Mt: 15:21-28
We are seeing a side of Jesus this morning that we don't often get to see. Jesus usually says just the right word. Maybe the difference here is that he's tired after a long day of ministry. He may even be a little irritated by his disciples who have just been urging him to send the Canaanite woman away. While all or some of this may be true, these circumstances alone do not justify or explain his harsh response to this woman. Jesus literally calls her a dog, addressing the woman with the words, "It is not fair to take the children's food and throw it to the dogs", implying that the woman is a dog.
What I want to do this morning with you is create a space where we can fully enter into this story.
To access the Good News in this text, we need a more contemporary story. The story I am about to tell you may initially be disturbing for you; it was for me. The story has artistic and theological overtones. While I am not much of an art enthusiast, I do know that I tend to appreciate art much more when I can enter into a particular artistic expression without making a premature judgment. Art as you know is sometimes intentionally disturbing to help us "get" what we would otherwise possibly miss. So I hope you will let the artistic expression in this story touch all of your sensibilities.
A few years ago I was taking a theology class at Claremont School of Theology. Our term project assignment was to research how a community uses sacred symbols to identify themselves with God, as God's own. One student had interviewed a homeless woman who lives underneath a bridge in Los Angeles. For the purpose of telling this story, let's call this woman under the bridge, Mollie.
Mollie has been living under the bridge for many years. Mollie self-identifies herself as a trans-gender woman. So that we all have a common understanding of what this means, trans-gender persons experience a gender disconnection between how they understand themselves to be today from the physical sex in which they were born. Honestly, it would have been much easier for me to leave out this particular detail, but I don't think that the parallel to the Canaanite woman would have been made as effectively.
By using Mollie's story, particularly as a trans-gendered person I am hoping to evoke for us how Mollie and the Canaanite woman are experienced as foreigners within their social context; for few affirm their humanity or wish to include them as they are, even in our most inclusive communities. In our contemporary culture, trans-gender persons are frequently misunderstood and often disregarded as emotionally disturbed, mostly due to our own biases.
Let's return to Mollie's story. It had been Mollie's spiritual and artistic practice to collect other people's garbage; specifically, their once sacred objects. Mollie searched for and collected broken crosses, torn holy pictures, broken rosaries, cracked statues, burned bibles and similarly scarred materials that once bore for others God's sacred image. Mollie organized her collection of objects in the form of the Stations of the Cross. Mollie's stations are another version of the stations you put up during Lent around this church to help you meditate on Christ's passion, death and resurrection. Mollie organized these discarded objects in a way that reflected and embodied the Jesus who she has come to know at the center of her life's story.
Mollie is no different than you or me in this regard, in that her images of God and of Jesus reflect her life history and her experience. Not unlike you and me either, Mollie's images of God also reflect her image of herself.
The student at Claremont asked Mollie to help her understand and appreciate the meaning behind Mollie's tattered Stations of the Cross collection. Mollie said I have been told throughout my life that "I am just garbage". "People treat me like garbage". Mollie said "most of the time I feel like garbage too; except when I am in the presence of Jesus." Mollie then said, "I know that God loves me even as I am and that he became garbage to be with me in this mess". Mollie perhaps more eloquently than any seminary professor or theologian I have known completely understands the essence of the theology of the incarnation. Even though her garbage-like image may initially be offensive to us, what a gift that she senses God's presence where others have rejected her and even ostracized her. And what love Jesus has for Mollie to enter the mess of her world in a way that Jesus would be recognized by her on her terms, in the very circumstances of her life.
You can hear Jesus' words to the Canaanite woman, echoed again to Mollie - "Woman, great is your faith!" Pointing to the Canaanite woman's faith is the traditional interpretation for this text and that is indeed Good News. And yet as I prayed over these texts there was something else which I sensed the Holy Spirit leading me to share with you this morning.
The first reading and the Gospel came together for me during my prayer, in the line of Isaiah where the prophet writes "And the foreigners who join themselves to the Lord, to minister to him, to love the name of the Lord, and to be his servants - these I will bring to my holy mountain." "To minister to him", I don't ever recall hearing this line before. Mollie broke open Jesus' heart. Yes she ministered to him because she loves him. Like Jesus who emptied himself for us, Mollie and the Canaanite woman emptied themselves for Jesus because they love him.
Mollie and the Canaanite woman have turned around the condemning words of society that have objectified them as garbage and as the equivalence of dogs. They have dared to stand outside of the social labels that diminish and discard persons with the same ease as we discard our useless holy objects. Mollie and the Canaanite woman break open God's heart because they are no longer perplexed by the worldly paradox. And that paradox is that we are made in the image of God, even though we may be misunderstood, labeled or excluded by others. Now few of us have been excluded like Mollie or the Canaanite woman, yet we still often fall into similar paradoxical traps when we cannot claim and cherish God's image imprinted on us.
When we think of ministry, we don't usually think about ministering to God's heart. Rather we think of Jesus ministering to our hearts. Ministry then must be daring to break open our hearts and sharing our vulnerability, so that we may open ourselves up to the transforming presence of God and be a transforming presence to others too. When Mollie cherishes the broken objects in her sacred collection, she is cherishing her brokenness, she also cherishes the broken Body of Christ, in the same way, as she is cherished by God. It is in this inter-personal if you will, Trinitarian act of cherishing what appears to be less that we become more, just as Jesus does for the Canaanite woman in the Gospel story.
See how the Canaanite woman does not respond with anger to Jesus' harsh remark to her, but rather with love and then as a result of her love, she breaks open Jesus' heart and his demeanor towards her instantly changes. Mollie and the Canaanite woman cherish what appears to be less and doing so they become more and those in relationships with them, like you and I are also transformed by her story.
This is a very way to live because for us to do the same for others, we must become like Mollie and the Canaanite woman and minister to God's heart, in a way that breaks open God's heart and each other's hearts. We must be vulnerable enough to trust that which we often prefer to keep hidden. To live this way, we must first, also resolve the worldly paradox that impedes and paralyzes us from flourishing in God's love and service. Like Mollie and the Canaanite woman we must be convinced that we are made in the image and likeness of God and that nothing can separate us from being God's own beloved.
The Good News for us today is that God enters fully into our life circumstances, to transform us into Godly images that God cherishes as God's beloved. When we shamelessly unlock our hearts, take off our masks and claim the fullness of our humanity, then and only then, can we have a glimpse of the full humanity and divinity of Jesus, a glimpse of God's image reflected to us in our tattered and imperfect lives.
Charged and inspired with this Godly wisdom, then we will build the City of God and come into God's reign. Then in shared intimacy with God's heart, we will see Mollie as more than garbage and the Canaanite woman as more than a dog, and in so doing we through our particular life's story and ministries will transform all God's world into God's very own beloved. Reversing the paradox of the world, daring to live radically open lives which lead to transforming one another, even transforming Jesus at the end of a long day of ministry - this, this is the Good News for us today and always!
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