Proper 15, Yr A
The Rev. G.
messy, holy, and healing
It is tempting to just pretend like we didn’t hear this morning’s gospel story.
Have you ever overheard someone say something that you immediately wished you had not overheard? Maybe a joke told in poor taste at a party? Maybe something insensitive and ignorant, said in line at the grocery store.
You know - A stranger, or worse, a friend, or worse still, a family member says something terrible and loud and you think, “Oh, I wish I were invisible, or dead, or deaf, but I am not so, I have to either pretend I am invisible, dead or deaf, OR I have to deal with what was just said.”
That’s how I feel about this morning’s exchange between Jesus and the Canaanite woman. I want to ignore it. But I read it, and you heard it.
We all know Jesus said, “It is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.” And we all know that if we measure that sentence out allegorically, then the children are God’s chosen, the Jews, and the dogs, are outsider gentiles like the woman. So, we have just overheard Jesus, Savior of the world, utter something that sounds terrible, exclusive, and cruel.
Another temptation is to shrug our shoulders and say of this story, “Well, that’s a tough one, sorta reminds of real life, you know, it’s tough sometimes,” and move on to the big miracle in the next scene. But I think we’re too smart to get away with pretending we’re invisible or shrugging our shoulders so all that’s left is to tackle this difficult scene head on.
So…I’d like to compare it to a Christmas pageant put on by young children.
I have never seen a Christmas pageant that wasn’t at least a little bit out of order.
You know the scene.
It’s a Sunday morning shortly before Christmas. You arrive at church and try to enter the worship space in your usual way, but you can’t because in the narthex there is something strange happening. It is a bizarre mix between a riot and a kid’s costume party.
Joseph and Mary are there. He looks a little bit bored and scared, and she is carefully cradling a baby doll. They are surrounded by a bunch of little bitty shepherds, a team of tiny angels, and three school age kings in glitter covered crowns. Hovering over the whole restless mass of noisy child actors are a couple of frenzied, though purposeful, Sunday school teachers (who will have seats with the saints in heaven as recompense for their suffering).
When you encounter this muddled pulsing mass of children in burlap and cheap costume fabric, you smile and turn yourself sideways so that you can squeeze through the crowd and find your seat for the show.
You know the Christmas story. You know the characters and the sequence of events.
The angel appears to Mary, the angel appears to the shepherds, the baby is born, the shepherds visit, the wise men travel from far away to gaze and wonder at the baby doll in the makeshift manger. In the final scene, the whole cast of characters is together on the stage. It’s the perfect photo opportunity of the cutest little dysfunctional family ever assembled.
Well, that’s how it’s supposed to go, but I have never seen a Christmas pageant come off like that.
Usually what happens is the Sunday school teachers get everyone lined up just right, everyone has their cue, and then the teachers blink once and the whole thing falls apart. The smallest angel runs crying to her mother in the front row. The donkey, which is two boys in a two piece costume- splits in half because the kid wearing the head has to go to the bathroom. The group of three kings is down to two kings, because one of the wise men has escaped and is climbing a crepe myrtle in the courtyard. Everything gets out of order. Half of the shepherds go missing, and Joseph is too shy to say his lines.
Last year, our Christmas pageant here at
Someone always messes up their lines at a Christmas pageant. (That is, if there are lines.)
Years ago, here at St. Paul’s, Mary got her lines turned around backwards. As the story goes, she essentially told the angel Gabriel that she didn’t know what he was talking about because she was not a virgin. Talk about things you wish you had not overheard…
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In the gospel stories God has a plan.
God has a plan, and Jesus going first to the Jews, God’s chosen people, is a key element of his plan.
When the gentile woman, this loud, crying Canaanite woman, who is distinctly NOT a Jew, breaks through to Jesus and shouts his name asking him to heal her daughter… this is not a part of the plan.
The gospel will go to the gentiles, indeed the gospel will go to the world, but we’re not to that part of the story yet, so the woman is like the wayward crying angel in our Christmas Pageant who breaks up the order of things and runs to the front of the church before her cue is called.
She’s like the back half of the donkey who is pushed through the curtain by the front half of the donkey during angel Gabriel’s opening monologue. She breaks the scene.
The scene is broken, and…
Jesus says, “You’ll not get what is meant for the children.”
I don’t know why he says what he says the way he says it. I don’t know why he calls her a dog. On the one hand I am troubled by it. But on the other hand I feel like people saying strange uncomfortable things, well, that’s a part of life sometimes.
And God knows I am confounded by God on a number of issues, so why not add this saying of Jesus to the list of things that confound me. And then focus on the graceful ending to the story. The ending to this mixed up gospel story is precisely like the ending to every Christmas pageant I have ever seen.
In both stories - the body of the show may be confused and out of order; someone may have even said something mildly offensive, (I am not a virgin! You’re a dog!) but after the smoke clears, the congregation and the listener feel like they have been a part of something graceful – mysterious, maybe even confounding, but graceful nonetheless.
What’s the end of the gospel story?
Jesus heals the woman’s daughter, and he gushes admiringly at her persistent faith.
He says, Woman, great is your faith! Let it be done as you wish!
So in the end, things being out of order, her being a gentile and not a Jew, neither of those things mattered at all and God’s grace rained down on a woman and her daughter.
Last year, after the 90 second mob scene that was our Christmas Pageant was finished, I felt like I had been at a great feast. I felt full with pride. Those were our kids, telling our story in their own funny way. In the end, it didn’t matter that they didn’t have lines, paraded in and out quickly, and got the order of the things all mixed up. God’s grace rained down on a congregation and their kids. There was something simply graceful about the holy bedlam of our Christmas pageant.
The stories of the gentile woman and the Christmas pageant are messy, holy and in the end som
Messy, holy, and healing. Sounds like life; that is, sounds like life lived with faith in Jesus Christ.