Sunday 17th August 2008TRINITY XIII

Fr David Cherry

Isaiah 56 : 1 & 6-8 ; Romans 11 : 1-2a & 29-32 ; Matthew 15 : 21-28

Words from today’s Collect : “…help us so to proclaim the good news of thy love that all who hear it may be drawn unto thee.”

The subversion of the elect comes from a despised foreigner and a woman who has more faith than those who pride themselves on being the elect.

The violent and worrying events taking place in the Caucuses at the moment make one wonder if we are now witnessing the beginning of the collapse of what we could euphemistically call the ‘Pax Americana’.  Hardly and original thought, but pertinent in considering today’s Gospel.

Moses was quite clear to the Israelites when they were about to conquer the Hittites, Girgashites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites, and Jebusites, seven nations larger and stronger than you: “….you must destroy them totally. Make no treaty with them, and show them no mercy. Do not intermarry with them. (Deuteronomy 7)

The sanctity of the elect nation of God was to be preserved at all costs.   The series on the House of Saddam is quite a good clue as to what it is to be caught up in tribal loyalty, the lengths we will go to preserve power.  

Modern people are not strangers to modern reasons to sanctify – what someone has called - ‘the collective narcissism of ethnic, national, and religious groups’.  Jews and Christians, Muslims and many others have found their own texts to justify their own version of events, their reasons for the subjugation of others.  Either that or mere acquiescence to real politik – this is the only way we humans are able to live.

The beauty of the Jewish and Christian Scriptures is rather than hide and cloak what is going on, it is plain for you and me to see.  The fullest disclosure is made by God appearing among us in Christ our Lord so the Gospel is a disclosure, an unveiling , a revelation of the myths we live by.   And it is a subversive of these myths.

The gospel story this morning is troubling to many.  Depending on the tone with which you read it, Jesus could be heard as unnecessarily harsh.   If so, the disciples would not have been that alarmed.  She Syro-Phoenician woman was, after all, a mere Canaanite, a race they had subjugated long ago.  And calling her a Canaanite is a bit like calling a Norwegian a Viking.   The disciples would have been much more surprised and disturbed by Jesus’ harsh treatment of the Scribes and Pharisees, the religious leaders his own elect people.

Feminist theologians have read Jesus as the one who is being reminded by the Canaanite woman of the true vocation of the people of Israel.  It is thus a kind of reversal of history - the woman converts Jesus to a new way of thinking.   In her the Canaanites conquer Israel.

This, we will immediately see, is to do injury to the omniscience of God in Christ.  There is another way of seeing this story:  Jesus permits the conversation, knowingly.    At first he treats her as any normal man of Israel would by ignoring her. Perhaps he wants to be overheard and provoke her faith : I am not sent but unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel. This is the kind of reaction and mission his disciples would expect. He was their own Messiah.  But he allows her to go on and draw out and recover for her hearers the true meaning of Jewish election and he allows the voice of truth to come forth from her.  She worships Jesus (did they? – had the disciples truly recognised who he was?)  She reminds Jesus and her hearers that salvation comes from the Jews and that this is their vocation for she believes that anything from the true Israel is for all - including her.    How well she knows what Israel ought to be – in words of the prophet Isaiah in the first reading this morning : to keep justice and pursue righteousness so that foreigners who love the Lord will be brought to his holy mountain and be made joyful in God’s house of prayer which us for everyone.

Jesus permits this.  For he is the one who does not subjugate or dominate.  As on the cross he lays down his life and allows another to voice freely, to challenge.  The subversion of the elect comes from a despised foreigner and a woman who has more faith than those who pride themselves on being the elect.    She is not offended by the Truth of Christ as were many others who went away disappointed because Jesus would not conform to their expectations and confirm them in their stance towards the world. “O woman, great is thy faith.”

In Christ the world and all peoples are to be reconstituted as a new People by the subversion of the Gospel, the subversion of identity and loyalties.    St Paul writes in the epistle : For God has consigned all men to disobedience, that he may have mercy upon all.   We are to discover our place among all others – all equally disobedient which means ‘un-listening’, ‘stubborn’, unwise in our dealings with others; all equally dependant on the mercy of God.

And this is a true place to be, different from any collective narcism, as we bear God’s tortured and suffering world in our hearts today; as we pray for an end to aggression and violent subjugation, for all in pain and despair today; for our brothers and sisters who seek to witness to an all-encompassing, non-tribal God:

Almighty God, who hast called thy Church to witness that thou wast in Christ reconciling the world to thyself: help us so to proclaim the good news of thy love that all who hear it may be drawn unto thee; through Jesus Christ our Lord.  Amen