On June 17, 2017, I received the Wilbur C. Ziegler Award for Excellence in Preaching from the New England Annual Conference of the United Methodist Church. The opportunity to preach to one's colleagues and siblings in the faith is the blessing conferred on the fortunate one chosen. The theme of the 2017 Conference was "Vital Conversations: Racism".
Text: Matthew 15:21-28
Date: June 17, 2017 (Ziegler Award Sermon)
New England Annual
Conference, Manchester, NH
© Thomas L. Blackstone,
Ph.D., Preacher
Matthew 15:21 Jesus left that place and went away to the district of Tyre and Sidon. 22 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.” 23 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.” 24 He answered, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” 25 But she came and knelt before him, saying, “Lord, help me.” 26 He answered, “It is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.” 27 She said, “Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters’ table.” 28 Then Jesus answered her, “Woman, great is your faith! Let it be done for you as you wish.” And her daughter was healed instantly.
Pestering Jesus
First of all, I want to thank my
amazing congregation Pleasant St. UMC for nominating me for this honor,
particularly Grenda Banton, Kerri Oliver, Carol Crothers and their confederates
who helped make this happen. I also want
to acknowledge the members of my church, including the choir, who left
Waterville at 4:30 this morning to get here, because evidently, they had
nothing better to do on a Saturday in June.
Actually, I think it had more to do with meeting Mark Miller, given that
we have been singing his words all the way through Lent.
I’m also grateful for my family being
here, my oldest Alex who works as a counselor with troubled teens in the Maine
woods to help turn their lives around, my son Patrick who is departing for the
University of Indiana in a couple of weeks to enter a Ph.D. program in
theoretical physics, probing the mysteries of the universe, and my daughter Laura
who studies math, computer science, and geology at Brown University about a
mile from Rev. Ziegler’s former church in Providence. And, of course, Lynn my wife of 31 years who enriches
the lives of kids with autism and other challenges as a speech pathologist in
Augusta. She also keeps our family on
track, and how all five of us got here today on time, with matching socks, I
have no idea, but she (I suspect) does.
I also want to thank the saints in my
life who have inspired me as a Christian, as a preacher, and as a member of the
New England Annual Conference, this body which has shown such courage in
standing for change and for justice in troubled times. These folks are too many to name
individually, but let me call attention to three people who are close to my
heart today: Vicki Woods is heroically
typical of the incredible District Superintendents that I have served under for
the last 26 years. She has been a voice
for justice from my first days in ministry, and
she helped my congregation figure out how to nominate me for this award, so if
you don’t like what you hear, blame Vicki.
I’m also thankful for the life of the late H. Everett Wiswell, who was
my pastor in Caribou, ME in 1978, when as a High School Junior I screwed up my
courage and shared with him (after a week at Mechuwana) that I felt called to
ministry. Had he chuckled or rolled his
eyes or told me to go grow up a little, I might have never said another word,
but instead he honored that holy moment in my life with Christ-like compassion
and love, for which I am grateful.
Finally, I’m remembering my doctoral advisor, the late Dr. Fred Craddock
who helped me figure out how to be a student of the Bible and a pastor at the
same time. In the great circle of
scholars at Emory University, Fred was the one who found me in my confusion
about where I was headed, and helped me find my way through the Ph.D. program
and back to the church, all the while being an inspiration in every sense of the word.
[And I should add that of the three
people I just mentioned, Vicki Woods is the TALL one! So, it’s a good day for the short people!]
And it is essential to remember, as
well, the Rev. Wilbur C. Ziegler, who so inspired his congregation in
Providence with his “compassion, optimism, ability, courage, and sensitivity”
that they created this award in his honor. I never met him personally, but I have
blessed by his legacy and inspired by his character and faith.
You have to know that I have been
listening to the Wilbur C. Ziegler sermon every year at annual conference for
nearly 25 years. And every year that
I’ve heard it, I’ve shared one thought with every United Methodist Pastor who
was listening with me. “Thank God that
isn’t me!” My second thought, of course,
has been to realize how God has used my amazing colleagues and siblings in the
faith to break open some fresh perspective on God’s word, and God willing that
will happen again today.
Will you pray with me? Holy
and Gracious Lord, who quiets the fear in every trembling heart, use these
moments as you desire: to bless, to heal, to challenge, or to mend, and may
your holy wisdom reveal herself to our hearts, either because of or in spite of your servant. Amen.
A Canaanite woman stood in the road… A
Canaanite woman stood in the road…not the Syrophoenician woman we read
about in Mark’s gospel, no, a Canaanite
woman, torn from the very pages of the ancient Torah, 1000 years or more out of
time. If some of you Whovians are
wondering if she just stepped out of a blue police call box, you’d be
justified. Matthew has conjured up a
time traveler, an ancient enemy, a mother from one of seven tribes driven out
to make room in the Promised Land for the children of Israel. You remember the Canaanites from Deuteronomy
7:1 don’t you, that passage you assign to your lay leader when she’s being
difficult? How Moses predicted military
defeat over the Hittites, Girgashites,
Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites, “seven nations larger
and stronger than you,” he said.
“And how should we treat these scoundrels, Moses, when we come into the
land?” the people inquired.
And Moses, speaking for God,
responded with words that still trouble us:
“You must destroy them totally.
Make no treaty with them, … show them no mercy. Do not intermarry with them. …Break down their
altars, smash their sacred stones, …. burn their idols in the fire.” …Show / them / no / mercy. It’s as though Moses said, “They are incompatible
with the love of God.”
So, when a Canaanite woman appears in
the road standing before Jesus…wow. Now
we get to see what happens when the incarnate Son of God crosses paths with the
sworn enemy of the Ancient Hebrews. And
when Jesus’ friends saw her, did those devastating words from the Great
Lawgiver echo in their minds, “Show them no mercy.”
Well, then the Canaanite woman makes
a ruckus. Not content simply to be in
Jesus’ presence, she not only speaks
her truth, she shouts her truth, and
the first words out of her
mouth? “Have mercy.” “Have mercy on me, Lord, Son of David; my
daughter is tormented by a demon.” “Have
mercy on me, Lord.” So here she is, the
very embodiment of the outsider, the rejected one, whose exclusion from mercy
came from the very lips of Moses himself, speaking for God, and she asks for
the very thing that the Bible says she can’t have: Mercy.
Not because she’s unworthy, not because she’s a bad mother, not because
she has an evil reputation, but simply because…she was born that way: born on the wrong side of the racial, ethnic,
tribal line that had stood for centuries.
By cursing her people, Moses had cursed all of their descendants,
including her demon-possessed daughter.
Mercy indeed. “Go study your
Bible, woman,” the disciples might have said with justification. “There is
no mercy for you.”
Well I wish I could say that Jesus
moved quickly to lift this ancient curse, but it’s to Matthew’s credit that he
doesn’t give us the inspired story we want,
but the inspired story we need. Jesus, for whatever reason, does what the
body of Christ still does when
confronted with the one who doesn’t quite fit our definition of acceptable. Jesus, says…nothing. Dead silence.
“But he did not answer her at all,” Matthew says. Given the harsh words of Deuteronomy, maybe
Jesus considered that silence was a
merciful response, but this woman began to disturb the bureaucracy with her
shouting, her protest, her misbehavior, and soon the disciples are whispering
in Jesus’ ear that he must dismiss her because… she is driving them crazy.
So Jesus,
seeing that silence isn’t working so well, speaks, not words of liberation, but
(I’m sorry to say) words of “policy.”
“I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” (whew!)
Understand that Jesus doesn’t say
these words to the Canaanite woman, the victim
of his silence. He speaks this policy to
his brothers, his inner circle, his council of advisors, his general conference
if you will. And within that tightly
knit circle of like-minded individuals, this resolves the situation: A Canaanite woman has asked for help,
ignoring her was ineffective, but now we have issued a policy statement that
covers her situation. Her daughter
doesn’t meet our eligibility requirements for assistance. “Sorry, Canaanite woman, you’ll have to get
help someplace else.” And we have to
assume that one of the disciples carried this news to her, or even worse that
she had to endure listening to her eligibility for mercy being debated by a
group of people that had given her no greeting, offered her no right to speak, and
did not even bother to learn her name.
Because, you see in that moment she wasn’t
a person, a mother, a fellow human being in the eyes of the infant church. She was an “issue,” a problem, an agenda
item, a complication to be dealt with.
What happens next is perhaps best
summarized by the words of the unlikely prophet Sen. McConnell. “She
had appeared to violate the rule. She was warned. She was given an explanation.
Nevertheless, she persisted.” [US
Senate, 2.7.17]
Yes, those Canaanite women are
everywhere.
But she came and knelt before Jesus, saying, “Lord, help me.”
I have to imagine that that was not
an easy thing to do. And I mean
literally that I have to imagine it
because I have never been in her situation.
Because white, middle-class, over-educated, straight men in our culture…
don’t have the experience that this
woman just had, we aren’t spoken of in the third person by those in power, we
are not categorized in ways that subsume our sacred personhood under a
label. We have the privilege of being
spoken to, not spoken about.
So, before those of us who carry such privilege in our backpack, assume
that we would not intrude upon Jesus’s personal space with such audacity and
boldness, or that we would not humble
ourselves before a group that had just so disrespected us, let’s you and I walk
a mile or two in her shoes, her Canaanite shoes.
The conversation that Jesus and woman
proceed to have is unworthy of our Jesus, and Matthew knows that. But Matthew, inspired by the Holy Spirit,
needs us to hear it because the church still, to this day, confuses justice and charity. Jesus said to this
woman, weary from night after night of rubbing her daughter’s back, bathing her
forehead, listening to her cries, holding her trembling body, to her Jesus
said, “It is not fair to take the
children’s food and throw it to the dogs.” And summoning every ounce of
self-control that she can, the woman answers, “Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their
masters’ table.”
When I hear her say those words, it
breaks my heart. Because it says that
she has been so beaten down, and so consumed by worry for her child, that she
will sacrifice her own dignity for the sake of another. In this moment she is Messianic, she is self-sacrificing,
she is embodying the love of
God.
I see
this woman’s face, every day, in fact: in the women who walk into the Food Bank in my
Church, and I hear her voice in the words that are spoken as they register and
check in. I am grateful that these women
are treated with respect and dignity by our volunteers, but I know they’ve
heard the comments hurled at them by our society: “freeloaders, welfare queens, lazy, good for
nothing.” When we give to the poor out
of our abundance, are we distributing crumbs to the dogs under the Master’s
table (along with a helping of shame and humiliation)? Or are we, conscious of our unclean hands,
partnering with God to try to undo the economic injustice of our society, that
has made a handful of people fabulously wealthy, while leaving scraps for
public education, health care, nutrition, housing, college tuition, and job
training?
Does it still have to be said in 21st
century America that it is not a sin to be poor, that it is not a sin to be
sick, illiterate, marginalized, mentally ill, addicted, bankrupt, persecuted, a
refugee from tyrants, a teenager who is bullied? Being weak or in-need shouldn’t put someone
under the table with the dogs. In God’s
kingdom it is the hungry person who
is seated first, and are not the ones in need of forgiveness, those who would
deny them a chair?
Well, just when I am ready to give up
on Jesus in this story, he responds with words that give me back my hope and
restore my faith. Because with this
woman kneeling before him, Jesus doesn’t say, “your obedience is impressive,
your submission is acceptable, your shame makes me pity you sufficiently.” Instead Jesus looks at her, looks at his
disciples, and looks at the crowd, and whether he has just come to this
conclusion or not—the Bible doesn’t tell us—Jesus gets it. There may be a passage in scripture that
condemns this woman, there may be a standing policy that denies her mercy and
justice and inclusion, but Jesus looks at her self-sacrificial posture, her
willingness to be humiliated for her daughter, her God-like compassion and tells
her to stand up, and with one phrase Jesus restores her dignity: “woman, great
is your faith! Let it be done for you as
you wish.” And it was.
Did you hear that first part? He praises…her
faith. And in that moment, we know that Jesus sees her, includes her, is in fellowship
with her, and (dare we say it) has learned
from her. The word faith is used 17 times in Matthew’s gospel, and always it is the
mark of genuine discipleship, either because one has it or because one lacks
it. Those who need to hear the Sermon on
the Mount are called “those of little faith,” the Centurion in chapter 8 (another
outsider) has his servant healed because of the Centurion’s faith, the
disciples in the boat during the storm are afraid because they lack faith, the
paralyzed man is healed because of the faith of his friends, faith the size of
a mustard seed will be capable of accomplishing anything, and what do the Pharisees, scribes, and hypocrites lack? Justice, mercy, and faith.
By praising the greatness of this
Canaanite woman’s faith, by raising
her up from the dust, by speaking to
her rather than about her, by
recognizing the image of God already in her soul, Jesus has set aside scripture, ignored policy, and has shown the church how to be the Church of Jesus Christ when there’s a Canaanite, an
outsider, an incompatible, a suffering brother or sister standing right there
in front of us, asking for mercy. It’s
not about charity, it’s about justice!
Those of you who are close to me know
that the last six years of my life have been consumed with accompanying my
mother through the hell of dementia. By
all possible measurements we are only part way down this path that will direct
the rest of her life. It became apparent
after my father’s death that, even in the midst of pancreatic cancer, he had
been compensating for her growing confusion.
She lived with us for two years after that, then moved to assisted
living, and now resides in a memory unit that keeps her physically safe but mentally
tormented by her continuing self-awareness of her failing memory. In time that will pass we are told, but when
ignorance has become bliss, she will no longer remember us, and so we journey
together and try to treasure every moment, even if it is painful for her and
for us.
Because of Mom’s illness, one of the
words that I’ve had to learn this year is “paramnesia.” Paramnesia occurs when a mentally compromised
person tries to make sense of the world while suffering a partial lack of
memory. And in order to speak coherently
about an event, the patient will confabulate, include details in a story that
didn’t actually happen, will fabricate a reality that makes sense for the
moment but is in fact, false.
Part of me wants to ask in my
confusion, whether Jesus was
suffering from theological paramnesia when this episode with the Canaanite
woman occurred (and yes, I know there are multiple explanations of why he might
have acted the way he did), but I’ve come to believe that Matthew wasn’t in fact telling a story about Jesus; I think Matthew was telling a story about the church. Because as Matthew’s congregation watched Imperial
Rome crush Jerusalem like a walnut, and as they saw the smoke of destruction
and persecution rise over the Holy City, Matthew’s community knew that things
were going to have to change, that the Church in order to survive and to be the
authentic expression of God’s love in the world, that the church was going to
have to remember a few things it had forgotten.
It was going to have to remember that Jesus sought out strangers, that Jesus praised the faith
of Gentiles, that foreigners showed
up at his birth, that ethnic, racial, tribal differences mattered nothing to
him, that economic injustice and racial privilege is incompatible with Christian
teaching, and most of all the church had to remember this: Canaanite lives matter…incompatibles lives matter,
persecuted minorities matter, LGBTQ lives matter, victims of violence matter, and
(today of all days) black lives matter.
You and I are here at the 2017 New
England Annual Conference of the United Methodist Church. And on my dark and cynical days, I find
myself wondering how many more of these there will be. But even as we wither away, Canaanites—some of them our own
children—are standing at the door of the church, longing to come in. They are standing there, cautiously, because
(despite our faults) they sense God
in us, someplace beneath all that silence, mis-interpreted scripture, and
prejudicial legislation. They can hear
the authentic Jesus in our heritage and in our passion for mission, despite the
racism and white privilege that gets in the way of our discipleship, and they can hear the rush of the wind
of the Spirit that we keep trying to squeeze into containers of fear so that it
won’t change us.
It’s time to let that Spirit loose! It’s time to let that Spirit loose! It’s time to let that Spirit loose! It’s time
to emulate the Jesus who tells persecuted strangers to stand up with
dignity. It’s time to rediscover the
image of God in the people who scare us because they seem different. It’s time to confess our sins, and seek to undo the harm we have done because of
our lack of justice, mercy, and
faith. The Holy Cities of 20th
century Christendom are burning, there is no going back. The church I was trained to serve in seminary
no longer exists, if it ever did. But
Jesus? Yeah, Jesus has never left. As he
promised, he is with us to the end of the age! And if we are willing to let Jesus heal our memory, to let Jesus strip away the false narratives of
the church that we’ve told ourselves, who’s in and who’s out, to let Jesus put us square in the middle of
town where Canaanite mothers can pester
us and teach us with their requests
for justice, then brothers and
sisters, I have hope for this church.
And if this church can find that Jesus and let him break our sinful
selves open yet one more time, and put us back together with a lot less judgement and a lot more justice, mercy, and faith, then
maybe some of those Canaanites will do us
the honor of crossing the threshold, standing by our side, and reminding us that God wants them here
because of the greatness of their
faith: And as they walk in the door (hear this now!), it’s time for folks like me,
who are invested in and benefit from the status
quo, it’s time for folks like me to stop
talking…and listen…and change. It’s our
only hope.
Our choir sings a song, Great, Great Morning. And folks love it; it’s a medley, a mash up
of several gospel songs that are all looking towards “that day,” that ultimate
day when Jesus calls us home, or comes to check on what we’ve been up to [maybe
you’ve seen the bumper sticker: “Jesus
is Coming; Look busy!”]. I love singing that
song; it just makes me feel good. But I
also know that the day we’re singing
about is Judgment Day, that day when Jesus comes to rebalance the scales of justice.
If you’ve read the prophets or the Book of Revelation, you’ve got to
know that it doesn’t turn out well for those who neglect the poor, oppress the Saints,
or ignore the world’s suffering.
One of the things that is said about
Rev. Ziegler is that he was really good at “afflicting the comfortable.” In that spirit we’re going to sing that song, and I want you to enjoy it, but not too much, because we still have work to
do, don’t we? Amen?
