Nevertheless, She Persisted: a sermon for Year A, Proper 15

This sermon was preached on Sunday, August 20, 2017 at All Saints' Episcopal Church in Glen Rock, NJ. The scripture readings this sermon is based on can be found by clicking here. 

This week has been a tough one in America, and in Barcelona and elsewhere in the world. And it’s been a tough time in and around Judea, Galilee and the land of Canaan in the portion of Matthew’s Gospel we read today.

Jesus is meeting with confusion, contention, opposition, and resistance to his message in and around Judea and Galilee. He’s been rejected in his own hometown of Nazareth. At various points, he’s gotten into hot debates with Jewish religious groups and leaders like the Pharisees, Sadducees and scribes. His disciples seem sort of clueless, they never seem to ‘get it’ when Jesus works a miracle or teaches in parables.

He’s been getting some good response from the crowds however, at Gennesaret and on the shores of the Sea of Galilee. But it’s been a tiring time. So, Jesus tries to get a little time away, by going away or ‘withdrawing’, as some translations put it, to the region of Tyre and Sidon in Canaan.

Here we should say a little something about Matthew and how Matthew’s gospel presents Jesus’s mission. As I’ve often said to you, Matthew is the most Jewish of our gospels; it goes to great lengths to present Jesus as the Jewish messiah, the fulfillment of Jewish prophecy and Jewish law. Matthew presents Jesus’s mission as being to the Jewish people primarily, first and foremost; and in Matthew, it is only after the resurrection that the disciples are told to go and make disciples of all nations.

So, in Matthew’s context, Canaan is not Jesus’s mission-field, he’s not expected to preach or teach or heal there. And it may well be that Jesus is seeking a place where he won’t draw so much attention or criticism, some time out of the spotlight.

But of course, that can’t be the case. Word of Jesus, the healer and miracle worker, has spread into Canaan, and just as he arrives, a Canaanite woman approaches Jesus and his companions, shouting out, “‘Have mercy on me;’ help me, my child is sick.” But Jesus ignores her.

Nevertheless, she persisted -- and she makes a pest of herself by continuing to shout out. The disciples want her sent away. Finally, Jesus addresses her by, more or less, reciting his job description. “I was sent to the lost sheep of the house of Israel,” he says.

Nevertheless, she persisted; pleading with him, “Lord, help me.”

Jesus says to her, “It is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.” Keep in mind here, Jesus isn’t calling the Canaanite woman a dog. He’s explaining to her the position he’s in; and it’s the same as any householder. You feed the household before you feed the household pets. You make sure the kids are fed before offering the dogs whatever leftovers you have -- everyone knows that. And it’s how Jesus sees himself and his role at this point in his ministry; understanding as he does that his mission, his teaching and preaching and healing, is -- at this point, at least -- to and for the children of Israel.

Nevertheless, she persisted. “Yes, Lord,” she says, “Yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters’ table.” The Canaanite woman persisted, and she insisted that she be seen and heard; she insisted that her needs, those of her child, be heard, and understood, and attended to.

The Canaanite woman insisted that there be some justice for her too. She understands who Jesus is; she calls him ‘Lord’ and ‘Son of David’. She believes in his power to heal, in his power to bring sustenance to the hungry -- not just for some, but for all those who hunger, and not just for food, but those who hunger for justice, righteousness too.

I’ve said to you before, whenever we’re talking about justice, we’re not talking about ‘just us’. The biblical idea of justice is not punitive; it doesn’t mean that those who commit a crime against us are duly punished. It’s about the whole community; it’s about fairness, equality, and a share in the bounty that God grants us. It includes everyone, and everyone’s needs, everywhere. As Martin Luther King famously put it, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”

That’s what the Canaanite woman sought, why she persisted and what she insisted upon. And when Jesus understands that, he brings her into his mercy and justice. She persisted, and it gained for her a place, her rightful place, in the justice of God’s kingdom.

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The events of this past week in our country have called us, once again, to task. And that task is to continue, or perhaps, really, to begin in earnest, the important process of examining and addressing racial inequality and racial grievance in our country. This task, this work insists upon being addressed. At every police shooting of an unarmed African-American. At every incidence of hate, at every instance of racially motivated mass murder or domestic terrorism.

Yet, often we find that we, like Jesus in today’s gospel, are weary of it, we want to withdraw from it, we want to avoid the confusion and contention and criticism that this process often evokes.

My brother is researching our family’s history. He sends me information from time to time. Recently he told me about another of our ancestors he’s traced who was a slave trader. That’s two, so far. When he told me this, he said, “I know you’re not going to like this…” He was right. It sickens me to know that the people I come from, from whence my name comes from, bought and sold human beings; that that was the way they put food on the table to feed their children, my ancestors.

Later, his choice of words came back to me. “I know you’re not going to like this…” It made me wonder, ‘Wouldn’t everyone not like this? Wouldn’t every member of my family, at least, be appalled to learn this?” And friends, I’ll be honest with you; the answer to that question is no, not exactly. They’re like many white Southerners who you’ll hear say that that was a long time ago, and since none of us owned slaves in our lifetime, we can’t be held accountable for the legacy of slavery. They’ll give the usual revisionist view of slavery that Southern apologists often give, claiming it was better than what freed slaves would know during Reconstruction, for example. They’ll wrap their response in the irrational and romantic notions of the nobility of the ‘Lost Cause’ -- and there’s a memorial on the courthouse square to further reinforce that benighted notion of the terrible history of our country.

When people speak about how demeaning it can be for African-Americans to have to live in the shadow of those monuments, they speak rightly. 
But those monuments aren’t just demeaning to the sons and daughters of the formerly enslaved. They demean the sons and daughters of the slave holders and slave traders, because they wrap our ancestors’ crimes against humanity in a noble shroud that obscures the horror that was done. They foster and support our denial of how bad it was then, and how bad the persistent effects of those crimes still are.

So, as you can imagine, I’d rather not have this conversation that is upon us. I’d rather look away from what was done by those who share my name. I’d rather withdraw into Canaan, and escape the confusion and contention and criticism that will be a part of this painful conversation that our nation so desperately needs to have.

Nevertheless, I persist, we persist, uncomfortable as it may be for those of us who, however unwillingly, benefit from the legacy of slavery and the racism it engendered in our nation. We persist in listening as others insist that our history reflect their struggles; insist that this present day (and many would add, this president) must deal honorably with the legacy of slavery that persists in the ills that sicken our society.

Nevertheless, we persist, we must persist, until justice means more than ‘just us’, until justice means all of us; we persist until that day that the prophet Amos proclaimed, the day when justice rolls down like waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream. +Amen.

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© The Rev. Mark R. Collins