Christ Church, Philadelphia

“Even Jesus Needed to be Reminded to be Inclusive”

A sermon preached by

The Rev. Timothy B. Safford, Rector

August 15, 1999

Only a foolish preacher, in these hot summer months when a congregation hopes for short, snappy sermons with lots of funny stories about how blessed they are in God’s love, would preach a sermon about the sin of hatred and scourge of racism. I am that foolish preacher!

But the events of this week demand it, and the Gospel today calls for it. When Buford Furrow opened fire on school children in a Jewish community center, because he was filled with hate and believed that Jews are a threat to white Americans, and then killed a Filipino postal worker because he was nonwhite and an employee of the Federal government, I suspect that the heart of God broke. I know that mine did. We have been so bombarded by the actions of ignorant hatred that it has become psychically exhausting. From the bombing of the Oklahoma City Federal building, to the vicious killings at Columbine High School, to the senseless murder of Andrew Shepard, and now the shooting this week of preschoolers, to name just a few, the carnage creates a fatigue within us that leads to apathy about the effects of ignorant hatred rather than creative engagement with it. But we are called, as Christians, to be the agents of change. Jesus changed, can we?

We have before us this morning one of the most important Gospel teachings on reaching across boundaries to be open to the person different than the norm. It teaches us, amazingly, in first showing us Jesus in a less-than-positive light, and then showing him change. Are we all not to change? Here is the text:

Jesus went away to the district of Tyre and Sidon. Just then a Canaanite woman from that region came out and started shouting, “Have mercy on me, Lord, Son of David; my daughter is tormented by a demon.” But he did not answer her at all. And his disciples came and urged him, saying, “Send her away, for she keeps shouting after us.” He answered, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” But she came and knelt before him, saying, “Lord, help me.” He answered, “It is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.” She said, “Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters’ table.” Then Jesus answered her, “Woman, great is your faith! Let it be done for you as you wish.” And her daughter was healed instantly.

Matthew 15:21-28

Why didn’t Jesus, at first, answer the Canaanite woman who cried out to him to heal her daughter who was severely possessed of a demon? He clearly heard her. Jesus had not yet refused a request of any person seeking healing. Demon possession, blindness, a sickness unto death, Jesus heard everyone’s needs, but this woman he did not acknowledge.

When he heard her crying out, but did not respond, his disciples grew weary, begging Jesus to “send her away,” because they grew tired of her crying. Still, Jesus did not respond.

Why?

Two possibilities. One, she is a woman, and in the time and culture that Jesus lived, women were to be invisible and silent, certainly not making requests of a man of healing and teaching like Jesus.

The other possibility: she is a Canaanite, she is not a Jew, like Jesus. Her ethnicity is “Syrophonecian,” meaning she is one the Jews despise as foreigners and the unclean. She cries out, and Jesus remains silent.

Was it because she was a woman, or because she was from an ethnic and racial group that Jesus had been taught by his culture to despise that he remained silent? For both reasons?

Jesus tells his disciples, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel,” suggesting that his reason for snubbing the persistent woman was that she was not a Jew. But Jesus did not withhold healing from the Roman soldier when he pleaded to Jesus on behalf of his dying slave. The gospels are full of accounts of Jesus reaching across boundaries to heal the sick. What is happening here? Clearly, the intent of his mission was to reach beyond the racial and ethnic boundaries of his cultural world. If not, why are we here, since this congregation certainly doesn’t represent “lost sheep of Israel”.

This woman, who is nameless, no doubt a widow or a scorned woman, who loves her daughter very much, convinces Jesus to change his mind. She convinces Jesus to see the world differently, that those who are the chosen of God are not the only important ones. She tells Jesus that all of humanity can receive God’s blessings, not just the ones who consider themselves as special and chosen.

When Jesus refuses to acknowledge her, pretending her to be invisible, reflecting the experience the minority has had over the eons of living in a majority culture, she breaks through Jesus’ defenses and throws herself at his feet. She’s an assertive, if not an uppity woman[1], who loves her daughter so much, she will do anything for her. Further, her faith in Jesus as Lord, Savior, Healer, Son of David, is so more refined than that of those closest to Jesus, for she is in greatest need. She doesn’t question him; she doesn’t challenge him. She worships him and relies on him.

Jesus is harsh, if not rude, if not derogatory and, to use contemporary terms, racist. Kneeling before him, she simply asks for the help he has given freely to so many, and he responds, “It is not fair to take the children’s bread and throw it to the dogs.”

There is no sugar coating that sentence, though commentators have tried for centuries. Jesus knew what he was doing, they write; he was simply testing the authenticity of the woman’s faith; he was doing what was best for her.

But there is no escaping that he called her a dog, and that “dog” was a clear ethnic epithet--a racial slur--toward this Gentile woman. Decorum prevents from using the word related to a dog that we use in our language, and Jesus’ use of the word “dog” in his own language

I know it may seem too bold, if not arrogant and sacrilegious on my part, to suggest that Jesus is using “hate speech.” No matter his motives, I respectfully suggest that hate speech is always hate speech. I think the woman in the story knows it’s hate speech, as shown in her response.

She is kneeling before Jesus, and after he calls her a dog, I imagine her not dropping her head but staring him in the eye, and breathing deeply in her lungs the air of God’s love for her, and then carefully and slowly speaking her words with pride, firmness and assurance. “Even a dog gets to eat the crumbs that fall from the master’s table.”

In my mind’s eye, I see a long, and quite uncomfortable, silence pass between them. She refuses to break her stare. Finally, it is Jesus who speaks, “Woman, great is your faith.”

I believe she has changed him. I believe that you and I today are the inheritors of her prophetic action. In this moment, we see that Jesus has the capacity and the power to be inclusive of all of God’s children and not just the chosen few who look the right way, come from the right family, and have the right connections.

That Jesus expanded his vision to include this woman who was considered ethnically inferior as worthy of the Kingdom of God means that we, who follow Jesus today, must always expand our vision to include those who do not fit the status quo.

This example comes to mind.

I was quite moved when former President Gerald Ford argued persuasively last week in an editorial that the vision of an inclusive America is under attack. Commenting on efforts to end affirmative action programs at his alma mater, the University of Michigan, he writes, “Of all the triumphs that have marked this century. . . , none is more inspiring yet incomplete, than our pursuit of racial justice.” He concludes his piece by saying that the ending of affirmative action programs mocks the vision of an inclusive America, that, “Carl Sandburg had in mind when he wrote, ‘The Republic is a dream. Nothing happens unless first a dream.’ Lest we forget: America remains a nation with have-nots as well as haves. Its government is obligated to provide for hope no less than for the common defense.”[2]

President Ford is making the point we can gather from the account of Jesus with the Caananite woman. As America must strive, through hard work and reparation for past injustice, to be truly inclusive of all its citizens, the Christian must strive, through the hard work of living out the baptismal covenant, to be truly inclusive of all of God’s children. Where President Ford speaks of America, the Christian speaks of the world. Remember, we promise, as Christians, “to seek and serve Christ in all persons,” and “respect the dignity of every human being.” How much easier the Christian life would be if all were many and every human being was most human beings, especially the ones like us.

So, when Serbian Christians kill, in the name of ethnic cleansing, Albanian Muslims, because Christianity is seen as superior, then we, who see Jesus changed by that nameless woman, must speak out. When we hear an ethnic or racist joke, and laugh rather than speak up, we admit we forsake the message the Gospel gives us this day. When we see mistreatment of gays and lesbians, we must show our own actions of inclusive love. When African-Americans must enter a public building adorned with the Confederate flag, we, who have been saved by Jesus, must show the power of reconciliation far more comforting than living in a tragic past.

I know I am not perfect, nor near perfect, on any of these matters. Thankfully, God is not finished with me yet. Where I am weak, I pray you, my Christian brother and sister are strong. Where you are weak, I will strive to be strong. Together, we will be the inclusive community of Christ that proclaims the inclusive Kingdom of God. Look! Jesus changed and grew when the Caananite woman fell at his feet and spoke the harsh words of truth. You and I can change.

One more story seems to fit for the conclusion of this sermon. Two summers ago, I was privileged to have a private conversation with Archbishop Desmond Tutu. He was in New York, having chemotherapy for prostate cancer. He had been working non-stop on the difficult work of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa, and he was away for a short time for treatment. With some trepidation I asked him a question I ask many who suffer with cancer: “Archbishop, what have you learned from your cancer?”

With a deep pensive look in his eyes, he said, “I have learned that life is too short to be filled with so much hatred. I don’t think we realize how much time we waste on hate until the end, when we can’t get the time back.”

Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior, teaches us the same this day. May we have the power, resolve and grace to take this lesson to heart, and work for those who know not yet the power of its truth. Amen.

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[1] New Testament professor Sharon Ringe writes, “The Church has trouble with uppity women,” in her tesrrific essay “A Gentile Woman’s Story,” in Feminist Interpretation of the Bible, Letty M. Rusell, editor, the Westminster Press, 1985; pages 65-78. I have relied heavily on her exegesis

[2] Gerald R. Ford, “Inclusive America, Under Attack,” The New York Times, August 8, 1999, Section: The Week in Review, p. 15