The
Struggle Continues
Reflection
on Matthew 15.21-28
RCL
Proper 20A
20
August 2017
Saint
Faith’s Anglican Parish
Vancouver
BC
Matthew 15.21-28
21
Jesus left that place and went away to the district of Tyre and Sidon. 22 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.” 23 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.” 24 He answered, “I was sent only to
the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” 25
But she came and knelt before him, saying, “Lord, help me.” 26 He answered, “It is not fair to
take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.” 27 She said, “Yes, Lord, yet even
the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters’ table.” 28 Then Jesus answered her, “Woman,
great is your faith! Let it be done for
you as you wish.” And her daughter was
healed instantly.
More than fifty years ago the Roman
Catholic initiated a process of liturgical change that would reach out beyond
the communion of the Roman church and touch the lives of millions of other
Christians. Among the reforms was the
introduction of a three-year lectionary that would enable worshippers to
encounter far more of the Holy Scriptures than the previous lectionary shared,
in one form or another, by Anglicans, Lutherans and Roman Catholics.
I have lived as a lay person and as
an ordained person through at least thirteen three-year cycles. You might think that after thirteen ‘kicks at
the can’ I’ve heard all that is to be heard and learned all that is to be
learned. But this perception is very far
from the mark. Each year, each cycle, I
am amazed at what I might call ‘divine serendipity’ when the readings for a
given Sunday or holy day, chosen decades ago, speak clearly and directly to the
current lived experience of the congregations among whom I have lived,
worshipped and served.
Today is one of those
occasions. Jesus has begun to travel in
areas of the Roman province of Palestine that are populated mostly by non-Jewish
people, some indigenous such as the Canaanite woman, some relatively recent
immigrants such as Romans, Greeks and other peoples from the Mediterranean and
Near East. As Matthew describes this
period of Jesus’ public ministry, Jesus is reaching out to Jewish communities
living outside the boundaries of the predominately Jewish areas of the
region. His focus is on bringing these ‘separated’
and ‘minority’ communities within the embrace of the prophetic message of good
news that he has shared with their sisters and brothers closer to the
heartland.
But Jesus is halted in his steps by
a Canaanite woman, a non-Jewish indigenous person, who addresses him by a
Jewish messianic title, ‘Son of David’, who addresses him as ‘Lord’, the first
person in Matthew’s account of Jesus’ life and mission to do so. At first Jesus refuses to be distracted, but
when she persists, he cracks a anti-Gentile joke, a racial slur, if you
like. The woman is undeterred, firm in
her commitment to free her daughter from the demon that has possessed her. Her ‘faith’, her persistence, her
unwillingness to be dismissed by this celebrity rabbi from Galilee, results in
Jesus’ assurance that her daughter will be healed.
Jump ahead a millennia or two. In 1965, when I was twelve years old, Lyndon
Johnson signed into law the first of a series of legislative acts intended to
redress the centuries of injustice endured by Afro-Americans. This legislative tide would eventually result
in a commitment of the federal and state governments to address the injustices
and inequalities endured by other ethnic minorities and women.
As a teenager I lived in a
segregated city, segregated not by law but by custom, prejudice and
income. My neighbourhood was a white,
working-class neighbourhood where there were few people of colour. In grade seven I was sent to a school where
academically-talented students from throughout the city were clustered together,
but even then there were few teenagers of colour in my ‘cluster’. In grade twelve my secondary school was the
object of court-ordered desegregation and I experienced my first
racially-inspired violence within the halls of my school.
As a university student I joined a
circle of friends who encouraged me to become a member of a fraternity. I was proud of its history as a society,
founded shortly after the American Civil War, by three southerners who wanted
to heal the divisions caused by what some still call ‘the recent unpleasantness
between the states’ and others ‘the war of northern aggression’. It was only years later that I learned that
our founders were quite clear who they wanted to bring together: young white Christian men. No Jew or Afro-American or anyone else of
colour need apply.
And here we are in Vancouver seventy
years after the Second World War worshipping in communities where plaques and
flags hang on our walls to remind us of the sacrifices made by young men and
women, including members of my own extended family, to rid the world of fascism
and racist ideologies. Yet we know that
the struggle continues, not only in the United States and elsewhere in the
world, but here in Canada itself, to combat ‘the evil powers of this world
which corrupt and destroy the creatures of God’. Each time we celebrate a baptism in this
parish we promise to ‘. . . strive for justice and peace among all people (and
to) respect the dignity of every human being’.
We who live as disciples of Christ
are being called to join the Canaanite woman in her passionate and tenacious
struggle to ensure that the dignity of every human being is not only respected
but is nurtured and treasured. We who
live as disciples of Christ are being called to transform the table of
privilege into the banquet table of the kingdom of God, so that every human
being shares in the bounty rather than scrabbles for crumbs. We who live as disciples of Jesus are being
called to resist any and every ideology that discriminates against any human
being on the basis of race or religion or country of origin or sexual identity
or whatever other category.
The truth is this: Anyone who denies the full humanity of
another person is denying her or his own humanity. He or she is committing an act of spiritual
and moral suicide. Our resistance is to
be guided by the principle of speaking this truth in love not in violence or
exclusion directed to those whose views threaten the fabric of creation.
I have no illusions about the
challenges that accompany this struggle.
I know in my own heart the times when I fail to respect the dignity of
others. I know my own failures to
confront in love a person or persons whose words are meant to hurt and to
exclude others for criteria based on race or class or some other
prejudice. But the struggle continues
and there is no middle ground when we confront the demons of prejudice.
We often speak of Jesus as
gentle. In today’s gospel we see Jesus
as a person of power and privilege in contrast to a non-Jewish woman of
indigenous background who is desperate to free her child. Today this unnamed woman is an icon of
discipleship who challenges us over the span of the millennia to speak truth to
power and to resist evil. We are
surrounded by people who, in one way or another, scrabble to find the scraps
from the table of abundance. We are
surrounded by people who, in one way or another, experience exclusion and
discrimination. We dare not be idle ---
for the bell is tolling --- for us and for all of God’s beloved children.
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