The First United Methodist Church of Napa, CA
August 17, 2008
God’s House Band Sunday
Scripture Readings:

Hebrew Scriptures – Genesis 45: 1-15¹

¹…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 Egypt. ⁵And now do not be distressed, or angry with yourselves, because you sold me here; for God sent me before you to preserve life. ⁶For the famine has been in the land these two years; and there are five more years in which there will be neither plowing nor harvest. ⁷God sent me before you to preserve for you a remnant on earth, and to keep alive for you many survivors. ⁸So it was not you who sent me here, but God…has made me a father to Pharaoh, and lord of all his house and ruler over all the land of Egypt. ⁹Hurry and go up to my father and say to him, ‘Thus says your son Joseph, God has made me lord of all Egypt; come down to me, do not delay. ¹⁰You shall settle in the land of Goshen, and you shall be near me, you and your children and your children’s children, as well as your flocks, your herds, and all that you have. ¹¹I will provide for you there—since there are five more years of famine to come—so that you and your household, and all that you have, will not come to poverty.’ ¹²And now your eyes and the eyes of my brother Benjamin see that it is my own mouth that speaks to you. ¹³You must tell my father how greatly I am honored in Egypt, and all that you have seen. Hurry and bring my father down here.” ¹⁴Then he fell upon his brother Benjamin’s neck and wept, while Benjamin wept upon his neck. ¹⁵And he kissed all his brothers and wept upon them; and after that his brothers talked with him.

Gospel Lesson – Matthew 15: 21-28²

²¹Jesus left [Gennesaret] and went away to the district of Tyre and Sidon. ²²Just 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.” ²³But he did not answer her at all. And his disciples came and urged him, saying, “Send her away, for she keeps shouting after us.” ²⁴He answered, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” ²⁵But she came and knelt before him, saying, “Lord, help me.” ²⁶He answered, “It is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.” ²⁷She said, “Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters’ table.” ²⁸Then Jesus answered her, “Woman, great is your faith! Let it be done for you as you wish.” And her daughter was healed instantly.

“Everyone Deserves More than Just the Crumbs.”

All she wants is some crumbs. “That’s all it’ll take you, Jesus, ‘Messiah,’” she says, “to move just a step closer to me: some crumbs.” In the context of this culture, all that this woman is asking from Jesus is a small favor, really, a piece of bread that might be reserved for the children. The realism of this setting and of the woman’s petition is obvious. She, an outsider, knows that Jesus, an insider, isn’t supposed to do her any favors at all. She is a member of a despised ethnic group and – according to the values of that day – people were only supposed to care about their own kinfolk. It is extraordinary, though, that at the same time, the woman’s schooling of Jesus shows her determined resistance to just accept things as they are. Her actions and words take on the power of a new vision, a new way of being in the world – something which Jesus finally comes around to describe as "faith." I think that she’s also a desperate mother, and she’s going to do whatever it takes to have somebody, anybody – even if it’s Jesus – heal her daughter.

This story could be about anybody who’s been forced to live on the margins of society. Make this woman a gay man whose partner is dying of AIDS in a hospital ICU and denied entry because they’ve never been allowed to marry; the crisis is the same. This kind of antagonism toward outsiders, sadly, marks a lot of societies – religious or otherwise.  It’s almost as if we need an enemy, some “other,” against whom to define ourselves.  This need often drives us to such lengths, though, that it only serves to perpetuate and sustain our images of enemies, even creates them for our very survival. There's “them” and there's “us.” This is the stuff of prejudice.  What is truly devastating, though, is that all too often religion is manipulated and exploited to hold these kinds of prejudices in place.

So Matthew’s story puts Jesus right in the middle of a very tense scene – one in which Jesus himself is portrayed as expressing a racist (if not sexist) point of view, only to give it up when he’s put under pressure. This Gentile, this Canaanite woman, who was doing all the pestering, was from a group of despised, diminished and dispirited people. How much evidence is there in our own society of such people? Before gays and lesbians it was people of color; before them it was people for whom English was simply their second language; before them it was people with terrifying diseases for which there were no known cures. The sad truth is that in our own day we too might have used such disparaging words to describe another human being not unlike this woman.
When Matthew’s Jesus does make a response, he uses the word, “dogs.” And if we were one of his followers that day – part of the “in crowd” – we’d sympathize with Jesus. This pushy woman was determined to be heard – persisting, pestering, hanging around, bugging us. Truthfully, all of us have known people like her – people we’d rather avoid, evade, or walk around. And sometimes we too have been known to try almost anything not to have to be in their company. Does this make us any less human?

As much as we want to “rescue” the image of Jesus, here, he isn’t the hero of this story; the woman is. This persistent, pestering, following us around, bugging us, woman! And so this story is meant to remind us of those other members of despised or oppressed groups that have had to act out or “act up”³ just to get relief from their misery.  The woman is not content to be ignored because she is convinced her daughter deserves to be given a chance at living a normal, productive life. Maybe this is why modern-day asylum seekers and illegal immigrants will risk everything to try and come into this country – through underground tunnels, in oppressive heat across vast stretches of the deserts of the southwest, or even across the open ocean in little leaky fishing boats!

This is a great story because it shows that something good can still come out of even the worst situations – even as the worst can come out of the best. So this is one way we should ponder this story and our relationships with others radically different from us – especially those who, under international law, are convinced that their children, like ours, deserve to be given a chance, any chance, at living a normal, productive life.

Another thing to notice in this reading is that the gatekeepers are on full alert, and they’re not criticized for it; they have an important role! But, thank God, they’re not the whole story; Jesus finally comes to his senses and realizes that God is on the side of this woman. The inconvenient truth, the perplexing, the confrontational and the foreign, those who just can’t seem to assimilate into “the way things are,” the people who jar us out of our complacency and expectations, these ill-fitting, scary people, might just be coming to us in the name of all that’s holy. They might just be God challenging us to a fuller view of the way things are truly meant to be, to a wider take on the purposes of creation.

The story of Jesus and the Canaanite woman is a reminder that God can be heard on two sides of any conversation, a reminder that God still confronts the Church with discomfort and difference for its own good – so all of humanity can become what it was meant to be “in the image and likeness of God.” If there is a “voice of God” to be heard in our own time, then, it will more than likely be heard in the uncomfortable, disturbing voices of the world from people on the margins.

Finally, through the initial actions of Jesus and his companions here we are reminded that you can’t be inclusive and indifferent at the same time. The woman in today’s story comes with some respect for Jesus and with some trust in his being who his people are saying that he is. God isn’t the one who damns and excludes people from the presence of the sacred. So we’ve got to recognize that for some people being in the presence of God is the last place they want to be!

The other side of this, then, is that if we are to be truly welcoming of all people, it’s going to make demands upon us. It’s far too easy for us simply to be grudgingly tolerant, to draw no distinctions at all, to accept everybody and every sort of behavior without question. Today’s cynical saying, “Whatever” is the lazy manifestation of this attitude of complete relativism. That’s not being inclusive; that’s being indifferent – whatever you do is fine, just as long as it doesn’t affect me. What that all too often leads to is the position that says, “If you’re allowed to do this or that, then whatever I want to do has got to be all right as well.” A lot of seemingly tolerant people, then, are really just indifferent people. Maybe they’re also just careless, unwilling to draw moral distinctions in case somebody might want to enforce a moral distinction on them, in case anybody might presume to tell them what they can and cannot do and so “cramp their style.”

One mark of truly being inclusive, then, is that you’ve learned how to accept people who challenge the way you think, who challenge even the values that you hold. Many of us, for a long time now, have suggested to the so-called “conservatives” in our Church that they might be able to see God at work in those people that challenge them with so-called “liberal” or “progressive” causes – over the very nature of salvation, for instance, or the freedom for loving gay and lesbian persons to marry. Equally, though, the Church is full of so-called “liberal” Christians (I’m raising my hand, here; I confess!) whose primary claim might be to boast just how inclusive they are, and yet who can be just as upset as the crankiest conservative to reject anything or anyone that makes them feel uncomfortable. There are too many around who one heartbroken traditionalist once described as “illiberal liberals.” Should we be paying attention to that?

In the end, inclusiveness in the face of difference just may be at the very core of creation itself. That means that we’re not only to be reconciled in the midst of our shared difference and discomfort, but we ought to embrace it. It’s hard to be told that as the people of God we’re supposed to see past other people’s bigotry – beyond where their tolerance stops. But there it is. The Church, we who gather here Sunday after Sunday, at least ought to be a sign of how God wants the human family to be – what the final design ought to look like. We shouldn’t be content with any lesser motive for being here: to come just to see old friends, just for our own comfort, or to simply dabble in the things of God when it suits us and feel no real obligation for the mission that we say is ours as a church⁴ – to extend no welcome to the stranger who joins us for worship, for instance, because it’s more comfortable to stick with the people we know.

Like it or not the Church is called to reflect inclusiveness, which remains to be a challenging and often uncomfortable thing. But we’re not left alone with our pride, our self-sufficiency, safely within our comfort zone. There is a bigger cause for us to embrace, no less than becoming a sign to the whole dysfunctional human family that there is a way to put things right. With the help of a woman a group of men – and then you and me – are shown a way of not only naming but transcending our discomfort, into a moment of experiencing just how fearless and how genuine inclusiveness can be.

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