after Pentecost
| Old Testament | Genesis 45:1–15 |
| Psalm | Psalm 133 |
| Epistle | Romans 11:1–2a, 29–32 |
| Gospel | Matthew 15:(10–20), 21–28 |
Almighty God, you have given your only Son to be for us a sacrifice for sin, and also an example of godly life: Give us grace to receive thankfully the fruits of his redeeming work, and to follow daily in the blessed steps of his most holy life; through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.
You tell me I am clad in righteousness, but I still feel undeserving. My sins and failures from my past seem like reasons for disqualification. But you cover me anyway. You call me yours anyway. Enable me to don your grace like a robe I will never remove. I wasted too much time attempting to earn the love you provided freely. I believe I must improve and accomplish more to demonstrate my worth. But you never asked for that. You just asked me to come. So here I am. I am grateful for your love, which accepts my true self. Amen.
▶ | Hear These Lessons Preached St. Peter’s, Woodville · Proper 15A, August 20, 2017 |
“We do not presume to come to this thy Table, O merciful Lord, trusting in our own righteousness, but in thy manifold and great mercies. We are not worthy so much as to gather up the crumbs under thy Table. But thou art the same Lord whose property is always to have mercy.” — The Canaanite woman’s answer is not only in the Gospel. Cranmer put it in our mouths at the altar rail. Every time we pray the Prayer of Humble Access we are quoting her.
“He said, It is not meet, and she said, Truth, Lord; He called them children, but she masters; He used the name of a dog, but she added also the dog’s act. … Confidence and strength, says she, by no means; nay, I am even full of shame. Yet nevertheless my very shamelessness do I put forward for entreaty; He will respect my confidence.”
“A guest, I answer’d, worthy to be here: / Love said, You shall be he. … You must sit down, says Love, and taste my meat: / So I did sit and eat.”
“As far as I know, there is only one good reason for believing that he was who he said he was. One of the crooks he was strung up with put it this way: ‘If you are the Christ, save yourself and us.’ Save us from whatever we need most to be saved from. Save us from each other. Save us from ourselves.”
“Like the story of the woman who as an outsider experiences God’s mercy and so challenges a too-narrow tradition that would want to restrict God’s mercies to a chosen few, so these sayings invite a reexamination of our hearts and call us to a new appraisal of the expansive reach of God’s mercies.”
Now this Sunday we have an interesting passage. In order to engage it we must realize that it comes after a confrontation scene with the religious leaders. Jesus has just been confronted by the authorities, who are challenging him that he is not following the tradition of his faith ancestors. They are acting somewhat like inspectors who are pretty sure the disciples have not been washing their hands before they sit down and eat. The passage is a direct engagement with the rules of the day, which understand the tradition of the religious authorities to be outside the tradition of Scripture. And so Jesus, in our passage today, teaches the crowd around him something different.
Scholars tend to look upon this text as trying to deal with the difference between the Matthean communal rule of life and that of their forebears. At the same time we must recognize that while this may be true, we also know that this engagement with the religious authorities was one of the key mitigating factors that led to Jesus’ crucifixion.
Jesus is proclaiming a message that connects the new emerging communities with the ancient law of Israel and their prophets. The new communities that Jesus is speaking to are certainly continuing Jewish communities. But the Gentile mission too was quickly to engage as a full member of the evolving understanding of God’s widening kingdom. Jesus is preserving the good news of a God who is in relationship with his people and who makes promises to be with them always, even to the end of the ages; a God who promises the abundance of creation. So there is a sense that Jesus is continuing and reforming. (Allison/Davies, Matthew, 537)
Jesus’ teaching is essential to a global mission. Jesus’ teaching is the precursor to the Apostolic Decree from Acts 15:20, 29 and 21:25, wherein the first community of followers of Jesus quickly laid out the boundaries that would enable the Jew and the Gentile to worship God through the particular revelation of Jesus Christ without getting in one another’s way. The rule prohibited four things: eating meat sacrificed to idols, eating blood, eating strangled animals, and intercourse with near kin. (Allison/Davies, Matthew, 538) These were the rules.
“What comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart, and this is what defiles.”
The real focus, I think, for this passage has to be that text. This is a key component of Matthew’s Gospel — indeed of the whole of the Gospels. It is mentioned throughout the Gospel narrative. Too often religion gets overly focused upon ritual, and in so doing loses sight of the key component of faith: the direction, through the heart, of one’s life and work.
It is one’s intention and attitude that is a chief characteristic of Jesus’ words to his followers. It is perhaps the center of Jesus’ own moral teaching. Integrity is the result of harmony between thought and act. Integrity is the result of an action based upon the living word of God, brought into being through the vessel of one’s heart and delivered by mouth and hands.
In the end, Jesus’ own teaching is why he must accept the challenge of the woman. He too must act in accordance with his own teaching, and in so doing shows the integrity of his words and his actions. All too many preachers will get hung up on the woman’s challenge. Do not miss the challenge Jesus is offering to us who craft so many rules for the segregating of our own communities.
We also might read Jesus’ words in the context of his wider teaching. When we do this and hold this passage in tension with it, we might ponder the idea that Jesus is being satirical in his response. Satire shows continuity with the statements about eating grain or sitting with sinners. It also has continuity with the other passages where women followers and women outside the community (like the Samaritan) are engaged by Jesus in a positive way. Instead of reading our biases into the passage, we might wonder whether the two were not jousting out of satire, rather than our overlaying postmodern ideas.
This is not particularly new teaching that Jesus is offering his followers. In fact most religious reform is not new. It is rather a rereading, reinterpreting, and revocalizing of the ancient words of psalms, prophets, and rabbis. It is to say that keeping the commandment was good, but that interiorizing the commandment was essential religious work.
The Psalms, the prophets, and the rabbis all attest the necessity of cleansing the heart and purifying interior disposition. In the First Gospel, however, there is a regular and emphatic dwelling on the theme, so that Matthew remains a constant reminder that Jesus laid an extraordinary emphasis on the real inner religious significance of the commandments.
We are challenged by this passage a great deal. As a Church we are working through divisions on the different ways of acting out our faith — liturgy, sacrament, and polity. Yet I think we are being judged by those who do not come to church but seek God. We are being looked upon by those who love Jesus and believe he would have similar criticisms of today’s church.
I think we are challenged to hold up today’s Scripture and ask ourselves, as individuals and as preachers and teachers: what are the things we are most concerned about? What are the items from the last meeting we went to that did not go our way, and so now we are harboring as essential to the life of our church? What are the items we hold most dear and most important: budget, altar guild, ritual, grounds, coffee hour? What are they, and how are they connected to the religious heart of our church? How are the things we hold as most important connected to the religious heart of Jesus’ Gospel?
This is a good exercise. Perhaps we should do the work corporately, and then offer ourselves to God and be reconciled to God, our neighbor, and the world. Then perhaps we can take a genuine step forward in mission, reconnecting our words and actions with our own heart and with the heart of Jesus and his Word.
“O God, you made us in your own image and redeemed us through Jesus your Son: Look with compassion on the whole human family; take away the arrogance and hatred which infect our hearts; break down the walls that separate us; unite us in bonds of love; and work through our struggle and confusion to accomplish your purposes on earth; that, in your good time, all nations and races may serve you in harmony around your heavenly throne.” — Paul’s warning to the Gentile branches not to boast has a collect of its own.
“God will not give up on us. His promise of life is centered in the death and resurrection of his Son, Jesus Christ. He is the Deliverer from sin, death, and the power of the devil for Jew and Gentile alike.”
“What a wonderful vision: God wants to have compassion towards all people — and will!”
Paul has made his case — one that I do not agree with — that Israel will not be saved at the last day. My view is in fact a generous view, given the fact that most Jews today do not believe as I do that reconciliation with God is possible by God’s doing and through God’s love. Some may be saved, he says, but not many.
Paul then explains how, like him, both Jews and Gentiles may come to believe, and that he is a chief example of how God is working his purpose out with his people the Israelites. God is faithful, and God intends to save his people. The Israelites are still his chosen people. God will lead the Israelites to this new understanding by means of the Gentile Christians and their faithfulness, he says.
Gentile Christians, who were once unfaithful and disobedient, are now part of the family of God. They are and can be examples to the Jews, and show them how to respond to the grace and mercy and love of God. They are to be examples to the world, to Jew and Gentile alike, of how to live with God. I think this is the part of the passage that will preach.
As a follower of Jesus who receives grace and the Spirit, I have an opportunity to live a life worthy of my saving. I have an opportunity, out of gratitude, to reflect the love of God to all people. In so doing they will be drawn towards God and God’s love.
I am not to spend a lot of time worrying about who is saved and who is not. Instead my work as a God-fearer and Jesus follower is to live a life of grace. I am to be, as C. S. Lewis said, a little Christ. In so doing, others will become as I am and in turn be Christs out in the world. This is our work. Freed from the law and forever united by the love of God, I am to respond out of gratitude and live a life of the Spirit for all the world to see — never boasting in my own saving work, but in the work of my Savior Jesus Christ.
“O God, the Father of all, whose Son commanded us to love our enemies: Lead them and us from prejudice to truth; deliver them and us from hatred, cruelty, and revenge; and in your good time enable us all to stand reconciled before you.” — Joseph stands before the men who sold him and weeps. The prayer book knows how long “your good time” can take.
“The text for today describes a moving scene of reconciliation, the self-revelation of Joseph to the brothers who sold him into slavery many years before, and gives us the theological lens through which to view the whole story of Joseph.”
“Joseph’s complicated family history teaches us that Israelite identity was a cultural and religious one, and not an ethnic or even national one in his time — and for some time to come.”
“Once powerless at the bottom of a pit, outnumbered by brothers who hated him, Joseph now gets to decide who will live and who will die. Having that power does not necessarily make Joseph a bad guy, but his use of that power to control those around him surely does, no matter how much he cries.”
In our passage for this week we have the great reconciliation moment between Joseph and his brothers. There has of course been a great drought, and his brothers have come to Egypt for help and find themselves before Joseph, who now oversees on behalf of the royal family. (Spoiler alert.) Joseph forgives them in the end. Joseph brings his brothers and family to Egypt, thereby completing the journey of the tribe into Israel and setting up the story of Moses.
I really like what Rabbi Jane Rachel Litman has to say in her Beliefnet article:
This week’s Torah portion, Vayiggash, probes the emotional tension of coming out after a lifetime of passing. It brings us to the dramatic climax of the Joseph story. Though a Hebrew, Joseph is now living as an Egyptian lord. He dresses as an Egyptian, he speaks as an Egyptian; in every outward respect he is Egyptian. His true identity is known only to himself and God. … From the time of his imprisonment until this climax, Joseph has assumed a more hardened and calculating face to the world. He cleverly guides Pharaoh into making him vizier of Egypt. He strategically deals with a great famine and makes a profit. He lies to his brothers and tests them. … At last, in this week’s portion, Joseph must choose whether to allow himself to be vulnerable — to be seen for who he is. … It is a moving moment indeed when the Torah recounts how Joseph sends everyone away, so that he is alone with his brothers, his “own kind,” when he reveals himself. Finally, letting go of his worldly, calculating, Egyptian facade, he comes out. “I am Joseph,” he sobs.
The idea that Joseph, like others before him, has had to hide and be someone else for so long is not a new theme in history. It is almost as if the old Joseph has died, as the brothers wished. The moment of transformation comes for him. He can stay hidden or be revealed. He can help his family or leave them to suffer the consequences. In a costly moment to himself he is able to be his created self — and in this way there is also aid for his family, and in the end reconciliation. While the story is clear that Joseph himself has been wronged, almost killed and sold into slavery, he must himself also pay a cost for reconciliation. He must unveil himself of his hatred and anger.
Oftentimes in reconciliation processes we are very attentive to what the other must do in order for us to move forward. Rarely are we aware of our own cost for the process, and what we will lose in order to gain reconciliation.
What are the items we hold most dear — budget, altar guild, ritual, grounds, coffee hour? How is each of them connected to the religious heart of Jesus’ Gospel?
Joseph had to unveil himself of his hatred and anger before reconciliation could come. What would you have to lose this week in order to gain it?
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