Conversation with God
Scripture: Matthew 15:10-28
This morning’s Gospel reading is not my favorite story about Jesus. As he is walking down the road with the disciples, a Canaanite woman comes running, calling out to Jesus for help. She’s noisy, pushy, knows what she wants, and won’t let up. The disciples, in typical style, try to make her go away.
Now this is where I start to wish there were a different reading for this Sunday. In many other stories, Jesus is much nicer. In the story of the children who want to meet Jesus, he tells the disciples, “Let the children come to me.” In the story of the paraplegic, Jesus sees the man being lowered through the roof and shouts his approval right away. In the story of Zaccheus the tax collector, Jesus looks into the sycamore tree and calls Zaccheus to him. And not only that, he goes to Zaccheus’ place for dinner!
So the first disturbing moment for me is when Jesus ignores the woman. Her daughter is sick! She’s shouting after him! But Jesus ignores her. And when she keeps persisting, it gets worse. Jesus insults her: “The bread I have is for the children, not for the dogs.” Jesus calls this woman a dog. We’ve just heard Jesus dismiss the Pharisees as “the blind leading the blind” and he’s often blunt—rarely pulling his punches, but still: it kind of ties a knot in the old “What Would Jesus Do?” bracelet, if you know what I mean.
So as I say, this is not an easy text. But I think there are two things going on in the story that we should examine.
The first thing to think about is this: Jesus had a way of meeting people where they are. If a man’s riches were getting in the way of a relationship with God, Jesus would tell him to sell them. If a woman needed to tell her story of long illness and pain, Jesus was ready to listen. If a person was thinking about following Jesus, but wasn’t ready to make a final decision, Jesus simply said, “Come and see.” For the Canaanite woman, then, I wonder if Jesus saw in her a real need to wrestle with him before she could receive a blessing. Sometimes we don’t want things handed to us on a plate. Sometimes we need to feel like the good things are worth struggling for. And sometimes we need to have a good matching of wits—a personal connection—before we’re ready to accept healing.
I went to my first visit with a new doctor a few months ago. And I left not wanting to go back again. It’s not that the doctor didn’t take my temperature, or listen to my heart or ask me if I had particular complaints. It was that she seemed rushed. She didn’t want to chat things over—she wanted to either get me the right pill or get me out of there.
Now it’s entirely possible that my doctor was having a bad day, and it’s also possible that Jesus was having a bad day, but I think by the time Jesus tells the woman not to expect any bread from him, she has his full attention.
And this may be where the real moment of healing is found in the story. Not when the little girl recovers from her demons and is free to be healthy and normal again, but when Jesus looks the Canaanite woman in the eye and sees her—really sees her. The healing is not only in the recovery of the little girl, but also in the conversation Jesus has with her mother. Jesus hears her, and it changes his mind.
This is the second important moment in the story. Granted, I’ve just said that Jesus may be pushing on this woman because he knows she is up to the fight. But that doesn’t mean she didn’t affect him. She makes a real change in his attitude.
Jesus focused most of his ministry on a specific group of people—what he calls “the lost sheep of Israel.” This group of people had its own vagaries, its own foibles, its own flaws. It included traitors, prostitutes, drunkards, and other sinners who were not accepted in polite society. These were the lost sheep, and Jesus felt called to be with them. He said, “Well people don’t need a doctor. It’s the sick who do!”
This drove the Pharisees nuts. Here is someone going around the countryside as a teacher, healing people and making strange pronouncements about God and God’s work in the world, yet he eats with sinners all the time! He wears the wrong clothes, talks to the wrong people, and doesn’t respect tradition.
Jesus fires back in the first section of our reading from Matthew: Respecting tradition isn’t the same thing as respecting God. When it comes to who’s in and who’s out of God’s kingdom, you don’t have any idea. Washing your hands is no good if your heart isn’t clean.
So Jesus had a very clear picture about what his mission was: to reach out to those lost sheep. And he also believed that his mission was limited to the people of Israel. This is not a new theme. Much of the Old Testament tracks what looks like divine favoritism—choosing Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, David. Choosing Sarah, Rebecca, Rachel, Ruth. The people of Israel for many years had a particular covenant with God, a relationship that was different from anyone else’s. Jesus’ mission statement read: “Bring the kingdom of God to the lost sheep of Israel.” No need to go further.
And this is where the conversation becomes so important. The Canaanite woman, ready to go to the mat for her daughter, opens Jesus’ eyes. She knows without question that he can heal her daughter, so she uses his own words against him. He says: dogs don’t get to eat the children’s bread. She says: yes, but they still get the scraps.
Because we don’t normally think of Jesus having his mind changed or learning something new, this story is shocking. Shouldn’t Jesus already know everything? But the Canaanite woman challenges him and wins—his ministry is not, after all, only for Israel, but for the lost sheep everywhere.
Prayer at its best is conversation with God. And what are we hoping to do when we pray, if not change God’s mind? The Canaanite woman is clever and courageous in her encounter with Jesus. He treats her as his equal and concedes her point. This is the good news for us today: God does not come to us as someone who is higher than the rest of us, as someone who never makes mistakes, as someone who has all the answers. God comes to us as a human being and listens to us—both our protests and our praises. God is ready to have a conversation with us.
This moment of grace in Jesus’ ministry is important for all of us in this sanctuary, because it marks Jesus’ willingness to not only minister to the Jews but also to the Gentiles. It is hurtful, at first, to hear the sting in the words—that we are the dogs and they are the children. But our salvation hangs in the balance, and without the persistence of the Gentile woman on her daughter’s behalf we might not be in the same place we are today. Jesus might not have seen through the false division between Jew and Gentile. Jesus might not have recognized that faith can be found in unexpected places.
We, then, were outcasts at first, but we’ve been welcomed into the sheepfold. We’ve been healed because of a change of God’s heart. We are the ones who stood outside and who have only belatedly been let in. God’s great gift of mercy is ours. And it is just that—a gift, not a birthright.
What does this story mean for our own ministries? For our own lives?
First, it means that as recently-welcomed sheep, we should always be wary about trying to decide who’s in and who’s out. Jesus’ warning to the Pharisees holds true today: washing your hands doesn’t mean your heart is clean, and respecting tradition is not the same thing as respecting God.
Second, instead of trying to decide who’s in and who’s out, let’s see if we can’t do what Jesus did: bring love and healing into the world through our everyday lives. There are people of great faith in unexpected places, and the Holy Spirit is stirring in hearts you might never suspect. Let’s not only stay open to that Spirit; let’s do all we can to help it.
Finally, in our personal time with God, the good news is this: God welcomes our conversation. God loves us as we are, not because we were born into the right family or because we say the right things, or even because we come to church. So tell God the truth. Strive for honesty. Because God is still speaking and God is ready to listen. Thanks be to God, Amen.
This morning’s Gospel reading is not my favorite story about Jesus. As he is walking down the road with the disciples, a Canaanite woman comes running, calling out to Jesus for help. She’s noisy, pushy, knows what she wants, and won’t let up. The disciples, in typical style, try to make her go away.
Now this is where I start to wish there were a different reading for this Sunday. In many other stories, Jesus is much nicer. In the story of the children who want to meet Jesus, he tells the disciples, “Let the children come to me.” In the story of the paraplegic, Jesus sees the man being lowered through the roof and shouts his approval right away. In the story of Zaccheus the tax collector, Jesus looks into the sycamore tree and calls Zaccheus to him. And not only that, he goes to Zaccheus’ place for dinner!
So the first disturbing moment for me is when Jesus ignores the woman. Her daughter is sick! She’s shouting after him! But Jesus ignores her. And when she keeps persisting, it gets worse. Jesus insults her: “The bread I have is for the children, not for the dogs.” Jesus calls this woman a dog. We’ve just heard Jesus dismiss the Pharisees as “the blind leading the blind” and he’s often blunt—rarely pulling his punches, but still: it kind of ties a knot in the old “What Would Jesus Do?” bracelet, if you know what I mean.
So as I say, this is not an easy text. But I think there are two things going on in the story that we should examine.
The first thing to think about is this: Jesus had a way of meeting people where they are. If a man’s riches were getting in the way of a relationship with God, Jesus would tell him to sell them. If a woman needed to tell her story of long illness and pain, Jesus was ready to listen. If a person was thinking about following Jesus, but wasn’t ready to make a final decision, Jesus simply said, “Come and see.” For the Canaanite woman, then, I wonder if Jesus saw in her a real need to wrestle with him before she could receive a blessing. Sometimes we don’t want things handed to us on a plate. Sometimes we need to feel like the good things are worth struggling for. And sometimes we need to have a good matching of wits—a personal connection—before we’re ready to accept healing.
I went to my first visit with a new doctor a few months ago. And I left not wanting to go back again. It’s not that the doctor didn’t take my temperature, or listen to my heart or ask me if I had particular complaints. It was that she seemed rushed. She didn’t want to chat things over—she wanted to either get me the right pill or get me out of there.
Now it’s entirely possible that my doctor was having a bad day, and it’s also possible that Jesus was having a bad day, but I think by the time Jesus tells the woman not to expect any bread from him, she has his full attention.
And this may be where the real moment of healing is found in the story. Not when the little girl recovers from her demons and is free to be healthy and normal again, but when Jesus looks the Canaanite woman in the eye and sees her—really sees her. The healing is not only in the recovery of the little girl, but also in the conversation Jesus has with her mother. Jesus hears her, and it changes his mind.
This is the second important moment in the story. Granted, I’ve just said that Jesus may be pushing on this woman because he knows she is up to the fight. But that doesn’t mean she didn’t affect him. She makes a real change in his attitude.
Jesus focused most of his ministry on a specific group of people—what he calls “the lost sheep of Israel.” This group of people had its own vagaries, its own foibles, its own flaws. It included traitors, prostitutes, drunkards, and other sinners who were not accepted in polite society. These were the lost sheep, and Jesus felt called to be with them. He said, “Well people don’t need a doctor. It’s the sick who do!”
This drove the Pharisees nuts. Here is someone going around the countryside as a teacher, healing people and making strange pronouncements about God and God’s work in the world, yet he eats with sinners all the time! He wears the wrong clothes, talks to the wrong people, and doesn’t respect tradition.
Jesus fires back in the first section of our reading from Matthew: Respecting tradition isn’t the same thing as respecting God. When it comes to who’s in and who’s out of God’s kingdom, you don’t have any idea. Washing your hands is no good if your heart isn’t clean.
So Jesus had a very clear picture about what his mission was: to reach out to those lost sheep. And he also believed that his mission was limited to the people of Israel. This is not a new theme. Much of the Old Testament tracks what looks like divine favoritism—choosing Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, David. Choosing Sarah, Rebecca, Rachel, Ruth. The people of Israel for many years had a particular covenant with God, a relationship that was different from anyone else’s. Jesus’ mission statement read: “Bring the kingdom of God to the lost sheep of Israel.” No need to go further.
And this is where the conversation becomes so important. The Canaanite woman, ready to go to the mat for her daughter, opens Jesus’ eyes. She knows without question that he can heal her daughter, so she uses his own words against him. He says: dogs don’t get to eat the children’s bread. She says: yes, but they still get the scraps.
Because we don’t normally think of Jesus having his mind changed or learning something new, this story is shocking. Shouldn’t Jesus already know everything? But the Canaanite woman challenges him and wins—his ministry is not, after all, only for Israel, but for the lost sheep everywhere.
Prayer at its best is conversation with God. And what are we hoping to do when we pray, if not change God’s mind? The Canaanite woman is clever and courageous in her encounter with Jesus. He treats her as his equal and concedes her point. This is the good news for us today: God does not come to us as someone who is higher than the rest of us, as someone who never makes mistakes, as someone who has all the answers. God comes to us as a human being and listens to us—both our protests and our praises. God is ready to have a conversation with us.
This moment of grace in Jesus’ ministry is important for all of us in this sanctuary, because it marks Jesus’ willingness to not only minister to the Jews but also to the Gentiles. It is hurtful, at first, to hear the sting in the words—that we are the dogs and they are the children. But our salvation hangs in the balance, and without the persistence of the Gentile woman on her daughter’s behalf we might not be in the same place we are today. Jesus might not have seen through the false division between Jew and Gentile. Jesus might not have recognized that faith can be found in unexpected places.
We, then, were outcasts at first, but we’ve been welcomed into the sheepfold. We’ve been healed because of a change of God’s heart. We are the ones who stood outside and who have only belatedly been let in. God’s great gift of mercy is ours. And it is just that—a gift, not a birthright.
What does this story mean for our own ministries? For our own lives?
First, it means that as recently-welcomed sheep, we should always be wary about trying to decide who’s in and who’s out. Jesus’ warning to the Pharisees holds true today: washing your hands doesn’t mean your heart is clean, and respecting tradition is not the same thing as respecting God.
Second, instead of trying to decide who’s in and who’s out, let’s see if we can’t do what Jesus did: bring love and healing into the world through our everyday lives. There are people of great faith in unexpected places, and the Holy Spirit is stirring in hearts you might never suspect. Let’s not only stay open to that Spirit; let’s do all we can to help it.
Finally, in our personal time with God, the good news is this: God welcomes our conversation. God loves us as we are, not because we were born into the right family or because we say the right things, or even because we come to church. So tell God the truth. Strive for honesty. Because God is still speaking and God is ready to listen. Thanks be to God, Amen.
posted by Amy Sens at 10:55 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home