Homily, August 20, 2017 on Matthew 15:21-28
Preaching is becoming a dangerous occupation. The homily/sermon is meant to help us connect the message from Scripture with our daily lives. But atrocities like the ones this past week in Charlottesville and Barcelona make preaching the Good News of God’s love and mercy increasingly more challenging. Preachers are feeling the heat as we engage the sacred words of Jesus with today’s tragedies. While BC has been feeling the heat of massive forest fires this summer, we preachers feel the heat of tension, of horror, of conflict. We feel the heat of helplessness, of sorrow, of guilt … How do we speak prophetic truth into racism? How do we speak healing into discrimination? How do we speak hope into a world careening towards self-destruction?
Feeling the heat of conflict should not surprise preachers though. After all, we preach One who had a knack for heating up conflict as a matter of course. Again in today’s passage, things are heating up under Jesus’ feet again. Who is Jesus’ ministry for?? Do foreigners, people of colour and outcasts have a right to claim God’s grace and healing? Just like in our time, there were strong cultural opinions in Jesus’ time about who was acceptable and who was not: clean and unclean people, they called them back then. The Canaanites were deeply despised by the Israelites. Jesus experiences tension and the ugly reality of racism, prejudice, and discrimination towards a defenseless person in need.
A foreign and despised woman approaches Jesus, a Jewish man. She even has the nerve to pay him homage and then begs a favour she has no right to. She bursts into Jesus’ space and pleads with him: “Lord, son of David, have pity on me! My daughter is terribly troubled by a demon.”
Whatever else he does or says, Jesus at least refuses … he refuses the disciples’ demand to remove this nuisance from their midst. (the disciples have a knack for sending people away or telling them to shut up and not “bother” the Master). Jesus responds by addressing the woman directly, with a comment that seems quite out of character for this man of God: “I am a stranger here; I should not interfere.” Is this out of character, or is Jesus merely testing her?Or in the worst case, is he just plain rude, insensitive, and harsh? “Help me!” the woman insists. Jesus’ next words seem excessively harsh: “It is not right to take the food of children and throw it to the dogs!”
“Dogs” was a derogatory much like “nigger” or “Redskin.” Slurs such as these are an insult, a metaphor referring to others as less than human, more as animals, only good for eating leftovers.
The Canaanite woman issues a bold challenge: even if Jesus’ mission is initially meant for the Jews, is he nevertheless willing to respond to genuine faith no matter where and in whom? But then again … who knows what this woman is about… Better safe than sorry; better not throw the message of God’s kingdom to the dogs.
It’s disturbing to see Jesus act this way. But let’s be honest … how often do WE act in this way? We’d rather be safe than sorry ourselves. Most of us have made up our minds about what is important in our lives and who counts in the grand scheme of things (and who doesn’t). We are diligent in living our faith and church commitment. We stick to our priorities with honourable loyalty and a principled sense of duty.
So principled and so loyal are we that nothing can divert us from our goal to serve God. Until someone rattles our cage, and reveals how far short we actually fall from serving God when we exclude and ignore and unjustly label another. The Canaanite woman rattled Jesus’ cage… The tragedy in Charlottesville rattled our cage, revealing the ugly poison of racism. The tragedy in Barcelona rattled our cage, revealing our global failure to foster justice and respect in all people, esp. those disadvantaged by the world’s economic systems which favour the few at the expense of the masses.
Sure, Jesus’ mission is intended for God’s chosen people. But who are God’s chosen people? The Canaanite woman calls Jesus Lord, refers to him as master, and humbly says that she, like dogs under the table, will gladly take the leftovers of his mission and power.
It is no coincidence that Matthew placed this story right smack between the two miraculous feeding of the multitudes, both of which reported leftovers. While these crowds were adequately provided for, it is the Syro-Phoenician woman who seeks what Jesus’ own people don’t even realize they have – the leftovers! And Jesus, astounded at her faith, is forced to leave the beaten track. rethink his whole mission and gives her the … leftovers of God’s healing love.
How many times, Lord, do we fail to recognized you because we are too busy with our own private interests and have long ago set limits on who deserves our love? We can all be outraged by the news reports of refugees smuggled and drowning in the Mediterranean, or other countries closing their borders to them. It’s easy to be outraged at terrorist attacks like in Barcelona or the racial clashes in Virginia. But our outrage is sometimes cheap and hollow. For we are the ones who have everything at the expense of people who are oppressed and exploited. We all help perpetuate the unjust distribution of the earth’s wealth, a wealth given by God to be shared with all people.
Sure, Jesus’ mission is intended for God’s chosen people. But as Jesus himself discovers, God’s chosen people includes the Canaanite woman, invites outsiders and nuisances, includes smuggled immigrants, people of colour, and all people of good will. God’s love has no limits and accepts no boundaries. Because of the Syro-Phoenician woman’s persistence, Jesus himself gains new insight and extends his mission past his own people, his own religion, his own nation. And don’t forget that we … are the beneficiaries of this shift.
Pope Francis repeatedly urges us to risk veering off the beaten track in the name of Jesus and for the sake of the world. “Jesus,” he said to a gathering of young people, “is the Lord of risk, of the eternal ‘more.’ Following Jesus demands a good dose of courage, a readiness to trade in the sofa for a pair of walking shoes and to set out on new and uncharted paths. … Teach us how to live in diversity, in dialogue, to experience multiculturalism not as a threat but an opportunity. “Have the courage to teach us that it is easier to build bridges than walls!”
On this side of death, we are all saved and unsaved, saint and sinner, both at the same time. We all bear the status of “foreigner” in God’s kingdom. We are really not that different from the Canaanite woman, blacks suffering racism, refugees running for life, suicide-bombers disillusioned with the worlds greed and exploitation, smuggled and suffering illegal immigrants desperately seeking safety and a future.
We may not experience their particular illness, social rejection or utter destitution. But we all know what it feels like to be rejected, unloved, ignored, denied, attacked and judged. None of us goes through life without collecting the deep scars that sin and evil inflict. Engaging with someone who cries out for justice and healing is always unsettling, and can re-open scars in our own heart. Only when we let this happen can compassion be born and healing occur. In the end, we all stand together, hungry and thirsty before our God as God’s chosen people. Only then, boundaries and distinctions will fall away.
Despite Jesus’ initial reluctance to grant her wish, never once does he rebuke the Canaanite woman, never does he silence her, and never does he send her away. Instead, Jesus engages her in dialogue. Jesus enters a relationship with her, which has everything to do with human dignity.
We cannot limit God nor trivialize what God can do. Every person we despise should remind us that “there for the grace of God go I.” To all of us Jesus says: “Always remember both your own need for mercy and healing as well as your calling to bring God’s healing to the world.” Or as C.S. Lewis once said: “To be a Christian means to forgive the inexcusable because God has forgiven the inexcusable in you.”
And so we feel the heat of the world’s tragedies, and we should. We feel the heat of our complicity in perpetuating racism and discrimination, injustice and greed. We feel the heat of the temptation to give in to helplessness and apathy. The tension in today’s Gospel remains unresolved. Instead, we live that tension fully in the day-to-day challenges and encounters. For we are wounded healers, saint and sinner. As wounded healers God calls us in the service of the Gospel. Without limiting God, and without trivializing God’s healing love, we are the hands and feet, and the heart, of Christ. “We” are all God has on this earth. AMEN
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Grace@Sixty 
As I see it, the woman first of all was there on behalf of her ailing daughter, she must have known she was not of their clan thereby it posed a problem to her to be criticized by the many, but the willingness to go to the lowest common denominator to receive those scraps, and recognition from Jesus for the healing of her daughter. At that moment her faith turned into trust as he He was willing to recognize her. (He turns no one away that comes to him) What are we called to ?
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