9th Sunday after Pentecost--Proper 15A

9th Sunday after Pentecost--Proper 15A
August 14, 2011
When I was driving up to Jackson on Wednesday, I noticed a church sign on the outskirts of Wiggins. It said, “When in doubt, don’t pout, just give Jesus a shout.” If only it were that neat and clean and simple!
But our gospel for today is very messy, even offensive and doesn’t quite fit into such a nice, neat formula for faithful living. In our gospel today, the very presence of the word “Canaanite” “stirs up memories of ancient foes—idol worshiping enemies over against whom the people of Israel defined themselves.” And in Matthew’s gospel it takes on an added complexity because the author of Matthew intentionally lists the Canaanite women Tamar, Rahab, and Ruth as a part of Jesus’s own geneology and a part of his family story.i So there’s already the presence of that messy mixture of associations with the people of Cana, and then, in our gospel portion for today, Jesus talks about eating and the bodily function that result, and he calls a woman who petitions him (via shout) to help her sick child a dog (which is a typical Jewish expression for Gentiles, but still quite offensive).
The two pieces of this gospel at first glance seem unrelated—Jesus is teaching the crowds about Jewish dietary law and ritual defilement and about how people should worry more about what is coming out of our hearts, and then Jesus takes a road trip into Canaanite country, where he encounters this woman who shouts at him, petitioning that he heal her demon possessed daughter. These two incidences may seem unrelated, but by placing them together, Matthew’s gospel and our lectionary indicate that there is some sort of connection. “In the first [part of today’s gospel] people who are socially accepted [the Pharisees] emphasize external differences [observance of the Jewish dietary laws] and miss the matters of the heart [what are truly impediments to our relationship with God and others—‘evil intentions, murder, adultery, fornication, theft, false witness, slander…’] Whereas in the second [part], a woman who is socially marginalized breaks through external differences [of gender, culture, and cultural prejudices] to claim God’s mercy.”ii The encounter between Jesus and his disciples and the Canaanite woman becomes the illustrative parable of what Jesus is teaching the crowds in the first part of the gospel. And interestingly enough, in the second part, the disciples play the part of the Pharisees.
Today, I invite you to take some time and identify with the different characters in the story of the Canaanite woman. Let’s look at the woman first. This is a woman who is not bound by conventional social propriety or norms or even deep-rooted conflicts. She is brazen in her cry to Jesus, and she shouts at him, “Lord, have mercy.” It is a prayer that echoes down through the centuries and has been shouted and whispered by millions of lips—“the cry of the soul in extremis, a raw witness to the depth and misery of the human condition.”iii In the Greek phrase that is translated as “Lord, have mercy,” mercy is not a noun, a sympathetic feeling; mercy in the Greek is a verb. It is an action. This woman’s challenge is for Jesus to act, to do something.
On the other hand, the disciples in today’s gospel are very worried about propriety. First they complain, “Lord, you offended some Pharisees,” and then they complain, “Lord, send that woman away; she keeps shouting after us!” I wonder what it is that they are really worried about in their seeming obsession with propriety? What do they learn by witnessing Jesus’s encounter with the Canaanite woman?
And then there is Jesus, who is especially enigmatic in this lesson. Why is his first response to the woman silence? Is his understanding of his mission changed in this encounter?
In Matthew’s gospel, mercy is absolutely central to Jesus’s ministry. He quotes Hosea on two different occasions (9:14, 12:7) and says, “I desire mercy not sacrifice.”iv In his encounter with the Canaanite woman, Jesus models for us what this means. He shows us what God’s mercy looks like and that it is all inclusive. He shows us that we don’t get to decide who is good enough (or not) to receive God’s mercy. And what does he mean when he speaks about the woman’s great faith? What is she doing or saying that leads her to the healing which she seeks? (I think it is that she doesn’t care a whit that she is acting against propriety; she gives her heart fully to her demand for God’s mercy and that Jesus heal her daughter, regardless of all that separates them.)
Have you ever acted like that woman and cried out to Jesus, Lord, have mercy! Do something! Help me! What happened? Were you met with silence? When in your life have you been like the Canaanite woman, willing to defy all social convention and propriety to demand your share of God’s mercy?
When are we like the disciples and the Pharisees, more concerned with outward appearances than what is in the heart; more concerned with propriety than with mercy? What concerns of our own about propriety and what is seemly get in the way of the matters of our hearts? How do our concerns about what is seemly get in the way of the healing and transformation that God is offering us? How does our squeamishness impede our encounters with God?
Mercy and propriety seem to be at odds in this gospel, and in fact, they can at times be at odds in our own lives. It is much easier to let propriety rule our hearts than to let mercy rule. Propriety is fueled and dictated by culture, by tradition, by “the way that we’ve always done it.” Mercy is fueled by God’s intervention in our lives and the world; mercy is inspired by God’s invitation to look at others through God’s eyes, and to see others the way that God sees them, to love others the way that God loves them.
But to follow that call, we must be willing to go deeper, beyond the surface of things, to peel back the layers that we build up on our own hearts and the layers put there by our families, our culture, etc. When we encounter someone who makes us uncomfortable because of who they seem to be on the outside, we are invited to peel back the layer of what is outside and try to imagine what might be in that person’s heart. Could it be the hearts of the “other” harbor the same hopes and dreams, fears and sorrows as our own? Can it be that the heart of the other longs as deeply as our own for their share of God’s mercy? And what is it in our own hearts that makes us so afraid of the other? Are we afraid that there is not enough of God’s mercy to go around, so that we try to hoard it all for ourselves? Are we afraid that our place in the kingdom will be diminished by God’s inclusion of all God’s children?
In today’s gospel, Jesus shows us that he will not allow himself and his understanding of his mission to be an impediment between the Canaanite woman and God’s mercy. May we have the courage to follow this way he has set, and to go and do likewise.
Essential idea from Feasting on the Word: Theological Perspective by Iwan Russell-Jones, pp356-357.
From Feasting on the Word: Exegetical Perspective by Jae Won Lee, pp 357-361.
Essential idea from Feasting on the Word: Theological Perspective by Iwan Russell-Jones, pp358