St. Paul’s Church in
Bergen, Jersey City NJ
August 20, 2017
Year A, Proper 15:
The Eleventh Sunday after Pentecost
Isaiah 56:1, 6-8
Psalm 67
Romans 11:1-2a, 29-32
Matthew 15:10-28
What a Wonderful But Broken World
Well,
that was quite a week, huh?
For
me, it was very much a week of contrasts.
On the one hand, as
you all know, our country was caught up in the aftermath of last week’s violent
white supremacist protests and the counter-protests in Charlottesville –
including the response, or responses, of the president.
Meanwhile, overseas there was yet another
terror attack, this time in Barcelona, and catastrophic mudslides in Sierra
Leone.
But, on the other
hand, while all of that and more terrible stuff was going on, a few of our St.
Paul’s adults and I spent much of last week over at Old Bergen Church,
participating in a “summer peace project” called, “Building a Neighborhood
Together.”
We
couldn’t have known this months ago when we started planning, but this super-positive
event with its beautifully diverse group of kids and adults arrived right
on time.
While
our country seemed to be tearing itself apart, we sang and danced and
meditated and played and talked about peace and shared ideas about what a
peaceful neighborhood might look like – and, using their own imaginations and
creativity, the kids built a cardboard city that included the “Peace
International Airport” and “The Peaceful Apartments” and, maybe inevitably, a
McDonald’s, one that even had a, hopefully peaceful, drive-thru!
Led
by our own Gail, over the course of the program the kids learned a repertoire
of several different songs, but for me the most beautiful, the most touching,
and the most timely was “What a
Wonderful World,” a song made famous by Louis Armstrong, that I’m sure many of
you know:
“I
hear babies cry. I watch them grow. They’ll learn much more than I’ll ever
know. And I think to myself, what a wonderful world.”
Amen.
We
live in a wonderful, but very broken world.
There are
armed-to-the-teeth Nazis on the march, with their ugly and hateful words and
symbols, with their rage and violence, defiling our streets and airwaves and
even, if we let them, defiling our own hearts.
Last weekend in
Charlottesville, they attacked the counter-protesters and even killed one, the
courageous Heather Heyer.
There
is violence and the threat of violence on our own Jersey City streets – last
week we suffered our fourteenth homicide of the year, but it seems that barely
anyone even noticed.
There is poverty
that leaves so many with groaning stomachs, poverty that forces people out of
their homes and onto the streets.
There
are our own personal troubles and fears. There’s our own brokenness, our own stinginess
when it comes to love. There is our own tendency - even here in the church - to
divide people into our kind of folks and not our kind of people. There is our
own reluctance to share our blessings.
We live in a
wonderful, but broken world. So, God invites us to make our world more
wonderful, to heal what’s broken, by setting aside our own fears and prejudices
and by being even more loving and generous.
And,
I’m sticking my theological neck out here a little bit, but, I think that’s
what’s going on in today’s gospel lesson:
God
invites God’s Son to heal what’s broken, by being even more loving and more generous.
If
you’re not familiar with today’s Gospel lesson, Jesus’ encounter with the
persistent and bold Canaanite woman, well, then, this story may come as a bit
of a shock, because in it we find a very human Jesus behaving in such a
seemingly un-Jesus-like way.
Maybe
it’s because Jesus was out of his comfort zone: he’s in or at least near a place
called Tyre and Sidon, a non-Jewish land, where a desperate woman, a Canaanite,
a non-Jew, approaches him, begging him to help her tormented daughter.
Apparently,
she’s been annoying the disciples, which sounds about right, since they so
often didn’t get what following Jesus was all about.
But, even if
you’ve only been paying half-attention in church, you know how this should go
down: Jesus will heal the girl, let the
disciples have it for their hard hearts and little faith and then move on to
the next teaching or healing.
Routine
work for Jesus, right?
Just another day
at the office for the Messiah!
But,
instead, in this case, Jesus flatly and, it sounds to me, coldly rejects this
non-Jew, this Canaanite woman and her desperate plea, saying, “I was sent only
to the lost sheep of Israel.”
But,
remarkably, she doesn’t give up, though. Instead, she kneels before Jesus, begging,
“Lord, help me.”
And
then Jesus says his most un-Jesus-like words of all, saying to this poor and
desperate woman, “It is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to
the dogs.”
Now,
if I were insulted by Jesus, I’m pretty sure I’d just slink away, devastated
and ashamed, but instead this incredible woman replies, pointedly and boldly,
“Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters’
table.”
And,
you know, the way I read this exchange, this amazing and really kind of
shocking scene, it seems to me that in this moment our brother Jesus hears the
call to heal what’s broken and make the world even more wonderful – maybe in
this moment he realizes that God’s love is bigger than even he, the Son of God,
had realized – that God loves both Jews and Canaanites – that God’s love
is for absolutely everybody.
Jesus
says to the persistent and bold Canaanite, “Woman, great is your faith! Let it
be done for you as you wish.”
And,
her daughter was healed instantly.
We live in a
wonderful, but broken world. And God invites us to make our world more
wonderful, to heal what’s broken, by setting aside our own fears and prejudices
and being even more loving and generous.
I never thought
I’d be preaching about Nazis, but this is where we find ourselves.
But,
actually, for a long time now, I’ve been interested in how the institutional
Church behaved in Nazi Germany.
A
handful of brave and bold ministers and priests resisted the Nazis and paid
high price for their courage and integrity. But, the tragic reality is that
most of the clergy either kept their heads down and minded their own business,
or they wholeheartedly supported Hitler’s twisted and evil ideology.
I’ve
long wondered what I might do – and
what the American Church might do – if a similar situation arose here in our
country.
Well,
I don’t have to wonder so much anymore because, last week in Charlottesville,
clergy from many different religions and denominations, many wearing their
distinctive clothing, stood with the peaceful counter-protesters, risking
something big for something good, offering love and solidarity in the face of
hate and division.
And,
I’m convinced that my clergy colleagues and I would do the same thing if white
supremacists should ever make the unwise decision to march here in Jersey City.
Finally,
there is Heather Heyer, the seemingly ordinary 32 year-old paralegal who
couldn’t and wouldn’t stand by when hate came to town and sacrificed her life
for love and peace when a driver drove murderously through the crowd.
In
the days that followed we learned that it seems Heather was who she was because
of the family that raised her.
Her
father Mark Heyer, said, “I’m proud of her. I’m proud of her standing up. She
had more courage than I did. She had a stubborn backbone, that if she thought
she was right she would stand there and defy you. If I understand her, she
wanted to do it peacefully and with a fierceness of heart that comes with her
conviction.”
Most
remarkable of all, Heather’s father offered forgiveness
to her killer. He said, “I just think what the Lord said on the cross. Lord
forgive them, they don’t know what they are doing.”
And
then there was Heather’s formidable mother, Susan Bro, who displayed an almost
supernatural calm when she spoke at the funeral. She said, “They tried to kill
my child to shut her up. Well, guess what – you just magnified her.”
So,
yes, it’s been quite a week, a week of contrasts.
It was a week when
we were powerfully reminded that we live in a wonderful, but broken world.
As Jesus
recognized long ago, thanks to the bold and persistent Canaanite woman, we are
called to heal what’s broken, by being even more loving and more generous.
We are called to
follow the example of Jesus and also those who stand up to hate, and even those
who offer forgiveness in the midst of terrible suffering and loss.
And, if we’re sincerely
willing to work with God to heal our wonderful but broken world, then I am
convinced that the words of the beautiful song sung by our kids last week will
be even more real, more true:
“The colors of the
rainbow, so pretty in the sky, are also on the faces of people going by. I see
friends shaking hands, saying, ‘How do you do?’ They’re really saying, ‘I love
you.’”
Amen.
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