No is not good enough!
A sermon on Matthew 15: 10-31 by Jill Friebel 14 August 2005.
The gospel reading comes in just after Jesus has had an angry and heated exchange with a group of devout Pharisees from Jerusalem. He turns to the crowd and it sounds like his frustration boils over into rather descriptive language to the following crowd about what God really cares about. He is pressed on all sides, people are following him with the sick and demon possessed, and they never stop coming. He has the Pharisees on his back every time he turns around and the disciples though well meaning often didn’t get it either. If anyone felt alone it must have been Jesus.
Feeling alone doesn’t necessarily mean being alone. How often do you have that experience of restlessness, of being surrounded by people but there is an aloneness that just can’t be touched, it can’t even be described in words.
In the middle of this passage Jesus takes off with the disciples and heads across the border into the region of Tyre and Sidon. He only went out of Palestine a couple of times and Mark tells us in his version they found a house and did not want anyone to know he was there. He had to get some space from people. This was foreign territory for a Jew and it was close to present day Beirut. We often read how Jesus took off to be alone, if we wonder about Jesus experiencing the same emotions and needs and temptations as we do this story is full of it.
David and I know what it is to be surrounded by sick people. We lived in Niger for 4 years and it gives us powerful images of what the pressure was like for Jesus. In our little hospital at Galmi on the edge of the Sahara desert the staff treated 100,000 out patients a year. There was a saying “If you haven’t seen it yet you will see it at Galmi.” It was like an ocean of need, desperately ill people and desperately poor and helpless. An exhaustion begins to set in that overwhelms you and an even deeper frustration that it seems like nobody knows or cares especially the governments that are meant to care for people. It’s easy to get cynical and hardened in such situations.
Even in our medical practice in Melbourne we are exposed to the physical, emotional and psychological needs of people. There is a growing anxiety and fear in people about the health, their future and their families even in a country which is utopia compared to the rest of the world. We have become so convinced that what people need more than ever is someone who listens to them and shows genuine care and helps them to listen to their own heart. People are frightened to be alone.
Jesus often went off to be alone. It was in a place a solitude and contemplation that was the secret of Jesus ministry. It was here that he was able to commune with his Father and share the burden of his work. “I’m telling you this straight he said, The Son can’t independently do a thing, only what he sees the Father doing. What Father does, the Son does. The Father loves the Son and includes him in everything he is doing.” Jn 5:20 and then “The words I speak to you aren’t mere words. I don’t just make them up on my own. The Father who resides in me crafts each word into a divine act.” Jn 14:10.
It is in the lonely place, where Jesus enters into intimacy with the Father, that his ministry is born. Somewhere we know that without a lonely place our lives are in danger. Somewhere we know that without silence words lose their meaning, that without listening speaking no longer heals, that without distance closeness cannot cure. Somewhere we know that without a lonely place our actions quickly become empty gestures. The careful balance between silence and words, withdrawal and involvement, distance and closeness, solitude and community forms the basis of the Christian life and should therefore be the subject of our most personal attention.
But the passage tells us that Jesus wasn’t able to find the much needed respite because a woman began following him around. She was a Syrophoenician or Canaanite woman. What comes through in this exchange is the rather uncomfortable way Jesus seems to treat this woman. She comes crying to him for help and at first he ignores her and turns his back on her. His disciples take a cue from his reaction and beg him to get rid of her for she wouldn’t let up. So here he is in a Gentile city with a screaming Gentile woman and knows that if he heals her daughter there will be hoards more people flocking to him from this district. Now much has been written about whether Jesus makes a racist, sexist or just a plain irritated comment or all three. But whichever it is it doesn’t fit comfortably with our image of Jesus. The reference to dogs is unusual, but the Phoenicians were one of the first people in the western world to keep dogs as pets, rather than as hunters or scavengers. The word is doggie which and not the insulting word ‘dog’ as a Jew would use it. Is Jesus using a homely illustration of the pet dog yapping for food, while the food is set on the table in front of the child?
This woman sounds desperate. “Son of David she calls out have mercy on me, my daughter is tormented by a demon.” She must have known some Jewish history and that the promised Messiah would be called the Son of David. But she was definitely an outsider from a Jewish point of view. It was the Canaanites who had occupied the Promised Land. The Canaanite religion was a source of worshipping false idols, sacrificing children, marrying people of other religions and other abominations which meant that she was symbolic of abominable and detestable religious practices. From a Jewish point of view, she was “religious scum.” If anyone was of the wrong religion, she was. If anyone wasn’t saved, this lady wasn’t. If anyone was going to hell, she was. If anyone was damned, she was. She was of the wrong religion, a despicable religion for a “true blue Jew” of the first century.
Her plight and desperation gave her boldness way beyond her personal status –a gentile woman begging a Jewish rabbi for help and even arguing her case with him. Jesus told her he was sent to work with those who had gone off the rails among the Israelite people. Were the Pharisees faces flashing in front of his eyes? Was his heart even more wounded and weary at the memory of such obstinacy and arrogance and “little faith” of these Jews when confronted by this outsider, expressing her belief and “great faith”. Was he amazed even then at such insight and trust and simple God likeness that this woman showed?
She wouldn’t let up. “It is just not right to take food out of the mouths of the children and throw it to little dogs,” He said. “Fair enough, Lord.” But even dogs are not denied the scraps that fall off the family’s table.” Jesus marveled at her great faith and gave her what she wanted. He repented and changed his mind. He couldn’t even convince his own people but she didn’t need any convincing. Truly this woman was more like God and closer to the heartbeat of God than any true blue Jew he had come across.
His own people turned their backs on him. Some people accepted him though, and put their trust in who he said he was and what he said he was on about.
This woman had just enough knowledge that gave her hope, and she was closely in touch with her feelings and longings of love. She wasn’t driven by status or power she didn’t have any. But she was open to God and God revealed to her the truth of Jesus, it doesn’t come through knowledge but through God’s spirit deep within, and it is a “knowing”. The kind of knowing that comes from within with a strange sense of certainty and it gives you peace. The place to connect with this knowing is in silence, away from the voices and words that come thick and fast all around us to distract us from our hearts. We need to find the solitude to listen to ourselves. It is here that the knowing will give way to love and desire. It will grow into courage, determination, and energy, and good righteous anger begins well up. It makes you beat against the doors of heaven even when they are silent. Even when God seems to turn away you have a knowing in your being that God is your only hope and you can wrestle with God until the presence of Christ comes through with a blessing. You might have to wrail and vent your anger and disappointment and kick the doors in before you feel heard. But surely Jesus will come and say “Your faith has got real guts I will do for you what you ask.”