Epiphany 2, Year B, 2006

/ Sarah / Leave a comment

Lord: Sarah  

Sarah:  (Look around confused)

Lord:  (more insistently) Sarah!

Sarah:  Yes, Lord?

Lord:  You misunderstood me.  I didn’t say you should become a priest.  I said you should marry Jason Priestly.  You know, the actor from Beverly Hills 90210? 

Sarah:  (Confused look on her face)  Well, it’s a little late now. . .and I think Jason Priestly is married. . .do you mind if I just keep being a priest?

Lord:  (Sigh)  Fine.

Sarah:  Okay, well, then I’m going to go ahead and preach. . .

Hearing the call of God is a confusing, complicated process.  It would be nice if God would shout from the heavens and tell us exactly what we should do with our lives.  However, God seems to prefer to reveal our call to us slowly and quietly, so that we truly have to search our heart, mind and spirit.

Today’s reading from the Old Testament is about the call of Samuel.  Samuel’s mother was a woman named Hannah.  She was one of two wives of a loving husband and was barren for many years.  One day, she went to the temple where the priest, Eli, presided.  She wept and prayed so hard her lips moved.  Eli, not being the most compassionate priest on the planet, thought she was drunk and told her to move along.  Nice, huh?

So, Hannah goes home, soon gets pregnant and is so thankful that she not only names her son Shem-uel-name of God-she also vows to give her baby to the temple, so he can serve God all his life. 

In the meantime, Eli’s sons, who were supposed to take over for him, were incredibly corrupt, stealing from the offerings brought to the table, strong-arming people who came to pray.  As you can imagine, God was NOT happy about this.

So, this brings us to today’s reading.  Samuel is an apprentice at the Temple and while sleeping, hears a voice calling him.  He assumes it is Eli speaking and goes to him.  Eventually Eli realizes what is going on and helps Samuel figure out that God is trying to speak to Samuel.  So, Samuel tells God he is listening, and God gives Samuel a terrible message to give to Eli, telling Eli how Eli’s family’s dynasty will end because his sons have been so corrupt. 

To Eli’s credit, he does not get angry with Samuel, but realizes that he should raise Samuel as an honest, ethical priest.

Samuel’s call story is a wonderful model for us, because Samuel could not discern his call himself.  He needed the help of the community to discern his call.  Without Eli’s perception, he would have no idea God wanted to speak with him.

All of us have a call-something we were designed to do.  A call can be described as our deepest passions meeting up with the needs of the world around us.  The author of a book called Listening Hearts writes,

A call may come as a gradual dawning of God’s purpose for our lives.  It can involve an accelerating sense of inner direction.  It can emerge through a dawning feeling that we need to do a specific thing.  On occasion, it can burst forth as a sudden awareness of a path God would have us take.  Call may be emphatic and unmistakable, or it may be obscure and subtle.*

We often think of a call in religious terms-a call to the priesthood or to a monastery-but a call can take as many forms as there are people.  You can have a call to a particular work within the church:  youth group, ministering to the homebound, evangelizing, hospitality, but you can also have a call to secular work-a call to the theater, to law, to medicine, to interior design, to fatherhood, to motherhood, to writing. 

A call can be lived out through a paying job, or it can be something you pursue in your free time.  Many calls are not particularly lucrative, so-this may come as a shock to you-some people have jobs that don’t fulfill their deepest passions, but do pay the bills.  That is a perfectly honorable way to live. 

There are two major glitches in life that can throw us off course from living out our call:

First:  What if we don’t know our call?

Second:  What if we know our call but can’t satisfy it?

In the first instance, if we don’t know our call, we need to heed Eli’s advice:  Say a prayer to God, “Here I am.”  Let God know that you are paying attention, ready to listen.  So often, we tell God what we want or what our worries are, and we don’t leave space for God to respond to us. 

Next, journal about your deepest passions.  What moves you, what excites you? 

Third, talk to your friends and family.  Often, those around us can see our gifts far earlier than we can.  When I trepidatiously announced my desire to pursue ordination, my father and a priest friend both said a more eloquent version of, “Duh.” 

Finally, pay attention.  Although God does not often speak in a booming voice from above, he can speak through the world around us.  If you start looking for needs in the world around you, soon you will find a place where you can serve. 

The second case, being unable to satisfy one’s call, is much more challenging.  I have two friends, both of whom feel a strong call to motherhood. Unfortunately, both are single women.  One of them followed her call, and after a year of prayer and discernment adopted a baby girl from China.  This has been a wonderful experience, but is loaded with the challenges that come with being a single parent. 

The other friend feels strongly that for her, the call is to marriage and motherhood.  She does not feel a particular call to a profession and as you all know, you can’t just make marriage happen.  For her, the last few years have been a real struggle as she has earnestly tried to seek a call, and prayed to be released from this desire to be a mother. In the meantime, she is pursuing a masters degree in a field she thinks she won’t hate, has moved closer to her nephew, and has adopted a dog to nurture.  She invests in friendships, her home and in her church, but the gnawing desire of her call never truly leaves her. 

Many artists and writers also struggle with unsatisfied call, because it is so difficult to support oneself in those fields. 

Unfortunately, I have no easy solution for this problem.  However, I think the icon of Hannah, Samuel’s mother, can be a helpful one for us.  Hannah’s barrenness represents not only the inability to have a child, but also the inability to complete any creative act.  Hannah, who was barren for so many years, did the only thing we can do when we are absolutely stuck and hopeless.  The author of 1 Samuel describes Hannah as “speaking in her heart” when she prayed to God.  She prayed, honestly and passionately.  She wept and pleaded.  Hannah did not suffer in silence, repressing her desires-she began a conversation with God.  Hannah is an icon of hope because her prayers were answered.  She also presents a challenge for us, because once her prayers were answered, she immediately gave Samuel back to God. 

Hannah reminds us that, although a call feels intensely personal, ultimately a call is about lining up our lives with the divine. And, although living one’s call can feel incredibly satisfying, there is always an element of sacrifice when we live the life God intends for us. 

Hannah could not have known the consequences of returning Samuel to the temple, but God would go on to use Samuel as one of the most respected prophets in the history of Israel.  He oversaw the first King of Israel, Saul and was instrumental in recruiting David, after Saul displeased God.  

In pursuing her desire to have a child, Hannah blessed all of Israel.  Just imagine what might happen in this community if we all followed our calls.

Amen.

 

* Farnham, Gill, McLean and Ward, Listening Hearts, Morehouse Publishing:  Harrisburg, PA (1991), p. 7.

 

 

 

 

 

Holy Name Day, Year B, 2006

/ Sarah / Leave a comment

What’s in a name? that which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet;
So Romeo would, were he not Romeo call’d,
Retain that dear perfection which he owes
Without that title. Romeo, doff thy name,
And for that name which is no part of thee
Take all myself.

Pretty good, huh?  That’s the one piece of literature I was asked to memorize in high school and the girl’s still got it!  Most of us recognize this piece as part of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet.  Juliet is lamenting that she cannot be with her true love because his name happens to be that of a family her father hates.

A name is a powerful thing.  A name can separate two lovers, prevent a person from getting a job, give a person access to family wealth and prestige. 

When a parent chooses a name for their child, they choose it with care.  Some of you have wonderful names, loaded with meaning.  Blake and Corin Hunter were named after literary figures-William Blake and the character Corin from Chronicles of Narnia.  Chuck and Leith’s names were chosen because they were family names.  Janice was supposed to be named Elaine, but her mother took one look at her and knew she was a Janice.  My sister and my names were carefully chosen from a baby book with the sole criteria that they could not be reduced to stupid or embarrassing nicknames. 

Do me a favor.  Take a moment and tell the person next to you how you got your name.  If you’re in the Witness Protection Program and some government agent gave you your new name, just invent a story. . .

(Pause)

Today we celebrate Holy Name day, the day when Mary obeyed the Angel Gabriel and named her son Jesus.  No one names anyone in the bible by accident, so we can learn a lot about a person by what he is named.  The word for Jesus can also be translated as Joshua.  If you were here Christmas morning, you heard Chuck talk about the connection between Jesus and the Old Testament figure of Joshua.  After the Israelites were liberated from the Pharaoh through Moses’ intervention, they wandered around the desert for forty years.  Joshua, who was a generation younger than Moses, ended up leading the Israelites into the Promised Land, the Land of Canaan.  So, when the Angel Gabriel tells Mary to name the baby Jesus, which literally means God Saves, you start to have a clue that big things are in store for this baby. 

The significance of names in the Bible did not begin with Jesus.  Adam was called on to name every animal and when Adam first sees his wife, he spontaneously names her in awe and wonder.  From that time on, the names people choose for their children, or even for themselves, in the Bible are careful, rich expressions of their circumstances.  For example, barren women in the Bible who end up becoming pregnant, often name their children in thanksgiving to God.  Hannah names her son Samuel, which means “name of God”, because she had prayed for his conception.

With this legacy behind us, we have the privilege of naming each other and using each other’s names. 

With that privilege comes power.  One of the most powerful ways you can demean a person, remove his humanity, is to alter or remove his name.  This begins in the playground, when kids will taunt one another with unpleasant variations of each other’s names. 

As adults we can do this insidiously.  I have an acquaintance who has some co workers who drive her crazy.  Instead of referring to them by name, she calls them “that black accountant” or “that Mexican girl in human resources”.  She manages to both negate their identity and demean their entire race in one fell swoop with just a handful of careless words.

Unnaming’s most terrible manifestation comes when people’s names are removed altogether, such as in concentration camps during world war II, when people’s names were replaced by a number.  Dehumanizing prisoners in this way, enabled the guards to treat them as people who were far less than fully human, worse even than a normal person would treat an animal

Names are precious.  They are a symbol of all we are and who we hope to become.  Just as Adam carefully chose the first names, and God chose Jesus’ name, we are called to be careful with the names of those around us, to use them tenderly, with respect.

How you speak a person’s name reveals so much about how much you value the person to whom you are speaking.  Listen to these differences:

Hello Chuck! (Say once with enthusiasm, once with boredom, once with disdain, etc.)

Depending on how I used his name, Chuck would immediately know whether I valued him as a person that particular day. 

We hold this power of naming and unnaming, not only over others, but also over ourself.  When I first moved to town, two thirteen year old girls came to my door selling magazines for a school fundraiser.  As I filled out the paperwork the girls started to bicker with each other, saying things like, “You are so stupid.  No you’re stupid!”  They stared at me blankly as I preached to them about the importance of self respect and using positive language.  One of them said to me, “Oh, no, you don’t understand.  It’s okay.  We’re best friends!” 

What these girls didn’t realize is that we become what we name ourselves.  If we allow others to call us stupid, we begin to call ourselves stupid.  If we begin to call ourselves stupid, then eventually we won’t see much need to respect ourselves and will begin limiting our opportunities or even putting ourselves in danger.

In contrast, if we call ourselves nice names, we’ll eventually live into them.  Working at Emmanuel has been disorienting for me, because I have never in my life been called the nice things that I have been since I’ve moved here.  Chuck in particular has a remarkable gift of naming.  If you’ve spent five minutes with him, all of a sudden you feel like you are a fabulous person who was solely responsible for hanging the moon.  My poor sister has the exhausting job of reminding me that I’m the same-old-Sarah and to not get too big of a head. Despite her best efforts, though, I actually find myself being nicer, doing better, because you all treat me like that is who I am. 

When you think of yourselves, what names to do use?  Despite all the lofty events of the last few weeks, I do not think of myself as Sarah-the-Priest nearly as often as I think of myself as “Sarah-who-has-gained-five-pounds-since-she-moved-here.”

Take another moment, this time silently, to think of the names that you use for yourself.

(Pause)

Hopefully, many of those names are positive, but if they aren’t I want to offer you hope. 

First, remember that the maker of the universe created you.  He calls you by name and sees who you truly are.  When the Father speaks your name, he speaks it with the greatest tenderness and affection. 

Jesus, whose name we celebrate today, also has some names for you.  Remember, this is the same Jesus who called the impulsive, flailing Simon, Peter, which means Rock.  He not only called Simon by name, but he added a new name full of hope and pride. 

If your head is full of names that are demeaning, think for a moment about Jesus’ primary names for you:  Friend, brother, and sister.  Jesus, who is all of God, sees you as a partner.  He knows who you are now and he sees who you can become.  He believes in your potential and is eager for you to believe in yourself.

And if your name is not enough for you to believe in, and it probably shouldn’t be, remember that you can cling to the name of the Lord and the name of Jesus-for by revealing these names to us, God declares his desire for intimacy with us and his determination to be in relationship with us forever.

Christmas Eve, Year B, 2005

/ Sarah / Leave a comment

And Mary pondered these things in her heart. 

Mary had a lot to ponder that night long ago.  The child that had grown within her so miraculously and then been carried so precariously through the long journey to Bethlehem had finally been born.  Instead of a quiet moment with her new baby in a safe and warm bed, she is surrounded by livestock and strangers. 

The word translated as “pondered” literally means, “thrown together”.  This pondering is not a quiet, meditative one, but a frantic scrambling to understand what is happening, to absorb all the new information and feelings Mary is experiencing. 

Mary experienced affirmation that her baby was from God throughout her pregnancy.  An angel spoke to her and then, thankfully, to her cousins Zechariah and Elizabeth. Her husband Joseph believed her, but the news of this incredible incarnation was still quiet and contained to a few family members.

This holy secret ends when a flock of shepherds bursts into Mary’s makeshift birthing room, still illuminated from the vision they have seen, talking over each other to tell the story of the angels and how they had visited what felt like every barn in Bethlehem until finally they found this one, with the baby wrapped in strips of cloth.

At this moment, as she holds the baby a little closer to her chest, Mary realizes, this is not “her” baby, not entirely.  In this moment of joy at his birth, there is also a little grief, as Mary realizes her child is a child she will have to share.  Not just with these eager shepherds, but with all people.

Usually in painted icons of Mary and the baby Jesus, Mary holds Jesus on her lap, close to her body.  However, there is one icon in which Mary faces the onlooker and holds Jesus away from her body, towards whoever is looking at the icon. 

This is the Mary who realizes her sacrifice will be to lose her son, not only to death, but also in life.  This baby will grow up to create a new family of misfits and criminals.  This baby will grow up to live a life of a wanderer, traveling from town to town.  He will never settle down or provide her with grandchildren. In this icon, Mary not only accepts this reality, but offers Jesus to us.

This baby who was born, was born of Mary, but was born for the world.  After all, we must remember that this tiny baby contains all of God.  All the powers that created the universe, pushed the stars into their rotations, created green grass and human flesh out of dust. 

One of our acolytes was helping to green the church last Sunday and observed that the baby Jesus in our nativity scene is about half the size of Mary.  He looks at least six years old.  I wonder if that was an intentional decision on the part of the artist.  Perhaps the artist got carried away as she meditated on the huge implications of the incarnation, of God choosing to limit himself in human flesh.  Maybe she thought no small baby could handle the enormity of God, so she made the baby a little bigger, to give God more room to wiggle around.

I wonder what it was like for God to suddenly also be completely human, to have his infiniteness constrained by skin, to suddenly have to turn his head to look behind him, to suffer the indignity of having to learn to walk?  Was there a part of being a baby Jesus really loved?  Did he love his own tiny fingers and toes the way we love the toes of our favorite babies? 

From the very start, just by being born, God began to redeem what it is to be human.  If Jesus can learn to walk, and read, and eat, then walking and reading and eating have the potential to be holy activities, not just human ones. 

If God chooses to be born in a dingy stable in the midst of chaos, then God redeems all those who suffer the indignities of poverty and chaotic lives.  God choose to came, not to a family that had it all together, but to an exhausted traveling couple who were just trying to find a dry place to lay their heads.  Mary and Joseph did not have the time or resources to prepare for a “proper” arrival for their son, so he came in the most awkward and uncomfortable of situations.

Yes, Mary’s sweet baby was no ordinary child. 

God came to earth as the Christ so we could know him in a deeper and more intimate way. He came embodied, in actual human flesh, not some divine ephemeral cloud.  He could taste and touch and feel.  He could get headaches and feel hunger pangs.  He came to face all our temptations and sorrows.  He came to know what it is to love and lose. He came not only to save us from our sins, but to redeem the very lives we live.

Know that whether you sorrow or feel deep joy at this moment, that Christ has compassion for you, knows what those emotions feel like, and loves you.  He offers you hope for redemption and continued joy. . .not just in the next life, but in this life.  There is no experience you can have that is outside the scope of Christ’s forgiveness, nothing you can do that, if repented, will prevent Christ’s embrace.

I’ll close with a poem by Madeleine L’Engle about Christ’ birth from Mary’s perspective.

O ORIENS, by Madeleine L’Engle

O come, O come Emmanuel

Within this fragile vessel here to dwell.
O Child conceived by heaven’s power
Give me thy strength: it is the hour.

O come, thou Wisdom from on high;

Like any babe at life you cry;

For me, like any mother, birth

Was hard, O light of earth.

O come, O come, thou Lord of might,

Whose birth came hastily at night,

Born in a stable, in blood and pain
Is this the king who comes to reign?

O come, thou Rod of Jesse’s stem,

The stars will be thy diadem.
How can the infinite finite be?

Why choose, child, to be born of me?

O come, thou key of David, come,

Open the door to my heart-home.
I cannot love thee as a king-

So fragile and so small a thing.

O come, thou Day-spring from on high:
I saw the signs that marked the sky.
I heard the beat of angels’ wings

I saw the shepherds and the kings.

O come, Desire of nations, be

Simply a human child to me.
Let me not weep that you are born.

The night is gone. Now gleams the morn.

Rejoice, rejoice, Emmanuel,

God’s Son, God’s Self, with us to dwell.

Advent 4, Year B, 2005

/ Sarah / Leave a comment

King David was a manly man.  He slayed giants. He slept with other men’s wives and killed their husbands.  He led the armies that secured Jerusalem.  He established a kingdom.  (He also danced through the streets naked, but that is another sermon.)

Sweet Mary, on the other hand, was by all accounts a nice girl from a good family.  She was open, receptive, non-confrontational.  She was even a virgin.

Somewhere, Gloria Steinem is pulling out her hair.  These descriptions are a feminist’s nightmare, right?  Manly men and wimpy women.  Women of my generation were told we could grow up to do anything, be anyone we want to be.  Women before me had fought for their rights to work alongside men in every field you could imagine, and I certainly reaped the benefits of their hard work.  After all, I was born the year after the first women priests were ordained. What women are not supposed to be is passive, waiting around for some man (or God) to fulfill our destiny.

So, what do we do with these images of David and Mary?  These contrasting images of aggressive and passive behavior.

The good news is, we don’t have to choose just one.  (Though I’d be careful which attributes of David you emulate.)  God uses both David and Mary in Jesus’ conception.  In the Lukan geneaology of Jesus, Joseph, Jesus’ father, was descended from the line of David.  We’ll never know how the genetics of the assumption work, whether Jesus inherited any of Joseph’s traits, but for all legal purposes, Jesus could trace his heritage back to David.  

Throughout Jesus’ life, his incredible faithfulness to his heavenly Father will be a powerful combination of both David’s aggression and Mary’s ability to yield to God.  We see David in Jesus when he stands up to the powers of the day, when Jesus throws over the tables in the Temple.  We see Mary’s quiet faithfulness when Jesus yields to God in prayer over and over again, especially when he must choose to follow the path that he knows will lead to his death.  And in this struggle, we learn that yielding to God, as Mary and Jesus do, can be the most courageous and frightening way of faithfulness possible.  Yielding to God is not wimpy.

Mary was a woman who knew where her life was going.  She was marrying a carpenter, and would have a lovely quiet married life in which she’d take care of her husband and raise their children.  All this is interrupted when the Angel Gabriel comes to her and tells her that she is the favored one of God.

When Mary accepts God’s unexpected plan for her life, she yields to a future she cannot predict.  She does not know whether Joseph will accept or reject her, whether her family will shun her.  She certainly cannot know that she will one day have to watch her son be brutally murdered. 

When Mary yields to God, she surrenders her very understanding of how the world operates.  She surrenders her understanding of how God intervenes in the world.  Mary is open to God behaving in a completely new and unanticipated manner. 

Yielding to God is no small thing.  When we acknowledge that we do not control our destinies, we face the terror that we cannot predict our future.  There is no way to ensure that we or our loved ones will be safe, secure, or happy. 

Still, the Angel Gabriel refers to Mary as “favored one”. This Greek word translated as favored-charitoo– means, “endowed with grace”.  God chooses Mary, not because she is perfect, but because he chooses to endow her with his grace, just as he chooses to endow humanity with grace through the life and death of Jesus.

So, where is the grace in this yielding to God? 

I’d like to think that the grace, for Mary, came from her relationship with her Son.  She had the privilege of watching this incredible man grow from the baby and young boy she had nurtured to the powerful, wise and self-giving man he would become.  She experienced the grace of knowing God first hand, for a longer period of time then anyone before her.  She lived with this incarnate God 24 hours a day for years.  I’d like to think somewhere inside of her was a Jewish mother who got a chuckle out of the thought of disciplining the Lord of the Universe.  Potty training God?

In the same way, the grace when we yield to God, is that we get to learn more about God, we get to sit in his presence for a bit, and get a tiny sense of who he really is.  Yielding to God is not always about doing the will of God, it can also be a emotional or psychological transaction.  For instance, if you have a hard time trusting the father figure in your life, that distrust probably plays out in your prayer life with God.  If your dad abandoned you, why shouldn’t God?  In that case, yielding to God might be a moment of epiphany when you realize that God loves you, that God is not going to abandon you.  In that moment, you feel your body relax, your defenses lower.  That is yielding to God. 

You might believe you don’t need God.  In that case, yielding to God may happen when you get hit with a major crisis.  In a moment, in a flash, you realize that you are finite, that you don’t have all the answers. 

When we yield to God, we become God’s favored ones.  Not because we earn the distinction, but because God longs to bestow his grace upon us. 

And it is only when we yield to God, that it becomes appropriate to have a more confrontational, aggressive faith like David.  When we have yielded in prayer to God and have a sense of God’s call in our lives, we can then live out the “masculine” side of our faith.

Some of us might be called to fight for justice-writing letters to legislators, or organizing protests.  Others of us might be called to bring bible studies into local prisons or to work with the Bread Fund. 

The Christian life is a dance of yielding and responding to call.  The Christian Life is a dance of prayer and action. 

We are called to be both Mary and David.

As Jesus came into life through David and Mary, we are called to bring Jesus to life in this world.

Amen.

Advent 2, Year B, 2005

/ Sarah / Leave a comment

It is time to come home!

This is the good news the prophet is speaking in the passage from Isaiah we hear today.  You see, Jerusalem was the symbolic and physical home of the Israelites.  They had journeyed for hundreds of years, and finally secured Jerusalem under King David’s leadership.  The Israelites believed their wandering, their suffering was finally over.  Unfortunately, years later, the Babylonians swooped in and took over Jerusalem, exiling all the Jews. 

The Israelites understood this defeat as not only a political and military defeat, but a spiritual defeat as well.  They believed that their sins had caused the loss of Jerusalem.

When the Lord says, “She has served her time and her penalty is paid” in this triumphant passage from Isaiah, he is telling the Israelites the good news that they will no longer be punished by exile, but will be allowed to return home.

It is time to come home!

John the Baptist repeats some of these words from Isaiah when he proclaims the coming of Jesus Christ. 

See, I am sending my messenger ahead of you,
who will prepare your way;
the voice of one crying out in the wilderness:
`Prepare the way of the Lord,
make his paths straight,

Why echo this message of homecoming?  Jesus was not going to come in and drive out the Roman occupiers of Jerusalem. 

What is a home, anyway?   I’ve been traveling for a couple weeks, a little vacation, then some continuing education, and each time I drove back to Crozet, and sunk into my big comfy bed at the end of a long day, I could feel myself relaxing into being home.  Some of you have lived in this area since you were tiny and some are as new as I am, but somehow we have all come to associate this place with home.  Home is more than a physical place.  Home is an emotional and spiritual idea, too. 

When John announced Jesus’ coming, he was announcing a whole new idea of a religious home.  No longer would home be a physical place like Jerusalem.  Home would now rest in a person-the person of Jesus. 

It’s time to come home.

To come home to Jerusalem, the exiled Jews would need to a do a lot of work.  They would pack all their tents, hitch their belongings to their donkeys or camels, and begin the long walk back home. 

Coming home to Jesus takes work, too. 

John the Baptist preached a baptism of repentance.  He knew that in order to encounter Jesus, the very embodiment of love, the people around him would need to cleanse themselves of their sins.  He knew a life of sin would prevent a homecoming with Jesus.

I read a wonderful book over vacation called A Song I Knew by Heart by Brett Lott.  This novel is a retelling of the Ruth and Naomi story, but with a big twist.  In this story, after years of dealing with the painful issue of infertility, Naomi and her husband have grown distant from each other.  In a fit of anguish, Naomi throws herself at her husband’s best friend and they are intimate together one time.  Naomi goes immediately home where she sits in a cold bath, trying frantically to feel clean and finds herself unable to move, but shivers uncontrollably in her cold and guilt.  Her husband comes home, finds her, lifts her out of the tub, then takes her to their family bed, where he covers her in quilts and lies next to her until she warms again.  Throughout the rest of her life, she is tormented by her guilt and thinks of her sin as a separation from love. . . a separation from love.   Instead of turning toward her husband, who loved her so, she separated herself from that love and clung to another.

Sin as separation from love. . .a powerful image isn’t it?  When we sin, we separate ourselves from love, we separate ourselves from home.  When we repent and are forgiven, we bridge that separation, we experience a profound homecoming.

Naomi feels the weight of her guilt for the rest of her life.  She never tells her husband what happened, and they stay married and eventually have children.  At the end the book, at the end of her life, she finds out that her husband’s best friend told him what happened immediately after the indiscretion. 

So, when Naomi’s husband picked her up out of the frigid tub, and warmed her with blankets and his own flesh, he KNEW what had happened.   He was forgiving her, loving her, despite her betrayal.

For forty years, Naomi carried around a guilt that separated her from her husband, her children.  If she had only spoken of her guilt to her husband, she could have experienced the depth of her husband’s forgiveness, God’s forgiveness, much sooner.  Perhaps she could have even forgiven herself.

Like Naomi’s husband, God is eager to forgive us, eager to wrap us in the blanket of his love, his acceptance.  God is eager to welcome us home. 

As we wait for Jesus’s arrival this Christmas, we can prepare for his arrival by coming clean, coming clean before ourselves, our loved ones, God.  We can examine ourselves for the ways in which we have separated ourselves from love, and turn to welcome love back in our lives. 

(Pause)

It is time to come home.

Proper 28, Year A, 2005

/ Sarah / Leave a comment

Investing is serious business.

I learned this at a finance workshop that Karin Bonding ran several weeks ago.  A few women got together over a bottle of wine and some chocolate truffles and faced the cold hard truths of our financial situations. 

If you were watching us, you would know exactly where our financial weaknesses were by when we gulped a sip of wine. 

I gulped when I realized how long I would need to save money for a downpayment on a house. 

Another woman gulped when she realized how much she needed to save for her children’s college education. 

There was a collective gulp when we talked about the money we would need for retirement.

Karin was fantastic at helping us calm down and figure out how we could meet our financial goals.  Apparently stuffing your money in a mattress and panicking is not a valid financial plan.

The slave in today’s gospel lesson could have used Karin’s advice.  His master entrusts him with one talent, which was a huge amount of money at the time.  A talent was a very large coin that could weight as much as 60 to 75 pounds!  Imagine if your boss asked you to invest several million of his dollars.  I can sympathize with the slave’s nervousness. 

The slave wanted to make sure he protected that talent, so he buried it deep within the earth so nothing could happen to the coin. 

Imagine his anxiety each day of his master’s trip, visiting the mound of dirt that protected the coin to make sure no enthusiastic canine had dug the coin out from it’s protected spot.  What relief he must have felt to return the talent safely to his master! 

Unfortunately for the slave, the master was not as interested in the protection of the talent as he was in the investment of the talent.  The master rewards the two slaves who have taken the risk of investing the money and takes away the talent from the man who dug the hole after calling him lazy and wicked!

We do not often think of God as a savvy investor—After all, when you can create a universe just by thinking about that universe, you probably don’t have a serious need for cash.

We’ll be helped if we remember this story is a parable.  Imagine Jesus as the master.  He is going away for a time, but will be back soon.  Jesus wants to make sure that believers don’t waste the gifts of the Church by hiding them.  He wants us to invest ourselves to the best of our ability, so that when Jesus returns, he’ll be able to see the returns on our investments. The question is:  how do we know what gifts Jesus wants us to invest?

I was, for three years, the world’s worst secretary.  I hate working in an office all day.  I hate filing.  I don’t like being interrupted by an authority figure.  I’m not crazy about answering the phone.  I’m also not fantastic with details.  So, you can imagine the disaster that awaited my poor boss anytime he needed anything.  My gifts did not match up to my responsibilities.

I think sometimes in the church, we get so panicked about getting programming together, that we cajole, beg, or manipulate parishioners to step up to do jobs that need to be done, regardless of whether their gifts match the responsibilities.  While I’m not going to stop recruiting for Sunday School teachers, my dream would be that everyone in this parish would be doing the work that best suits you, that brings you pleasure. 

Each of you has incredible gifts.  I’ve been saddened to hear some of you, particularly women, focus on the tasks in life you believe you do not do well. 

Humility is one thing, but when we deny the gifts God gives us we’re wasting a chance to really invest those gifts.  Remember, the God of the universe created you.  This is the same God who made mountains, and diamonds, and fireflies and rainbows—God makes really good stuff.  You are no exception. 

So, if you are not sure what your gifts are or if you think you know, but want to explore some more, or if you are convinced you are giftless, I have a wonderful book to recommend to you.

The book is called Living Your Strengths, and the authors and publishers can be found in your bulletin.

Living Your Strengths was written based on a study conducted by the Gallup Organization.  Some researches from the Gallup Organization interviewed people who were the best in their fields—the best CEO, the best teacher, the best cleaning woman, the best actress—and so on.  When they compiled the results of their interviews, they found that people have thirty five areas of strength and each of us excels at four or five of these. 

Living Your Strengths addresses how to use these gifts in a church setting.  However, the information you learn will help you use your strengths in the rest of your life, as well.

Here is a quote from the book, “In Gallup’s research into human potential over the past 30 years—including interviews with more than 2 million people—the evidence is overwhelming:  You will be most successful in whatever you do by building your life around your greatest natural abilities rather than your weaknesses.  Your talents should be your primary focus. . .Your calling is what God wants you to do with your life; your talents and strengths determine how you will get it done.  When you discover your talents, you begin to discover your calling.”  (p. x)

The CATCH to this book, is that you need to buy the book to take the online quiz to find out what your strengths are—so clearly whoever marketed this book had the gift of fleecing his market audience. 

I think this book can be a helpful tool for us, because it re-frames our thinking about gifts.  Instead of wishing for someone else’s creativity or ability to cook or financial savvy, or worrying about our weaknesses, it helps us take an honest look at our own gifts. 

You might not have had any idea you had the gift of consistency or individualization, for instance.  If you do, you might do well visiting with some of our housebound parishioners.  If you have the gifts of analysis and being a learner, the adult forum committee might be the place for you.

If I had read this book before taking on my job as a secretary, I might have realized that my gifts of empathy, arranging, adaptability, connectedness and individualization, did NOT a good secretary make.  However, they do make a decent minister.  I could have, like many people, focused on my weaknesses and tried to better them.  That is a fine goal.  However, if I had spent the last three years improving my filing skills rather than going to seminary, I would still be one unhappy girl.  If we really want to maximize our role on this planet, and in this church, a more effective approach will be to focus on our strengths and do ministry out of that part of ourselves, rather than focusing on our areas of weakness.

At 11:00 [Today we celebrate the baptism of Clancy Beights.  We’re not sure what his strengths will be—He recently learned how to put his foot in his mouth, but his growth probably won’t stop there.  We do know that he will be an important part of the church, as we all are.]

The wonderful thing about the investment God has made in us, is that God invested in US, not in you or me.  God invested in the church—millions of people all over this planet.  We are all incredibly different, but we can work together to really make a difference.  We do not have to be responsible for every committee, every job, every mission.  God will show us what our, individual callings are and how we can best use our strengths to serve him.  

Proper 25, Year A, 2005

/ Sarah / Leave a comment

Have you ever been in love?

I don’t mean the kind of sensible love of matched personalities and long marriages. I mean the can’t-catch-your-breath adolescent love of terrible poetry and teenage heartbreak.  When you’re in this be-still-my-beating-heart kind of love, your mind can think of nothing else.  It doesn’t matter if the object of your love is entirely inappropriate or unattainable, your devotion is complete. 

When I was in early high school, back when a text message was the newspaper, my girlfriends and I would write long notes to each other in intricate code describing every detail of the interaction we had with the boy we had code named “Samoa” or “River”.  Passing these notes was risky, but there was always the thrilling potential for the object of our love to actually intercept a note, decipher our code even the NSA couldn’t crack, and admit he returned our passion. 

Now, some were slightly more developed romantically than I was at fifteen, and actually had relationships in which both parties felt this love.  These lucky couples expressed their love through scrawling their initials on desks, or writing graffiti in the bathroom, or the most romantic of all, carving their initials in a tree in a local park.

When you’re in love, you want the world to know. 

When the Pharisees asked Jesus his opinion of the greatest commandment, they were hoping to paint him into a legal corner.  You see, if he chose ONE of the 619 religious laws on the books, it would mean he was degrading the rest of the laws.  Well, instead of choosing one of these laws, Jesus sings the Pharisees a love song.

Well, not exactly a love song.  You see, what Jesus says, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, and with all your mind,” he is quoting part of the Schema, a sung Hebrew prayer.  Waaaaay back in Jewish history, when God and Moses spent a lot of time talking, Moses told the Jewish people that God told him to tell the Israelites, “The Lord your God is one God.  You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul and with all your might.”  Moses went on to tell the Israelites they should keep this commandment on their doorposts.  He might have been using a metaphor, but we religious folks can be pretty literal, and so even today in many Jewish homes, you find a Mezuzah on the door frame, a small box or tube that contains the text of the Schema–this prayer.  Think of it as a form of carving initials in a tree trunk—Lord God hearts human kind.

The relationship between the Israelites and God may seem like a strange love affair since God tells the Israelites they should love him with all their heart.  In my experience, I find it rarely works to tell someone, “Love me!  Choose me!”  However, when God passes on this commandment, he does it during a special time in Israel’s history.

The Israelites have recently been liberated from Egypt and are wandering around in the wilderness, waiting to get to the Promised Land.  For most of the trip, they’ve been pretty grumpy, not at all sure they really wanted to be liberated in the first place.  They are fairly disorganized and not sure how to behave.

God will soon give them a LONG list of rules to help them organize themselves, but first he wants to remind them of who he is and what their relationship will be like.  Just like a new lover, eager to be known, God self-discloses, describes to the Israelites what he is like.

Our Lord is ONE God, not a confusing mass of petty Gods.  He is a God who reaches out to us.  He does not make us guess which of his manifestations he will be today.  We take this for granted, after four thousand years of worshiping one God, but imagine what it must have been like to worship a pantheon of smaller gods who fought with each other for power, for pride.  You would never be safe, never comfortable.  In that kind of system, you have to offer gods constant sacrifice, constant manipulation.  By declaring himself one God, our Lord let us know he was straightforward, trustworthy.

When God tells the Israelites that they should love the Lord their God, he is not being a bully.  God is telling the Israelites good news—the relationship between God and people is based on love, not on what humans can do to appease the gods.  All the other commandments and laws are really a subset of this one.

Jesus takes this a step further and adds, “Love your neighbor as yourself.”  The Love between God and people leads naturally to love between people. 

Let me give you an illustration of this phenomenon.  Next weekend, I have the honor of performing the marriage ceremony for two people whose lives completely exemplify this principle. 

They love God and have this very sweet, holistic, supportive love for each other, but their love does not stop there.  Because of this amazing energy and goodness that flows between them, they have ended up as the emotional center of their group of friends.  They bring chicken and biscuits to friends who are sick, take late night phone calls from friends in distress, and their dining room table is the center for many an abundant celebration of love and friendship.

This couple understands that love, even romantic love, is not something to be hoarded and parceled out carefully.  Love is designed to push ourselves beyond our natural borders, to reach out to those around us—to hear their stories, celebrate life’s joys and mourn life’s tragedies with them. 

As Christians, we don’t have the tradition of the Mezuzah to proclaim our love for God.  Instead Jesus asks us to show our love for God, by loving our neighbor.  Loving one another is our way of carving our initials in a tree.  People of Emmanuel heart God.

Amen.

Proper 21, Year A, 2005

/ Sarah / Leave a comment

My best friend in college was a woman named Carissa. She was raised in Houston and Singapore in a family in the oil business. I was raised overseas, too, but by two teachers. While my family cleaned up okay, elegance was never our greatest strength.

Carissa got married right after college and, as one of her readers, I was invited to the casual barbeque rehearsal dinner—I believe the dinner was actually described as a pig-pickin’. Since the dinner was casual, I dressed the part—a plain blue t-shirt and a pair of khaki pants. When I arrived at the party, all the other women were wearing silk dresses and pearls. You see, I had missed two important social clues. First, the party was thrown by Texans and Texas casual, it turns out, is not so casual. Secondly, the party was being held at the Virginia Country Club. Now, being southern, all the guests were very kind to me. . .even the ones who thought I must be on staff and kept asking me where the bathrooms were.

I was much luckier than the poor underdressed guest at the wedding in our gospel reading today. I was not cast into outer darkness and I did not once gnash my teeth. As you might imagine, however, I have a great deal of sympathy for this poor character. Why was he punished for wearing the wrong outfit?

The parable we read today about the wedding banquet is the last in three parables commonly known as the vineyard parables. These parables are Jesus’ response to the Pharisees challenging his authority—we heard the other two the last two Sundays. First, the parable about the owner of the vineyard asking his two sons to work, second, the parable about the tenants killing the landowners son, and now this parable about the wedding feast.

In our parable today, a King is giving a wedding banquet for his son. He invites the usual fancyguests, but all of them refuse to come. After punishing them thoroughly, he invites poor people off the streets.

So far, this parable makes a lot of sense. God has initiated a party for his son Jesus, the religious establishment of the day rejects the party, so God extends his invitation to prostitutes, tax collectors, and the like.

Now, however, we come to the poor unfortunate guest who is not wearing a wedding garment. The King does not show him an OUNCE of Southern hospitality, in fact he throws him out on his ear, to eternal weeping and gnashing of teeth.

Phew!

Here’s my question. How many poor, off the street people do you know that own silk dresses or tuxedos.

Not too many, right? But in the world of this parable, no one else is getting berated for wearing the wrong clothes, but all the guests came off the street. So, where did the other guests get their wedding garments?I wonder if the King actually provided clothing for his guests.

And if the King DID provide clothes for his guest, and this particular guest insulted him by rejecting the gift, the King’s reaction makes a little more sense.

At the risk of piling metaphor upon parable and confusing us all mercilessly, imagine this garmentless guy as the kind of person who never really invests in anything, but always likes to hover around and see what is going on. He wanted to be at the wedding party, but he did not necessarily want to be associated with the King.

He’s the nosy neighborhood woman who takes a sharp intake of breath (tssss) when you give your kid a snack before dinner, but would stand idly by if your kid was running into traffic. He’s the guy not even assigned to your project at work who always has some negative comment to say about your ideas, but never offers to pitch in and help. He is, if I may be so bold, the kind of guy who comes to church to see and be seen, but is not particularly interested in God or his own spiritual journey.

Our friend is the kind of guy who is always detached, never passionate, never a “joiner”, but always has an opinion.

There’s a great scene in “O Brother Where Art Thou” in which one character has recently been baptized and another has sold his soul to the Devil. George Clooney’s character looks back and forth between the two and says, “I guess I’m the only one here that remains unaffiliated.”

Our parable today indicates that not affiliating with God is dangerous behavior. This kind of wishy washy behavior is the kind of behavior that gets a person tossed into outer darkness.Yikes!

You see, aligning ourselves to God is not a passive act, aligning ourselves to God—like William’s parents are choosing today—is a choice, a commitment for something.>

When Jesus told the Pharisees this parable, he was on the long, bloody road to the cross. Jesus knew the cost he was going to have to pay to be obedient to God and you can understand his impatience with people who would not commit to being on God’s team.

As the King offered to change the identity of this wedding guest with the wedding garment, God wants to change our identity. He wants us to wear outward and visible signs of our commitment to him, not in the form of crosses around our neck or Christian T-shirts, but in the form of our lives.

Our God is a passionate God, who is passionately jealous. He does not want us running around dating money or power or sex as our other Gods. He wants us to choose him, to align ourselves with him in worship, our prayer life, and the choices we make throughout the day.

There is no joy in a relationship in which one member is detached. No marriage is satisfying unless both partners are completely engaged. God is completely committed to us. He has shown that through Jesus’ birth, life, death and resurrection. Through our parable today, he reminds us that he wants our utter commitment to him. He longs for our energy, time, and love.

Being a half-way Christian is not enough. God can handle our doubts and questions and fears, what he does not want is for us to hold back. Better to engage, argue, even berate God, then to say, “Eh. I’ll pray tomorrow.” God offers us more than a wedding garment to accept, he offers himself.

Amen.

Proper 19, Year A, 2005

/ Sarah / 1 Comment

Four years ago today, as I sat in my living room with a few good friends, watching the footage of two planes flying into the twin towers over and over again in what seemed like an infinite loop of media coverage, I could not have known the degree to which that event would exacerbate divisions between America and the Middle East or even exacerbate divisions within our own country. 

Western nations and Middle Eastern nations have lived in an uncomfortable tension for over one thousand years as each have vied for the same wealth, power and land.  Our latest conflict is rooted in a business deal struck fifty years ago between American oil companies and Saudi Arabia’s Saud family.  Western style capitalism and conservative Islamic social norms expanded side by side for fifty years until the inevitable explosion of violence we have experienced the last few years. 

Knowing how to respond to the Middle East can be confusing for us, since the violence is the work of a few terrorists, rather than entire nations.  A neighbor of mine is a high school counselor in a nearby county.  Her co counselor enthusiastically decorates the high school for Christmas every year-Christmas trees, Santas, baby Jesuses, you name it.  When her new principal informed her that she would also have to decorate for holidays such as Hannukah, Kwanzaa and Ramadan, she exclaimed, “I can’t decorate for Ramadan, we’re at war with Muslims!” 

Now, we’re not at war with Muslims. But for many Americans, 9-11 has shaped the way they view all Muslims, not just terrorists.  Christians are suspicious of Muslims because of 9-11 and Muslims are suspicious of Christians because of how they were treated after 9-11.  While not much overt violence happened, nearly every American Muslim I know received threatening phone calls, found people blanching in fear when they approached, or watched Christians cross the street in order to avoid them.  The conflict in the Middle East is a complicated one and won’t be solved in a ten minute sermon, but I think looking back at the earliest roots of the conflict will lend insight into all the conflicts our country is facing today.

As I did research on the history of this Western-Eastern conflict the last few weeks, I discovered that the Muslim people trace their heritage back to Ishmael-Abraham’s “other” son.  Let me refresh your memory of Ishmael’s story.  His story appears in the middle of Genesis and is a juicy one-not unlike something you might find on Montel. 

God called Abraham out of his native land and told Abraham that he would be the father of a nation.  Abraham was married to Sarah, who, as a practical woman, thought that God was off. . . his. . . rocker.  After all, Sarah and Abraham were elderly and childless and not about to make babies.  In order to help God with his plan, Sarah arranged for Abraham to sleep with Hagar, her maid, who would then be the surrogate mother for their child.  Well, eventually both Hagar and Sarah got pregnant and had their babies, and as you might imagine, Sarah soon started to think her life would be a lot better if she could get rid of Hagar and Hagar’s son, Ishmael.  She wanted to restore her place of power as Abraham’s wife and ensure her son Isaac, would be the head of this new nation. Accordingly, Sarah forced Abraham to kick Hagar out of the house and Hagar ended up stranded in the desert, where God promised to be faithful to her and create a nation from Ishmael as well as a nation from Isaac.

According to the Quran, this nation that descended from Ishmael later became the Muslim people. 

So, metaphorically at least, the very roots of the conflict between East and West spring out of a very individual, very personal conflict between two women who did not know how to forgive.

In our Gospel passage this morning Jesus tells the parable of the king who generously forgives the debt of a slave.  The slave then goes out and throttles a man who owes him money.

That’s so like us, isn’t it?  We have a hard time internalizing the fact that God loves us, forgives us, and blesses us.  Sarah certainly acted like this slave.  God blessed her with a reality beyond anything she could have dreamed-she a barren, elderly woman was not only forgiven for laughing at God, but she was also blessed with a son, ensuring her family line would last forever.  Instead of extending the graciousness she had been given by God towards Hagar, she becomes afraid that Hagar could threaten her blessing so she banishes her.

What if Sarah had been able to forgive herself for not trusting in God?  What if she had been able to forgive Hagar for her capitulation in Sarah’s scheme?  What if she had been able to forgive Ishmael for being born?   Would Jewish and Muslim people have been able to stay united in one religion?  Would the Crusades never have happened? Could 9/11 been avoided?

Obviously we cannot go back into time and change the course of our history.  What this story illustrates is the degree to which we each control our own lives and thereby the destinies of countless others. 

Now we humans love to have an enemy.  Remember the first Olympics after the fall of the Soviet empire?  It was kind of sad, right?  We didn’t know what teams to hate!  No East Germans, no Soviets. . .and those teeny Chinese gymnasts are just too cute to hate. . .

This enemy-making happens on the smallest scale.  Even in my own small development in Crozet, factions have developed.  As a renter, I catch up on all the latest Home owners association gossip when I run with some of the neighborhood women. There is constantly someone trying to make an enemy out of someone else.  Whether the conflict is between single family homeowners versus townhouse owners or the townhouse owners versus the builders. . .where there is not natural hostility, someone will manufacture hostility. 

We see this kind of enemy-making in our nation and even in the Episcopal Church.  Hurricane Katrina has unmasked hostility between whites and blacks in America.  The Iraq War has unmasked hostility between conservative and liberal Americans.  Bishop Robinson’s election unmasked hostility between conservative and liberal Episcopalians.

The good news is that this enemy-making is not inevitable.  The catch to this good news-is that any reconciliation between Muslims and Christians, blacks and whites, liberals and conservatives, single family home owners and townhouse owners is up to us.

Why?

This reconciliation is up to us because we are forgiven.  As Christians, we understand that though we owed God a huge debt, he not only forgives us, but he blesses us beyond our wildest imagination.  This positions us to relate to others in a unique way.  

People make enemies because they are anxious.  Sarah was anxious about Ishmael’s threat to Isaac.  We were anxious about the Soviets using nuclear weapons to obliterate us.  Single family homeowners in my development are anxious about the townhouses bringing down their property value.  Anxiety.  Anxiety.  Anxiety!

As people secure in the knowledge of God’s love for us, anxiety does not need to cause us to be threatened by other people.  As Christians, we know that we do not need power to be powerful.  We do not need money to be rich.  We do not need prestige to be important to God or to those in our church family. 

Like any psychological or spiritual truth, we can’t just say to ourselves, “Well, God loves me!  No more anxiety for me!”  To gain a deep knowledge of our loved-ness, we need to spend time in reflection, prayer and in reading Scripture. When we read Scripture, we realize that God loved a murderer (Moses), adulterer (David), a betrayer (Peter), prostitutes, tax collectors, and on and on.  The beauty of God’s forgiveness is that it enables a holy God to love profoundly un-holy people.  And when we know God loves us, we are enabled to love others.

Without anxiety, we can deeply listen to those who have different opinions from us.  Without anxiety, we can dream ways of sharing power that anxious people could never invent.  Without anxiety, we can be the bridge makers that help differing groups see the humanity in each other. 

And if we don’t act as the bridge makers, who will?

 

 

 

 

Proper 15, Year A, 2005

/ Sarah / Leave a comment

God is immutable.  God doesn’t change.  Christians have pretty much believed this since Thomas Aquinas, one of our most brilliant theologians, argued this one point in five different ways.  (reading from Aquinas?) We can take comfort in God’s changelessness-he is steady, consistent, we know what to expect.

God’s immutability, God’s changelessness is easy to accept.  Until, that is, you read the Bible. 

See the problem with the idea of God’s immutability, is that theologians like Aquinas were taking a Platonic idea, a Greek idea, and imposing it on the Hebrew God.  Most of the time in the Bible, God does seem changeless, but every once in awhile, there is a story in the Bible that makes you wonder about what the changelessness of God really means.

Today’s Gospel lesson of the Caananite woman is one of these stories.

In this story, Jesus is confronted with a woman who is an outsider.  So far, Jesus’ ministry had been confined to those of Jewish descent.  Our heroine was decidedly NOT Jewish-she was from an outlying region called Syro-Phonecia.  Jesus was putting himself in a vulnerable position even being in Tyre and Sidon so it is no wonder he is a little tense when this Caananite woman approaches him.  Still, keep in mind that Jesus has been hounded by hundreds of people, and in every story recorded before this, he has responded to people in need incredibly graciously.  When this woman starts begging him to help her daughter, however, Jesus is rude.  Rude!  Jesus! 

Now, I’ve read a lot of commentaries about this passage, and many of them think Jesus was toying with the woman, teasing her to test her faith.  But he called her a DOG!  A DOG!  That’s not nice.  That’s not a Jesus-y thing to say.  If one of you called because your daughter was sick and you wanted Chuck or I to visit you in the hospital, and we called you a dog, you would not say, “Oh, isn’t that sweet. They are testing my faith.”  Even if Jesus was “teasing”, he was not teasing in a kind way.

What is so fabulous about this story is that instead of bowing down in respect or shame and running away, the Caananite woman fights back!  This woman will not let go.  She uses Jesus’ own argument-that he was sent only to the people of Israel, not other “dogs”-and twists the argument in her favor.  She is so convinced of Jesus’ ability to heal her daughter, that she does not need him to be gracious, she does not need him to actually come to her daughter, all she wants is crumbs. 

Jesus may not know that he is sent to more than just the people of Israel, but this woman sure does.  All that she has heard about Jesus convinces her that he is the kind of man who would heal even a Caananite woman’s daughter.  She is so driven by love for her child, desperation for her well being, that she will take on GOD, and figuratively arm-wrestle him until he submits.

When Jesus finally realizes what is happening, he is not angry or confused-he is delighted!  Something about this woman’s persistence, doggedness, (If you’ll allow me) makes him go “Aha!”  Something about this no-good, foreign “dog” makes him realize that part of his God-ness is to love, heal and redeem ALL people, not just the people of Israel.  Something about this very human woman’s pain makes Jesus grow.

Sure, you’re thinking, but Jesus was also human, so maybe it was his humanness that grew. . .Well, there are plenty of stories in the Old Testament in which God seems to change his mind, when he seems bent on destroying Israel until some faithful Israelite intercedes. 

While there is something comforting about having a God that never changes, I wonder if the concept of God’s immutability is something humans have developed out of our need to define God.  God is so massive and abstract and powerful and elusive and we are so. . .orderly.  I guarantee you, Thomas Aquinas was an off the charts “J” on the Meyers-Briggs-there is something incredibly satisfying about being able to say, “God is like this.”  And, because of the gift of Scripture-of the history of God’s interactions with God’s people-we CAN describe God.  What we can’t do is pin God down. 

Any of you who have a prayer life know this.  As SOON as you think you know what God is doing in your life-BOOM!-suddenly he surprises you with something you never could have imagined.  I do not mean that God is tricky or capricious.  Clearly, over the course of history, God has shown many consistent traits:  God is loving. God is just.  God is merciful.  What I do mean, is that God is not stagnant. 

So, we may not be able to pin God down, but what our passage from Matthew shows us today is that we sure can argue with him.  We can demand that God act like God and show our loved ones the mercy and love that we know he is capable of.  We can demand that God heal us and those around us.  Our prayers do not have to come from a bended knee and a meek heart.  We can raise our fists to God and say, “Hey, if you’re God, why don’t you start acting like it!”

We all go through different spiritual stages in our lives and sometimes it really feels like God is snubbing us, like God isn’t interested in even offering us crumbs of hope, crumbs of faith. 

But if Jesus is willing to heal the daughter of a pushy outcast, he’s surely willing to heal us.  That healing may not look like we expect, but the experience of healing will come out of or even in the midst of this latching onto God, of this deep engagement with the one who created us and redeems us.  There is a time to peacefully accept the lot life has given us, and there is a time to furiously object and to beg for justice and healing.  The key is to stay in prayer, to take time to listen to your heart and listen to God.  When we stay engaged with God, whether meekly or violently, we give God the space to speak to us, to change our hearts, to bring us more in alignment with his vision for our lives. 

Remember, if the Caananite woman had just walked away from Jesus, both she and Jesus would have been denied a life-changing encounter. 

Amen.