Community Church Sermons
August 14, 2005
Matthew 15:21-28
When I was a child, I loved to play “Connect The Dots.” It was all a part of learning to sequence numbers from 1 to whatever, and learning to draw lines, and learning to discern whole images out of background noise. What a miracle it was to realize that the dots connected into a beautiful picture! I would call to my mother, “Mom! Look! It’s a clown!” – or a boat – or the Statue of Liberty!
Do you remember learning to connect the dots?
I’ve been wondering lately about when Jesus was a child. Was he a child like you and me – needing to learn and grow and acquire skills – or was he “special” – “different” than you and me??
Did Jesus sometimes have trouble connecting the dots because, like me, every once in a while he’d get confused and draw the line from dot #4 to dot #15? Were the lines he drew between the dots sort of squiggily and smudgy like the lines little boys sometimes draw? Did Jesus even NEED to connect the dots? Or, because he was the Son of God, could Jesus just instantly see that the picture was San Francisco with the Golden Gate Bridge in the background?
Was Jesus a real child, or just a pretend child?
Listen to the second verse of a song we sing at Christmas every year:
“The cattle are
lowing, the baby awakes,
Hmmmm. Any moms out there today? No crying? Is this a real baby, or a pretend baby?
Listen to what was written in an ancient Christian manuscript that never made it into the Bible. It’s called The First Gospel of the Infancy of Jesus Christ:
“The following accounts we found in the book of Joseph the high priest, called by some Caiaphas. He relates that Jesus spoke even when he was in the cradle, and said to his mother, ‘Mary, I am Jesus the Son of God, that word which you did bring forth according to the declaration of the angel Gabriel to you, and my father has sent me for the salvation of the world.”
That’s quite a mouthful, don’t you think, for a baby in the cradle! Real infant, or pretend infant?
Even as a young boy, Jesus is sometimes treated in various writings of the time – books that again, never made it into the Bible - as a kind of Superboy whose special powers draw both the admiration and the ire of his contemporaries. In the Infancy Gospel of Thomas, for instance, we learn that at 5 years of age, Jesus stops up a stream to form a pond, and from the clay on the bank of the pond, forms the shapes of birds, and then claps his hands, and the birds come to life and fly away; another boy, the son of Annas the Scribe, breaks down the dam forming the pond – as kids will often do – and Jesus becomes angry and says, “You godless, brainless moron, what did the pond and waters do to you? Watch this now – you are going to dry up like a tree and you will never produce leaves or roots or fruit.” And immediately, the child withers up and dies. Not too long afterwards, the boy Jesus is going through the village and a running child bumps into him. So Jesus strikes the boy dead.
Well, you can imagine that the parents of all these dead kids don’t take too kindly to little boy Jesus. So they go to Joseph and complain that Jesus is killing all their kids, and they don’t like it one bit. So Joseph takes Jesus aside and tells him, “You’ve got to stop killing all these kids! Our neighbors are starting to hate us and they won’t invite us over for dinner anymore!”
So Jesus says, “Okay, I’ll be good. I won’t kill any more kids. Promise!”
And he doesn’t kill any more kids. But the parents who complained, are struck blind.
Real boy, or pretend boy? What do you think?
This is a crucial question to ask about the child Jesus because sooner or later we must ask it about the man Jesus.
Is Jesus really human like US? Or is he just going through the motions?
Today’s Gospel text from Matthew forces us to come to grips with this question, and in answering it, to come to a great and vitally important spiritual truth.
Jesus is out in enemy territory, so to speak. The cities of Tyre and Sidon are outside of Israel, in Lebanon, and it is the territory of the Canaanites, a pagan people who worship Baal and who are natural enemies of the Jews. Canaanites hate Jewish people and Jewish people hate Canaanites. I don’t know what the Canaanites called the Jewish people, but the Jewish people called the Canaanites “dogs.”
A Canaanite woman comes to Jesus. She has obviously heard reports about his ability to heal, and she cries out to Jesus to help her daughter who suffers with what is believed to be demon possession.
What does Jesus do? Like any good Jew, he ignores the cries of the Canaanite woman.
She persists.
He turns his back.
She keeps calling.
He will not answer.
She won’t give up.
Finally, the disciples are irritated enough to say. “Jesus, can’t you just tell her to hit the road?”
And so Jesus turns to the woman and says, “I was only sent to the lost sheep of Israel.” In other words, Canaanites need not apply. God sent me to minister to the chosen people, the Jews, only.
She falls on her knees, blocking his way. “Lord, help me!” she wails.
And that’s when Jesus shocks us. Jesus uses the “N” word, except in that day the “N” word was the “D” word.
“It is not right to take the bread of the children of Israel and toss it to the DOGS!” Jesus says.
Harsh! What do you make of that?
There is a pause. Then, almost in a whisper, the woman stammers, “Yes, but even the dogs get the crumbs that fall from their master’s table.”
The Bible tells us that in that very moment, something miraculous happened. The woman’s demon-possessed daughter was made well. And Jesus makes a startling discovery! Stunned by her answer, Jesus turns to her and says, “Woman, you have great faith! Your request is granted!”
So the daughter was made well.
And now I want to ask you a question: “Was Jesus just pretending? All along, was Jesus just playing a game that he knew would result in the healing of the daughter, but making the mother jump through some theological hoops before he granted the healing?”
Or, in that conversation with the Canaanite woman, did Jesus somehow, by the grace of God, connect the dots, and truly see something he had not seen before???
Did Jesus learn something new about life?
From the very beginning of our faith, Christians have struggled with the relationship between Jesus’ humanity and Jesus’ divinity. Most of us have never been quite comfortable with the idea that Jesus – though he was the Divine Son of God – lived among us as a fully human being – a person just like us, limited in power and knowledge and awareness, bound to the cultural mores of the society in which he lived. We like to think that Jesus had special powers that true humans like us don’t possess. We like to believe that Jesus wasn’t affected by the prejudices and worldview of his time. We like to believe that the baby Jesus never cried or filled up a diaper, that the boy Jesus never had to learn to walk or read or write or speak Hebrew, that the man Jesus never was tempted to sin, or never really got mad, or never doubted. We have a hard time with this idea that Jesus had to grow and learn just like we do, and that there were moments in his life when – by the grace of God - the dots were suddenly connected and he discovered something he had never seen before!
“Woman, you have great faith! Your request is granted!”
One of the reasons I love the
Bible is because it refuses to surrender to the idea that Jesus in his life
among us was more than human. Philippians 2 says that Jesus, though he was God,
did not hold onto his Divine nature, but instead emptied himself, taking upon
himself HUMAN nature, the complete LIKENESS of you and me. Jesus became like
us!
Jesus lived among us as a 100% human being. And as one of us, Jesus shows us what it means to be fully human.
To be fully human means to depend upon God for our daily bread. To be fully human means to make mistakes and to seek God’s help in correcting them. To be fully human, most especially, means to LEARN and to GROW into the full measure of the humanity God intends- just like Jesus learned and grew!
So what were the dots that connected for Jesus that day? What was it that Jesus learned from this encounter with the Canaanite woman? And what can we learn from his example in Matthew 15?
Well, for one thing, Jesus discovered that this woman was a person of faith! “You have great faith!” Jesus exclaims! And isn’t that odd? I mean, this woman was not a Jew like Jesus. She was not a Christian like you and me. She refers to Jesus as “Lord”, but in the way you and I would say, “Sir.” She has no idea that Jesus is the Messiah.
But she has faith!
What a discovery it is that there are people who belong to other religions who are people of faith! They do not go to our church, nor do they necessarily subscribe to our theological wisdom. They may well be Baal-worshipping pagans from Canaan.
But they have faith!
“Woman, you have great faith!” Jesus discovers.
Then a second dot that’s connected here. The faith of this woman is clearly not centered in some set of theological doctrines. She is not about to recite the Apostle’s Creed!
So what faith is it that Jesus sees in her?
“Even the dogs get the crumbs that fall from the master’s table,” she said. And she said a mouthful with those words!
She is saying that, even if Jesus is right, that the goodness of God is intended solely for the Jews, surely the crumbs of that goodness would fall to pitiful people like her and her daughter! She has faith that God’s goodness is bigger than the household of Israel, and that ALL God’s creatures – even Canaanite dogs – can receive it!
She has faith in the goodness of God to touch every life – regardless of race, religion or ethnic background! What a discovery about faith!
And then the third dot – the one that makes the picture more clear than ever before.
In verse 26, Jesus had seen the woman as a “dog.” But in verse 28, he calls her a “woman!”
By the grace of God, Jesus no longer sees her as a “thing”, but as a “person” – a mother who simply wants the best for her little girl.
It seems to me that these three dots need to be connected in our day, too. Especially now, since jet travel and the internet have shrunk the world down to a smaller size and we find ourselves rubbing elbows not only with other brands of Christians, but also with people of other religions – Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, and others - and in these post 9-11 days when Christians, Jews and Muslims especially are at each other’s throats, each one calling the other “the great Satan”. I find myself wondering how the world might be changed if we could only connect the dots like Jesus did that day.
If we could see that faith is not the possession of any religion, but is the gift of God freely poured out upon people everywhere, could we not begin to bridge the horrific chasms that divide us? Could not Christians, Jews, Muslims and others sit down and begin to understand each other?
And if we could see that the faith God pours out is not a theological system, but rather a relentless belief in the goodness of God toward ALL people, would we not discover a mandate for how to treat each other?
And if we could see – in one glorious moment of connect-the-dot majesty – that there are no “dogs” in this world – but only mothers and fathers and sons and daughters who want the best for their families and to taste the goodness of life – our world would be transformed! No longer would we use the words we use to describe those we do not know let alone understand. The “N” word, the “F” word, and the “S” word - so popular in our culture today - would never again be used to describe anyone. I won’t say the words. You can figure them out.
On Sunday morning, October 31st, 1999, Egypt Air Flight 990 crashed into the Atlantic Ocean about 60 miles south of Nantucket Island. All 221 people aboard perished. My old colleague Andrea Gouze was called to go and care for the families of those who lost their lives. Most of the families were Muslim. Andrea is a Jewish rabbi. She says, at first, she herself was confused as to what to do in the midst of all that grief, and among people so different from her and often antagonistic toward people of her own background. But all at once, she found herself holding a sobbing Muslim woman who had just returned from seeing the debris field. She and the woman did not share a common language, and so they could not speak to each other. They simply held each other, and wept.
Andrea writes that cultural and religious differences are not barriers at a time like this. She says, “Everyone cries in the same language.”
And the dots connected into a picture she’d never seen before!
Was Jesus a real man? Or a pretend man?
Did he know everything in advance, or did he have to learn and grow?
If Jesus knew everything and had the advantage of living among us as a “pretend” person, he has nothing to offer you and me.
But if truly Jesus became human for our sake – as the Bible says – then he calls us to not be afraid to connect the dots in our own day, and see the emerging picture of God’s beautiful kingdom!