Included
Included: Romans 11.1-2a, 29-32 & Matthew 15:21-28
Misha is desperate. She came to the UK from the Czech Republic because she had heard that there was work. She's been here six months and is still paying back the loan she took out to fund her ticket. Four days ago she got a letter from home. Her little sister, Anya, has taken ill and her parents can't get hold of the medicine she needs in Prague. Misha goes to the local health centre and asks if they can provide the medicine Anya needs. At first she can't even make an appointment, but she makes such a nuisance of herself that eventually the receptionist persuades the doctor to see her. The doctor explains the situation to Misha. Anya isn't even in the UK, and the NHS has a definite rules about the limits of where it can work. It wouldn't be fair to UK tax payers to pay for medicines for people all over the world.
Sean is desperate. He's just completed a five year sentence in prison. Because one of the things that got him into trouble were the lads he used to hang out with, part of his bail conditions are that he's had to move away from his home town. He's got a little bedsit, but no friends and no family to support him. Sean missed his daughter growing up. She's seven now. He wants to be able to keep in touch with her, and his ex is OK for him to visit, but he can't afford to pay the train fare. He keeps writing for jobs but they don't even acknowledge his applications, never mind asking him for interview. He starts to go round town, doing the rounds of three or four big employers, keeping on asking for work. Eventually one of the receptionists asks his boss to tell him not to come asking any more. So she comes out and explains the situation to Sean. The economy is not in great shape, there aren't many jobs, and you don't know any one here. It wouldn't be fair to other local, law abiding folk to give you one of the few jobs there are.
Sybil is desperate. She retired from a good job three years ago when she was fifty. She and Reg had been looking forward to enjoying retirement together. But then Reg died only 12 months later. Then 6 months ago her mum had a bad fall and went a bit frail, it had seemed only good sense that she come and live with Sybil. But Sybil's now exhausted. Her mum has started showing symptoms of dementia and has become more and more dependent on Sybil. She never has a moments rest. She tried to get some help from the council but she could never get through to the call centre. She hates the call system, press 1 for this or 2 for the other. She decided to go to the town hall and knock on the door of every office until she found someone who could help. Eventually one of the receptionists gets a council officer to come and get rid of her. So, he comes out and explains the situation to Sybil. The council has limited funds and Sybil is quite well off financially, she could afford to pay for a nurse or for residential care herself. It wouldn't be fair to other people who haven't got the financial resources or family to look after them to give you support.
I don't know what you feel about these stories, what you think about the pictures you have seen. Perhaps you are outraged at the injustice that is being done. There are people in need and there should be a way of helping them. Perhaps you are sympathetic to these needs, but you think that it wouldn't be fair for them to get what they are asking for. After all, there are other people who have a better claim to the help available.
What do you think would have happened if the Sentinel had got hold of these stories. Would they have been presented as bureaucracy gone mad, jobs worths stopping people who really need help getting it, incompetent officials not being able to meet infinite need from finite resources. Or, if the requests had been met, would they have been heralded as heroes or stomped on for being soft touches?
Today we find Jesus in a tough spot a bit like this. He's been wandering around the area of Galilee, feeding thousands of people, as we talked about a fortnight ago, walking on water which we talked about last week and then he had a visit from the religious leaders from Jerusalem who had wanted to argue the finer points of religious law with him. He'd been busy and decided it was time to recharge his batteries. So, he takes the disciples of into the region of Tyre and Sidon, towards the coast. There is no indication that this was planned as mission trip, it looks more like retreat.
As they walked along this woman starts pestering them. If you were trying to think of somebody that Jesus definitely should not have spoken to, then you couldn't do better than this. One: a woman. Two: A Canaanite, one of the pagan race that the people of God had displaced from the Promised Land. Three: Her daughter has a demon.
Now, we are used to stories about Jesus where people come up and ask for help and he helps them. So, it comes as something of a shock to see Jesus ignoring this woman, and then trying to send her away by saying that it would not be fair to give to her, a dog, what was meant for the children of God. So what is going on, why is Jesus not helping her? Well, it seems that at this stage of his ministry Jesus really did understand his mission as being to the house of Israel only. He knew that he had been sent by his Father, and filled with the Holy Spirit to bring the people of God, the sheep of the house of Israel, back into safe pasture. So, he acted in line with what he believed that his mandate was. He had not been given authority by his Father to use the power of the Holy Spirit outside of Israel.
In this conversation I think that we witness Jesus receiving this authority from the Father, realising that his mission is wider than he has understood it to be up to now.
But how can this be? How can Jesus' knowledge have been incomplete about something if he was God? Well, I think that Jesus on earth did not know everything. In his letter to the church in Philippi Paul talks of Jesus “emptying himself” when he came to earth as a man, and I think that this helps to make sense of the way that Jesus went about his business. He was filled with the Holy Spirit, and this empowered him to do the works that he did. He listened to God and was sensitive to God's leading in different situations. And, in the same way that the words and actions of other people allow God to speak to us, I think that the words and actions of the Canaanite woman allowed God the Father to speak to Jesus.
Through the faith filled reply of the Canaanite woman the Father showed Jesus that his mission would be one that bought the Kingdom of God to all peoples.
But Jesus had to be ready to listen. He thought that he was going on retreat to somewhere where he would not be called on to work. But, he remained open and listening. So, when the Father's plan became clearer, Jesus recognised it and went with it. More than this, in the next section of the gospel we see Jesus healing many people in this area and even doing another work of power in feeding many thousands of people.
The full consequences of this encounter were not worked through in Jesus' life time. They continued to affect the life of the early church after Jesus died and rose again. As the disciples tried to work out what it meant to live faithfully following Jesus and be heralds of the Kingdom of God, they had to decide whether people who came to faith in Jesus had to become Jews. Could God's saving power really come to the Gentiles, the pagans? It is part of this ongoing debate that we overhear in the bit of Paul's letter to the Romans that we heard read. He is trying to work out how God can be faithful to the promises he made to the house of Israel, whilst including the rest of the world in the relationship restoring work that Jesus did.
We don't have time to recap the whole debate this morning, but it did become apparent that God had done this and for this we should be especially grateful. This is because we are Gentiles, we are Canaanite dogs, we are the inheritors of the heritage of inclusion in the Kingdom that was announced in the conversation between Jesus and this woman.
We are Misha, Sean, and Sybil. We are those who have been included in the people of God, who have received what we did not deserve, not just crumbs but an invitation to the meal.
As we go through life, as we come across people on the fringes of society, what is our reaction to their pleas for help? Do we remain open to the Holy Spirit prompting us to step outside the system, outside the ideas of how we think that the world ought to work. Are we willing to believe that they might have something to teach us, to allow us experience in even greater depth the grace of God. How do we react to the people on the fringes of our church, or outside our church, how do we go about including them in the people of God? Are we willing to risk being unfair, or to allow things to happen that might be unfair to us, in order to see the Kingdom of God spread in even more astonishing ways?
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