Discipleship beyond the walls of death

Preached at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church
17 August 2014 | Proper 15
Matthew 15:10-28 | The Canaanite Woman

This morning’s Gospel begins with a riddle. You know– The Greek word for riddle is parable. Jesus taught in riddles. It was a kind of teaching which required the listener to think. A puzzle. The riddle was this: “It is not what goes into the mouth that defiles a person, but it is what comes out of the mouth that defiles a person.”

The Pharisees just got angry at this riddle. What did it mean? What was the point? But later, the puzzled disciples got the explanation from Jesus: “Whatever goes into the mouth enters the stomach, and goes out into the sewer. But what comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart: evil intentions, murder, adultery, fornication, theft, false witness, slander. These are what defile a person, but to eat with unwashed hands does not defile.”

It was a teaching, and I think it’s safe to say that Jesus’ explanation didn’t make too much more sense to the disciples than the riddle had made initially. But the next day, Jesus and the disciples had an encounter with a Canaanite woman near a Syrian seaport, and that experience made sense of the riddle. Jesus’ encounter with the Canaanite woman showed the disciples what defiling a person was about.

1. God breaks through our walls of death…

The woman lived in the Lebanese part of Syria, near the seacoast. She needed help. But she was trapped, and she and her daughter were condemned, by the racism, and the religious prejudice, and the gender prejudice of Jesus’ people – the Jews. It was a prejudice which the disciples clearly shared – instinctively, unthinkingly: “Send her away,” they said. Jesus articulated the prejudice: “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. It is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.”

The Canaanite woman was way beyond the prejudice. She knew who God really was. She saw the universal acceptance and love of God and she needed to claim it for herself and her daughter. Jesus, too, knew what was going on with her, and had given her the opportunity to claim her blessing. She did. “Yes, Lord,” she said, “yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters’ table.” And Jesus recognized it. The healing was completed. “Woman, great is your faith! Let it be done for you as you wish.” And in that moment her household was healed of the depression and despair which racism, sexism, and religious condemnation had thrown over it from the beginning.

The disciples watched. Perhaps Jesus’ teaching the previous day came into their minds, the riddle he had saddled them with: “It is not what goes into the mouth that defiles a person, but what comes out of a person that defiles a person? … out of the heart come evil intentions, murder, theft, false witness, slander.” Calling someone a dog in God’s name. Where could that come from?

The woman and her daughter were imprisoned behind a wall of death, just as millions of people in this world today and thousands of people in metropolitan Richmond today are imprisoned behind walls of death – unthinking, long-established, often religiously or ideologically-enforced walls of death and prejudice related to racism, or religious condemnation, or class and economics, or distance, or sexism.

Jesus broke through that wall of death. God breaks through our walls of death. Have you ever seen him do it?

 2. Convicting us by his mercy…

So here’s one of the stunning parts of our God’s work as lived out by Jesus: it’s not his condemnation but his mercy that convicts and alters the consciousness of his disciples.

We don’t have any account of the disciples’ reaction to Jesus’ encounter with this woman. She and Jesus concluded their conversation. Perhaps she ran home to her daughter. Perhaps she and Jesus sat for awhile and chatted. Perhaps they laughed and joked. Perhaps at that point she introduced herself to the other disciples.

No doubt the disciples were stunned. Jesus had penetrated the walls of prejudice which they thought were virtue. He had lived the life of the Spirit of the true God whom they had always been taught preferred Jews and males to everyone else. And in living that life, Jesus had broken through with this woman to celebration, healing, wholeness – to the real life of God – to what we may call salvation.

Years later, the disciples included this story in Matthew and Mark’s gospels, following the teaching that it is out of the heart that prejudices and jealousies and false witness and slander come. I think it’s safe to say they included the encounter with the Canaanite woman in the narrative because, in retrospect, they had been convicted by her.

Convicted. They saw their own error. They saw the true judgement of God, including every person, without discrimination, in his love. They saw it because they were witnesses to God’s mercy and the celebration of true spiritual healing. It’s the real thing. Not just somebody’s religion.

A couple of days ago, Betsy Carr showed me a column in the Roanoke Times by Dr. William Hazel Secretary of Health and Human Resources in both the McDonell and McAuliffe administrations. Dr. Hazel describes what he experienced this summer as a participant in a Volunteer medical clinic held for five weekends at the Wise County Fairgrounds in far Southwest Virginia. The column has been circulating around the General Assembly. At Wise, volunteers provided medical care to thousands of persons, many of them desperate. Dr. Hazel tells a story of mercy – of the powerful ministry that took place there at Wise, much of it for people who hadn’t been able to get to a doctor since the last year’s clinic.

People have been telling the General Assembly that some poor Virginians can’t get health care for several years here. Higher and higher walls of combative ideology have prevented anything from being done. It’s not right to throw the children’s tax money to the dogs. But the encounter of these disciples with the people at the Fairground in Wise, those weekends of powerful need and blessing, seems to have moved people beyond their walls of ideology. Even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their master’s table.

The mercy of God in Wise has awakened hearts. And it may just enable the General Assembly to find some way of destroying the barriers to health care for some hitherto ignored and condemned folk. The discipleship of legislators. God breaks through our walls of death,Convicting us by his mercy.

 3. To establish the path of discipleship.

The Canaanite woman’s healing. The people getting health care at the Wise County Fairgrounds. Dr. Hazel in his volunteer experience. Jesus’ encounter with the woman and his celebration.– these are someone else’s experiences, not ours.

The disciples stood, watching, near the seacoast at Tyre as Jesus talked to the woman and proclaimed her healing to her. The General Assembly stands by and hears Dr. Hazel’s testimony. You and I sit here this morning and wonder what this has to do with us.

Jesus has broken through the walls of death, convicting us by his mercy. The next thing that happens in Matthew’s Gospel after the encounter with the Canaanite woman is the appearance where Jesus was of great crowds of the lame, the maimed, the blind, the mute, and many others. He healed them, “so that the crowd was amazed and they praised the God of Israel.” A crowd of 4000 had gathered. Jesus invited the disciples to serve them and help them all eat. I think they probably sense the genuine reality of God’s spirit in Jesus and feed one another. Again the disciples are learning – seeing what can happen through God’s mercy.

Of course they are learning. They are disciples. The word disciple means “student” in Greek. They are witnesses. They may not themselves have had any dramatic religious experiences. They may not themselves have had to come from behind horrible walls of prejudice or condemnation to find acceptance. They are Jews and not Muslims. They may always have had health care and not be seeking for a remedy to a problem which has never been addressed for years.

This whole exercise by Jesus, this whole exercise by God and Holy Spirit is, for those who want to listen, an establishment of the path of discipleship. It is a path marked by mercy observed which leads the disciples deeper and deeper into service of the mercy of God, which has convicted them. They need to receive it, and they need to give it – they need to live in the stream of it. Psalm46:4-5: “There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God, the holy habitation of the Most High. God is in the midst of the city; she shall not be moved; God will help her when the morning dawns.” This is the stream of learning, the stream of discipleship, the stream of actual gospel.

These disciples went on with Jesus, and then they went on after he was gone, encouraged and revived by his appearance after death. They kept on learning, kept on growing, kept on breaking through the walls of death which imprisoned people, kept on being arrested by God’s mercy. They were convicted time and again of their indifference and insensitivity, but they were so very sure of the mercy of God that they simply moved deeper and more broadly in their new awareness. They went deeper, acted genuinely, lived expansively, discovered, learned.

God breaks through our walls of death, Convicting us of his mercy, To establish the path of discipleship. A disciple is a student. This is a learning path. Each of us is walking it today.

AMEN.

The Rev. B. P. Campbell