"The Living God"
Don't be afraid to seek Jesus out.
Sermon Preached by
The Reverend Dr. Andrew Stirling
Sunday, April 10, 2005
Text: Matthew 15:21-28
It is one of the main characteristics of the ministry of Jesus of Nazareth that people who came willingly to him and sought him out during their time of need were often untutored souls, unfettered by any tradition or background in the faith. In fact, over and over again, the gospels show people who were so distraught, so upset with life, so incapable of handling their own circumstances, in the midst of all that was taking place in their land, going directly to Jesus for support and nurture.
Many of those who came to Jesus had no deep theology, no knowledge of his divinity, no appreciation of the religion in which he was brought up. They came to him simply because they had heard that he was approachable. He was someone they could go to regardless of their state of being, regardless of their knowledge of the faith, regardless even of their ethnicity.
They came and sought Jesus out. Listen, for example, to the following voices: “If I could only touch his clothes, I will be made whole.” This was a woman who had been bleeding for many years and in her desperation just wanted to touch his garment to be made whole. There was another person: “If you will, you can make me whole.” The man who said that was a leper. He had a disease that at that time was incurable. He was going to be separated permanently not only from his community, but also from his loved ones and even from his God. He sought Jesus out: “If you will, you can make me whole.”
There was a time in Jesus' ministry when everything was going wrong; when it seemed like his ministry was going nowhere. The authorities were questioning his ability, and wondering if his judgment was sound. His disciples were ill at ease with the state of affairs, and there were questions about whether Jesus knew what he was doing. However, at that very moment, a group of peasant women came up and said, “Let us come near to him so he may touch our children.”
In all these circumstances (and there are many others throughout the New Testament), people in their desperation and in their need felt that they could turn to Jesus Christ in an open and an honest way. When all hope seemed to be lost and everything seemed to be dark, they sought him out, as Zacchaeus did, through a crowd. That is why, in the Gospel of Matthew in particular, these stories are undergirded by the Old Testament.
You can understand that Matthew would have been thinking about the passage in Isaiah about the “Coming One,” of whom it was said, “He will take upon himself our infirmities.” Such was the understanding of Matthew in writing his gospel that he saw these events in the light of the Old Testament and the fulfillment of God's covenant with his people. But this morning's passage has often been seen as contrary to this.
On initial reading, this story sounds implausible, harsh, even rude. A woman comes to Jesus in her desperation. Her daughter is possessed by a demon, which is another way of saying she is ill and broken. As a last-gasp effort, she comes to this Son of David; she comes to Jesus of Nazareth in the hopes that he might be able to do something about her daughter. As the story goes, a rather interesting debate takes place. The disciples shun her and Jesus is silent. Finally, he responds to her and says, “It is not right to take the children's bread and toss it to their dogs.”
Now, on the surface, it sounds like Jesus is being rude - he's calling her a “dog!” The meaning of the original Greek word, however, actually softens the whole event. I was thinking about dogs when we had the blessing of the pets here this morning at 9:30, (and trust me, you should have been here for this event! I am still recovering from it!) and I thought indeed it does appear that calling someone a dog is a put-down, but the Greek word used is “kunarion,” and kunarion doesn't mean a dog that roams the street like a wild animal, but a puppy, a pet.
So, if you read this story then in the light of the real way in which it was written, Jesus is saying something much more profound to this woman, and the two of them then began to match wits and exchange witticisms. It's a nice little debate, a little give-and-take that goes on. You have to see the story in that light, because that is the light in which a Palestinian who had been there would have seen it. In other words, Jesus isn't being rude or arrogant to this woman, he is making a number of very important points, but he is doing it in a rather humorous, almost tongue-in-cheek manner.
This story, then, is not, and I want to stress this, out of keeping with the whole tone of Jesus' ministry. This woman who comes to Jesus in her time of need is just like all the others who came to Jesus in their times of need. In his own unique and singular way, Jesus deals with it. What makes this story all the more fascinating is that it is not about Jesus. It is about the woman. It is not about what Jesus does miraculously, as important as that is. It is about the affirmation that the woman makes at the very end. With that in mind, I want to look at the major players in the story, because they open up for us a window on what was really taking place. In writing this gospel, Matthew is very deliberate. I want to stress this. He is very deliberate in including all the different protagonists.
The first were the disciples. As in so many of the stories in the Bible, the disciples didn't look particularly good here, just as they didn't look particularly good when the women that I mentioned before brought their children to Jesus. What did they do? They turned them away! They told them literally, in Greek, to “Get lost!” That's what they said, “Go away! We do not want to be defiled! Get out of here!” In the same way, they say the same thing to this woman: “Don't bother Jesus! We have to take care of him! Go away!” Why did they do that? And why, as the source of the gospels after all, include this detail of the story, when they must have understood that they didn't look particularly good?
Well, there are a number of different theories, all of which speak to the church today and the way we deal with people who are in need and distressed. First of all, we are told this woman was a Canaanite. From the very beginning of the Old Testament, from the very earliest days when the Israelites moved into their country, the Canaanites were seen as the natural enemy. They had their pagan gods, and some were even godless. The term Canaanite stood for everything that was unclean and unworthy and idolatrous. Thus, these disciples brought up within the Jewish tradition looked upon this woman with disdain because she was a Canaanite.
We read that Jesus was in the area of Tyre and Sidon. He was outside of the main area in which he lived, and maybe the disciples were just frightened that it would all be just too much for Jesus to handle - too much godlessness for the Son of God to address! So, they shunned the Canaanite woman.
Or, as another school of thought has suggested, they were just being possessive. Maybe they just thought as they were walking through Tyre and Sidon that Jesus was their private property. Who was this woman to come and disturb a nice stroll in the countryside? After all, she was a Canaanite and they were his, and he was theirs. Why couldn't they just keep the rest of the world at arm's length?
Very often, my friends, religion does that with people. We become possessive about our God, possessive about our churches, possessive about our Christ. As if, somehow, he is ours, as opposed to us being his. Sometimes, we turn the church into nothing more than a club with certain procedures to fulfill in order to join, a club which, by definition, is designed to maintain a set membership, a membership that is comfortable with itself, but not necessarily open to those outside it. Sometimes we are like the disciples. We get possessive and we keep the needs of the world at arm's length.
Or maybe it is something else. Maybe the disciples didn't want this woman near because she didn't understand the rules. She didn't know this was the Son of God, and when you come to the Son of God you don't just come up with your broken, demon-possessed child and walk into his presence; you come in with holy awe and respect. Maybe they were just sending a message to the world that there are certain rules and regulations, and if you don't abide by them, you don't get to see Jesus of Nazareth.
Last week I was privileged to attend the National Prayer Breakfast in Ottawa, and I noticed a couple of members of our congregation were there as well. It was a very moving experience, because politicians of all stripes and all parties gathered and participated in the service, read Scripture, prayed together, sat down and had a meal. Justices of the Supreme Court were there, the Speakers of the two Chambers, members of the diplomatic corps, clergy and others. A wonderful gathering!
For me, to return to Ottawa was a little bit like Home Week: It was great to see my friends. The two speakers were absolutely awe-inspiring! As one, a woman called Catherine Williams-Jones told her story, you realized she had been a child on the streets of Vancouver. As a young girl, she had lived on streets in the toughest parts of Vancouver, but now she is in charge of an organization in the Okanagan that brings relief to young women who have found themselves destitute.
The story of this woman's life and her travails and struggles of living on the street was very moving. The other speaker interwove his story with Catherine Williams-Jones. He was a Detective Sergeant Lang, who was part of the Vancouver vice squad in the tough parts of Vancouver. He told the story of one day bursting into a room to take on some drug dealers who turned out to be armed. In the middle of all this, as it looked like there was going to be gunfire, he looked down and saw on the couch a cute little blond 12-year-old girl, looking terrified.
He arrested the men in the room, and the little girl was put in the back of a car and was taken to Social Services in Vancouver. A few weeks later, he saw the very same little girl riding a bus alone. Why was she back on the streets, on her own on a bus, when she should have been in foster care? He stopped the bus, got on it, and he took her by the hand and, contrary to all the rules that the police should follow, he put her in the back of the police car and took her home. Eventually, he and his wife adopted her - contrary to all the rules!
The young girl who had been in the back of that police car, as you well can imagine now, was Catherine Williams-Jones. This police officer broke the rules because he cared. He broke the rules to be compassionate. He broke the rules to save. He broke the rules because of his belief in and commitment to Jesus of Nazareth.
That is exactly what the disciples could not understand. Jesus was not interested so much in the rules as he was in the people who were in need. Jesus faced this woman, and his first response was silence. Very often, as the great German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer said, “when you are face to face with evil, the first response is silence.” The first response is to wait on God. The first response is not to speak, but to listen to the Spirit. This is what Jesus was doing. Then, he began to speak, and in reference to the disciples' shunning this woman, Jesus said, “I'll have none of this, but you must understand that I have to go to my own people first, so why should I come to you? Would I take the food that I give to my own people and give it to puppies? Is that what you want me to do?”
Now, Jesus by saying this was issuing a couple of challenges. The first was that he was declaring that he was an Israelite. Remember, he is no longer in Israel as such. He is letting her know that his ministry is the ministry of God's covenant. His first mission is to his own people, the Jewish people. He then challenges her and says, “Give me a reason why I, who have been sent to my own people, should come to you, a Canaanite, a Gentile, to you, a puppy, when I should really be giving food to people in need?”
You see, Jesus wanted that she not see him and his ministry as just an elixir, just a means of providing care or healing, just one possibility amongst many. What he wanted from her was a declaration of faith, that she knew who he was and why he could perform this miracle. It was precisely that challenge of God's glory and his ministry that made this woman take him seriously. Jesus was not trying to drive her away. He was trying to draw her in.
There are many people, my friends, who desperately want to be drawn into God's covenant of love. There was a storefront ad for a funeral home in San Francisco a number of years ago. It simply said, “Why walk around half dead when we can bury you for $98?” It was to get people's attention. In other words, take the life you have seriously, and find life. This woman did just that with Jesus. When her daughter was demon-possessed, writhing with whatever disorder she was suffering from, she wanted life for her, rather than let it be buried, she sought out Jesus.
This brings us back to the woman, the centre of the story. She responded to Jesus with incredible words. Jesus said, “It is not right to take the children's bread and toss it to their dogs.”
“Yes, Lord,” she replied, and here she showed her wit: “But even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters' table.” She had realized who Jesus was. She knew that even crumbs from him were worth something. Such was the nature of her faith that even though she, a Canaanite, had no right to come to him, a Jew; even she, with a demon-possessed daughter, had no right to be able to claim the covenant of the disciples; even though she, as a wayward soul, had no right to come to the Son of God, she was willing to take the crumbs from the master's table. Anything that Jesus could do for her was worth everything!
A stanza in a wonderful little poem by Nancy Spiegelberg goes as follows:
Lord, I crawled across the barrenness to you with my empty cup
Uncertain in asking any small drop of refreshment.
If only I had known you better,
I'd have come running with a bucket!
This woman came to Jesus for crumbs; what she got was something far more. She came to Jesus in her need, and although unworthy, her faith had made her important. Although she herself was not abiding by the rules, Jesus was opening his heart to her. That, my friends, is the ministry of Jesus of Nazareth! That is the majesty of his dominion! That is the power of his welcoming spirit! What does he say to her after all this is over? “Woman, you have great faith; your request is granted.” Her daughter was healed from that very hour. The power of the living God is in Christ who opens his heart. Amen.
This is a verbatim transcription of the original sermon.