August 16, 2020 - Eleventh Sunday After Pentecost - Nevertheless She Persisted, Daring To Give A More Human Response

A beautiful summer Sunday that was already pretty warm for morning, heralding how hot the rest of the day would be. I acted as Assisting Minister today and sang the Hymn of Praise and the Distribution Hymn, Lamb of God. 

Today I was struck by the evolving nature of man's understanding of God during worship.  The Gospel started with a theological discussion about defilement Jesus was having with his disciples. We don't talk much about defilement as they did when the Bible was written. Then Jesus and the disciples move to a borderland called Tyre and Sidon, where most Jews don't travel, and a "Canaanite" woman shouts out a request at Jesus to heal her daughter.

The anachronistic labeling of her as a "Canaanite" woman is Matthew's reminder of how scripture, particularly Deuteronomy records God's commands about the Canaanites. In words attributed to Moses' and shared with the Israelites, God commanded the genocide of six city nations: 

Deuteronomy 20:17 "But you shall utterly destroy them: the Hittite and the Amorite and the Canaanite and the Perizzite and the Hivite and the Jebusite, just as the LORD your God has commanded you," 

And the explanation for the destruction is "they cannot teach you to do all the detestable things they do for their gods, and so cause you to sin against the LORD your God." 

Genocide prevents sin according to this verse. Genocide stops defilement according to this verse. Hebrew scripture declares this and Jesus' initial reply is in keeping with what the scripture would seem to dictate here. This also is mirrored in the disciples' first response. They want nothing to do with her. This woman, according to Jewish traditions and the scriptures, is unclean because she is a woman, and she is of a different ethnicity, and she is of low social status. She is three times unclean because of who she is. According to the scripture that Jesus comes to fulfill, she should be utterly destroyed. Jesus comparing her to a dog is mild. 

Now, she could have taken Jesus at his word. She could have taken the insult, "It is not right to take the children’s bread and toss it to the dogs.” and walked away. Nevertheless, she persisted, She eloquently answers "Yes Lord, yet even dogs eat the crumbs that fall from the master's table." Rather than attempting to deny or contradict his words, she dares give a more human and more Godlike response than he gave her. Together Jesus and this woman create a new Gospel vision of God's compassion for humankind.

Stephen Patterson writes in his book The Forgotten Creed: Christianity's Original Struggle against Bigotry, Slavery, and Sexism, about the history and legacy of a forgotten early Christian creed embedded in Galatians 3:26–28,  "So in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith, for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus."

Patterson's book describes how ancients used categories to create “otherness” and to structure society to the advantage of native, free males, and how, and why, certain early followers of Jesus, including Paul, came to reject these “othering” categories and instead embrace their unity and solidarity as children of God. 

This book also traces the failure of nerve that eventually led the church to abandon this ideal and once again leverage race, class, and gender to the advantage of native, free males: let women be subordinate, slaves be obedient, and foreigners beware. 

Setting this discussion in the context of the contemporary debate about race, class, and gender and demonstrates that these are not late-arriving modern concerns deriving from the current culture wars. Race, class, and gender are always used to divide the human community into “us” and “them.” This forgotten creed is an early strike against the age-old problem of racism, classism, and sexism.

He speculates this was the first Christian creed that might have been proclaimed in a liturgy as new Christians were baptized into the faith. I am completely drawn to the idea that the first creed was not affirming one's beliefs about God but,. rather, a groundbreaking insight and allegiance to our identity as people of God which we must discover, again and again. in the communities we build.