Sermon 8/17/08
Interlude: Crumbs from the Table - Matthew 15:(10-20) 21-28
(view lectionary notes for this text)
If you are a person who pays close attention to the bulletin and the Touchstone newsletter, you might realize that today we were supposed to be hearing a sermon about Joseph and his brothers: a story from the Old Testament, where Joseph is sold into slavery by his brothers because they are jealous of how he is favored by their father. But in the end, Joseph and the brothers are brought back together by the mysteries of God’s work in the world, and reconciliation takes place. We were going to spend two weeks looking at Joseph. But then last week we had the special treat instead of seeing scenes from Godspell, and I didn’t want to cram the whole Joseph story into one week.
Besides, the gospel lesson for today is one that is as hard to skip over as it is to deal with. It’s probably one of the hardest passages in the Bible for people to deal with because we don’t know how to react, how to interpret Jesus’ behavior. Before our passage for today, Jesus has been arguing with the Pharisees and scribes. They complain that his disciples don’t wash their hands before they eat, as the law commands. But Jesus tells them, “for the sake of your tradition, you make void the word of God.” In other words, the Pharisees are more worried about carrying on with tradition than they are worried about actually doing what God wants them to do. In response to this exchange, Jesus calls the crowds to him, and continues where our passage for today begins. “Listen and understand. It is not what goes into the mouth that defiles a person, but it is what comes out of the mouth that defiles.” The religious laws of the day strictly prohibited what could be touched, what could be eaten, what would make a person clean or unclean. But Jesus explains that that kind of cleanness or uncleanness is superficial. Instead, it’s what’s in a person’s heart that makes a person clean or unclean. What comes out of your mouth, what you speak from your heart – that’s what matters.
Then the scene changes. Jesus travels to Tyre and Sidon, a region that would have been populated primarily by Gentiles – non-Jews. A woman approaches Jesus – a Canaanite, again, a non-Jew, and she asks for help for her daughter. “Have mercy on me,” she cries to Jesus, and she calls him Lord, Son of David, a title that suggests she believes he is the Messiah. But Jesus simply doesn’t answer her at all. His disciples try to get him to simply tell her to go away, as she keeps shouting. But Jesus finally responds, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” She’s not deterred. She kneels before him and says, “Lord, help me.” Then Jesus answers, “it is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.” This is the exchange that’s hard to hear, because two thousand years ago, calling someone a dog was as insulting, if not more insulting, as it would be today. Jesus compares the Jews to children and this non-Jewish woman to a dog, and the words are stinging and hard for us to absorb. But the woman is still persistent: “yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters’ table,” she answers. “Woman, great is your faith!” Jesus responds. He tells her her daughter will be healed.
This story has a happy ending – the girl is healed. But what do we make of what Jesus has said to her? I’ve read lots of commentaries about the text, and lots of people trying to explain what Jesus says, but it’s hard for us to not hear this exchange as other than rude and insulting. What’s going on? Is Jesus just having a bad day? Has he just had enough of people asking for help, and this woman is just one request too many? Too begin to answer these questions, I think, as is so often with difficult texts, we need to look at our context, and go back to the beginning section of this passage. It is this opening section that frames Jesus’ interaction with this woman – in the opening section Jesus teaches – in the second section, we see this very teaching in action. Jesus has been teaching that it is what is inside a person, not what is outside, that makes a person clean or unclean. Now, an opportunity comes for him to act on the very thing he’s just been teaching about, to practice what he preaches. First, we see that Jesus travels to Tyre and Sidon. This exchange with the woman is the only scene that happens here that is recorded. It seems he goes here for no other purpose than for this interaction to be shown to us. He would have known that the region would have been filled with non-Jews. And this woman would be considered unclean on many levels – he’s talking to a woman, first, who is a non-Jews, a Canaanite, second, who has a daughter who is unclean by virtue of her demon-possession. This woman is unclean on the outside in every way. She doesn’t come in the right package. But inside? This woman can identify Jesus as Messiah, something his own disciples couldn’t often do. And she’s persistent in asking God for healing, a virtue that Jesus lifts up often in his teachings. And she has a deep understanding of God’s grace, available even to her, despite the boundaries society has placed between her and Jesus. “Woman, great is your faith,” Jesus ultimately declares. Her insides, where it counts, are clean, and good.
I’m not sure why Jesus speaks to her as he does. I still can’t make sense of it. But I can see that Jesus is again cross boundaries, showing people that no one is beyond the reach of God’s grace – indeed, some of those who don’t appear to be ‘good enough’ actually are filled with greater faith than those who look like they have it altogether on the outside. So what does all this mean for us? Are we clean or unclean? Are we clean outside or inside? What comes out of us? Who are we judging because of their outsides rather than their insides? Do we ever reach across the boundaries like Jesus does?
This lesson seems simple enough for us to understand. It’s what’s inside, not outside that matters. After all, today we don’t follow the codes of ritual cleanliness that Jews in the first century practiced, right? Of course, we’re still obsessed with cleanliness – everything we buy, it seems, can be purchased either in regular or antibacterial form. Jesus might say that goes in us doesn’t defile, but that sure won’t stop us from fighting germs however we can! But still, our practices have changed and become flexible, haven’t they? We don’t consider whole groups of people unclean, do we? . . . And yet, I think our attitudes and beliefs are still very much the same as in Jesus’ day. We have our own ideas about cleanliness and what defiles. We might not worry about eating particular foods that defile, or about performing religious rituals for cleanliness, but we still worry a lot about what goes into us rather than what comes out from us.
After all, our world is filled with things that it seems we’d be better off excluding if we could. We are bombarded with things that seem to threaten our cleanliness. We’re tempted by all the world offers – junk food that hurts our bodies, drugs and alcohol and other addictions that break us down physically and emotionally. The world offers us empty promises that new toys and new technology and new cars and new homes and new clothes are going to fill us with the meaning that we seek. In the media and on television, we are inundated with images of sex and violence and an on-demand lifestyle, masquerading as normal and necessary. Indeed, it seems that there is much in this world that can defile us, make us unclean, if we let it inside us. How can Jesus say that it doesn’t matter what goes into us? As Christians, shouldn’t we be protecting ourselves, insulating ourselves from all of these things, these temptations, that are coming at us?
But Jesus says we should be more concerned with what comes out of us than what goes into us. Christians have always struggled with how to live in the world and not be just like the world. But insulating ourselves, closing ourselves off from anything that might make us unclean also means we would have to close ourselves of from others, close ourselves off from those we are called to love and to serve and from those to whom we are called to share the good news of God’s free grace. Jesus surrounded himself with people and places and practices that we would describe only as bad influences. But Jesus didn’t see it that way. He saw himself as the one who was doing the influencing. We are called to do the same, and to draw from within us the Christ that we have to share with the world.
What is inside you? We are created in the image of God. And Jesus tells us that if we’re open to it, God will abide, will come and be at home, right in our hearts. If we’re open, we’ll find that it is God who is inside of us, God who dwells with in us, in our spirits. It is God within us that we seek to let come out of us, work through us. What’s in your heart? Simple as it seems, it’s what we find there, and how we use what’s inside of us, that will change our lives.
Amen.