Sermon

How many times can we forgive? None.

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Matthew 18:21-35

Peter came and said to Jesus, “Lord, if another member of the church sins against me, how often should I forgive? As many as seven times?” Jesus said to him, “Not seven times, but, I tell you, seventy-seven times. (Read the whole passage)

We have been hearing the stories of Jesus’ ministry for a while now, we started back in spring and through the whole summer. For the past few weeks, Jesus has been challenging the disciples more than usual. He has put before them the question of who they think he is. Jesus has rebuked Peter for not getting it when Peter tried to stop Jesus from going to his death. And last week, Jesus challenged his disciples and us with the reality of conflict resolution, of how it is that God truly sees us.

But today, it is Peter who puts the hard question to Jesus. “How often should I forgive?” he asks “Seven times?”

And while usually when we hear this story we move on to Jesus’ response, Peter’s question deserves some time to consider… We need to slow down and truly hear what Peter is getting at.

Yet, before even considering how much we ought to forgive, maybe it is worth reflecting on our own experience with forgiveness.

Think back to the last time you had to forgive someone in your life. And not just a small acts of forgiveness like for your spouse getting regular ground beef instead of lean ground beef at the grocery store, or for your neighbour’s leaf blower sending all their leaves onto your lawn, or for that grandchild who spilled juice on the couch.

Rather, try and think of that time you forgave someone for something big. Something that was hurtful and life impacting. Something that was more than an accident or forgetful moment.

It is probably likely that most of us haven’t had to give that kind of forgiveness recently, maybe even at all in our lives. Or if we have, it has been only a few times.

And it is also likely that IF we have forgiven someone for something big that we haven’t forgiven fully. The sin committed against us probably still stings, that a part of us still holds it against the sinner, that maybe we bring up the offense from time to time to make the one we forgave still feel guilty.

Forgiveness is a complicated process. And it can be just as much about letting others off the hook of our judgment, as letting go of the hooks ourselves… freeing ourselves from having to hold others in judgement and condemnation. It is a lot of work to hold a grudge, to hold onto our hurt.

And so is Peter asking about this kind of hard work forgiveness? Probably not.

In fact, Peter doesn’t seem to be asking about forgiveness at all. More something like chances. How many chances do I have to give someone before I can hold their feet to the fire? Seven?

Peter wants a type of forgiveness he can control, a measuring stick that he can wield against even his brothers and sisters in Christ, against the people closest to him.

He is talking about the kind of forgiveness as chance giving that we use daily, the free passes for little offences that we give out depending on our mood and how much coffee we were able to drink in the morning.

So Jesus answers Peter’s question. Jesus tells us how much we are to forgive. 70 times 7 or 490 times. But it is NOT the number that is important. It is how Jesus gets there. Jesus multiplies Peter first guess. In a way Jesus is saying, however much you think is a generous amount of forgiveness, multiply that and then multiply it again… by a lot.

And yet, just to make sure that Peter gets the point and just to make sure that we get the point, Jesus tells a parable. It is a simple parable. A King forgives a slave an enormous amount. The slave then turns around and does not forgive a fellow slave a much smaller amount.

In our modern world, where we deal with big numbers often…  so 10,000 and 100 don’t seem like much. But to really understand the depth of Jesus’ point we need to do some math.

10,000 talents and 100 Denarii are two vastly different amounts. A Denarii was what a day labourer would ear for one day’s work. Whereas a talent was worth 15 years of wages.

10,000 talents was worth about 54 million denarii.

The king forgave a debt that would have taken the slave 3000 lifetimes to work off.

The forgiven slave had a fellow slave thrown in prison for 3 months worth of wages.

The difference between the two is absurd.

But of course, Jesus is making point in using ridiculous numbers.

Forgiveness is NOT about an amount. It is NOT just a measuring stick for how judgemental we can be.

True forgiveness is that hard and complicated process that we might never achieve ourselves in our lifetime.

How often should we forgive? Jesus answer is, “Over and over and over and over and over.”

And even then, Jesus says, even after you have practiced forgiveness for a lifetime… remember that forgiveness is not something that you can do on your own.

What Peter doesn’t realize and what we regularly forget is that true forgiveness, the kind of mercy and forgiveness that Jesus has come to show the world is God’s alone to give.

That when God releases us from God’s judgment we are transformed. That from the moment we are born into this world are we are “on the hook” for our selfishness and self-centredness, we are on the hook for our sin. We are on the hook to die. And we hang from the hook, being held in judgment. Judgment that says we are not enough. We are not good enough, not righteous enough, not holy enough, not perfect enough. We are failures and frauds. We are sinners. And because of that, we will die.

But there, as we are dying on the hook for our sins, we are held in judgment that we can neither let go of ourselves or escape…God comes. God comes to us in the waters of baptism. And God raises us up, God releases us, God frees us. God says that we are no longer held in judgement, we are no longer destined to die. That in baptism we are now held and alive in Christ.

Christ who forgives. Jesus who releases us from judgment. The Son of God who brings God’s mercy near and close.

And then, over and over again, God reminds us that we are forgiven.

As we gather for worship we practice it.

We confess our sins and receive God’s forgiveness again.

We hear the word proclaimed, and God shows us grace again.

We sing and pray and confess our faith and share the peace, and God tells us the story of God’s love for us again.

We welcome the newly baptized into our community of faith, and God welcomes us all in the Body of Christ again.

We come and receive bread and wine, and God gives us forgiveness to eat and drink and to live our very bodies again.

Forgiveness as hard as we know it to be, as complicated as we know that it is to give, as difficult as it is to receive…. Forgiveness is not what Peter describes today. And we know that. We know that forgiveness is not the power to hold our brothers and sisters in judgement.

But we need Jesus tell us what forgiveness truly is. And Jesus reminds us tell us again that forgiveness is the work of God in our world and in our lives. It is not something that we can do one our own, but rather forgiveness is what God is doing to us and for us. God is letting go of the judgment we are held by, God is releasing us from being on the hook for sin and death. God is forgiving us completely and wholly… over and over and over and over again.

Theology & Culture

Conflict Resolution: Let such a one be to you as a Gentile and Tax Collector.

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Matthew 18:15-20

If the member refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church; and if the offender refuses to listen even to the church, let such a one be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector… (Read the whole passage)

Human beings are not good at conflict. In fact most of the time, we are quite bad at dealing with conflict in our lives. From arguments in the home to disagreements between nations, we often fall back on the same bad behaviours.

Conflict awakens that part of our brains that takes us from being rational, reasonable people to defensive and irrational reptilian like creatures. Our reptilian brain, the part which governs our fight, flight or freeze responses can take over when we enter into conflict… and fighting, running or hiding are not the ways to solve conflict, they are ways to escape danger like T-Rexes and sabre-tooth tigers.

So to help us with conflict, we have this handy passage from Matthew, a simple yet effective process that allows us to deal with and get through disagreements and conflict in our communities of faith. It is one that Christians have been using for a long time, one enshrined in our church constitution. And as far as conflict management goes, it is on point.

If someone wrongs you, take your concern to them directly. Or in other words, don’t talk about your problem with everyone but the person who has wronged you. Simple yet difficult, as we almost always would much rather gossip than face those who have wronged us directly.

This first step is the hardest, it is the step that actives our reptilian brain. We feel that addressing a perceived wrong is not likely to end in an apology, but for the wrongdoer to tell us that we are actually the ones who are wrong. An argument with a family member or friend feels like the danger posed by a sabre-tooth tiger to our reptilian brain.

And so to mitigate our reptilian defensiveness when two people simply cannot come to an understanding, we are to take 1 or 2 trustworthy persons with us. A neutral third party, who will  be witness to the conflict and someone who might gently bring objectivity to conflict. Someone to remind us that our reptilian brain might be overblowing things.

But then, if conflict cannot be resolved will one or two neutral witness, we are to bring the issue before the community. Let the whole body of our brothers and sisters in faith address the conflict. And usually the idea of having a fight out in the open is good perspective giver, a motivator to come to resolution rather than show the world the worst parts of ourselves. And yet, if even this kind of radical transparency cannot solve conflict, than Jesus says is one solution:

“Let such a one be to you as a Gentile or tax collector.”

Over the years Christians have called this step by different names. Shunning, banishment, excommunication, being cut off. A drastic last step when relationships are broken by conflict.

A straightforward and clear process for conflict resolution.

And yet, this process demands more of us than we might think. It is simple, but not easy.

For the disciples hearing Jesus’ words today, this process was very different than the way their world worked. In their world, everyone knew their place. The authorities, those with power, those who were righteous… they knew that they controlled society. They knew that they were the judges of the world. They were ones who chose the winners and losers in any conflict.

And the ones on the bottom, the unclean, tax collectors, fishermen, gentiles, beggars, labourers, the sick and ill… they knew that they had no power, no one on their side. The outcomes of conflict was in the hands of those more powerful than they.

The disciples and others listening to Jesus, lived in a world so carefully categorized that you knew who you could talk to, who you could eat with, where you were allowed to sit in the synagogue, which door you could use when going to the temple and so on. This hierarchical world carefully laid out who had power and who didn’t. And Jesus’ followers didn’t. They were bottom dwellers, low on the social ladder.

And so this kind of process would have sounded great to Jesus’ followers. A process where they could be the ones with power, the ones who could judge the sins committed against them. It could turn their whole world upside down. Those in power could be thrown down to the bottom, those on the bottom could finally rise up and take control. The powerful are no longer the judges of all things. The authorities don’t get to decide who is right and who is wrong for everyone, rather those who have been sinned against, like those on the bottom… they can judge for themselves. They can judge sin directly.

Or at least, that is what is this iconic passage from Matthew 18 sounds like.

Until Jesus says, “let such a one be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector.”

For you see, there wasn’t a day that went by that the Pharisees and Scribes, the temple authorities and priests didn’t remind Jesus and his followers that they were spending time with the wrong crowd. Jesus liked to eat with tax collectors, unclean sinners who worked for the terrible Romans collecting their unclean money. Jesus liked to interact with Gentiles, unclean sinners who worshipped incorrectly, like the Canaanite woman who Jesus called a dog. Jesus like be around those on the bottom, people like fishermen, people like his disciples.

How easily has the church forgotten this. How quickly have we gone back to thinking that Gentiles and tax collectors are those we should shun and banish and excommunicate and cut off. How easy is it for us to think that when we cannot resolve conflicts we should just end the relationship and cut people out of our communities and our lives.

And if this passage from Matthew 18 were just a standalone piece of advice, it might sound like something from a self-help book. But it isn’t. It comes right after Jesus has been telling his disciples that the Kingdom of Heaven belongs to the one who is like a child, the least important of the world. That to be a stumbling block to the least of these little ones is to be avoided at all costs. That Jesus is the shepherd who leaves the 99 to seek out the one lost sheep.

And so when Jesus says let such a one be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector…

The Gentiles and tax collectors were the one that Jesus came to seek and find.

The ones like little children to whom the Kingdom belongs.

The little who believed in Christ and should not be caused to stumble.

The lost sheep whom the Shepherd searches out and rescues.

Gentiles and tax collectors are those that Jesus has come for.

Come for to show God’s love and mercy and grace.

Come for to eat with like beloved guests and equals.

Come for to heal and restore to wholeness.

Come for to bring God’s Kingdom near.

Gentiles and tax collectors are the lost and least that Jesus has come to minister to.

Jesus’ words on resolving conflict were not a way for his disciples to move from the bottom off their world to the top. And they are not a way for us to stand in judgment of our brothers and sisters in Christ.

Rather, they are a reminder of whom God has come for, who God’s love and mercy and grace are given to. They are a reminder about how God sees us.

They are a reminder that for God, we are all Gentiles and tax collectors.

That in the confession and forgiveness we hear week after week, God seeks us out like the one lost sheep.

That in the Word of God spoken in our midst, God welcomes the little ones who stumble.

That in the bread and wine of Christ’s body, God makes us God’s children and gives us the Kingdom.

The word that Jesus gives us today is so much more than a simple process for conflict resolution. Jesus reminds the disciples and us just who we are. That even with the process for solving conflict we will not be able reconcile with our brothers and sisters on our own. But that we are all instead ones such as Gentiles and Tax collectors to God. And that when we would cut each other off from relationship, that Jesus has come instead to find and reconcile us.

Jesus has come to heal us and eat with us.

To show us God’s love and mercy and grace.

Amen.

Sermon

Turning Cornerstones into Stumbling Blocks

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Matthew 16:21-28

And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him, saying, “God forbid it, Lord! This must never happen to you.” But he turned and said to Peter, “Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to me; for you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.”

Then Jesus told his disciples, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. (Read the whole passage)

We would all like to believe that we would have been smart enough. That we would seen what the others missed. We hope that had we been the ones those following Jesus around the backwoods of Galilee, that when he would speak of his impending suffering, we would have been able to keep our mouths shut, or even agree with him. If we had been standing in Peter’s shoes, maybe we wouldn’t have tried to stop Jesus from coming to harm and instead we would have known that Jesus’ life on earth necessitated the cross.

To hear Jesus speak to us today, means we must take a moment  to imagine Peter’s humiliation in front of his friends. Jesus calls him a stumbling block. A stumbling block simply because Peter showed concern for his teacher and his friend. Jesus seems to be a little a hard on Peter. Jesus is hard on this poor guy that just moments before he had been praising. Praising Peter for his faith and his sight.

You see, just before the conversation we hear today, Peter recognizes Jesus as the Messiah. And Jesus responds by changing Peter’s name, which was Simon, to Peter. Petros. Rock. “On this rock, I will build my church”. This is what Jesus has just proclaimed to Peter, and then Jesus turns that rock and foundation, into a stumbling block. How quickly Jesus turns things on their head.

But why is Peter rebuked so? What is so wrong with having concern for one’s friend and teacher. It is not as if Peter was acting maliciously. It is not as if Peter was trying to trip Jesus up. He was simply showing concern. He was trying to be the good guy. Poor Peter, always speaking first and only later thinking through was he has said and done, seems to be the victim of a moody Jesus. Or at least that is the way it may seem. But with Jesus there is always something else going on.

We all hope that we would see the world more clearly than Peter did, yet we know that we are not much different. Most of us know that we would have responded in the same way to Jesus when he spoke of his coming suffering. Most of us have spoken to loved ones that way, we have warned those we care about of impending danger and we have warned against taking dangerous risks.

And how can we help it? We live in a world that desires above all else, safety and security. We are bombarded by media that tells us to buy more insurance, to invest more for our retirement, to drive safer cars, to lock our doors and install home security systems. We drive our kids to school, even its only a few blocks. We do not go out alone at night. We strive to keep ourselves and our loved ones safe. And why shouldn’t we. Are we not caring for those we love when we keep them safe?

Certainly it is because we care that we strive for safety and security. We care for our loved ones, and we do not wish them to come to harm. Most of us would give our own lives to save the life of someone we cared about.

And yet, somewhere in the desire to care for our own, there is also the desire to be in control. At the root of our search for safety and security is the selfish desire to control the world around us, to shape things in our vision. To make the world according to our own image. Because deep down, we know that the only way to be truly safe and secure… is to be in control. If we can be in control, there are no surprises, nothing unexpected, no one will get hurt… and no one will be free.

When Jesus rebukes Peter and calls him a stumbling block, you can imagine there must have been sadness in his voice. A sadness about Peter’s inability to understand, a sadness for the people for whom Jesus would suffer. Peter doesn’t see the bigger picture, the divine picture. Instead, Peter is looking to control the situation, to control Jesus, and Jesus is frustrated with him because of it. Jesus is trying to get at something bigger, something more important than what Peter is worried about. Jesus is pointing to the end of the story.

When Jesus tells his disciples to take up their cross it is not a command or an order. Taking up the cross to follow Jesus is not about following a noble cause, or a sign of our great faith. Rather, Jesus’ words are an invitation to see the world anew, to set aside our fears about being unsafe and not in control, and to see a world where God is at work. Where God is doing things, where God is creating life, where God is loving God’s creation.

Jesus’ invitation to take up our crosses and follow are also a promise. A promise that is staked in the ground, a promise on which Jesus hangs. The promise that the violence and death found on the cross is not the end of life. Suffering and death do not define our existence, they are not the powerful entities out there. Death is not the end of our story. Rather with God there is the promise resurrection, there is the promise of New Life and a New Creation.

We are often stumbling blocks like Peter, stumbling blocks that hinder ourselves more than anyone else. And again like Peter and the disciples, we usually don’t get what Jesus means when he says, “take up your cross and follow me”. But when we do get the point, its is when we remember that we do know the end of the story, that we do know what happens on Easter Sunday.

Jesus’ invitation shows us that we cannot take up our cross on our own. For us, the cross is insurmountable, death is insurmountable. But for God the cross is transformed. It is transformed from the greatest tool of control and power than humanity has ever wielded, into God’s greatest sign of love, grace and mercy. God proclaims loudly in Christ’s birth, death and resurrection, that death shall be no more and that is God is the end of the story. To take up the cross, is to live at its foot knowing what God has made of the cross’s power. To follow Jesus, is to be loved by God and to be given New Life in God’s New Creation. To live by the Holy Spirit is to be the stumbling blocks that God uses to build His church.

Today, Jesus speaks to Peter, Jesus speaks to us and says, “Let go, give control. I have got this. It will be okay.”

And because of this, we are set free, set free to live in the world in which God is in control.

Set free because Jesus carries our cross, our cross on which death no longer hangs, but instead New Life in Christ.

Sermon, Theology & Culture

Peter wanted a private club – Jesus gave us the Church

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Matthew 16:13-20

He said to them, “But who do you say that I am?” Simon Peter answered, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.” And Jesus answered him, “Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father in heaven. And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church…(Read the whole passage)

Last week, I had a brush with fame. If you happened to be listening to the local Christian music station on Thursday after around 5pm, you would have heard me do a brief two part interview. Yes, I know, I know… for anyone that is wondering I will sign autographs in addition to shaking hands on the way of out church… and no, this hasn’t gone to my head.

In all seriousness, the reason that I was interviewed was for an article that I had written and that was published by Christian Week magazine…a locally founded but national/ecumenical publication in Canada.

The article was about something that I mentioned in my sermon last week, Why White Supremacy is a Sin. After the events of Charlottesville two weeks ago, the article was my attempt at articulating why the ideology White Supremacy is sinful.

At its foundation, Christian White Supremacy takes the idea that faith and church confer a special status and power to us to extreme ends. That being a follower of Jesus or a Christian makes a special group, a special in-crowd, that the church is only about who is on the inside, rather than reaching those outside. For White Supremacists, only white skinned people are those special ones.

Now, what does that have to do with the Jesus and Peter today?… well in a way, Jesus is naming that same attitude among the disciples – the idea that being a follower of Jesus confers special status and special power.

Jesus and the disciples are out in gentile lands again. Last week they were in the coastal region of Tyre and Sidon, where Jesus encountered and eventually healed the Canaanite woman’s daughter… but only after she convinced him that she, a gentile and a woman, was worthy of his compassion.

Today, Jesus has travelled inland to the region of Caesarea Philippi where he takes the opportunity to ask the disciples a question: “Who do people say that the Son of Man is?” This gets a few different answers, mostly comparisons to the prophets of old. But Jesus isn’t satisfied and takes it a step further. “But who do you say that I am?”

When none of the other disciples have an answer, Simon offers a guess. “You are the Messiah, Son of the Living God.” Not a dead prophet but son of the living God.

And for that Jesus gives Simon a new name – Peter. Peter which means rock, the rock on which Jesus will build his church, giving the church the power loose and bind sins.

That is a quite the journey from “Who do you say that I am?”

This story of this encounter between Jesus and his disciples that we hear today, is a passage we tend to place a lot of meaning on.

The Roman Catholic church reads this story as Jesus’ choosing Peter to be the first among the disciples… the first Bishop of the church, the Bishop’s office whose has become the office of Popes through the centuries. The Pope, they say, is the successor to Peter. The Papal symbol is two keys.

Others find in this passage an important question, one that is more relevant today than ever. Who do we say that Jesus is? Many church leaders today would contend that this question is at the core of what it means to follow Jesus and how we answer this question in a world of suffering, violence, hatred, division, conflict, war and death determines the character of our faith.

And perhaps for us here at Good Shepherd, our answer to the question of who Jesus is would impact significantly how we minister to the community around us.

But perhaps neither of these concerns are truly what this passage is about.

As usual, there seems to be something else going on.

And getting at that involves asking the question why.

Why does Jesus ask his disciples, far from home and in gentile territory who people say that he is. And why does Jesus give Simon a new name with new responsibilities.

On regular occasion, the disciples get caught up in the perks of being disciples, rather than the reality. They want to sit at Jesus’ right and left hands. They want power to heal and power over demons. They get jealous of others who do works of power in Jesus’ name. They get impatient with people who come to Jesus for healing, much like the Canaanite woman last week.

And so when Jesus asks the disciples, who they think he is… it isn’t because Jesus is wondering what people think of him. It is because he wants the disciples to connect with reality.

They are followers of Jesus. Jesus who is the Messiah. Jesus who is then son of the Living God. The Messiah who has come to save the whole world, sent by the Living God, the God of all creation. The forgiveness that they proclaim is not a power they hold over others, but a responsibility they now carry. The New Life that they preach is not privilege bestowed to a few, but a gift given to all.

Like the disciples, the church, including us, has fallen into the same trap again and again. And while it isn’t usually as extreme or destructive as White Supremacy… it is something we struggle with.

For many churches and communities of faith in North America these days it has been the norm to see ourselves firstly as centres of community. Faith families who love and care for each other. Groups who exist for the benefit of our members. Clubs with special privileges.

And yes, in some ways those definitions do apply to us. But they do not define us. They are not the why. They are not our first and primary purpose for existing. The Church is not a community of the privileged, but a community of the burdened. A community given responsibility. A body tasked to preach and proclaim the story of the one whose name we bear – to tell the world about Christ.

When Jesus gives Simon a new name today… it is first a reminder of who Jesus is. In the Old Testament the only person who ever changed someone’s name was God.

When Jesus tells Peter that he is the rock on whom he will build his church, it is a reminder that this community of faith is the Messiah’s. It is a community rooted in the forgiveness of sins for sinners, mercy for the suffering, and resurrection of the dead.

When Jesus tells Peter that he will be given the keys to kingdom and that what he binds on earth is bound in heaven, and what he looses on earth is loosed in heaven… it is a re-orientation of the privileged and self centred attitudes of the disciples.

The power to forgive, the power to grant mercy, the power of resurrection and new life… these are powers NOT to be used as Peter, the disciples and the church desires. But rather responsibilities and tasks to be undertaken. Forgiveness is not to withheld, but given. Mercy is not to be given with discretion but with wild abandon. And new life… well God’s answer to all death is resurrection and new life.

When Jesus re-names Simon, and makes him the rock of the church, and gives him the keys to the Kingdom… it is not a moment of granting privilege or benefits… It is a moment of reminding Peter, the disciples and us of the responsibility we bear.

That we are firstly a community of faith. Faith is not a by-product of our community, but rather community and our love and care for one another is a by-product of our faith. Forgiveness is not a power the church wields over people, but rather something we are not to withhold. We are to forgive sinners. Period. And new life… well resurrection and new life is the story that we tell… or rather that Jesus tells through us, week after week, year after year.

Through Peter, through the disciples, through us, Christ proclaims again and again that death does not have the final word. Christ proclaims through us New Life given for all and for us.

Today, Jesus asks a pretty simple question to the disciples and to us. But the result is a reminder, again, of just how Christ is re-naming and transforming Peter and us, into the his body. Into the Body of Christ giving forgiveness, mercy and new life to the world.

Theology & Culture

The Canaanite Woman and Charlottesville

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Matthew 15: (10-20), 21-28

But she came and knelt before him, saying, “Lord, help me.” He answered, “It is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.” (Read the whole passage)

The early church had a problem. It didn’t know what to do with the gentiles. Within a just a few decades of Jesus’ death, resurrection and ascension the small but growing communities of followers of Jesus the Messiah, didn’t know if or how they could include gentiles or non-Jewish people among their ranks. This question of inclusion vs exclusion caused a lot of struggle and conflict for those early faith congregations.

Today, we continue in this long season of ordinary time to hear the stories and episodes of Jesus’ ministry. And while it may seem like the gospel stories have been conveniently arranged in way that allows us to tell the story of Jesus throughout our liturgical year… that is not the case today.

The purpose behind the story of Jesus’ and the Canaanite woman’s encounter was about addressing the gentile problem of the early church more so than our need for a collection of vignettes of Jesus’ ministry to read throughout our summer church services.

And while it isn’t all that often that the stories of gospels have distinct and significant purpose other than telling the story of the gospel of Jesus Christ, today we encounter one of the few texts that is included in the gospels for a particular reason.

As Jesus and the disciples are travelling about the countryside, they enter the district of Tyre and Sidon – Gentile territory near what we know today and Syria and Lebanon. As Jesus and the disciples a Canaanite woman comes to Jesus and begins to shout,

“Have mercy on me, Lord, Son of David…”

Now it is important to know that 1st century Galilee and the surrounding gentile regions were not pluralistic and multicultural in the way Canada is today. While there were people of different ethnicities, religions, and class, their world was no a tolerant place. Jews, like Jesus and his disciples, were careful not to mix with the gentiles. They did not speak to, eat with, or even touch gentiles unless absolutely necessary. If they did, they would become ritually unclean and need to become ritually clean again.

This practice of avoidance of gentiles led to enthno-centric attitudes… what we would call racist today. Gentiles were often perceived to be less than human. In fact, to call someone a “Canannite” was not a description of their ancestry but derogatory term that Matthew, the gospel writer, uses for the woman (Mark identifies her as Syrophoenician or Syrian). In the OT, God was believed to had commanded the genocide of the Canaanites, and so Canaanite became the slur used for all gentiles, with the connotation that Canaanites weren’t even worthy of being alive.

The Canaanite woman’s problems were of course worsened by the fact that she was a woman… a person not even permitted to be alone in public, let alone speak to a man, let alone a Jewish man. And to top if off, the Canaanite woman had a demon-possessed daughter… and by association would be completely and totally unclean.

And so when Jesus responds to the Canaanite woman who comes to him asking for mercy… his response of calling her a dog, while sounding pretty bad to our ears, would be nearly the maximum amount of compassion that someone could show such an undesirable person under Jewish law.

The Canaanite woman and Jesus are constrained and limited by the cultural systems that existed around them. The woman lived in world where she couldn’t even be considered human by Jesus… and Jesus’ world didn’t allow him to consider this woman, seeking mercy for her sick daughter, as a human being.

And while we would like to have a smug feeling about how backward the world was with their complicated efforts to excludes and dehumanize each other 2000 years ago… we have been witnesses this week to examples of the ways in which not much has changed.
As the events of Charlottesville played out last weekend over the news, we saw the incredible and terrible lengths that human beings can go to just to exclude, denigrate and dehumanize anyone who looks different. As White Nationalists – or really White Supremacists – marched in the streets with weapons and violent intentions for the sake of a statue glorifying the racist history of African American slavery… we saw what a racist culture looks like in action. A culture very similar to what we read about in the gospel today.

Just as the Canaanite woman and Jesus were trapped and constrained by the cultural systems around them… we see how the extraordinary lengths that people go to in order segregation, excludes and dehumanize fellow human beings, trap and constrain them too. Traps them in their hatred, traps them in their intolerance… traps them in cycles of conflict and violence that never seem to end.

As the Canaanite woman comes seeking mercy from Jesus she persists. Even as Jesus insists that she is not one of the ones he has come for, not one of the children of Israel, she continues to ask for mercy.

And in what could have been a White Nationalist quoted in the news this week, Jesus says,

“It is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs”

And with that the woman should have got the message, she should have realized that she wasn’t one of the chosen, she was simply not the right colour, or religion, or gender, or clean enough or human enough to receive mercy…

But she persists still…

She persists with Jesus.

Because she has heard that Jesus is the Messiah, the one sent by God, the one who is God’s mercy in flesh, walking the streets of her town.

And if Jesus is the Messiah, than the woman’s identity doesn’t matter. This isn’t about whether or not she is included or excluded, it isn’t about whether she is the right race, wether she worships God in the right way, whether she is the right gender, wether she is clean…

It is about Jesus and what it means for him to be the Messiah.

Because God’s mercy is not based in human cultural systems. God’s mercy isn’t given based on arbitrary categories like skin colour or gender or ritual cleanliness.

God’s mercy is given outside of the systems we live by. God’s mercy transcends race, gender, class and all other divisions of human invention.

The woman persists, asking Jesus for mercy for her daughter, because encountering God’s mercy in flesh has already transformed the Canaanite woman. God’s mercy personified in Christ transforms the world simply by being recognized and known.

And so the woman reminds Jesus that there are enough table scraps for even the dogs. That in Christ, God’s mercy in flesh, there is more than enough. More mercy than the children of Israel need, and enough mercy for even the dogs.

Yet by encountering God’s mercy in flesh, by seeking out the God of Mercy, the Lord, Son of David… the Canaanite woman is no longer less than human. Or rather, Jesus and the woman come into a relationship beyond what the cultural ethnocentric rules say. Jesus and the woman are no longer defined by human categories, but by God’s categories.

As Jesus acknowledges her and finally giving her the mercy and healing she seeks for her daughter, Jesus gives this woman a place in the Kingdom. Jesus acknowledges that this untouchable woman is, indeed, worthy of God’s mercy. Because God has declared her so.

And even though her world says she is less than human, God’s mercy given for her declares that she is, in fact, a child of God.

Just as God’s mercy comes and changes the world from the outside of racist cultural systems for Jesus and the Canaanite woman, this is the same place where God is at work among us. At work in Charlottesville, in Barcelona, at work in the all the places where we try to exclude rather than include. At work in the early church who eventually included gentiles in God’s kingdom.

As White Nationalists waked the streets of Charlottesville, as religious extremists committed acts of violence rooted in the division of race… Christ comes to us. Not proposing alternate systems, not telling us that we can solve this problems of division and hatred simply by “doing better.”

Instead, as the daughter of the Canaanite woman is healed and as the woman is humanized by Jesus’ turn towards compassion… we are reminded that the solution to our problems of race and religion can only be solved the One who comes to us from the outside.

We can only experience true mercy when God’s mercy in flesh walks our streets and frees us from systems and categories and idea that tell us some are more important, more human than others.

God’s mercy in flesh, walking our streets, comes to Charlottesville, comes to Barcelona, comes to all the places where we would try to call others less than human…

And God’s mercy in flesh, walking our streets, declares that God’s mercy is given, for us and for all.

An iPhone Pastor for a Typewriter Church