Matthew
15:21-28
September 14, 2014
Jesus left
that place and went away to the district of Tyre and Sidon. Just then a
Canaanite woman from that region came out and started shouting, “Have mercy on
me, Lord, Son of David; my daughter is tormented by a demon.” But he did not
answer her at all. And his disciples came and urged him, saying, “Send her
away, for she keeps shouting after us.” He answered, “I was sent only to the
lost sheep of the house of Israel.” 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.” She said, “Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs
that fall from their masters’ table.” Then Jesus answered her, “Woman, great is
your faith! Let it be done for you as you wish.” And her daughter was healed
instantly.
I think this is one of the most remarkable passages in
the Gospels. Why? Because it shows something about Jesus that most neither recognize
nor appreciate. It demonstrates his willingness to change and be transformed
himself. This isn’t an attribute most people recognize in Jesus.
Many Christians tend to think that Jesus sort of came out
of the womb fully formed spiritually. They think that he understood from the
beginning what his mission was, and how to achieve it. They seem to think that
he knew everything that was going to happen to him, and so everything that
happened was pre-planned or at least pre-known.
What I find so powerful about this passage is that it says
something quite different from what we tend to believe. It showed that Jesus
was strong enough spiritually and mentally to change his thinking, and in the
process to adapt his mission. In our passage, Jesus went from being a messiah
to the Jews to a messiah for the world.
Reflect back on the story. Jesus is in the area around
the Sea of Galilee, and he is preaching, teaching, and healing many there. Out
of the crowd a Canaanite woman approaches him and asks him to heal his
daughter, whom she says is afflicted by a demon. Today we might say has some
sort of mental illness, although some do suffer spiritual illness.
The disciples urge Jesus to send her away because they
believe their mission is not to peopple like her. A bit of background is
helpful here. The woman is a Canaanite, one of the age-old enemies of the
Israelites. You remember them from the Old Testament. They were the enemies when
the Jews entered the Promised Land. They were the residents there, and the Jews
pushed them to the lands outside what became Israel. From that time on, the
Canaanites were enemies. Many battles were waged against them. The only reason
the Israelites weren’t at war with them at the time of Jesus was that both
people were under Roman subjugation. They didn’t have an opportunity to fight.
But the disciples were right, at least in terms of what Jesus had taught them:
Jesus had come only for the House of Israel.
So Jesus tried to shoo her away. At first he says, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the
house of Israel.” That doesn’t sway her. She asks for help anyway. Then he
says something awful to her: “It is not
fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.” Imagine being
called a dog by Jesus. It was a worse insult then than now. Only the rich had
dogs for pets. Most dogs in that age were mangy scavengers. They were mostly
mongrels who hung outside of family homes, waiting for scraps and crumbs. To
call her a dog was to say that she was nothing but a scavenging mongrel,
unworthy of human attention. It really seemed as though Jesus only understood
his mission as being one to the Jews. Up to that point he had few dealings with
people outside the Jewish faith.
Then she courageously replied, “Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their
masters’ table.” That one comment changed Jesus. It seemed to transform
him. Perhaps the Spirit was speaking through her. From that moment he
understood that he wasn’t just for the Jews, but he was for all. He praised her
for her faith and healed her daughter. And as a result, what became the church
was transformed.
Jesus preached began to preach a message of unity not
just for the Jews, but for all people, a message that Paul eventually took to
heart and made tangible (as did the other apostles) by creating a church that
brought together Jews and Gentiles, slave and free, male and female, rich an
poor. No longer would differences keep people from God. Jesus preached a God
who loved everyone, and called all people to come together.
Jesus had been formed in a particular way, but he was
open to being continually reformed and transformed. This story highlights that
idea, and it also brings out an essential principle of being Presbyterian: Ecclesia reformata, semper reformanda.
Do you recognize those words. They are at the heart
of what it means to be a Presbyterian. They mean, the church reformed, always being reformed. This is an idea that
everything we do is built upon, but it’s also an idea that many Christians and
churches resist. It’s the idea that we have to always be open to how God may be
calling us to change our thinking, while at the same time always being grounded
in God’s teachings. For us Presbyterians, it means keeping one foot in the
past, while we always seek to discern where God is leading us in the future. Reformata, semper reformanda is rooted
in our scripture for today, and also in Jesus’ constantly breaking the law in
order to bring God’s reforming grace. He was constantly accused of breaking the
law and of being sinful, but he understood that the law was made to help
humans, humans weren’t made to simply serve the law.
What does reformata,
semper reformanda look like on a tangible level. Look at our worship
service and sanctuary and you can see how we Presbyterians are both reformata and semper reformanda. We are
Presbyterian in structure, which means that our worship services always feature
the reading of scripture at the center, along with praise, prayers, and
reflections on scripture. But we also add other elements. We’ve added elements
from other traditions, such as communion every Sunday in our first service
which is a tradition taken from the Catholic, Episcopalian, Lutheran churches.
And we offer wine and juice, combining the traditions of those other
denominations with ours. We read scripture in the beginning of our service,
which comes from the Baptist tradition. We sing contemporary, traditional, and
other forms of music that come from gospel, Hispanic, Celtic, Taizé, secular
traditions. We have art on our walls, where other Presbyterian churches often
just have white walls stripped of all art. We integrated different elements.
Why? Because we come out of a “reformed” tradition, but we are always open to
how we need to change to meet the demands of a changing world. We were reformata, but we are always asking how
we are called to become reformanda.
Our being reformata,
semper reformanda also creates problems for us because some people only
want to be reformata, while others
only want to be semper reformanda.
Some people want the church to always remain the same and resist change (for
example, the Roman Catholic tradition), while others want to get rid of the
shackles of the past and recreate the church, and even all religious pursuits (for
example, the New Age tradition), in their own image. We take a different
approach by trying to keep one foot in the past—in where we came from, which is
the reforming of the church in the 16th century—and one in the
future to where God is calling us.
What this means is that Presbyterians always grapple with
how to be faithful to God in an ever-changing world, and it causes us to
grapple with really difficult issues that other churches avoid. For example,
how do we respond to war and terrorism? Many churches respond in simple,
age-old ways: either embrace war against terrorism because we have to protect
ourselves, or maintain peace because all war is wrong. Presbyterians struggle
with it, and we debate it, and we fumble around in it, trying to come up with
the answer that is rooted in our traditions, while also being open to how the
present circumstances may call for a different response from the past.
We also grapple with how we are called to respond to
world crises and poverty. When crises arise, we always struggle to figure out
how to respond. In many ways, it is in these crises that Presbyterians are at
our best. Most people don’t know this, but when there is an earthquake,
tsunami, hurricane, or other natural disaster around the world, Presbyterians
are among the first to rush to people’s aid, and among the last to leave. For
example, Presbyterians are still heavily involved in places like Haiti, helping
individuals and the country rebuild their lives.
We also grapple with how to live with and behave towards
those of other religions, and because of that the way we see other faiths is
different today than it was fifty years ago. Fifty years ago, there was
skepticism about those of other denominations within Christianity, as
Presbyterians felt comfortable asserting their preeminence over those of other
denominations. Today, we accept those of other denominations as being equal to
us, but as practicing their faith differently from us in ways that are still
valid. The struggle today is whether we accept the validity of other faiths. A
few years ago our General Assembly, the body that is responsible for making
decisions in these more global areas of faith, sent a message out to churches
encouraging all of us, when possible, to have joint worship services with those
of other religions—specifically Muslims and Jews.
Just doing this caused an uproar in some circles,
especially here in our presbytery, Beaver Butler Presbytery. There were a
number of pastors and churches that said our having joint worship services,
whether they be funerals, weddings, or other services, was a blasphemy against
Christ. They were asserting an ages old belief that Muslims and Jews were not
saved, and therefore inferior to Christianity. Their feet were in the church of
the past, while many other Presbyterians were trying to see if God is calling
us to be a different way in the future. This struggle to be reformed and always
reforming isn’t easy for us.
It is because we are reformed, always being reformed,
that the Presbyterian Church (USA) continues to grapple with the issue of
homosexuality. We have made recent decisions that have to do with the
ordination of homosexuals and with our stance toward marriage. It is bound to
upset people. How could the Presbyterian Church do that? The reason is that we
are reformed, and always reformed: reformata,
semper reformanda. We grapple with these issues and ask the question, much
like Jesus with the Canaanite woman, what is God calling us to do now? We may
not get it right, but we try. We don’t simply say, “This is the way it was in
the beginning and so now must be that way forever.” We are like Jesus, who
broke the law at times in order to help people seek and serve God better.
Jesus constantly did things that were seen as blasphemous
and lawbreaking in his time. He ate with sinners, he received a cup of water
from a sinful Samaritan woman, he forgave people (an ability only reserved for
God, according to the Pharisees), and much more. In all of these he broke
religious laws and convention, doing things that would have made him ritually
unclean and blasphemous. But that didn’t stop him. He grappled with the past
while seeking what the Father wanted for the future. We do the same. It’s part
of our Presbyterian DNA.
There are many times when what we do seems wrong to me.
But I don’t leave our denomination because of it. I recognize that I am a
person who is reformed, and always seeking to be reformed so that I can be
transformed. And I’m part of a denomination that does the same thing. When we reform
ourselves, we are being Presbyterian, and being like Jesus, who called the
woman a dog and then praised her for having great faith.
If you can’t grapple with God’s call to be reformed and
transformed, it is difficult to be a Presbyterian because we are a church that
has one foot in the past and one in the future, when many would like to be one
or the other. We are called to be both reformata
and semper reformanda, both as a
church and individually.
Amen.
