Jesus and the life-changing encounter

 

Text: Matthew 15:10-28

One time my son came home from a youth group event with a t-shirt that read “Be Like Jesus” across the chest. I liked that shirt, which seems appropriate, I guess. 

However, today we experience a Jesus whose behavior might cause me to put that shirt back in the drawer — when he encounters a Gentile woman in her own homeland. While theologians across the centuries have mightily tried to explain away the words that come out of Jesus’s mouth — just one paragraph after he has declared that it is what comes out of your heart and your mouth that defile you — the fact is that Jesus first ignores a woman coming to him in faith asking for mercy, then he announces to the disciples that his mission does not include her kind, presumably so she would overhear and retreat, and when she does not, he insults her, saying that her kind (people who live in Gentile territory, which is where this story takes place, who the Jews called “dogs” because they were considered the enemy) that her kind are not covered under, or even eligible for, the Jesus-care health system. 

He is, to sum it up, blind to her identity as a child of God in need, because what he sees is her identity as someone from “the other side, not the right kind.” 

But this is one of the pivotal scenes in the story of Jesus’s life and work, and its placement here in Matthew’s telling of the story shows why:

Our reading today begins with Jesus on the Jewish side of the lake — there’s a lot of back and forth on the lake, or Sea of Galilee, so it gets confusing. We arrive mid-conversation about the difference between ritual or moral purity and defilement. Jesus is clear that regardless of what the rituals are, what defiles you is what comes out of your heart through your mouth if it is not about love. 

Then we move on. Jesus has become frustrated with the threats and danger that are growing in his home territory, and maybe he feels like a few days at the beach, so he heads off to the area of Tyre and Sidon on the Mediterranean coast, which considered hostile Gentile territory.

And here comes this woman who, despite being a Canaanite or Gentile, people who were considered enemies of Israel, she kneels before him and addresses him by his correct title (Son of David), indicating that she recognizes his identity as the Messiah, which nobody but a couple of blind men have called him before now, and she calls him Lord, meaning she believes in God, and she says, “Have mercy on me.” This is the appropriate posture, address, and petition of a faithful Jew. When blind Bartimaeus called out to Jesus in this way outside Jericho, and others wanted to shut him up, Jesus immediately stopped and called Bartimaeus to him, asking him what he wanted and granting it right then and there. But because his immediate identification of this woman is that she is of the wrong tribe, he treats her differently, even when she donned her t-shirt that said “Nevertheless she persisted” and continued to plead her case.

Now, let’s stop here and mention two things. First, one reason why people have trouble with this passage (in addition to Jesus’s harsh words) is because it shows Jesus changing his mind, indeed changing the scope of his mission as we will see. This goes back to the conundrum of whether or not the divine is immutable - unchangeable. But in the Jewish world this was not always a stumbling block. One of the most vivid stories in Genesis is when Abraham stands before God ,who has decided to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah, and says, “But wait: What if there are innocent people in those towns? Would you destroy the innocent with the wicked? Far be it from you, God, to act against what you have held yourself out to be, how you have acted in the past for life and not death. Will not the judge of all the earth do justice?” So God says, OK, I won’t do that, and sends his angels to rescue Lot and his family before the destruction begins. Abraham reminded God of who God was and held God accountable to that claim.

And secondly, if you read any of the lament psalms, which are most of them (even if we didn’t get one today - the people who created the lectionary didn’t consult me), this story is literally the embodiment of a lament psalm, the traditional worship language of God's people who believed in God’s promises. Come to Compline tonight and the first psalm you will hear begins “Answer me O God, defender of my cause, have mercy on me and hear my prayer . . . The Lord does wonders for the faithful; when I call upon the Lord, he will hear me.”

This is just what the woman is doing here. She knows who Jesus is and what he does - he heals and feeds and gives life and acts with justice and mercy - and her persistence in the face of rejection challenges him to see her as someone who also deserves those holy things. She doesn’t refute that the “children” should be fed but notes that “non-children” can be fed as well from the overflow that is always present at the table not of the church or the tribe, but of the Lord. Is it right to exclude others who need what you have because they are not like you, on your level, of your tribe, whatever? Is that what the Lord, the Son of David, who is about mercy and justice, should do?

And then Jesus comes to himself, he remembers who he is, he sees who she really is, and he grants the woman her plea - her daughter is healed - and announces for all to hear that she has shown great faith.

And then Jesus continues through Gentile territory, and you know what he does? He does all the things he did a few chapters back in Jewish territory - made the lame walk and the blind to see, and then he hosted thousands of them to a miraculous dinner of bread and fish. A couple of weeks ago you heard the story of the loaves and the fish, but that was the first one, for the Jewish crowds. Now he does it again among the Gentiles - we know they are because “they praised the God of Israel,” meaning that they were not Israelites themselves. His encounter with this unnamed woman of foreign birth spurs Jesus to be profligate with healing and mercy with everyone, not just with those of his religion and tribe. And by the end of this Gospel, Jesus commissions his disciples to continue his mission everywhere, not just in Israel.

So as one of my favorite commentators noted, “God is not enslaved by any theology, not even one announced by his own son. Theology, valuable and necessary as it is, need not stand in the way of divine compassion or human faith.”

As wonderful as this story is to me, though, it’s not worth much if I don’t get the “Be Like Jesus” t-shirt back out of the drawer and consider how I am called to live in this world every day as his follower. Do I not defile myself when I close my heart and mind to those who are not like me? When I believe that some people deserve mercy and justice and others do not because they are not on my team or of my tribe, whatever that may be? Am I following this Lord if I advocate for people to be excluded from the blessings that I enjoy, if I advocate for the door to be barred to them or for them to be kicked out because I don’t approve of their origins or their gender or their politics or their poverty or their religion or their hair or skin or who they love or what kind of jobs they have?

I can wear the t-shirt, but if I don’t take what it means seriously and open myself to the possibility that my field of vision, the scope of my perception of what justice is and who should receive mercy - and not just God’s mercy - is too narrow, if I rest in the attitude that professing faith in Jesus and coming to church relieves me of the obligation to chose to support justice and mercy in this world at this time for any of those who are not getting it, if I do not act out through word and deed what I profess, then am I not defiling myself? 

This feels hard and it is hard, to live life every day so intentionally, and it brings out natural anxiety - what if we fail? What if we can’t live up to this holy calling? Well, friends, we may only occasionally get it right. We will fail sometimes or many times, by commission or by omission. That’s why we come in here every Sunday and confess that we have not loved God with our whole heart and our neighbors as ourselves. That’s why our baptismal vows say “When we fall into sin” and not “If.” Remember the old saying - when at first you don’t succeed, try, try again. You can probably get a t-shirt that says that, along with one that says, “Nobody’s perfect.” God still loves you, even when you fail.

But whatever your clothing choices, strive to be like the Jesus who, when he recognized that his concept of holiness was too small, he changed his mind, and with it he changed how he lived.