Pride and Prejudice and…

    It is hard for me to think well, or even positively, of a man who would call a woman a dog.  And that puts me in a quandary and maybe you too, because in today’s gospel lesson a man does call a woman a dog, and that man is Jesus.
    What are we to make of this?  This story confronts us with an aspect of Jesus many aren’t comfortable with.  Over the years some people have professed that Jesus only says good and true things, so if he called this woman a dog, she must be a dog.  Others have said that this is the very human Jesus, caught after a long day of teaching and caring a debating.
    So I think the first thing this lesson does is invite us to ponder who we think Jesus is, and what his full divinity and full humanity means to us.  Fully human and fully divine – perhaps it would be helpful for us to consider this nature of Jesus like the color green.  Green is made when you mix yellow and blue together, and if you look at something green – a pastor’s stole, or a blade of grass, or a slice of honeydew – you cannot distinguish the blue from the yellow.  The two colors have blended to form something new.  Maybe that is what Jesus is – human and divine blended into something new so that we cannot distinguish between his two natures.
    But that makes this story harder to interpret, doesn’t it?  Because that would mean that the divine presence in Jesus calls someone a horrible, derogatory name; it would mean that even God is susceptible to certain prejudices. 
    This is a great story, and a great story to preach on, because it throws so many of our assumptions out the window.  Our assumptions about Jesus always being kind and gentle and flaxen-haired: out the window.  Our assumptions that Jesus can switch back and forth between human and divine: out the window.  Our assumptions about the woman – well, what are our assumptions about her?
    Picture this woman: what does she look like to you?  Who does she remind you of?  Short, tall, old, healthy, poor, rich, powerful, weak – what assumptions have you made about her?  That she loves her daughter and would do anything to help her is a very safe assumption.  That she is not too proud to beg.  That she will risk ridicule and defamation.  But what about the rest of it?
    I was taken aback reading a commentary that suggested that this woman, far from the powerless, impoverished woman I had always pictured, might in fact be someone of means and status.  Imagine this woman as Hillary Clinton or Meg Whitman.  And then picture Jesus: poor, itinerant, lacking formal education, preaching a message that is quite contrary to the establishment.  To Jesus, this woman is the Other, as he is to her.
    Jesus has gone to foreign territory – the region of Gentiles, not Jews.  Worn out, he is confronted by a powerful woman whose status in life is the complete opposite of his own.  What she represents – power, wealth, social standing – has oppressed what he represents – powerlessness, poverty, nobody-ness.  Maybe we can understand why he called her a dog.
    That doesn’t excuse the slur.  But in wrestling with this text, I realized that for all my hot-headedness about my Savior calling a sister a dog, maybe I needed to forgive him. Maybe realizing that these two people came from different places, and realizing how much Jesus risked by talking with a foreign woman, softened my heart enough to forgive Jesus for acting in a most unchristian way.
    Still, that whole “God calling a woman a dog” thing lingers.  Fortunately for all of us, the story doesn’t end with the canine reference.  The story appears to end with Jesus’ acknowledgement of the depth of the woman’s faithfulness and with the healing of her daughter. 
But in a way, that’s not the real end of the story.  I like to think it ends at the end of Matthew’s gospel,  with the risen Christ sending his disciples out to all nations.  Not just to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.  To all nations.  Everyone.  Male and female.  Jew and Gentile.  Slave and free.  Rich and poor.  Educated and illiterate.  We could go on forever.
    And that makes this an amazing story, because in these eight verses from Matthew 15, we see Jesus, yellow-and-blue-make-green, fully-human and fully-divine Jesus, change his mind.  We see God change the divine mind.  We see a foreign, desperate, faithful woman change the mind of the son of God.  That’s huge.
    It really is the turning point of the gospel, in many ways, an expansion of the very mission of Jesus and of God.  God made the whole world and chose a particular people, but now God is going to redeem the whole world and not just the chosen but all the people.  In God’s mind, there is now no longer anyone who is Other.
    That is huge, but it might be so big it’s hard to wrap our minds around, so let’s get specific.  Let’s look at what this means for the church.  Even more specifically, let’s look at what this means for the church in Matthew’s time.
    The writer of the first gospel, whom we call Matthew, lived and wrote among Christians who were trying to figure out how one could come to be a Christian.  Matthew likely wrote from a Jewish community within a larger Greek metropolis – a blending of cultures and traditions.  They struggled with the sorts of things Paul wrote about – does a Gentile need to first become a Jew (and be circumcised); what is the role of women, what about marriage, and so on. 
    And so this encounter between Jesus and a Gentile woman was the catalyst for the infant church to decide that it would expand its horizon, that anyone could join, that one needn’t come from the strong and beautiful Jewish tradition first.  It was a bold statement about identity.  The Other now belonged.
    I wonder if today’s church still makes such bold statements about identity.
    People who write about these things have noted about every 500 years, there is a major shift of sorts in the Christian church.  Around 1000, the church split east and west.  In the 16th century the Protestant reformation forever changed the face of Christianity.  And here we are, 500 years later. 
    Gone are the days when Protestants in North American could experience overflowing Sunday Schools and sermons published in the newspaper. Only about 12% of the world’s Christians lived in the North America. It’s a new world. 
    22% of Christians live in Africa.  25% of Christians live in Central and South America.  25% in Europe, 13% in Asia.  Less than 1% of Christians live in the Middle East, where it all began.  (Do you know what the most Christian country in the world is, with 100%?  Vatican City.)
    So if we try to stay with the image of the Other, could say that there are more Others  than there are us, that there are more non-white, non-North American Christians than there are of us.  And I don’t think that’s a bad thing.  It would probably be better if we stopped considering people who are different from us as the Other.
    You know, Jesus started out thinking of this Canaanite woman as the Other.  He ended with her in a different place.  So I think a big question for us 21st century North American Christians is this: how do we embrace those majority of Christians who aren’t like us, who don’t look like us or talk like us, who worship in ways completely different than we do? 
    Missionaries spent centuries going to those places where Christianity now flourishes;  we went to those places with all sorts of intentions, good and bad, and in the mutual ministries shared there (I’m taking the rosy view) the gospel of Jesus’ love was shared.
    But I wonder if in these days Christians in Central and South America and in Africa and in Asia see North America as a mission field, if we have become the Other to them?
    And what does all of this mean for our community here at Westminster?
    In today’s story from Matthew, we learn that Jesus had a clear sense of whom he was sent to serve: the lost sheep of the house of Israel.  After his encounter with a woman who was in no way like him, he changed his mind, and enlarged his vision.
    What will it mean for our church to have encounters with people who are nothing like us?  Will it mean that we might change our minds about some things to embrace new people and enlarge our vision?
    When the Pastor Nominating Committee began its work, they sent a survey to other pastors in the Presbytery to ask them their sense of Westminster and what type of leader might best serve the church.  Two comments in particular stood out for me.  These two pastors talked about Westminster and its leaders needing to be bridge builders to the community, bridge builders between the old and the new, bridge builders between tradition and new vision.
    Gregg and I will do some of that work, but it’s really up to all of us to look hard and deeply and warmly at the question of what it means for Westminster to be a vibrant church firmly grounded in Jesus Christ and firmly committed to being God’s people in the 21st century.
    That might mean we do some things in the same way.  It probably means we will do some things differently.  We will have to choose, very consciously, to risk.  And if we take risks, sometimes we will fail.  We’ll probably fail more often than we succeed.  And failure is a pretty good teacher.  And you can fail and still be utterly faithful.
    This story from Matthew assures me that even Jesus got it wrong once in a while.  You could say that he failed initially with the Canaanite woman.  But his failure, and his learning, and his change of mind led to even greater things.
    I think God has great and new things in mind for us here.  But as Albert Einstein once said: “Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new.”  If we are going to move ahead, we will make some mistakes.
    There are dedicated, faithful people here who, very thoughtfully and with experience, believe that things are too precarious, particularly in the financial sense, right now for us to be able to risk failure.  I get that.   That thinking can exemplify great stewardship.  But in some ways, what better time is there to take a risk?
    In January, Gregg and I were just about ready to stop searching for a new call.  Things weren’t going particularly well, and there is only so much rejection one can take before one starts thinking that the Universe, or God, or the PCUSA, is sending you a message.  We were imagining what Plan B would look like, and girding our loins for that.  Then out of the blue we got an email from Mary Ann Wish, the chairperson of the Pastor Nominating Committee.
    We had Plan B in mind.  We were looking at our future in Milwaukee among friends and stability and the known.  So we went into our interviews with the PNC with a sense of “we’ve got nothing to lose.”  There was something freeing about that.  We could risk being who we were and saying things clearly and asking hard questions.  And for better or worse (I like to think for better) here we are.
    You all have known great risks, successes and failure in your individual lives and in the life of the church.  So I don’t know exactly what God is asking of us, who the Others might be that God sends our way, or how God is asking us to risk.  I am excited to find out with you.
But I do know one thing: being faithful is more important than being careful.
Thanks be to God who calls us to amazing places.

Beth Neel
Westminster Presbyterian Church
August 14, 2011