The Good News Proclaimed
Preached by the Reverend Durrell Watkins at
the Sunshine Cathedral on
Sunday, August 3, 2008.
My great-aunt Gladys and her husband Arthur, like most couples, had their
ups and downs. I remember one day at breakfast while Uncle Arthur was enjoying
his morning coffee, Aunt Gladys came up behind him and hit him in the back of
the head with a rolled up newspaper! He shrieked out, “What is wrong with you,
woman?!”
Aunt Gladys said, “I found a cocktail napkin in your jacket pocket with the
name “Marianne” written on it, that’s what’s wrong with me!”
“Sugar Plum, calm down,” Uncle Arthur said calmly. “Yesterday at the dog
track I bet on a dog named Marianne. I just wrote down the name so I wouldn’t
forget which dog I wanted to put money on.” And that settled the matter, until
the next morning.
Again, Uncle Arthur was enjoying his morning coffee when Aunt Gladys came
up behind him and hit him in the back of the head with the enormous family
bible. “What was that for?” he demanded. To which Aunt Gladys said, “The dog
you bet on at the track just called and asked to speak to you.”
Our Executive Director, Ed Johnson, calls this “Dog Sunday” because of the
Gospel reading where Jesus responds to a woman’s plea for help by comparing
her to a dog. It seems uncharacteristically mean of Jesus, but if we do the
work of putting that discourse in the larger biblical context we may find that
this is actually a very positive, affirming, and liberating passage after all.
But first, we need to do some digging.
Prejudice is actually addressed throughout our scriptures. Sometimes we see
people giving in to the temptation of branding the Other and demonizing them,
but then some prophet or teacher will come along and challenge that and call
people back to a message of welcome and inclusion.
For example: In Deuteronomy 20, the Israelite people have a list of
enemies. And the writer of that passage says that their enemies should be
utterly destroyed. Verse 17 says unequivocally and unapologetically, “…you
shall not leave a single soul alive. You must doom all — the Hittites,
Amorites, Perizzites, Hivites, Jebusites, AND the CANAANITES…”
The Canaanites are an ancient enemy of Jesus’ people, and Jesus’ bible says
that they ought to be slaughtered! Luckily, Jesus doesn’t seem to take that
passage literally or perhaps he feels it is not appropriate in his day, but we
can clearly see why his disciples’ first impulse was to ignore her or send her
away… she is part of a group that the bible condemns. But Jesus stands in a
long prophetic tradition, and he may just wind up re-thinking that
condemnation and offering a more hopeful message in the end.
Other prophets had done as much, so there was precedence. Syria was an
ancient enemy as well, but the prophet Elijah healed the Syrian General Naaman
of his skin disease.
The story of Jonah tells of a man who is called to go to Ninevah to preach
to the citizens of that large city. But the problem is, Ninevah is the capital
of Assyria, and Assyria is one of those big Empires that have oppressed Israel
. Jonah doesn’t like Assyria and doesn’t want to offer them any hope or
kindness, but he is called to do just that. He hopes God will destroy the
people Jonah calls his enemy, but in the end, God embraces them!
The Moabites were another great enemy of Jesus’ people, and yet in the Book
of Ruth the hero of that story is none other than Ruth, the Moabite. She is
even listed as one of Jesus’ ancestors.
So there is a long tradition of religious people assuming their enemy is
God’s enemy, but eventually, the prophetic voices call us to reconsider such
assumptions and they remind us that God is a loving Presence who does not
ultimately exclude anyone for any reason.
We’ve seen Jesus operating in this great tradition throughout the Gospel of
Matthew, haven’t we? Zoroastrian astrologers from the ancient oppressor of
Israel, Persia, come to visit him and to give him gifts. These “Magi” return
to their homeland and their religion having, as the people they are,
participated in the Christ event.
We see a Roman Centurion coming to Jesus for the healing of his servant. As
a leader in the Roman military, we must assume that the Centurion was
compliant with the norms and regulations of the empire and that would have
included the practice of Emperor worship. This Roman pagan comes to Jesus and
he isn’t told to change his faith, he is praised for the faith he has! And his
servant (which I believe was his same-gender lover), was healed.
But then we come to today’s story and Jesus seems at first to be less
welcoming, less inviting, less inclusive. Or is he merely demonstrating how
needlessly hateful it is to demonize the Other? Perhaps he is offended that
his disciples have not seen the sacred value of this woman and so he shows
them how ugly their prejudice is… we often see in others what we cannot see in
ourselves.
And so the Canaanite woman, a member of a group that Jesus’ own bible
condemns, comes to Jesus so that he might help her suffering child. Suffering
is so opposed to the natural abundance that we expect from life, that the
ancients assumed it was caused by evil spirits or demons, and so she says, “My
daughter is possessed; please help her.”
The disciples are not moved with compassion; they want her to leave. And so
Jesus responds at first with the party line: “I’m here to gather up the lost
sheep of Israel.” In other words, my own people are suffering. We’ve been
scattered by the Assyrians and the Babylonians and the Egyptians and the
Persians and the Greeks and the Romans… I’m trying to unite my folks and get
them to find hope and empowerment in their own lives.
The woman won’t be brushed off, and I would like to think that if she had
walked away discouraged that Jesus would have called after her and said,
“Wait… I guess I could at least say a prayer for you.” But she didn’t walk
away. Instead, she demanded, “Help me.”
Jesus then uses an ethnic slur. Dogs, you see, eat scraps to survive. Some
people in Jesus’ community called Gentiles “dogs” because they didn’t keep
kosher… they ate foods that were considered unclean. Because they ate what
Jesus’ community would consider garbage, unclean food (like pork or shell
fish), scraps basically, Jesus’ community would call Gentiles “dogs”. And so
Jesus using the rude slur says, “It’s not right to take the children’s food
and toss it to dogs.” But the woman, who believes in herself even if Jesus and
his friends do not, argues for her own needs. She says, “If I were a dog,
you’d at least give me the leftovers from your table. How about treating me
with at least as much compassion as you would a dog.”
Jesus can’t keep up the charade any longer. He says, “Of course, you’re
right! And not only are you a person of sacred value, you are a person of
courage and great faith.” And her daughter, the story says, was healed.
My guess is that some of Jesus’ disciples experienced a healing, too.
Perhaps one or two of them said, “Wow… is that how ugly we seem when we use
the bible and religion as an excuse to exclude and demonize and ostracize
people? And could it be that our religious prejudices are wrong, and that even
people we thought were no good could be people of great faith, and are
actually people who God loves as much as God loves us?”
In a dramatic way, this story agrees with what Matthew has been saying
since page one. This story agrees with the prophet Isaiah saying that God’s
love is unfailing. This story agrees with the spirit of that ancient text, the
Didache, that prays for people to be brought together rather than kept apart.
This story agrees that every person has sacred value and every person has
access to the love and grace of God, because the loving Omnipresence that we
call God would never and has never excluded anyone. This is the Good News.
Amen.