A Fourth Church Sermon by Cynthia M. Campbell

August 18, 2002 | 9:30 and 11:00 a.m.

Crumbs

Cynthia M. Campbell
President, McCormick Theological Seminary

Isaiah 56:1, 6–8
Matthew 16:21–28

It seemed to me that they were practicing their pastoral care skills way outside the bounds of propriety. If you’ve ever been in counseling or done any counseling or even (as we say) “active listening,” you know the code phrases: “Tell me more about that”; “How did that make you feel?”; “What happened next?” It was a summer about thirty years ago. I was back in Los Angeles doing a hospital chaplain training program required for ordination. Seminary students spend ten weeks learning to care for patients and families all over the hospital: emergency room to labor and delivery, and everything in between. It’s a great program; most seminary students still do this today.

Thirty years ago, living in the heart of downtown Los Angeles was not only not very interesting; it was also moderately dangerous. On the rare occasions when we all had the night off, the group (four men, another woman, and myself) liked to get out and see the city. One week, my family in Pasadena invited us to a picnic in our backyard. I should have known better. It started as we sat around after dinner. My grandmother quickly became the center of attention. “So, what was Cynthia like when she was growing up?” Egged on by my friends’ newly learned phrases, it wasn’t long before my grandmother was regaling the group with stories of incidents I had long forgotten, hoped to forget, and even doubted their veracity. “Tell us more about little Cindy.”

It’s one thing to live with embarrassing stories told in the confines of one’s family. It’s quite another to have them shared with outsiders! But what happens when such narratives make it into the biblical record? That’s not a place we would expect to find reminiscences that put the characters in a less than flattering light—especially when the character in question happens to be Jesus. But that’s what this morning’s gospel is: a really less-than-flattering incident remembered by the power of the Holy Spirit, kept by the providence of God, waiting for us to contemplate, to ponder, to learn from.

In order to grasp the power of this story, the incident between Jesus and the Canaanite woman, we need to set the stage. Jesus and the disciples have left the region of Galilee (what was then and is now northern Israel) and headed north and west towards the area of Tyre and Sidon (in what is now southern Lebanon). Tyre was the Roman port city, the gateway for trade to Damascus, Baghdad and beyond. This is foreign territory for Jesus and his friends. They are outside the pale; these are not his people. He doesn’t belong here.

Why they have made this journey is, in Matthew’s telling, unclear. In Mark’s version, Jesus has gone to get away from the press of ministry; he’s on retreat. Matthew leaves this motivation out, which only serves to make the situation more pointed. The way Matthew writes the gospel, Jesus is the fulfillment of God’s promises to Israel. It is for Israel, God’s chosen people, that Jesus has come. And only after rejection by the Jews does the promise open out to include the “others.” Thus, this gospel begins with the lineage of Jesus, designed to show how he is descended from King David, and ends with Jesus’ command “Go and make disciples of all nations.” But the others come later for Matthew, only after Jesus’ ministry to Israel.

Matthew lived in a world defined by insiders vs. outsiders; the privileged vs. the marginalized; us vs. them—them being the enemy. Before we jump to quickly to the conclusion that these people were simply stupid or unenlightened or morally deficient, we do well to remember that this is how they survived. Many Jews of that day (especially those who belonged to the Pharisees) believed that it was their responsibility before God to remain separate and distinct from other peoples, their duty not to assimilate, their obligation to be “us” by not associating with “them.”

So, Jesus (by all accounts a devout and faithful Jew) goes out to “their” territory. And sure enough, he is accosted by one of “them.” On top of which, she is a woman, and a truly devoted Jewish man would never have a conversation with a woman not a member of his immediate family.

In Matthew’s narrative, both the trip to foreign territory and this foreign woman are interruptions. And she is unwelcome, unwanted, an intrusion. Notice how strongly this is portrayed. The woman calls out to Jesus, “Have mercy on me, Lord; my daughter is tormented by a demon.” Jesus ignores her: “He did not answer her at all.” She keeps on yelling at him and the disciples say, “Send her away!” She pushes her way into their midst, kneels at Jesus’ feet, and cries out, “Lord, help me!” And Jesus calls her a dog: “It is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.” There is no translation trick, no interpretive sleight-of-hand that removes the offense. Even though Jews of the time apparently referred to Gentiles as “dogs,” it’s not a nice thing to say.

The modern editors of the Bible tell us that this is a story about the woman’s “faith.” But I think it is at least as much about the woman’s persistence, her stamina, and her wit. Unlike any other gospel story, this petitioner turns Jesus’ words inside out. She turns his own metaphor back on him. She turns an insult into an opportunity. “Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters’ table.” Jesus, the master of metaphor, the champion of debate with the most educated religious leaders, is shown up by an outsider, by a mother so desperate to save her child that she does not let an insult get in the way but turns it into an opportunity to lay claim to the mercy of God.

It’s an embarrassing story. And it’s amazing, isn’t it, that it is recorded and remembered. I wonder—did Jesus tell the story later on himself? Did this woman become a model for his parable of the widow and the unjust judge? Did even Jesus deepen his insight into the grace of God as a result of this encounter? As he reflected on it later, did the words of Isaiah come to mind: “The foreigners who join themselves to the Lord . . . these I will bring to my holy mountain and make them joyful in my house of prayer; for my house shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples”?

We remember stories because they mean something to us; stories, even the embarrassing ones, shape our identity. We tell them over and over again to remind us (for better or worse) who we are and why. This story of Jesus is no exception. And the message is one that jumps off the page for me, a Christian who is a citizen of the United States in the first years of the twenty-first century. This story says that there is a wideness in God’s mercy like the wideness of the sea. It says that for God, there are no insiders vs. outsiders. It says that the same must be true for us.

Some years after Jesus’ earthly ministry, the Pharisee named Saul was overcome by the presence and story of Jesus and became Paul the Apostle to the Gentiles, the advocate of the enemy, the champion of the outsider. Paul never references the stories of Jesus; he never relates any of the events of Jesus’ life, except his death and resurrection. But Paul’s theology is clearly grounded in an incident such as this. Those who have been baptized into Christ Jesus, Paul says, are a new creation, and there is no longer Jew or Greek, slave or free, male and female, for you are all one in him (cf., Galatians 3:27–28). Paul doesn’t retell the stories, but surely he knew them. How else would he come to the conclusion that Christ has broken down the dividing wall of hostility between Jew and Greek and created one new humanity in place of the two (cf., Ephesians 2:11–16)?

As the Brief Statement of Faith reminds us, we live in a broken and fearful world. We are afraid; there are things worth being frightened of. We must not be naïve: there is evil in the world, and there are those who consider the United States their enemy. But as Christians, shaped as we are by the stories of Jesus, we must take stock of our world from a distinctive vantage point; we must ask different questions. We must, I think, ponder what it means for the outsider to lay claim to God’s mercy, what it means for the alien to call on the goodness of God, what it means for Jesus to be embarrassed by this stranger, this persistent woman, this mother with a desperately sick child.

In the aftermath of September 11, a variety of voices want us to think of the world as “us” vs. “them” and to think of “them” as “the enemy.” The current administration seems intent on trying to convince us that Saddam Hussein is so evil that we have no other alternative but to eliminate him, a view virtually no other nation except Israel seems to share. Frightened by terrorists who entered the U.S. on student visas, our government plans to place severe restrictions on visas and entry into the country by persons from a half dozen select countries. When our student from Sudan seeks to return, he will be fingerprinted and photographed, and we will be required to make regular reports about him. Ezekiel is tall and slender; his skin is the color of mahogany. At sixty-five, his hair is salt and pepper; the marks of his tribal initiation are prominent on his forehead. He is the stated clerk of the Presbyterian Church of the Sudan, but he is now from an enemy nation and thus potentially our enemy.

Some other Christians are clearly ready to support such views. Franklin Graham, son of famed evangelist Billy Graham and heir to the vast ministries set up by his father, continues to call Islam an evil religion and declares that Muslim religious leaders should apologize to the United States on behalf of their religion. And before we dismiss Graham’s statements, let us remember that his voice sounds much louder in the media and in Washington than any voice that speaks from any Presbyterian pulpit.

Which came first, do you think: Jesus’ confrontation with the enemy woman somewhere in the region of Tyre and Sidon or his teaching about enemies? Had he already been saying, “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father in heaven” (Matthew 5:44–45), or was it this mother desperate for the life of her child who cried out, “Lord, have mercy!” that opened his heart? The chronology doesn’t really matter. It’s what happened that counts: healing for the child and hope for the world. And maybe that is why this embarrassing story was remembered and cherished and handed on for us to ponder in these days.