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!
Sunday, August 9, 2009
Pentecost Sunday, June 4, 2004 - St. Paul's Church, Ventura, CA
It is good to be at home here at St. Paul's! This feels like home to me. I cherish the privilege that I have been given by Father Kahler to preach at St. Paul's on this Pentecost Sunday and I am also very grateful to Deacon Ed for generously sharing and shepherding me through some of his diaconal responsibilities.
Like the disciples Pentecost for me is about the interconnection between my paralyzing fears and God's desire for me to experience inner freedom in ways that release me and you from the locked rooms in which we dwell while we wait for the Lord to come. Though many have become suspicious of Pentecost due to their exclusive reliance on media hearsay about what it means to be a Pentecostal Christian, with some risk at being misunderstood I claim a Pentecostal identity for myself.
As I claim a Pentecostal identity I am making a commitment to participate in what has always been and always will be a radically unsettling and disturbing experience of the Divine transforming individual lives and human communities. By Pentecostal I do not mean that I am a fundamentalist or even that I speak in tongues; though for some this is a test of who truly is Pentecostal and a way to exclude me.
I am publicly reclaiming Pentecostal to mean that my Trinitarian relationship to God has always been rooted in and through the Spirit. When I have trusted the Spirit the most , it is then that I have found myself at odds with institutional expectations of me in my family, church and workplace. The inspiration to take back the word Pentecostal began for me when an Anglican Primate at a Bible study in Canterbury in October 2003 said, "it is possible for the Spirit to be up to different things in different places." These words gave me a legitimate space to stand when I have been at odds, feeling out of step with the compliant desires of others.
The earliest Pentecostal root is through the ministry of Charles Fox Parham in 1900. A subsequent root is through William Seymour in 1905. William Seymour was a member of Charles Parham's church in Kansas; but as a black man in an all white church he could only listen to Parham's sermons by sitting near a window on the other side of the church walls. Deeply infused by the Holy Spirit and God's abundance, Seymour knew that all are welcomed at God's table. Seymour left Kansas and traveled to Los Angeles to found the Azusa Street mission.
Parham's identity was rooted in a theology of scarcity informed by his fear of God while Seymour was convinced of the abundance of God's love for all and unashamedly and courageously preached this Good News. Parham's theology has been more frequently remembered and Seymour's theology but for a handful of communities in Latin America has been forgotten. There is little irony that William Seymour's theology has been forgotten and that what has been remembered is fear.
Fear -- that's exactly where the disciples are in this morning's reading, that's exactly where the Episcopal Church is in these pre General Convention days and that's exactly where many of us struggle to keep hope alive and not let fear dominate our lives. "Peace Be With You" - how do Jesus' words this morning coexist with William Seymour's Pentecostal theological vision in a way that you and I can claim a Pentecostal identity as Episcopalians? I want to extend Seymour and even Anglican inclusiveness beyond local hospitality. You can get a glimpse of what I mean by unpacking the Anglican Primate's words, "It is possible for the Spirit to be doing different things in different places." This Pentecostal image may sound a little chaotic to our Episcopalian/Anglican ears. These words hardly describe the unity we imagine for the Episcopal Church in these pre-General Convention days. Rather the Primate's words attempt to replace our desire for a comfortable consistent unity with contingency, difference and struggle.
I want to tell you two stories to amplify what it is I am about this morning. There were two non-negotiables for my parents - unity and respect for authority and all the privileges that come with both. Simply in my family and the church I grew up questions were not welcomed; particularly questions directed at those in authority. Most kids ask their parents why based questions that relate to how things work, for example, cars, airplanes or they ask questions about science like how ice forms or weather patterns. I on the other hand at a tender age of seven began to ask questions that I have come to see since are thoroughly related to power relations.
My uncle was a Roman Catholic clergy person; but my dad, his brother would always call him Brother Patrick, which was his name in religion rather than Willie which is what my dad called him until he entered the religious life. One day when Brother Patrick was coming for a visit I asked my mother why we call Brother Patrick, Brother Patrick, if he is dad's brother, shouldn't we call him by his first name. My mom snapped back at me and said, Joseph that is what you do to show your respect for a man of God. My mom knew me very well and said, "And further Joseph there will be none of this discussion when Brother Patrick visits us later." Brother Patrick and I that evening had a great conversation on the whole matter, deciding between the two of us that I would call him Uncle Willie. Until the day he died I called him Uncle Willie and on his death bed he thanked me for the privilege of finally being recognized as an uncle to one of the Duggan children. For me this is a sweet story that demonstrates what it means to be a Protestant with a Pentecostal identity in the Episcopal Church, the one who is inspired to ask questions that others prefer to silence out of respect for privilege.
I want to tell you another story of what happened a few years ago on a Pentecost Sunday morning. In an increasing number of churches, on Pentecost morning, the first lesson from Acts (2:1-11) is read simultaneously in as many languages as are represented by the members' cultural traditions. At All Saints Church in Pasadena, there are often 12-15 languages instrumental in reading the Acts text. I remember on this one particular Pentecost Sunday when a newcomer to All Saints Church was alarmed and disturbed by this practice. It is never announced beforehand what will happen, so newcomers experience readers dispersed throughout the congregation getting up one by one to read the text in their native language. When you first hear this, it sounds disruptive; at the very least it has a chaotic feel. This one man became indignant at one of the 15 people who had stood up to read and demanded that he sit down and show some respect to the Lector designated with the apparent authority to speak at the front of the church.
I believe that this man's instinctive, un-reflected and reactive response to the embodiment of Divine spontaneity symbolizes our own desires to bring order to Divine chaos. Divine unity is often initially felt as chaos. The cost of insisting upon our human unity as a means to ordering the chaotically felt Divine unity is that people are frequently silenced. The incalculable risk here is that usually people who have the least power are silenced first and most often.
Therefore I have come to believe that claiming a Pentecostal identity is about how we as Christians live reflectively with our power. This means living with our power in a way that welcomes self-critique as well as a communal critique so that our collective power that has historically silenced others may be transformed by the Spirit of God. Simply put, power is about the privileges which some have and others do not. Are we recognized for who we are as Uncle Willie or for our privilege as Brother Patrick? To wrestle with a Pentecostal identity as I see it is to live in a way that maintains reasonable doubt about how our collective power and privilege silences people.
The unity of Pentecost does not mean that in fear we lock the door to the room where the Spirit descended on the disciples, so that we can keep safe the treasure of the Spirit's descent for our exclusive use. The unity of Pentecost is in its dispersive nature. This dispersive-like Divine unity is counter-intuitive for most of us are stuck in our human notions of rigid order, unity and coherence. As long as we seek to control this dispersive-like quality, the Divine unity of Pentecost will continue to evade us as a church and as a culture. We must learn how to trustingly participate in the whirlwind of God's free, borderless love. This means that we will always live with risk as our comfortable consistent expectations and desires for unity will be destabilized by the movement of the Spirit that disturbs our comfortable lives.
As we receive the Spirit in community this morning, let us unlock the doors to our hearts and minds as well as to our church and all the places we live and work. This may mean as it is said later in John's Gospel "going to places where we would rather not go" and asking questions others would prefer we would not ask. The Spirit may be inspiring you to ask questions about a community or workplace matter in which many are talking about, but little is being done because it requires that you take a courageous stand. Hannah Arendt, a twentieth century, Jewish German philosopher writes "Power ultimately resides not in what we may imagine for ourselves but in what we make happen in the divided world we share with others."
Like the disciples Pentecost for me is about the interconnection between my paralyzing fears and God's desire for me to experience inner freedom in ways that release me and you from the locked rooms in which we dwell while we wait for the Lord to come. Though many have become suspicious of Pentecost due to their exclusive reliance on media hearsay about what it means to be a Pentecostal Christian, with some risk at being misunderstood I claim a Pentecostal identity for myself.
As I claim a Pentecostal identity I am making a commitment to participate in what has always been and always will be a radically unsettling and disturbing experience of the Divine transforming individual lives and human communities. By Pentecostal I do not mean that I am a fundamentalist or even that I speak in tongues; though for some this is a test of who truly is Pentecostal and a way to exclude me.
I am publicly reclaiming Pentecostal to mean that my Trinitarian relationship to God has always been rooted in and through the Spirit. When I have trusted the Spirit the most , it is then that I have found myself at odds with institutional expectations of me in my family, church and workplace. The inspiration to take back the word Pentecostal began for me when an Anglican Primate at a Bible study in Canterbury in October 2003 said, "it is possible for the Spirit to be up to different things in different places." These words gave me a legitimate space to stand when I have been at odds, feeling out of step with the compliant desires of others.
The earliest Pentecostal root is through the ministry of Charles Fox Parham in 1900. A subsequent root is through William Seymour in 1905. William Seymour was a member of Charles Parham's church in Kansas; but as a black man in an all white church he could only listen to Parham's sermons by sitting near a window on the other side of the church walls. Deeply infused by the Holy Spirit and God's abundance, Seymour knew that all are welcomed at God's table. Seymour left Kansas and traveled to Los Angeles to found the Azusa Street mission.
Parham's identity was rooted in a theology of scarcity informed by his fear of God while Seymour was convinced of the abundance of God's love for all and unashamedly and courageously preached this Good News. Parham's theology has been more frequently remembered and Seymour's theology but for a handful of communities in Latin America has been forgotten. There is little irony that William Seymour's theology has been forgotten and that what has been remembered is fear.
Fear -- that's exactly where the disciples are in this morning's reading, that's exactly where the Episcopal Church is in these pre General Convention days and that's exactly where many of us struggle to keep hope alive and not let fear dominate our lives. "Peace Be With You" - how do Jesus' words this morning coexist with William Seymour's Pentecostal theological vision in a way that you and I can claim a Pentecostal identity as Episcopalians? I want to extend Seymour and even Anglican inclusiveness beyond local hospitality. You can get a glimpse of what I mean by unpacking the Anglican Primate's words, "It is possible for the Spirit to be doing different things in different places." This Pentecostal image may sound a little chaotic to our Episcopalian/Anglican ears. These words hardly describe the unity we imagine for the Episcopal Church in these pre-General Convention days. Rather the Primate's words attempt to replace our desire for a comfortable consistent unity with contingency, difference and struggle.
I want to tell you two stories to amplify what it is I am about this morning. There were two non-negotiables for my parents - unity and respect for authority and all the privileges that come with both. Simply in my family and the church I grew up questions were not welcomed; particularly questions directed at those in authority. Most kids ask their parents why based questions that relate to how things work, for example, cars, airplanes or they ask questions about science like how ice forms or weather patterns. I on the other hand at a tender age of seven began to ask questions that I have come to see since are thoroughly related to power relations.
My uncle was a Roman Catholic clergy person; but my dad, his brother would always call him Brother Patrick, which was his name in religion rather than Willie which is what my dad called him until he entered the religious life. One day when Brother Patrick was coming for a visit I asked my mother why we call Brother Patrick, Brother Patrick, if he is dad's brother, shouldn't we call him by his first name. My mom snapped back at me and said, Joseph that is what you do to show your respect for a man of God. My mom knew me very well and said, "And further Joseph there will be none of this discussion when Brother Patrick visits us later." Brother Patrick and I that evening had a great conversation on the whole matter, deciding between the two of us that I would call him Uncle Willie. Until the day he died I called him Uncle Willie and on his death bed he thanked me for the privilege of finally being recognized as an uncle to one of the Duggan children. For me this is a sweet story that demonstrates what it means to be a Protestant with a Pentecostal identity in the Episcopal Church, the one who is inspired to ask questions that others prefer to silence out of respect for privilege.
I want to tell you another story of what happened a few years ago on a Pentecost Sunday morning. In an increasing number of churches, on Pentecost morning, the first lesson from Acts (2:1-11) is read simultaneously in as many languages as are represented by the members' cultural traditions. At All Saints Church in Pasadena, there are often 12-15 languages instrumental in reading the Acts text. I remember on this one particular Pentecost Sunday when a newcomer to All Saints Church was alarmed and disturbed by this practice. It is never announced beforehand what will happen, so newcomers experience readers dispersed throughout the congregation getting up one by one to read the text in their native language. When you first hear this, it sounds disruptive; at the very least it has a chaotic feel. This one man became indignant at one of the 15 people who had stood up to read and demanded that he sit down and show some respect to the Lector designated with the apparent authority to speak at the front of the church.
I believe that this man's instinctive, un-reflected and reactive response to the embodiment of Divine spontaneity symbolizes our own desires to bring order to Divine chaos. Divine unity is often initially felt as chaos. The cost of insisting upon our human unity as a means to ordering the chaotically felt Divine unity is that people are frequently silenced. The incalculable risk here is that usually people who have the least power are silenced first and most often.
Therefore I have come to believe that claiming a Pentecostal identity is about how we as Christians live reflectively with our power. This means living with our power in a way that welcomes self-critique as well as a communal critique so that our collective power that has historically silenced others may be transformed by the Spirit of God. Simply put, power is about the privileges which some have and others do not. Are we recognized for who we are as Uncle Willie or for our privilege as Brother Patrick? To wrestle with a Pentecostal identity as I see it is to live in a way that maintains reasonable doubt about how our collective power and privilege silences people.
The unity of Pentecost does not mean that in fear we lock the door to the room where the Spirit descended on the disciples, so that we can keep safe the treasure of the Spirit's descent for our exclusive use. The unity of Pentecost is in its dispersive nature. This dispersive-like Divine unity is counter-intuitive for most of us are stuck in our human notions of rigid order, unity and coherence. As long as we seek to control this dispersive-like quality, the Divine unity of Pentecost will continue to evade us as a church and as a culture. We must learn how to trustingly participate in the whirlwind of God's free, borderless love. This means that we will always live with risk as our comfortable consistent expectations and desires for unity will be destabilized by the movement of the Spirit that disturbs our comfortable lives.
As we receive the Spirit in community this morning, let us unlock the doors to our hearts and minds as well as to our church and all the places we live and work. This may mean as it is said later in John's Gospel "going to places where we would rather not go" and asking questions others would prefer we would not ask. The Spirit may be inspiring you to ask questions about a community or workplace matter in which many are talking about, but little is being done because it requires that you take a courageous stand. Hannah Arendt, a twentieth century, Jewish German philosopher writes "Power ultimately resides not in what we may imagine for ourselves but in what we make happen in the divided world we share with others."
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