, exposes the superficial selves our culture promotes and offers instead a far more daring vulnerability that is both most human and most Christian.

            As Christians we come to God not as members of the Jewish people that he brought out of Egypt and made promises to, we come to God as this Gentile woman did. She foreshadows the Gentile Church, and even when others are saying, “send her away,” she maintains her great faith. In this non-defensive faith, she is loved by Jesus. Rather than struggling to assert our value, may we experience ourselves as valued by God and be freed from the need always to defend ourselves. May we be as vulnerable to Christ as she was and find the strength that is found in weakness, so that our Lord Jesus Christ may approve of our faith as his did that of the Gentile woman.  Amen.