The 13th Sunday after Pentecost
Scripture
Hebrew
Scriptures – Genesis 45: 1-5[1]
1Then Joseph could no longer control himself
before all those who stood by him, and he cried out, “Send everyone away from
me.” So no one stayed with him when Joseph made himself known to his brothers. 2And
he wept so loudly that the Egyptians heard it, and the household of Pharaoh
heard it. 3Joseph said to his brothers, “I am Joseph. Is my father
still alive?” But his brothers could not answer him, so dismayed were they at
his presence.
4Then Joseph said to his brothers, “Come closer to me.” And they came
closer. He said, “I am your brother, Joseph, whom you sold into
Gospel
– Matthew 15: 21-28[2]
21Jesus left that place and went away to the
district of Tyre and
“God Sent Me Before You to Preserve Life."
There's a common misperception in the traditional church
that men have exclusively commanded the course of biblical history. It all starts off with some guy named Adam –
Eve comes along, of course, as an afterthought.[3] Then we hear about Noah, Abraham, Jacob,
Joseph, of course Moses, and on and on through David, Solomon and all of the
prophets. Even in the second testament[4]
women rarely are allowed to come "front and center" in the drama of
humanity's experiences of God – except, of course, as they do in relation to
some "leading man." The men, clearly,
are the "movers and shakers" of history!
Confronted as we are by today's gospel lesson, however, we men
ought to feel just a little bit like that smooth-talking character, Fagin, in
the musical Oliver who says, "I
think I'd better think it out again!"[5] Oddly enough it's Jesus who appears to be
taught a lesson here – and by a woman no less – when he appears to be saying,
almost dismissively, to her: "I
don't pay any attention to dogs;[6] I
was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of
Now if the gentile making that request had been a man, he
might have taken Jesus' snub and walked off "with his tail between his
legs." But this was a woman and a
distraught mother. She wouldn't let him
get away with it. "That may
be," she responds, "but even the dogs get to eat the crumbs that fall
from the tables of you privileged ones."
And Jesus dissolves in the face of this woman's audacity. A "dog" teaches her
"master" – and a new standard is set for the early Christian
community to remember when it too begins to confine itself within just the Jewish
perimeter instead of widening its embrace of the entire world. When you think about it, this is a truly
astounding moment of revelation – and it doesn't even come from Jesus.
What many of us fail to recognize, even the Hebrew
Scriptures (a testament that too many Christians dismiss, simply, as
"old") is filled with similar incidents in which a woman takes the
initiative to keep the drama of salvation alive and mobile. It's the men in all of these instances who
drag their feet.[7] In other words, the feminine becomes a
metaphor for a heart, and the kind of creative imagination that we all ought to
associate with the Spirit of God – a Force that formed order out chaos at the
moment of creation.
It's not just been modern psychology that has reminded us
men that by ignoring our "feminine side" we put ourselves in danger. In the mid-19th century, Charlotte
Brontë established the feminine as a metaphor for that critical element missing
in the all too masculine character, Edward Rochester, in her parable Jane Eyre. Moody, cynical, fatalistic,
I was
then his vision, as I am still his right hand….He saw nature – he saw books
through me; and never did I weary of gazing for his behalf, and of putting into
words the effect of field, tree, town, river, cloud, sunbeam…. Never did I
weary of reading to him; never did I weary of conducting him where he wished to
go.[8]
Slowly, under that influence,
Edward begins to "come to himself" – to grow in love, hope and faith
until, as Jane continues:
One
morning at the end of two years, as I was writing a letter…he came and bent
over me, and said: "Jane, have you
a glittering ornament round your neck?...And have you a pale blue dress
on?" I had. He informed me then, that for some time he
had fancied the obscurity clouding one eye was becoming less dense; and…now he
was sure of it….He cannot now see very distinctly, but he can find his way
without being led by the hand: the sky
is no longer a blank to him – the earth no longer a void.[9]
So, maybe, under the influence of these kind of
interactions as we read about one in today's Gospel lesson, it's time that we
reevaluated our notion that biblical tradition – or, for that matter, all of
history – has been and had to be dominated by men. So, guys, I think that it's long past time
for us to acknowledge the feminine in our theology. It's a far more eloquent metaphor of the kind
of faith and hope, love and imagination, that we all need to move humanity toward
the Mystery of God in the face of which mere reason and tradition remain so
blind.
What's left? Well, I
wonder how this Canaanite woman saw herself?
The very word "Canaanite" is filled with associations and
implications. She was of a tribe that
claimed to be the offspring of Noah, but a people also characterized as not of
"the seed" of Abraham – what some people still call
"pagan," which is the ultimate insult, unless you just happen to be
one! She was of a tribe once enslaved by
Solomon, and she came from a land that, before the conquest, was said to be
"flowing with milk and honey."[10] But the milk had soured and the honey had
begun to taste of ashes. So she came
looking for this new "kingdom" that she'd heard someone named Jesus
had been talking about – a kingdom that a colleague of the "Jesus Seminar,"[11]
John Dominic Crossan, called a "kingdom of nuisances and nobodies."[12] But even nuisances and nobodies deserve at
least "crumbs" – bringing, as their culture dictates, nothing but
their hunger and discovering, as they always will, nothing less than the
sustenance that leads to new life. So that
saying still holds true: "The
Gospel is about one beggar telling another where to find bread."[13]
I admit that, with everything else that I've come to
believe about Jesus, I have trouble believing that (even at first) he said what
he did to this Canaanite woman. The
disciples appear in-character; all of them were slow to believe, so I can hear
them saying, "Send her away…she keeps bugging us." But Jesus…?
It all points to our innate fear of those different from
us. Why is that? Why do we turn away from the stranger who
asks us for help? Maybe it's because
we're afraid that they'll take away by force what we feel belongs only to us –
food, material goods…our privileges.
Whatever they are we're afraid that they're irreplaceable. We're afraid to lose what we have. Maybe we reject the stranger just because
we've learned to horde our love in much the same way that we do our possessions. We don't really believe that 12-step axiom
that says "you can't keep it unless you give it away." We refuse to accept that love can ever really
be unconditional. Maybe we're afraid
because the stranger all too often holds up a mirror in which we see
ourselves. We see what we don't want to
see: our own deep need for love and
acceptance, our own status as the outsider.
It's in these fears, and in the rejection that follows,
that sometimes we get angry, even violent.
How many times have we witnessed in our lifetimes the senseless attacks
on people who are simply "different" from us? Those of us on the left are not always
innocent. That's what makes this story
so ironic. Jesus, the so-called savior
of all, at first refuses to help a woman that even his closest companions
believe only he can help. Why? Because she belongs to the "wrong"
cultural subgroup. A non-Jew, and a
woman, publicly asks help from a Jewish rabbi.
The irony there is that somebody with sufficient strength of character
to see through her cultural prejudices, doesn't seem to realize that what she's
asking for is impossible, absurd:
Canaanites don't ask Jews, let alone rabbis, for help! And in maybe the greatest irony of all, a
gentile Christian tradition that for far, far too long categorized Jews as
"dogs" – that persecuted, tortured and killed them in pogroms, or
that allowed them to be killed by others – these same Christians have
deliberately preserved (even canonized) a text in which Jesus seems to be
guilty of the same prejudice!
"The whole world is easily divided between the
righteous and the unrighteous," somebody once said. "The only problem with that division is
that the righteous make it." Both
of today's readings warn us about such arbitrary and artificial divisions. In the end today, it's Joseph – sold into
slavery by his own brothers – who says it best:
"You wanted me dead; but God sent me before you to preserve
life." Instead of cursing at those
who are different from us, instead of continuing to throw rocks at each other
across the canyon of our divisions, we need to find ways to reclaim the unity
that we hold in common – our community.[14]
The vision of the human community is a vision that still
challenges us: a family in which the
"stranger," the "alien," is treated with the same amount of
justice and integrity that we would ask for ourselves. It's one vision of what the "
* * *
[1] This part of the Joseph-saga presents a moving story of family reconciliation. Joseph, confronted with his brothers' urgent need for food, has used his rank as Pharaoh's governor to test them with a display of power until he can determine their readiness for healing. Through his artful and intricate leading, the brothers are silenced and only then become open to reconciliation.
[2]
Canaanites were viewed by the Jewish culture of Jesus' day much like the Native
Americans were by 19th century whites who were moving westward –
"better dead than red" was the common folk-wisdom. Canaanites were a throwback to the days of
the conquest of the "promised land" and so were a stigma to Jewish
life in that land even some twelve centuries later. This aboriginal population shouldn't have
been there! But it was. This is much like the way that Israeli West
Bank settlers view the Palestinian Arabs today.
That this woman has the shamelessness (read chutzpa here) to
"come out" to Jesus from modern-day
[3] The name
adam,
however, isn't really a name at all; it's the Hebrew word for "human
being" (or "humanity"). It
occurs well over five hundred times in the Hebrew Scriptures (the "Old
Testament") but always with that same meaning. The derivation and meaning of the
"name" Eve, though, still remains controversial. It's connected to the root word meaning
"to live" (thus the reason behind her so-called "naming" –
"…because she was the mother of all living [things]" – Genesis
[4] You may
notice that I usually refrain from using the traditional "Old
Testament" and "New Testament" as the names for that artificial
division of the scriptures. If we must
divide the Bible, I would choose "Hebrew Scriptures" and then something
like the "second testament" (or simply "Gospels,"
"Epistles," et al.). I do this to try to dispel (even if it's only
in this small way) the popular misconception that just because something is
"new," it's supposed to be a replacement of the "old." When it comes to the unfortunate division
created by controversies between Jews and Christians, theologians have called
it "supersessionism" – i.e.,
that somehow the God of the Hebrew Scriptures is "superseded" by the
God revealed in Jesus. Such an assumption
has caused untold harm (mostly to Jews) for centuries.
[5] From the
song "Reviewing the Situation" in Oliver!
(the musical), see the full lyrics: http://sufface.net/links/oliver-themusical.shtml#rts
[6] The
Greek word here is kunariois (or in the woman's response, kunaria) and was a
disparaging reference by Jews toward all non-Jews – gentiles. Jesus may not have just called this woman a
"bitch" (in the contemporary use of that word), but it's close.
[7] Take the story of Esau and Jacob. By rights Esau deserved his father, Isaac's, blessing. As firstborn he was by all the prevailing rules of the game heir to God's promise first made to Abraham and Isaac. The Edomites, who would descend from him, were supposed to be the means whereby God would redeem human civilization. But you couldn't convince Rebecca of that. She didn't care about this right of primogeniture – not even if God "Himself" sanctioned it! Her common sense told her that Esau was an absolute clown and that only Jacob possessed the qualities required for such a destiny. Over even Jacob's "manly" hesitancy, then, she tricks blind Isaac into bestowing his irretrievable blessing on the younger son, and the course of history is diverted in the direction that a mother knew was best (Genesis 25: 19-34).
Or take the case of Naomi and Ruth. Here we have a similar critical moment in the history of salvation. Ruth's husband has died. There's apparently no other male relative on the horizon who might, according to the custom of the times, marry her and raise a proxy child to perpetuate the deceased husband's name. Ah, but there is! A guy named Boaz, who, while knowing what's up, lets it go, reluctant to do anything about it for quite legitimate reasons – until both Naomi and Ruth seduce him to act. The consequence is that Boaz marries Ruth who gives birth to Obed, from whom comes Jesse, from whom comes David…from whom comes Jesus, the Christ (Read about all of this for yourself in the book of Ruth.).
I don't think that it's necessary to elaborate any further here on similar initiatives taken by the likes of Thamar, Deborah, Bathsheba, Esther and Judith, but you might want to take time on your own to read how these legendary women intervene to resolve moments of crisis in biblical history. What's more, I don't think that I need to elaborate on that "virgin" (That Greek word in Luke 1: 27, parthenon, by the way, may also simply mean "a young woman of marriageable age," and not be such a clear statement about her "virginity" – as the church has come to imply) from Nazareth whose "Yes" to God stands in such stark contrast to Zachary's "You've got to be kidding!" when he's confronted by a similar "annunciation" (Luke 1: 18).
In fact, in
all of these stories the "masculine" element generally comes across
as remarkably passive, or at least inclined to rest in the status quo, to cite
legalities to insure delay, whereas the "feminine" element always
seems to be ready to risk everything to insure that life wins out over death,
and hope prevails over fatalism. Are you
paying attention guys?
[8]
Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre, Chapter
38 – http://classiclit.about.com/library/bl-etexts/cbronte/bl-cbronte-jan-38.htm.
[9] Ibid.
[10] Exodus 3: 8.
[11] See the
URL http://www.westarinstitute.org/Jesus_Seminar/jesus_seminar.html – a group of biblical scholars with whom I've
been privileged to associate over the past fifteen years.
[12] John
Dominic Crossan, Jesus: A Revolutionary
Biography (HarperSanFrancisco, 1994) Chapter 3, pp. 54-74.
[13] I can't
remember, exactly, where this quote first appeared, but its been attributed to
Sri Lankan theologian, D. T. Niles in a book, God for Beginners, by Ralph Milton.
[14] I owe
this imagery of "community" as our "common unity" to a
sixteen-year-old stranger from