I.N.I.

A sermon to be preached at Christ Lutheran Church (ELCA), Elizabethtown, PA on 14 August 2005, the 13th Sunday after Pentecost and based on the Holy Gospel appointed for the day in the Revised Common Lectionary: St. Matthew 15:(10-20) 21-28

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ,

Last week’s sermon focused around the thought that Jesus overcomes all kinds of obstacles to come to us. This was exemplified by the Lord’s approach to his core disciples and to Peter in particular, walking on the surface of the stormy lake to get to those disciples, and then having to deal with Peter (letting him, too, walk on the water and then — soon after – having to pull him up to safety when he began to sink). I tried to tie that to the way Jesus overcomes all the obstacles (intellectual, emotional, and physical) that we folks throw in the way to block his approach.

This week’s Gospel builds directly on that lesson. Last week the question was “What?” (‘what is Jesus willing to do?’ ) and this week it is “To or for whom?” You’ll notice right off that this Gospel is divided into two distinct parts. Those of you taking notes will want to draw a dotted line across the page where the lesson is printed to divide verses 20 and 21, since that’s where the break is. Not a solid line, though, because the parts of the Gospel are securely connected.

Here’s the key point of this text: This week’s Gospel seems to be making the point that Jesus very consciously is open to relationships with all people, all kinds of people, all sorts and conditions of people — yes, even people like us. Let’s see what some possible implications of this are for us, and how it can play out in our lives.

I. There, as I said, are two distinct parts to this Gospel lesson. The first part gives us the Lord’s own understanding of the “clean and unclean” laws found in the Old Testament. It’s actually prefaced by a little confrontation between Jesus and a group of Pharisees who approached Jesus and questioned him about his disciples’ actions that broke the ancient traditions. What we have in the lesson is the next scene where Jesus calls the crowd (and how interesting it is that it wasn’t the crowd that was pressing in on Jesus as usual, but the Lord calling to them; does this underscore the importance of the lesson Jesus is teaching?).

Jesus tells the people that these ancient traditions guarded by the Pharisees were really getting things upside down and backwards. Those respected Jewish leaders, the religious right wing of the day, were admirably concerned about avoiding sinfulness. They knew God’s disgust for sin. It could be traced back to the Garden of Eden when just one sin called for the expulsion of Adam and Eve. But Jesus tells the crowd that the Pharisees were going about it all wrong. They were, in Jesus’s view, focusing on exactly the wrong things in their battle for holiness.

What were they doing? They were being concerned about maintaining the laws about cleanliness: the kosher laws that still, to this day, guide the most orthodox of Jews. The Pharisees were concerned about what they ate, about whom they touched, about whether they worked on the Sabbath and about what was to be considered “work.” These were all elements on the ‘input’ side of the equation. Jesus deftly explained that the final evaluation of sinfulness or righteousness would actually be taken on the ‘output’ side of the equation. God is much more interested, he says, with “what comes out of the mouth [and] has its origins in the heart.” These are things like “wicked thoughts, murder, adultery, fornication, theft, perjury, [and] slander.”

It isn’t in omitting a ceremonial hand-washing, or in tasting shellfish or pork, or in touching a dead body that people are defiled, Jesus says. Rather it is in being the source of these sorts of sins that a person is unclean.

II. Then Matthew records an interaction Jesus had in ‘the region of Tyre and Sidon” with a Canaanite woman there who wanted Jesus’s pity because her daughter was being tormented by a devil. This is quite an amazing little story. Jesus leaves the land of Israel and walks among the Gentiles a little to the north. There may well have been a little Jewish enclave in one of these port cities, but we don’t learn about any meeting with them, if they were there and if there was such a meeting. The only interaction Matthew tells us about is with this un-named Canaanite woman.

One wonders how she knew that Jesus might be able to help her daughter. Was it something about Jesus, or was it some special insight given to the woman? Had she heard of him from other travelers? Or had the disciples made it obvious that this Jesus was someone to be reckoned with? We don’t know the answers to any of those questions. What we do know is that somehow this woman knew about Jesus, and that she believed he could help.

The disciples played their parts as faithful Jewish men to the hilt. They were incensed at her calling after him. She was more annoying than the usual paparazzi who followed Jesus, because she wasn’t Jewish. She was a Gentile, a sinner, not one of God’s people. So they urged Jesus to send her away.

And the Lord seems to acquiesce. He feeds her the straight lines about being sent to the lost sheep of the house of Israel and about it not being right for the dogs to eat the bread that belonged to children. But, God bless the wonderful witness of this outcast woman! She didn’t give up. Her faith remained secure. She answered Jesus back with just the right response: ‘even the dogs eat the scraps that fall from the master’s table.’ Anyone here with a pet dog knows what this is all about, don’t you?

This woman’s marvelous witness isn’t that she wanted to upset the natural order of things. She didn’t argue that the puppies should be put up on the supper table. All she wanted was some of the crumbs that she knew were falling to the floor while Jesus was outside the borders of Galilee. Recognizing, proclaiming and rewarding her faith, Jesus grants her request for a healing miracle.

III. So what do we have in this text? First, there’s an overturning of the then traditional understanding of “clean and unclean”; and then there’s a practical demonstration of how that can play out in a person’s life if one takes the overturning seriously. We could, and probably should, rejoice in this new divine interpretation of divine law. And we certainly could, and probably should, find ways to apply these principles to our own time and place.

One very practical way would be to do what Jesus did in the region of Tyre and Sidon with this Canaanite woman. Rather than getting all squeamish about talking with her or being near her, Jesus engaged her in conversation and commended her faith to his disciples as an example for them. The Lord knew (and had just taught) that they wouldn’t be made unclean or defiled through contact with her. That was an external. It was the things coming from inside, the words and actions and reactions of Jesus and the disciples that would create the record in this case.

IV. The funny thing is that the disciples should have already known this. In this morning’s lesson from Isaiah 56: 1, 6-8 we catch the thought that even in the time of the prophets, God was eager to gather in ‘the foreigners who give their allegiance to me.” In other words, what Jesus was doing with the Canaanite woman was not a heretical interpretation of the Father’s intention. It was right on target. It’s still right on target.

But wait! Aren’t there some folks who are just too “different” from us to be acceptable? And aren’t there some who can rightly be viewed as “too sinful” or at least as “more sinful” than us? Surely Jesus was not saying that sin doesn’t matter any more. Jesus is not turning his followers loose in a moral and ethical free-for-all. There must be limits to behavior. God still hates sin, right?

And there are sinful people out there in the world. Individuals and groups of people flaunt God’s law at every step of the way. They make a mockery of any mention of the freedom that overturns the rules and traditions of the Pharisees. Those people, at least, have got to be beyond the circle of love that Jesus draws around his followers. We’re not like them, certainly. We all know that. We’re …. well, we’re the people who have been saved. Right?

THAT’s the problem highlighted in today’s readings. That’s the attitude of heart that Jesus taught against first with his words and then his actions.

Here and now we can be carrying forward the teachings of Jesus in our own time. In the words of Isaiah (56: 1), we can “maintain justice, and do what is right,” not by bending our wills in an effort to force ourselves to follow rules, laws, and guidelines (oh, say, like the ‘clean and unclean’ laws), BUT instead by welcoming in those “foreigners” (anyone different from us in any way) who give their allegiance to Jesus. The only way we get the power, the motivation, the inclination to do this is by seeing our Lord’s own words and actions; then his Holy Spirit can work a similar openness in our hearts, but giving them a different set of responsibilities.

Jesus makes it abundantly clear throughout his ministry that living the righteous life is not something his people are to do with the goal in mind of pleasing God into saving them. Rather, any righteous living is done in joyful response to the forgiveness already won for and presented to us, won on the cross and presented with the Spirit’s gift of faith. With his own life and actions, Jesus shows us how this works out in very practical ways.

Here, again, is the key point of this text: This week’s Gospel seems to be making the point that Jesus very consciously is open to relationships with all people, all kinds of people, all sorts and conditions of people — yes, even people like us. But also people NOT like us. Jesus is open to a relationship with sinful people. That would be people not like us. But “sinful people” would include people like us — let’s be honest: it would include us — too. God has forgiven all sinful people from the moment that his Son Jesus died on the cross in our places.

No matter how or where or when people have been grafted onto Jesus, they are his. God’s call is universal, and our outreach naturally ought to try to equal it. We will even find among the “foreigners” shining examples of a faith which we cannot match (as the Canaanite woman was to the disciples). This means that we can rejoice that Jesus accepts all people into the Kingdom of God. By the power of the Spirit, we do rejoice.

May the peace of God that passes all understanding keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus our Lord.

AMEN

S.D.G.

Note: the original manuscript has the following outline at the top of the first page

GOAL: rejoicing that Jesus accepts all people into the Kingdom of God
MALADY: we think some folks are just too “different” from, or viewed as “more sinful” than, us
MEANS: witnessing the Lord’s own words and actions
vv. 10-20 makes clear that categories of “clean and unclean” aren’t what people thought they were about
vv. 21-28 makes an immediate application when this Canaanite woman is warmly accepted by Jesus (after he voices the objections which the disciples were muttering under their breaths) and held up as an exemplar of faith