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Pentecost 14, 08/17/2008
Sermon on Matthew 15:21-28, by David Zersen
Leaving that place, Jesus withdrew to the region of Tyre and Sidon. A Canaanite woman from the vicinity came to him, crying out, "Lord, Son of David, have mercy on me! My daughter is suffering terribly from demon-possession." Jesus did not answer a word. So his disciples came to him and urged him, "Send her away, for she keeps crying out after us." He answered, "I was sent only to the lost sheep of Israel." The woman came and knelt before him. "Lord, help me!" she said. He replied, It is not right to take the children's bread and toss it to their dogs." "Yes, Lord," she said, "but even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their master's table." Then Jesus answered, "Woman, you have great faith! Your request is granted." And her daughter was healed from that very hour. (NIV)
CHOOSING YOUR TIME
Each of us can think of a time when we didn't choose to respond to a need, whether from a beggar or a phone-caller asking for funding for some charitable cause. My most recent example occurred when a young man surprised me by standing in the door of the church and saying, "I was very foolish last night and I got drunk, and now I'm terribly hungry and need some money to get something to eat." If only I would have been clever like Jesus and engaged the man in some kind of repartee that could have led to really interesting retelling, something well-written like the conversation that appears in today's text. As it was, I told him that we had a arrangement with a local social service agency which would provide him a meal. More interested in the money that I might have given, he said "thanks," and went on his way.
Today's text is a wonderfully curious story upon which many a commentator has tried his interpretive skill. The traditional interpretation is that Jesus clearly understood his responsibility to the children of Israel and would not have considered reaching out to people of various Gentile stripes. Acting within his limitations, he is finally moved by the woman's confidence in his mercy and power and grants her request.
Elton Trueblood, a Quaker New Testament scholar who made a name for himself with the book, The Humor of Jesus, contends that this text gives us an example of Jesus' wit and irony. He is playing with the woman, says Trueblood, because it's impossible to believe that one whose whole ministry is dedicated to the outcasts and disenfranchised could intend such mean-spirited words. He smiles as he says, "it's not right to take the children's bread and throw it to the dogs," and she smiles as she responds, with great confidence, "even the dogs eat the crumbs from the master's table." And we smile too.
Regardless of who is right in this matter, Jesus does respond positively in this situation, although clearly there were other situations, with both Jews and Gentiles where a positive response was not forthcoming. Jesus was a compassionate person, but his very careful choice of words makes it clear that he also made decisions about when and where he might choose to apply his mercy. The Gospel stories are limited in terms of what they can tell us, but we know from the episodes that were written down that sometimes people just tried to touch him in order to pry a blessing loose and at other times people had to break through the crowds to try to get someone to him. Jesus' ministry was personal, one to one, otherwise we would have stories of him simply healing the world with the wave of his hand. There is something to be said for this kind of personal decision/personal touch ministry and we ought to explore it both in terms of our own outreach and in terms of our claiming the kindness which is not generically, but only most personally our very own possession.
When we refuse another's request
Admittedly, there are times when we brush people off either because we are busy or because we aren't convinced of their need. I have struggled to make sense of the varied requests that come on the telephone, at the front door or on the street corner. Recently, I interviewed a man responsible for assuring that all the homeless school children in Texas are treated as equally in the school systems as are those who are not homeless. Over 400,000 children fall in this category, some living in cars, in shelters, in motels, in tents and on the street. He feels strongly that while times of desperation can occur in anyone's life, most of those in American society, at least, have access to community support systems that provide food, shelter, medical care and job counseling. He encourages people to give to the charitable organizations that seek to help address the larger needs rather than to people on street corners who all too often use the money for drugs and can make as much as $100 a day panhandling.
This professional's perspective may not be acceptable to everyone, but it does suggest that people can make responsible decisions about how to address human need and that not all refusals are to be seen as hard-hearted or uncharitable.
On the other hand, clearly we can recognize that there are negative attitudes in all of us that can be challenged. To discriminate against someone who is poor or who has HIV or who is a member of a race different from our own is to choose an exclusionary technique than cannot be called Christian. When we probe our heart of hearts, if we find lurking in its recesses an Ebenezer Scrooge or a Selfish Sarah or a Prejudiced Pete, we have every right to feel challenged by our fellow human beings as well as by our God. As the current issue of Time magazine (April 11, 2008) points out in it's cover story entitled "How to Help Those Left Behind," many people find themselves trapped in our form of laissez faire capitalism through no fault of their own. The solution may not be to become more generous at the street corner, but it does involve our being sympathetic to people whose fortunes have fallen on hard times. "God helps those who help themselves" is not a biblical quote, but "faith without deeds is dead" most certainly is.
How we are empowered to share
There is something very meaningless about all this discussion about sharing and kindness when it is expressed in ambiguous or generic terms. Unless a person with need has a name, or a description, like a Syro-phonecian woman, we find it hard to be responsive. Recently I received some very generous invitations from a man who owes me nothing and I keep asking myself how I can properly respond to him. Each of us has had this experience that we are touched by kindness that is not expected or friendship that is surprising. Why is it that we want to respond when we experience this?
The writer to the Ephesians (2: 4-5) makes it clear that because of his great love for us, God who is rich in mercy, made us alive even when we were dead in transgressions. He claimed us, affirmed us, accepted us by grace. This is such a lovely thought for us who so often sink into stingy, self-centered behavior. This is why it is so overwhelming to have a God that is totally different from us. In fact, this is what it means to be God-to be the alternative to the very behavior that too often characterizes us. And from that otherness he reaches out to forgive us, to love us and to call us his own. Why do we want to respond to this?
It is because this personal touch, first reaching us in our baptisms when we are called by name, calls us to become what God had in mind for us in the first place. As Augustine reminds us, our hearts are restless until God enlivens us and empowers us-until the God-vacuum within us is filled by love of the One who belongs there. We are known and loved by the very one who calls the universe into being and orders the stars and planets by his design. We are graced to be his beloved and to be assured that this life, given meaning and purpose through his Son, lasts into all eternity.
How does one respond to such personal and awesome claims? Surely not by occasional coins in a cup on a street corner or even by clever conversations with vagrants who are ever so convinced of our ability to make a difference in their lives. Each of us needs a plan, a stewardship response to God's grace to us, if I may use churchly terms for a moment. Each of us wants, individually or together with spouse or family members, to decide how we will respond to God's extravagant kindness. Each of us can choose the time and place in which to respond. And we can do it because struggling within us is a desire to express our joy and our confidence that the crumbs-and more than the crumbs-- will not fall needlessly to the ground. We have been immeasurably blessed for a purpose, and those blessings are seeking to make a difference through us in the lives of people around us.
Some of us may still find it useful or meaningful to touch people as they touch us, through a phone call or a knock at the door or a glance at a street corner. Others of us will choose to make a plan through which we will seek to make a difference in people's lives, using specifically designated amounts of time, talent and treasure. In any case, there is that within each of us who know ourselves to be loved by God calling us to choose our time when our response will be personal and real.
And for some of us, whose names are known only to the Master at the table, those generous crumbs will soon find their way to a person who is trusting God for a blessing.