Fire and Salt (proper 21b)

Fire and Salt

30 September 2018

Proper 21B

Homily preached at Trinity Episcopal Church

Ashland, Oregon

The Rev. Fr. Tony Hutchinson, Ph.D, SCP

8:00 a.m. spoken Mass, 10:00 a.m. Sung Mass

Numbers 11:4-6, 10-16, 24-29; Psalm 19:7-14; James 5:13-20; Mark 9:38-50

God, take away our hearts of stone, and give us hearts of flesh. Amen

Yikes!  “Hack off your foot, poke out your eye, chop off your hand—if any of these cause you to stumble!”  How in the world to preach this saying of Jesus?  It is not only harsh—insanely so!—but doesn’t even make sense.  Your foot causes you to stumble, not your hand!  Of course, stumble here is simply a metaphor for moral failing, for sin.    But even as a metaphor, this is one of most macabre “hard sayings” of Jesus.   The image is so grotesque that Matthew (18:8-9), who normally follows Mark when he uses his material, reduces Mark's seven verses to two, while gentle Saint Luke omits it altogether (17:1-4).

Taken literally, this saying actually led third century Church father Origen to cut off body parts that had gotten in the way of his efforts at chastity.  As a result, Origen—one of the age’s best preachers and scholars of scripture—was never named a saint or a doctor of the Church. In fact, one of the first canons of the Council of Nicaea was to ban such self-mutilators from the priesthood.

The saying is not an announcement of divine law, but a vivid and sarcastic reply to the disciples’ complaint that starts the reading: “Jesus, look at that guy there!  He is not one of us, but he uses your name to heal people. We told him to stop but he won’t. You make him stop.”

They have just failed to drive out an evil spirit from a boy afflicted since childhood (Mark 9: 14-28) and this interloper seems to be succeeding just fine.  They want to be sole proprietors of Jesus’ franchise, to defend their market niche and brand integrity.  They want to be good partisans, followers of Jesus, and so they encourage him to cast out people who don’t maintain the purity of the brand. 

But as we saw in such disturbing vividness this week in the Kavanaugh hearing, partisanship is not a good basis for living the truth or seeking what’s right. 

I wish we lived in a country where people listen to women, and absent hard facts to the contrary, believe their stories and their truth.  I wish we lived in a country where political partisans do not give a pass to moral failings in their own leadership and then go for the jugular of their opponents for the same or similar failings.  I wish we lived in a country where Judge Kavanaugh had testified, “I drank too much as a high schooler and university student, and maybe since then.  I don’t remember many things from those times.  If I did what Dr. Blasey Ford says I did—and I have no recollection of this at all—then I must apologize for having done a horrible thing.  I am sorry, and commit to be part of the solution to the problem of sexual assault in the future, including protecting my two daughters from dangerous situations and relationships."  I wish. I wish. 

Jesus replies to his disciples, “Don't stop that strange exorcist. Just using my name might bring him closer to the kingdom. Whoever is not against us is for us.”

Clearly, not all of Jesus’ followers agreed.  The oral tradition turned the saying into its opposite “whoever is not with me is against me,” and this twisted form of the saying shows up in both Matthew (12:30) and Luke (Luke 9:49-50; but cf. 11:23).

The historical Jesus was more welcoming and inclusive, less controlling and hierarchical, than his followers.    “Punish that competitor!” they say. In reply he says the strange exorcist is actually on their team!  Even a simple kindness like giving someone a sip of water advances the kingdom. And petty nastiness, sticking out your leg to trip up any of Jesus’ “little ones” will lead to worse things than being drowned in the ocean.  This as a warning to keep Jesus’ own over-zealous followers from running roughshod over people like the unnamed healer.

Jesus is saying, “the truth does not lie in partisan adherence.”  He is saying, “If you are unkind and unfair to others, that is bad enough.  But if you do it supposedly in my name, to protect my brand, well, then your simply are not following me.  That strange healer is one of my little ones whether you like it or not, whether he recognizes it or not.  And doing harm to him is worse that being drowned in the ocean with a millstone tied around your neck.   You want me to stop him, to control him, cut him off?  Well if it’s cutting off you want, you should start cutting off your own body parts.”  Elsewhere he says it less gruesomely, but still in vivid, grotesque imagery:  “If you see a speck in someone’s eye, don’t try to remove it until you have removed the log stuck into your own eye!”   If you want to give someone hellfire and punishment, think about what you just might be attracting for yourself by so doing!”  “Judge not, lest you yourself be judged.” 

Jesus concludes, “Everyone will be salted with fire.”  The two great means in the ancient world of purification and preservation, salt and fire, are going to be the lot of us all.  How to be saved from suffering in that fire or drying up by that salt? You yourself must be salt for the world, leaven for the loaf, light in darkness. “Have salt in yourselves, by being at peace with one another.”

He is saying,   We need to live in peace with each other, and not constantly go about seeking the punishment or correction of others.  We need to define ourselves not by whmo we exclude, but rather, by whom we include.  Purification is a serious business, getting rid of faults is too. The only way we can do it without being destroyed by it is by gently caring for others.  Be a light, not a judge.

For Jesus, God is not a mere tribal deity, not a petty partisan. God makes the sun rise on and sends the clouds to rain on both the righteous and the wicked (Matt. 5:45). He is Israel’s God, to be sure, but only so that Israel can be a city on a hill, a light on a candlestick, salt to give flavor to and preserve the world (Matt. 5:14-16).   God is not just for Jews, not just for Jesus’ authorized franchise-holders, but for all.   Because we are all in God’s hand, we must accept diversity.

That ultimately is what the parable of the wheat and the weeds is all about—don’t worry about which plants are good or bad, because if you pull up the bad you’ll surely kill good ones as well. Wait until the harvest comes, and God will sort it out (Matt. 13: 24-30). 

It is also what the Hebrew scripture is about:  Moses’ deputies come to him and ask him to silence the two commoners prophesying in the camp.  They do not know that the two were part of the 70 chosen to have God’s spirit but who failed to show up to meeting.  “Silence them?” replies Moses, “Oh I wish that all of the people were prophets like these two!” 

Jesus urges solidarity among all God’s creatures. That’s why even unbelievers’ offers of glasses of water build the Kingdom. That’s why Jesus here says the strange exorcist is one of his own “little ones” in need of protection from being tripped up. 

Living peace doesn’t mean making nice, papering over evil, or thickening our conscience with an amoral detachment. Ask any marriage or family counselor, any labor mediator, or any mediator or negotiator in international or inter-ethnic conflict. They’ll all tell you that truly seeking peace is not easy, and not harmonious. It is not a false “let’s all just get along.”  It is not keeping silence about real hurt or injustice, whether you suffered it or caused it.  It is about honestly addressing real problems.  It is about doing so in a spirit of shared endeavor, of mutual effort to let shared desires and aspirations force us to listen carefully to the other party.

Jesus calls us to be good yeast leavening the loaf that is the world.  He calls us to be bright fires enlightening the darkness about us, and tasty salt enriching and preserving all of life. He calls us to be prophets running through the camp unfettered by dour hierarchs and controllers, alight with the flame of God’s word.  He does not call us to demonize, exclude, judge, or ostracize.

God alone will bring this world right. We all will be rubbed through and through with God’s salt. We all will be put through God’s fire. And because of this, we must live humbly and simply, praying for each other, including our enemies, and seek to help each other, work for justice, and live in peace.

In the name of God, Amen

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New Men and Old (midweek message)

Fr. Tony’s Midweek Message

New Men and Old

September 26, 2018

Last Sunday, we sang one of my favorite hymns, “Praise to the Lord, the Almighty, the King of Creation.”  

Praise to the Lord, the Almighty,
  the King of creation!
O my soul, praise Him, for He is thy
  health and salvation!
    All ye who hear,
Now to His temple draw near;
Sing now in glad adoration!

Praise to the Lord, who o’er all
  things so wondrously reigneth,
Who, as on wings of an eagle,
  uplifteth, sustaineth.
    Hast thou not seen
How thy desires all have been
Granted in what He ordaineth?

Praise to the Lord, who hath fearfully,
  wondrously, made thee!
Health hath vouchsafed and, when
  heedlessly falling, hath stayed thee.
    What need or grief
Ever hath failed of relief?
Wings of His mercy did shade thee.

Praise to the Lord, who doth prosper
  thy work and defend thee,
Who from the heavens the streams of
  His mercy doth send thee.
    Ponder anew
What the Almighty can do,
Who with His love doth befriend thee.

Praise to the Lord! Oh, let all that
  is in me adore Him!
All that hath life and breath, come
  now with praises before Him!
    Let the Amen
Sound from His people again;
Gladly for aye we adore Him.

This was my favorite hymn when I was a boy.  It kind of stuck out in the Mormon Hymnal:  among many sentimental nineteenth century gospel hymns with accidentals and dramatic modulations in the alto and tenor parts, this hymn had a solemn stateliness and balanced harmonies.  It, along with St. Francis’  “All creatures of our God and King” (sung to Lasst un erfreuen, like “Ye Watchers and ye holy ones”) was my all around favorite, and that is probably the first inkling in my life that I was not cut out for Mormonism, but for Anglican/Episcopalianism. 

The German original for “Praise to the Lord, the Almighty” was written by a German Reformed lay preacher and catechist named Joachim Neander (1650-1680).   His family name had originally been Neumann (“New man”); his grandfather had changed it to the Greek form (neos ander—new man) to mark himself as a teacher of Greek and Latin at a time when such name changes were fashionable.  Neander preached and taught in a valley of the river Dussel, where he spent a lot of time camping and hiking:  he loved the valley’s vistas and its deep caves.  Many of his poems and hymns are reflections on the beauty of God’s creation.  He later went to Bremmen as an associate pastor in a small church, but his heart remained in this valley (German: thal) until his early death at the age of thirty by tuberculosis. 

One of the caves he explored and wrote about was named after him: Neanderhoelle “Neander’s cave.”   Later, when the industrial revolution started remaking the face of that part of Germany, the valley was named after its most famous cave, and became “Neander’s Valley”  or Neanderthal.  It was here in 1856 that strange fossils were discovered that looked like slightly deformed human beings.  When like discoveries elsewhere confirmed that this was a early species closely related to modern human beings, they were named after the place of their first discovery, “Neanderthal Man.” 

We now know that this species is not an ancestor race to modern human beings, but a closely related cousin race that became extinct, probably because of unsuccessful competition with the ancestors of modern human beings.  We have isolated their DNA, and know that there was some interbreeding: some 10% of the modern human population has some Neanderthal DNA. 

I take a great deal of pleasure knowing that this nature-loving churchman gave his name for one of the earliest strong examples of what Darwin called “the origin of species” through natural selection and evolution.   The irony of these very ancient hominids being called “New Man Valley” people brings a smile to my face.  I on occasion wonder if there will be Neanderthals in heaven.  

There is tension, to be sure, between the apparent randomness of natural selection and our faith in a creator God who is provident.  But there is no inherent contradiction  between faith and science:  the later asks how things are the way they are and the former, the ultimate question of why. 

Grace and Peace,

Fr. Tony+ 

Afraid to Ask (Proper 20B)

Afraid to Ask

23 September 2018

Proper 20B

Homily preached at Trinity Episcopal Church

Ashland, Oregon

8:00 a.m. Said, 1000 a.m. Sung Mass

Wisdom of Solomon 1:16-2:1, 12-22; Psalm 54; James 3:13-4:3, 7-8a; Mark 9:30-37

All-Nurturing One, help us to ask and ask well.  God, open our eyes that we may see, our ears that we may hear, and our hearts that we may understand.  Amen

A couple of decades ago, Elena and I were going through a tough patch in our marriage.  We had three kids in college, and money was tight.  Both of us were working hard at our separate careers.  In the evenings, we were exhausted and had little time for each other.  We had stopped talking.  Resentments built up, and there was tension in almost all of our interactions.  Both of us knew something was deeply wrong.  But neither of us dared ask what was the matter.  We were afraid that talking might make the problem more real, harder to resolve.  If we lifted up that rock, we were afraid of what might crawl out.   It was only by seeking counseling and a long process of amendment of life and forgiveness that we were able to reclaim our sweet relationship, if anything strengthened and deepened by taking the risk of asking about what we feared to ask.  I am pretty sure that most of us have had similar experiences, whether with spouses, professional colleagues, or friends: afraid to ask, and suffering through the uncertainty and discomfort of not understanding, of not knowing. 

That is what the disciples in today’s Gospel experience.  Jesus tells them what he thinks might happen when he goes to Jerusalem, and it’s pretty grim.  “But they did not understand what he was saying and were afraid to ask him” (Mark 9:32). 

Who knows? Maybe they’re afraid to ask because they remember what happened the last time the subject came up, a story we read last week:  Peter tells Jesus not to be so pessimistic, and Jesus shuts him down, “Get behind me, Satan!”   For whatever reason, the disciples have to go through Holy Week with no clue about what will happen or what it means, with only a memory of puzzlement at Jesus’ saying, and not a memory of how he explained it. 

There are many things we do not understand.  There are many things we are afraid of asking.   But our unwillingness to broach a subject, or to avoid it, or postpone or procrastinate it, can be a useful indicator of where our issues are, what triggers we have.  

Most of today's scriptures touch on this:  the Wisdom of Solomon talks about wicked people who cannot bear a righteous person, who try to avoid him and then try to kill him, because they don't want to ask the questions his presence raises.  James says strife and dissension come from hearts that are not right, and adds that we do not ask, or if we do, don't ask right. 

One of my besetting sins is procrastination.  I took 20 years to finish my doctoral dissertation at the Catholic University of America—but the first 15 of those were wasted with procrastination. I was afraid to write something that might be rejected, or ridiculed, or even barely criticized by my Jesuit dissertation adviser.   Fear of failure, but more important, fear of the obligations of success:  actually submitting a draft meant subjecting myself to the process of editing and criticism.  It meant having to revise, having to change, actually stretching myself beyond where I was.  The dissertation had become an unmentionable subject at home, one of the many issues troubling our marriage.   I realized that if I saw one of my advisers or professors on the street, I would have crossed over to the other side to avoid greeting them.  When we moved back into the area and Elena began her master’s degree at CUA, the time was right to bell the cat and address the un-addressable.    Under counseling, I decided to make amends, and put this to rest.   I made appointments to apologize and clear the air.  My adviser, though, surprised me and asked me to resume my work.   If I committed to finishing, he would commit to getting me readmitted and my committee reconstituted.  Here’s the thing—once I started again, it was not about finishing for me.  It was not about writing the perfect dissertation and getting it right on the first draft.  It was about putting in three hours a day and doing one day of library work once a week.  It was about putting in the time and effort, regardless of results.  That way, if I failed, at least I knew that I had given it an honest effort and would not have to go around hiding from topics of discussion or people.  Once I started, it only took four years.  But I first had to be willing to look under that rock, ask that question I was afraid to ask. 

Not asking is one sign of fear.  Procrastination is another.  So is distraction, always missing the crucial point and focusing on side issues.  Another is anger and outbursts of control freakiness. 

What do we fear? 

We usually find that question hard to answer since we almost automatically avoid what we fear, and shy away from it.  Fear produces blind spots. 

It might be more helpful to ask:  what do we avoid?  What do we postpone and put off? In what scenes are we like the cartoon characters that cover their eyes and say, “I can’t bear to look?” 

Here are some questions I have noticed that are often avoided:

What is it about me that makes it so this situation angers me so? 

How have I hurt someone? 

Can I forgive? 

Do I enjoy privilege because of my skin color, or gender? 

What is my part in the ongoing degradation of the natural environment and ruination of the planet?

 

How have I discouraged others from expressing their ideals and feelings? 

There are some ethics and limits on approaching things that have we have put off or have put us off.  In the Twelve Steps, we are advised to make a fearless moral inventory and a list of people we have harmed, and then make “direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.”  Sometimes, simply recognizing a problem and making quiet amends is better than broaching difficult matters and causing further hurt. 

If we are in a position of privilege or power, it is all the more important to ask the hard question.  Studied ignorance in such situations is a recipe for serious harm.  This is why James Baldwin said, “It is certain, in any case, that ignorance allied with power is the most ferocious enemy justice can have.”   Denial is the principal operator here, as is a stubborn refusal to listen to perspectives different from our own.  “La-la-la I can’t hear you” is another way of saying “I can’t bear to look.”  

If we are afraid to ask about or address a situation where we were the one harmed, it is important to talk to others, get support, and not be afraid any longer.  Lift up the rock and watch what crawls out.   This is one of the great things about the #METOO movement.  And if the abuser won’t accept your complaint or accusation, or even replies with further abuse, or if the system won’t favorably reply to you, either because of the corrupting entrenched power of privilege, partisanship, or because of honest concerns about preserving our society’s commitment of a presumption of innocence for any accused person, do not shut down and let that abuser win.  Be fearless and stick with your story.  As Martin Luther King taught, "The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice." 

We are all called to face our fears.  It is, I believe, part of accepting Jesus’ invitation to “take up your cross and follow me.” 

I invite all of us this week to look into our hearts and find evidences of blind spots and fears. What are the things in your life that make you want to look small so no one will notice you?  Go to the other side of the street?  Avoid someone?  What always pushes your justice button or makes you angry?  What questions are you afraid to ask?  Why? 
Such a practice will help us identify our fears and understand what is our responsibility and what is someone else’s.  Once we have an idea of where we are afraid to ask, talking it over with a trusted friend or counselor, or even with what the prayer book calls “a discreet priest” will help us actually see true blind spots.  

All of this will give us courage and heart to face our fears, take responsibility for our misdoings and amend them, and let go of resentment at the misdoings of others. 

In the name of Christ,  Amen.  

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Dreadful Toadying (midweek message)

Fr. Tony’s Midweek Message

September 19, 2018

“Dreadful Toadying”

Proper from last Sunday:

“O God, because without you we are not able to please you, mercifully grant that your Holy Spirit may in all things direct and rule our hearts; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit,

one God, now and for ever. Amen.”

When I first heard this collect after coming into the Episcopal Church, I was struck by what I thought was its unhealthy demeaning of self and implicit Calvinist stress on human depravity.  I had been raised Mormon, a Pelagian tradition that denies Original Sin, stresses the innate goodness of every human being upon birth, and affirms in its Articles of Faith that “Men shall be punished for their own sins, and not for Adam’s transgression.”  Free choice was a real thing, not just an appearance.  So the idea that we are crippled, unable to choose the right or please God unless somehow God worked a fix on us first, was wholly strange to me.   The prayer struck me like the prayer in the English Public School scene in Monty Python’s Meaning of Life: 

“O Lord, you are so big!  So absolutely huge! Gosh, we are really impressed down here, I can tell you!  Forgive us, O Lord, for this our dreadful toadying.  But you are so strong and just so SUPER!  Amen.” 

O Lord you are so big! 

Part of the reason I had left Mormonism was the high psychological cost many of its members paid for a thoroughgoing Pelagianism:  people with obsessive or compulsive problems, including addictions, were often seen as wholly unregenerate and willful, stubborn in their sins because they could just not seem to be able to pull up their socks, change their behavior, and stop relapsing.  I knew many Mormons who had a hard time mouthing the words of, let alone believing, the first part of any of the 12 Step Programs: “We admitted that we were powerless and that our lives had become unmanageable.” This, despite the LDS Church's endorsement of the Twelve Steps as a therapeutic and pastoral program. 

It took me years to understand what the true teaching of the Christian Church on such things was:  the doctrine original sin is not so much a doctrine of inborn depravity and universally merited punishment as it is an affirmation that as good as creation and human life are, we are in the final analysis unable to do it all ourselves.   God’s creative work in us is not yet finished, and we need to get out of the way to let God finish the task of creating us as something “good, very good.” 

I no longer think this week’s collect is toadying or self-denying.  Rather, it talks of God’s universal salvific will, the fact that God wants us all to reach the measure of our creation.  It talks of what theologians call “prevenient grace,” God’s unconditional loving kindness that goes before us and empowers us to choose and act beyond what we otherwise are able to do on our own. 

Most of us have had the experience of having a spouse be unhappy with us for not doing some task, or meeting some need, and when we say “but you didn’t ask me to do that,” hearing in reply, “That’s exactly why I’m angry—I should not have to need to ask you for this.  You should know without me asking.”   Relationship implies a knowledge of the beloved, and the ability to anticipate needs and desires.  Faith is a relationship with God, the Beloved.  And what we cannot anticipate of the Beloved’s desires, the Beloved makes up for with grace itself.   As we continue living in the Spirit, having the Spirit rule and direct our heart and minds, such grace becomes mutual, and our love of God becomes as unconditional as is God’s love for us. 

Grace and Peace, 

Fr. Tony+    

9-11 Intercessions

Fr. Tony’s Midweek Message

9-11 Intercessions

September 11, 2018

I wrote the following inter-faith prayer, drawing from Christian, Jewish, and Muslim traditions, for a U.S. Embassy Memorial Service in Beijing on the 9-11 10^th anniversary in 2011.   I share it now again on the occasion of this, the 17^th anniversary of the attacks. 

Intercessions for the Anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001 Terrorist Attacks

All-loving and compassionate God, as we pause today to look back and to look forward, to remember and to commit ourselves, we pray to you, our only defender and author of peace.

Helper and healer of all who suffer, remember all victims of violence—those who died and those injured, those grieving and those grieved for, those who witnessed evil and thus were wounded and scarred—give them rest, and healing, and wholeness.  Remember the works of their hands and the message of their hearts.
God of mercy,
hear our prayer.

Sustainer of hope and giver of courage, bless those whom terror has gripped, those whom horror has robbed of hope and meaning, those whose hearts have grown small because of hurt.  Bring forth water in the desert to quench the thirst of their despair.
God of mercy,
hear our prayer.

Creator of all, you know our hearts and from you no secret is hid.   Wash clean our hearts of every enduring anger, hatred, and prejudice.  Calm our hearts with the gift of serenity, and help us accept what we cannot change, no matter how unacceptable it may seem.  Help us to live our best values, and purify them also to be in accordance with your will. 
God of mercy,
hear our prayer.

Defender of the weak, protect those who also help the weak by being first-responders to crisis and disaster.  Bless those who died in this heroic service on this day in 2001: the police, the fire-fighters, the care-givers.  Bless their families and friends who grieve.  Remember the works of their hands and the message of their hearts. 
God of mercy,
hear our prayer.

Creator of the Day of Judgment, you who punish wrong-doing and bless up-right acts, who weigh each and every heart, bring to justice and right desserts those who seek the innocent to do them harm. 

God of mercy,

hear our prayer. 

Victor over Injustice and Evil, protect those who work to build a more just world, and establish peace and tranquility where there is none.  We pray for our political leaders, diplomats, law enforcement officers, intelligence community and military service members, and all who work to bring about an end to the scourge of political, religious, or ethnic terrorism. Protect them and guide them, and grant them wisdom and judgment.  Make them strong and give them courage.  Keep them from harm from the evil they may see, and safeguard them from becoming callous or brutal in the struggle.  May your countenance shine upon them, and the glory of your face smile over their just works. 

God of mercy,
hear our prayer.

All-Gracious God, we pray today remembering that we are but dust and ashes, the flower of the grass that fades away in a day.  On you O Lord, we place our trust.  Never let us be confounded.  We say this all for your tender mercy’s sake, AMEN.  

Grace and Peace, 

Fr. Tony+

A Dog named Hoover (proper 18b)

The Canaanite Woman, from the Très Riches Heurers 

du Duc de Berry. The Conde Museum, Chantilly.

 

A Dog named Hoover

9 September 2018

Proper 18B

Homily preached at Trinity Episcopal Church

Ashland, Oregon

9:00 a.m. Sung Mass

Isaiah 35:4-7a; Psalm 146; James 2:1-10, (11-13), 14-17; Mark 7:24-37

God, take away our hearts of stone, and give us hearts of flesh. Amen

In today’s Gospel, Jesus is traveling in the primarily Gentile territory.  A local woman enters and asks him for help. This is a violation of propriety:  in that society women were not supposed to directly engage with strangers who were men.  In Matthew’s telling of this story, she is labelled with the anachronistic Old Testament word Canaanite: an unclean and idolatrous pagan.   In Mark, she is a called a Greek, of mixed Syrian and Phoenician stock: a New Testament contemporary way of identifying a mixed-heritage pagan, coming from the two great oppressors of the Jewish people from before the Romans arrived. 

This gentile woman is worried about her daughter, whose abnormal behavior appears to result from possession by something outside of herself.  The woman has heard that this Jewish wonder-worker Jesus can expel such spirits.  She begs Jesus to cast out the demon. 

Now the way Jesus reacts is quite offensive to us of modern sensibilities.  It was also offensive to ancient sensibilities, and that is the reason that Luke drops this story from those he borrows from Mark’s Gospel.

In Matthew, Jesus ignores her.  It is almost like he cannot hear her. She only gets louder.  When the disciples just can’t bear the commotion any longer and ask Jesus to break his silence and just send the woman away, his reply is that is he is focused on his work in calling his fellow Jews to change their hearts and ways, and can’t take the time for this woman.  She begs him directly, “Lord, help me.” 

His reply here is no longer simply cold and unfeeling: “I can’t take food set aside for the children and throw it away for dogs to eat.”  The slur implied by the word dogs, seems downright bigoted.  

Christians have tried to explain away the slur ever since:  As I said before, Luke simply deletes the story and does not include it in his Gospel.  Some of the Church Fathers say that Jesus was simply testing the woman’s faith by using the slur ironically to see if she would persist.  Others have tried to take the sting out of the phrase by noting that the Greek word used in the text is a diminutive kynarios “little dog,” instead of the more common kynos “dog.”   So Jesus presumably would be saying,  “It’s wrong to take babies’ food and give it to puppies.”   But in either case, the slur remains a slur, and stays offensive.  

Jesus' talk here about divine blessing as a zero sum game is strange.  In his previous feeding of the 5,000, there was a ridiculous overabundance of leftovers.  Jesus’ parables talk about the crazy profligacy of God’s grace. 

But the pagan woman persists. She takes Jesus’ harsh word and turns it on its head with a bit of wit and chutzpah:  “Oh, but dogs under the table can eat the crumbs that fall, can’t they?”  Jesus says here: “this food is too good for you, you dogs,” and she replies, “So I'm a dog.  But don't call me Rover.  Call me Hoover.  ‘Cuz I can hoover up all those scraps just as they fall from your table!”  

Jesus’ reply in Matthew is amazing.  “Great is your faith, woman!”  The rhetoric and word order stresses GREAT.  “You are a GIANT in faith, lady.  Finally, I find someone who gets it, and surprise, surprise, she’s a gentile!  She’s a pagan! She’s a she!”

The exorcism is performed at a distance, just like in the two other stories of Jesus healing at a distance, the healing of the centurion’s servant (Matt. 8:5-13) and of the royal official’s son (John 4:46-54).   Note in all cases, the healing at a distance is done for people seen as beyond the pale.  These are stories about the far reach of Jesus’ grace, not about the worthiness or lack thereof of the recipients.  In the next story in Mark, read today, Jesus proceeds into the Decapolis, also gentile territory, and there heals a deaf man.  No longer does he seem exclusively focused on Jews. 

Reading the story as if Jesus is a bigot and the woman an activist who shakes up Jesus’ world so that he becomes WOKE is a misreading.  The tribalism and sectarianism at work in this story is a classic case of a conflict of basic moral imperatives:  the call to special benevolence to those who share your family, religious, and national ties and the call for general benevolence to all people. Jesus turns away here not so much from falling short of the mark or a rebellion against God (a “sin”), but from a misapplying of right principles to the harm of a very real human being right in front of him.  When she says she’s a dog named Hoover, he reframes things and realizes that despite his upbringing, this woman too is part of his tribe, the human family. 

Reading this story as if the Syro-Phoenician woman is a model for us to follow misses the point:  this is not a story trying to say that if only your faith were great enough, God will hear your prayers and grant you your wishes.  Faith here is not a magic trick.   In such magical thinking lies only pain—because when bad things happen to people, whether they are good people or bad people, this way of thinking chalks it up as the fault of those who did not get their way with God.  And if good things happen, then it is the result of the successful use of the trick.  Such a view reduces the Lord’s Book of Blessings to simply a Book of Spells.  

Put bluntly, this story isn’t about you, and about whether you are worthy or faithful enough for God’s blessings.  The focus of the story is Jesus, not the woman.   In this scene, Jesus, who loves a good joke and regularly tells parables with brutally witty edges, is bested in a contest of wit by the wise-cracking woman who is desperate for her child’s health.  She takes the callous slur Jesus has unthinkingly adopted from his upbringing, and turns it on its head.  Jesus in response laughs out loud, sees he has been had, and recognizes the faith, the trust, in the woman’s heart that drives her persistence and audacity. 

And so he turns back from—repents, as it were—of the casual callousness that his focus on his mission and on the boundaries his religion has set.  To be sure, as the Tractate to the Hebrews teaches, Jesus was like us in all things but sin.  He is not so much turning from sin here as he is opening himself further to the unexplored country to which God is leading him.  This scene anticipates the great shift in the Christian faith from mission only to Jews to mission to all.  It anticipates the great vision of St. Paul where “In Christ, there is no Jew nor Gentile, no slave nor free, no woman nor man.”

To me it is very comforting to think of Jesus here listening to the outsider and actually changing his mind.  Her wit and snappy response makes him laugh, and his mind opens.  He sees that it is not a zero sum, and that all his stories about a profligate loving God actually mean something.  God’s grace is wider he previously had thought appropriate. 

To me it is very comforting to think that a Canaanite half-breed pushy woman talking out of turn and beyond the bounds of propriety could get the best of Jesus by showing him how similar they were and as a result Jesus would bless her. 

None of us should afraid and ashamed to approach God when we feel the need for God.  Maybe a little bit of pushy persistence on our part is in order, a bit more witty and humorous audacity.    The woman was desperate and willing to go all out on the off chance that what she heard about Jesus as a healer was true.  When God appears forbidding and unwelcoming to us, that is precisely the time we need to remember the words of the prayer, “O God, whose nature is always to have mercy” and that, despite whatever we think may separate us from his grace.  That is precisely the time that we, like this woman, this dog named Hoover, need to focus on the love and compassion of God rather than on the boundaries that exclude us, or what people say about God's judgment. 

In the name of God, Amen

Theocrats and Crooks

Fr. Tony’s Midweek Message

Theocrats and Crooks

September 5, 2018

Almighty God, who has given us this good land for our heritage: We humbly beseech you that we may always prove ourselves a people mindful of your favor and glad to do your will. Bless our land with honorable industry, sound learning, and pure manners. Save us from violence, discord, and confusion; from pride and arrogance, and from every evil way. Defend our liberties, and fashion into one united people the multitudes brought here out of many kindreds and tongues. Endue with the spirit of wisdom those to whom in your Name we entrust the authority of government, that there may be justice and peace at home, and that, through obedience to your law, we may show forth your praise among the nations of the earth. In the time of prosperity, fill our hearts with thankfulness, and in the day of trouble, suffer not our trust in you to fail; all which we ask through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. (BCP, 820)

As we go into the midterm election season with a profoundly divided electorate  and as we hear ever more disturbing reports of the quality of our national leadership, it is important to remember that as Christians in a democracy, we have a moral obligation to try to vote in good people who, in the words of the Prayer Book, will be dedicated to truth and “ever mindful of their calling to serve” the common good in the fear of God. 

Some calling themselves Christians have provided the core support of what appears increasingly to be a profoundly corrupt leadership:  some even say that it was God who called these liars to their powerful roles.  I am reminded of a statement that C.S. Lewis made about corrupt leaders on the one hand, and religious fanatics as leaders on the other: 

“I am a democrat because I believe that no man or group of men is good enough to be trusted with uncontrolled power over others. And the higher the pretensions of such power, the more dangerous I think it both to the rulers and to the subjects. Hence Theocracy is the worst of all governments. If you must have a tyrant, a robber baron is far better than an inquisitor. The baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity at some point be sated; and since he dimly knows he is doing wrong he may possibly repent. But the inquisitor who mistakes his own cruelty and lust of power and fear for the voice of Heaven will torment us infinitely because he torments us with the approval of his own conscience and his better impulses appear to him as temptations. And since Theocracy is the worst, the nearer any government approaches to Theocracy the worse it will be."

(On Stories: And Other Essays on Literature. Copyright © 1982, 1966 by C. S. Lewis Pte. Ltd.)

No one party has a monopoly on corruption or lying, or of sincerely exploiting religion or a sense of being in the right to do horrible things.  We should not let this cloud our vision when voting however:  don’t vote for liars, crooks, or tyrants who claim that “Jesus is on our side.”  

Grace and Peace.  
Fr. Tony+