"Why Won't God Just Leave Us Alone?"
A Sunday Sermon Preached by
The Rev. Thomas C. Leinbach
August 17, 2008 - Harwich, Massachusetts

Preaching Text: "Jesus answered, 'It is not fair to take the children's food and throw it to the dogs.'" (Matthew 15:20)

This past week, during a lunch break, I took about five or ten minutes to stare at the beauty of Red River Beach. What made it of particular interest that day was the unusual cloud formations.

I don't know if you noticed, but earlier this week we were in a weather pattern where clouds and rain seemed to come and go, only to be replaced again by clear blue skies. The clouds themselves were bright and billowy - and uncommonly large.

At the beach, these immense clouds hung a few miles offshore, framing the summery scene. Together with the sky and sea, the impression was one of variations of color, like layers of a parfait. On shore, the sea grass waved gently in the breeze, as people on the yellowish-brown sand sat under blue umbrellas. The scene was idyllic. Another lazy, restful day on Cape Cod!

Returning to church, I re-read today's gospel reading from Matthew. Very quickly I realized that Jesus was not having an idyllic day at the beach! Once again he is being hounded by the relentlessness of human need.

As you'll recall, over the last few weeks we've witnessed Jesus ministering to larger and larger crowds. After hearing of Herod's butchering of John the Baptist, Jesus attempts to get away, only to be tracked down by the same crowds. Despite his weariness and despair, he willingly ministers to the people, even supplying food for the large crowd with just five loaves of bread and two fish.

Last week, he finally extricates himself, sending both the crowds and the disciples away. He goes to a high place and there begins to pray, to think, to heal. After only a few hours of respite, he sees the disciples out in their boat, caught in one of the sudden, violent storms common on the Sea of Galilee. So again he responds to their needs and rescues Peter, by pulling him out of the angry waters, and the rest of them, by stilling the storm.

Back on shore, word spreads quickly that he has arrived, and the people flock to him yet again. On top of this, he suddenly is confronted by a group of hostile scribes and Pharisees from Jerusalem who question him about his disciples' practice of eating with unwashed hands, in direct violation of Mosaic Law. Here there is no rest for the weary.

In today's reading he tries another tack. He leaves the area and heads into the district of Tyre and Sidon, Gentile territory, where presumably no one will know him. But, alas, a certain Canaanite woman finds him and immediately starts shouting out, "Have mercy on me, Lord, Son of David; my daughter is tormented by a demon."

Jesus then does something we find all but impossible to accept. He completely ignores her desperate plea! The disciples, in kind, try to usher her away. When Jesus finally does speak, he speaks harshly: "I was sent only to the lost sheep of Israel," he says. Later, in a back-and-forth exchange with the woman, he even refers to her people, the Canaanites, as "dogs."

Eventually, as we know, Jesus relents. He tells her, "Woman, great is your faith! Let it be done for you as you wish." And instantly, we are told, her daughter is healed.

Some have tried to soften Jesus' words and actions. But they stand stubbornly unvarnished. Some have suggested that Jesus was making a parable-type reference, with "dogs" referring to household pets rather than the more pejorative connotation. Either way, Jesus responds in a fashion we would not have thought possible. Rather than appearing generous and kind, he comes across as uncaring, even heartless.

Some have suggested that Jesus simply was having a bad day. He was tired, troubled and needed to be alone. He was human, after all. (The author of Hebrews reminds us that he was tested in every way, as we are.) As such, or so the argument goes, his ultimate willingness to help the woman becomes that much more significant, that much more gracious.

Then again, is it possible that something else is at work here?

Over the last few weeks, I've repeated stories from previous sermons, and here I must indulge you again. (My only defense, not that you asked, is that it's about the best example I can come up with.)

When I was growing up, I had two brothers who, though similar in many ways, differed dramatically in others. My oldest brother, for instance, the dutiful eldest son, was very conscientious. He studied all the time. I still remember him practicing his clarinet. Every once in a while, no matter where you were in the house, you'd hear this loud thump coming from his room, as he stamped his foot on the floor. This meant, of course, that he had made a mistake.

My other brother, however, the second-born, felt absolutely none of this compulsion to study or, for that matter, to go about being the dutiful son! He was perfectly content to do whatever he wanted, carefree and untroubled.

When my oldest brother reached his late teens, my parents decided he should have more fun. As it turned out, he had an interest in motorcycles and my parents actively encouraged him to get one. He was responsible and would be careful, they figured…and he even might have fun!

My other brother, on the other hand, had little trouble having fun. Fun, in fact, could have been his middle name! So when he also decided it'd be great fun to get a motorcycle, my parents put their collective feet down (though I can't remember whether they stamped them or not!).

So what's my point? Simply that in order to effect the good, different people and different circumstances often require different approaches. While one brother might benefit from a certain action, the other might be harmed by it. Different times, different circumstances, different people often have different needs.

When we read today's Matthew story, we generally interpret it from a uniquely modern standpoint. We consider how Jesus harshly reprimanded the scribes and Pharisees, the custodians of tradition in his day. We see narrow authority being justly criticized. We see Jesus breaking new ground, challenging Israel's time-honored prohibition against outsiders. Boundaries are being broken down…and none too soon.

Today, of course, it's easier to miss the true significance of Jesus' actions, here and elsewhere, because today we routinely consider boundaries, or distinctions in general, as largely immaterial, as already overcome. That Jesus would minister to this Canaanite "foreigner" strikes us as entirely normal. After all, why wouldn't he?

Jesus' contemporaries, on the other hand, would have found his actions shocking, because in Jesus' day authoritarianism was unquestioned and iron-clad. Despite this same kind of authoritarianism in some parts of our world today, this is not the experience of most modern-day Westerners.

But in Jesus' day, tradition was non-negotiable. A man's role was set, as was a woman's and a child's. One's place in society was proscribed, fixed. Political, social and religious norms were, as they say, "set in stone." Obedience to them was a given. And the penalty for breaking them was swift and severe, sometimes leading even to one's being banished from the community in which they lived.

When Leo Tolstoy published his classic novel, Anna Karenina, in the 1870's, it caused a sensation. The reason is that it explored the cultural taboo against, in this case, divorce.

Tolstoy's novel chronicles the tragic encounter of two star-crossed lovers set against a backdrop of what is deemed a shallow, traditional society filled with hypocrisy. The reader is expertly drawn into the story as our heroine, Anna, struggles with whether to leave her passionless marriage in order to marry the dashing Count Vronsky. The novel's effect, in short, is to contrast the merits of "true" love over against the seemingly pernicious and arbitrary rules of traditional society.

Today, of course, Tolstoy's novel has far less capacity to scandalize. After all, divorce long since has become commonplace, as has the idea of "true" love superseding the mere conventions of marriage.

Tolstoy, it is true, approached the vagaries of the human condition with exquisite sensitivity. Yet one wonders. Do these same sentiments translate well into a contemporary society awash in divorce, in a society with countless broken homes, where, in general, women and children suffer the brunt of its most punishing effects? Does this call today to break down the taboo against divorce have the same power, or relevance, as it did in Tolstoy's? At best, it seems, his challenge to societal convention today is beside the point. At worst, it's irresponsible.

Today, when we think of Jesus tearing down the barriers between Jew and Gentile, we yawn. When we see Jesus challenging and confronting the scribes and Pharisees, the bearers of tradition, we nod and move on. At best, we miss the profundity of what Jesus is doing. At worst, we miss perhaps something else: the ongoing merits of tradition, as we throw the baby out with the bathwater.

There is, after all, real risk in interpreting Jesus' reform of tradition as justification for rejecting any and all tradition. To expand, alter or even reject certain aspects of tradition is, in other words, a far cry from rejecting tradition altogether. To supplant the law with radical freedom, where anything goes, is, quite simply, not at all what Jesus had in mind.

In the end, what we see in Jesus' initial reticence to receive the Canaanite woman could be tiredness, but it also could be - dare I say it - that he had cause to be wary of her! Only, it seems, after she convinces him of her sincere desire and willingness to be a part of his kingdom, to accept fully who he is, is Jesus swayed to respond to her plea.

Alexander Solzhenitsyn, the great Russian author and reformer, who died just two weeks ago, and who spent his entire adult life fighting the rigid totalitarianism of the Soviet Union, once shocked his Western supporters when he said, "Human rights are a fine thing, but how can we be sure that our rights do not expand at the expense of the rights of others?. . . . Human freedom," he supposed, "includes voluntary self-limitation for the sake of others."

Jesus, I suspect, would agree. For though Jesus saw through the rigid arbitrariness of certain laws and systems, even religious ones, he also was able to separate out rules of mere social convention from those born of God's holy and inviolable truth. Paradoxically, the opposite of rigid legalism, for Jesus, is not capricious human freedom, not the breaking down of any or all rules, but radical obedience to the only thing capable of yielding true freedom: God's will.

It has been said that certain ideas, over time, have a way of becoming settled in our minds, to the extent that they actually become "invisible" to us. Which is to say, they come to be seen as eternal, objective, when in fact they may be only provisional, or possibly even false. If you want to know about water, in other words, as the old Chinese proverb says, don't ask a fish!

Jesus, however, continually challenges us to face life's ever-changing realities, and forces us, in so doing, to carefully discern spiritually the eternal from the merely provisional and socially-conditioned. The minute we become complacent in our thinking and doing, God's word and spirit is there to shock, and enlighten.

When social convention lulls us into unthinking forms of thought and behavior, whether it be strict, uniform obedience to tradition, as in Jesus' day, or the more idiosyncratic subjectivism of our own, Jesus is there to jolt us out of our false complacency.

As such, his initial rejection of the Canaanite woman shocks us today as much as his contemporary followers would have been shocked by his later decision to respond graciously to her!

Rejecting false convention, whether ancient or modern, is the province of God's love for us. Seeking an open heart and mind to discern rightly God's wisdom and truth, in the midst of the flux and flow of everyday life, is Jesus' constant witness, and our challenge. And if that means he sometimes needs to shock us into grasping his truth, then so be it!

Amen.