“If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.” Or we might say, “If you want to be on my team, stay close behind me, and be ready to pick up and go wherever I go. If necessary, be ready to move!” Uh oh. Maybe it’s not as easy as it looked last week to confess Jesus as the Messiah and follow God’s call.
The prophet Jeremiah, whose lament we just heard, could certainly relate to those words. He’d been a relatively young man, probably having a young man’s good time, when he first heard God’s call to him. “I’ve known you from even before you were born,” God told him, “and I’ve appointed you as a ‘prophet to the nations.’” “But, Lord,” replied Jeremiah, “I’m too young, I don’t know anything about speaking well.” “Never mind,” God said, “I’ll tell you what to say. You just come along, and I’ll be with you the whole time.”
Did Jeremiah know what he was getting himself into and where he would be expected to go, when he agreed to speak for God? I don’t think so. Of course, in the beginning, God’s words, as he tells us, “became to me a joy, and the delight of my heart.” But then God called Jeremiah to try to persuade the king not to enter into a fruitless alliance with other nations, in an attempt to stave off the Babylonians. The religious and political leadership, the other prophets, and even the king himself, loudly derided and scorned Jeremiah for not supporting the king. He was put under house arrest, and even briefly thrown into a well. Unfortunately, his prophecies were right on the mark. The Babylonians conquered Israel, destroyed the temple and much of Jerusalem, and forced the ruling classes and artisans into exile. Jeremiah himself ended up in Egypt with a portion of the exiles. No wonder he was disillusioned with God! No wonder he complains to God that his pain is “unceasing,” and his wound “incurable.” No wonder he accuses God of being “like a deceitful brook, like waters that fail.” Like Jesus’ disciples, like so many of us, Jeremiah had discovered that, while the joy of following God’s call is initially sweet, God often takes us out of our places of comfort and leads us into hardships beyond our imagining.
Yet God did not leave Jeremiah mired in his bitterness and disillusionment. Did you catch God speaking in the second half of our reading this morning? God calls Jeremiah to repentance and promises Jeremiah that, “If you utter what is precious … you shall serve as my mouth. It is they who will turn to you, not you who will turn to them.” In other words, “Don’t lose heart, Jeremiah. Keep testifying, focus on my mission. And people will believe you. You won’t have an easy time, but I am with you forever.” As part of the exile community, Jeremiah was forced to leave his home. He died in Egypt without ever returning to Jerusalem, but, reassured by God’s promises, he continued to speak God’s word for the rest of his life.
“If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.” Jesus is on the move again. With this morning’s reading, we are at a transition point in Matthew’s Gospel story. Jesus is ready to leave northern Israel behind. He has set his face towards Jerusalem and the events that are to transpire there. “It’s settled,” he tells his disciples, “this is God’s plan.” Like Jeremiah, Peter protests. He draws Jesus aside and tries to persuade Jesus to turn back. Still perhaps looking for a military messiah, a mighty king who would throw the Romans out of Israel, Peter can scarcely understand what Jesus is talking about. Jesus dying? Jesus, executed like a criminal? Unthinkable! And can’t we sympathize with Peter? He may not have understood what he was saying when he confessed Jesus as the Messiah, but he is rightly terrified at the prospect of his beloved rabbi dying. As are we, when we’re honest with ourselves. The Cross is always scandalous, so much so that many churches, St. Peter’s included, have no crucifix anywhere – not even in an icon!
Jesus, of course, rebukes Peter in the harshest possible terms. Jesus is on the move. He must go to Jerusalem, and he expects his disciples to leave the comforts of Galilee and follow him there. And, just to make sure that all the disciples understand that he meant what he said about dying a criminal’s death, he tells them that they can expect not only to leave their own places of comfort, but also to experience hardship as his followers, as a part of the community devoted to him. In no uncertain terms he reminds them, “If you want to be on my team, stay close behind me, be prepared to move, but don’t expect an easy time.” But just as God reassured Jeremiah that he would eventually be vindicated, Jesus also reassures his disciples of their greater life in him: “For … those who lose their life for my sake will find it.” Following Jesus won’t be easy, following Jesus won’t necessarily bring them what they want or expect, following Jesus may take them out of their comfort zones, but if they follow along behind him and with their fellow disciples, they have Jesus’ promise that wherever he leads them he will be with us.
“If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.” The sisters of the Community of the Holy Spirit can also relate to Jesus’ command. They know well where following behind Jesus can lead one. The community was founded in the early 1950s in New York City. All of its sisters, including today’s sisters, gave up other lives to join the community. Originally focused on elementary education, the community occupied a comfortable converted brownstone on 113th Street, not too far from the Cathedral of St. John the Divine. However, in 1961, some of the sisters answered Jesus’ call to establish a second school and community in Brewster, NY, about fifty miles from Manhattan. As part of their work in Brewster, in 2004 the sisters were called to establish Bluestone Farm as an example of sustainable living and farming. There the sisters now plant, harvest, and store their own food and weave their own textiles. The farm has attracted resident companions, interns, and volunteers who have expanded its work. Meanwhile, in Manhattan, the sisters felt called to gradually turn the ministry of elementary education over to others, and develop new ministries in education about living sustainably, spiritual direction, retreat leadership, and guest hospitality. In 2009, they heard another call: to leave their comfortable old convent and build a new green convent. Through a land swap with Columbia University, the community received a parcel of land on the edge of Harlem. Despite the reservations of some of their well-wishers about locating in a mixed-ethnic neighborhood, the sisters embarked on building a thoroughly “green” convent near 150th street. Complete with roof-top garden, the new St. Hilda’s house now stands as an urban experiment in living in closer community with the earth. Needless to say, none of these moves and developments have been easy. The move from the old Manhattan convent to the new one in late 2010 was particularly difficult for some of the older sisters. Yet even they know that Jesus is with them and their community, wherever he may lead them. Sr. Élise, who at 90 is the oldest member of the community, described the prospect of leaving the old convent. She said, “I really don’t have my roots set down here in this house – I’ll be happy to live anywhere. I already have a reservation in another place.” Or as Meredith Kadet, a recent Bluestone Farm intern, reminded us in a meditation on her own prospect of moving, Christians are a pilgrim people, always on the move with Jesus, always following where God leads them. “We’re on the move, then, together,” she tell us. “We’re on the move because we’re part of a community, part of a universe, part of a body of God that’s on the move toward a promise.”
We’re on the move with Jesus. We’re a pilgrim people, following behind a leader whom we know will eventually lead us to Jerusalem and to the Cross. We may have hardships, we may have to leave our comfort zone, we may have to go to new and unexpected, perhaps even dangerous places. Yet we have Jesus’ promise to be with us, wherever he takes us. And Jesus’ promise is as true for us as God’s promise was to Jeremiah, as Jesus’ promise was to his disciples, and as Jesus’ promise is for the sisters of the Community of the Holy Spirit. Here at St. Peter’s, to say nothing of the rest of our lives, we too may have to leave behind beloved old structures, beloved ministries, beloved ways of doing things. We may have to begin developing ministries in places where we hadn’t expected to be. But we can do all that and more, because we have heard Jesus’ call: “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.”
Meredith Kadet closed her reflection with the verse of an old song. Perhaps the song is appropriate for us too.
I open my mouth to the Lord
And I won’t turn back
I will go, I shall go
To see what the end gonna be.
God willing, we will all faithfully follow behind him.
Sunday, August 28, 2011
Sunday, August 21, 2011
You Are the Messiah
How did he know? When Jesus asked his friends, “But who do you say that I am,” how did Peter come up with the right answer, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the Living God?” Even if Peter was speaking for all the disciples, how did he know? Like other Jews of their day, Peter and the other disciples knew their Scriptures. They knew that the prophets, beginning with Isaiah and running right through Malachi, had been promising for centuries that God would deliver the Jews and would inaugurate a reign of peace and justice. Perhaps they also used their reason: they could see, in the way that Jesus healed people, in the way he argued with the religious leaders, and in the way that he taught, that there was something special about him. And too they had had some personal experiences of their own of Jesus’ power. Hadn’t they taken part in Jesus’ feeding of the great crowd? Hadn’t some of them gone out in a boat with Jesus and seen him walk on water? When Peter tried to do the same thing and began to sink, hadn’t they seen Jesus reach out and save him? And when he got back into the boat, hadn’t they said then, “Truly, you are the Son of God?” So when Jesus finally put the question to them, “But who do you say that I am,” perhaps it wasn’t so surprising that impulsive and quick-witted Peter could put Scripture, reason, and experience together and come up with the right answer.
But I still have a question. When Peter blurted out the right answer, did he really understand what he was saying? Did he really know what it meant to say that Jesus was the mashiach, the christos, God’s Anointed one? And did he really understand what kind of a messiah Jesus really was? Most likely not. Almost immediately, he tried to distance himself from Jesus’ warning that he would die on the Cross. As we know so well, on the eve of Jesus’ crucifixion, Peter denied three times that he even knew Jesus. Only after Jesus’ return to life at Easter and Peter’s acceptance of the Holy Spirit did Peter begin to understand what he had said in his confession, and only then could he begin to witness to others of Jesus’ true identity. No wonder Jesus told the disciples not to tell anyone that he was the Messiah. Clearly, the disciples had to learn and grow in their understanding a great deal more before they could adequately proclaim that Jesus was the one for whom Israel had been waiting for so long.
Over the centuries since Matthew’s Gospel was written, Christian communities have pondered the meaning and importance of Peter’s confession of faith, and especially of Jesus’ response to it. Roman Catholics, Protestants, and Orthodox Christians continue to disagree on their interpretation of Matthew’s rendering of Jesus’ words. Even so, almost all Christian communities agree that Jesus’ initial question, “But who do you say that I am?”, is a question that all of us must answer. “How do you understand who Jesus is?” is the defining question of Christian faith. In the service of Baptism, after the candidates have renounced Satan, the evil powers of this world, and all sinful desires, the very next question is “Do you turn to Jesus and accept him as your Savior?” Even so, the question of Jesus’ identity is one many of us adults shy away from answering – perhaps it’s fortunate that many of you were baptized as infants! For starters, some of us are unsure exactly what a messiah is. Or we may say, “Every Sunday we say the Nicene Creed, and in the daily offices and the Baptismal service we say the Apostles’ Creed.1 It took the creed writers several centuries to work out the creedal statements. Isn’t the question of Jesus’ identity settled for now?” Perhaps so, but do the creedal statements have personal meaning for us? Or perhaps you might think that St. Augustine, or Martin Luther, or the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, have said all there is to say about who Jesus is. Or you might think that the pictures you’ve had of Jesus most of your life, the cute baby in the “ethereally lighted antiseptic manger,” the gentle teacher with his flowing white robes, the brilliant debater, or the dignified martyr, are sufficient. Really, I learned it all in Sunday School. What more do I need? Or you just might not want any more challenges in your life. Between family and work, personal and health issues, there’s enough challenge in your life. Let Jesus’ identity as the messiah at least be something that doesn’t challenge me! Finally, perhaps we’re afraid that, if we look too closely at Jesus, if we really think about who he was and what kind of a messiah he really was, we might need to change some things in our lives. If Jesus asked you, “But who do you say that I am?”, would you answer “I’m not sure,” because you’d be afraid that Jesus would call you to follow him more closely, perhaps even to follow him all the way to your own Cross?
My friends, the truth is that, just like Peter, we can’t duck the question of Jesus’ identity. If we are serious adult followers of our Lord, if we persist in calling ourselves Christians, i.e., followers of the Christos, God’s Messiah, God’s Anointed One, and if we hope to draw others into the Body of Christ, we must be able to give an answer to Jesus’ question that is more than formulaic words. We cannot hold on to our Sunday school images of Jesus, nor can we deny Jesus’ power to change our lives if we let him. And, like, Peter, we must be willing to let our understanding of who Jesus is change and grow as we continue to follow behind him.
As we continue to confront the question of who Jesus is for us, we acknowledge that any deeper understanding of Jesus’ identity, any greater faith in Jesus is a ultimately a gift of God. Nevertheless, we also know that God uses multiple ways to help us grow and mature in our faith. First, we too can study Scripture more closely. We Episcopalians are not Biblical literalists: we do not believe in the inerrancy of Scripture, we understand that not every Bible story is literally, factually true, and we accept that much of Scripture was written in particular social situations for particular communities. We realize that the church’s and our own interpretations of Scripture may change over the years. Even so, as part of the one, holy, catholic and apostolic church, we continue to acknowledge that Scripture is the Word of God, and that God continues to teach us through serious study of Scripture. Secondly, we can also use our God-given powers of reason. We can study history and theology and learn how others have thought and are thinking about who Jesus is, and how we can most sincerely and effectively follow him. This does not mean that we believe because of what Paul, or Augustine, or Aquinas, or Julian, or Moltmann, or Marcus Borg, or Rowan Williams have said. We believe because God gives us the freedom and the ability to think through questions of faith and identity with our own minds. And third we can learn from the experiences of the saints and from our own experience of Jesus in daily prayer and contemplation. We can continue to let Jesus nourish us with his Body and Blood. While deeper faith is always a gift of God, for us as for Peter, God uses all three means, Scripture, reason, and experience, to show us who Jesus is, to help us grow in our understanding of Jesus and his work, and to empower us to witness to others that God was in Christ, thereby reconciling the world.
What does this mean for our lives here in this Christian community? If faith and knowledge are both necessary aspects of our life as disciples, if we can deepen our understanding of Jesus through study of Scripture, history, and theology, then we too must commit ourselves to continued study, to continued formation as Christians. We are concerned, and rightly so, to provide Christian formation for the children in our midst. But we must also take seriously our own formation as adults. This year, I challenge this community to commit itself to an adult Christian education program. Use the next two weeks to let me or Carolyn Cogar know the ways in which you would especially hope to deepen your faith this year. Then join us after Labor Day as we inaugurate a new phase in our growth together as Christians.
As we leave this place, we will sing, in the words of that grand hymn, that “the Church’s one foundation is Jesus Christ her Lord.” As you sing those words, pray about how you can know Jesus better. Commit yourself to letting your knowledge of Jesus continue to deepen and mature.
1. I depend on David Leininger, “Who do You Say That I Am?”, Tales for the Pulpit, (Lima, OH: CSS Publishing, 2007), 141-3, for much of this section.
But I still have a question. When Peter blurted out the right answer, did he really understand what he was saying? Did he really know what it meant to say that Jesus was the mashiach, the christos, God’s Anointed one? And did he really understand what kind of a messiah Jesus really was? Most likely not. Almost immediately, he tried to distance himself from Jesus’ warning that he would die on the Cross. As we know so well, on the eve of Jesus’ crucifixion, Peter denied three times that he even knew Jesus. Only after Jesus’ return to life at Easter and Peter’s acceptance of the Holy Spirit did Peter begin to understand what he had said in his confession, and only then could he begin to witness to others of Jesus’ true identity. No wonder Jesus told the disciples not to tell anyone that he was the Messiah. Clearly, the disciples had to learn and grow in their understanding a great deal more before they could adequately proclaim that Jesus was the one for whom Israel had been waiting for so long.
Over the centuries since Matthew’s Gospel was written, Christian communities have pondered the meaning and importance of Peter’s confession of faith, and especially of Jesus’ response to it. Roman Catholics, Protestants, and Orthodox Christians continue to disagree on their interpretation of Matthew’s rendering of Jesus’ words. Even so, almost all Christian communities agree that Jesus’ initial question, “But who do you say that I am?”, is a question that all of us must answer. “How do you understand who Jesus is?” is the defining question of Christian faith. In the service of Baptism, after the candidates have renounced Satan, the evil powers of this world, and all sinful desires, the very next question is “Do you turn to Jesus and accept him as your Savior?” Even so, the question of Jesus’ identity is one many of us adults shy away from answering – perhaps it’s fortunate that many of you were baptized as infants! For starters, some of us are unsure exactly what a messiah is. Or we may say, “Every Sunday we say the Nicene Creed, and in the daily offices and the Baptismal service we say the Apostles’ Creed.1 It took the creed writers several centuries to work out the creedal statements. Isn’t the question of Jesus’ identity settled for now?” Perhaps so, but do the creedal statements have personal meaning for us? Or perhaps you might think that St. Augustine, or Martin Luther, or the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, have said all there is to say about who Jesus is. Or you might think that the pictures you’ve had of Jesus most of your life, the cute baby in the “ethereally lighted antiseptic manger,” the gentle teacher with his flowing white robes, the brilliant debater, or the dignified martyr, are sufficient. Really, I learned it all in Sunday School. What more do I need? Or you just might not want any more challenges in your life. Between family and work, personal and health issues, there’s enough challenge in your life. Let Jesus’ identity as the messiah at least be something that doesn’t challenge me! Finally, perhaps we’re afraid that, if we look too closely at Jesus, if we really think about who he was and what kind of a messiah he really was, we might need to change some things in our lives. If Jesus asked you, “But who do you say that I am?”, would you answer “I’m not sure,” because you’d be afraid that Jesus would call you to follow him more closely, perhaps even to follow him all the way to your own Cross?
My friends, the truth is that, just like Peter, we can’t duck the question of Jesus’ identity. If we are serious adult followers of our Lord, if we persist in calling ourselves Christians, i.e., followers of the Christos, God’s Messiah, God’s Anointed One, and if we hope to draw others into the Body of Christ, we must be able to give an answer to Jesus’ question that is more than formulaic words. We cannot hold on to our Sunday school images of Jesus, nor can we deny Jesus’ power to change our lives if we let him. And, like, Peter, we must be willing to let our understanding of who Jesus is change and grow as we continue to follow behind him.
As we continue to confront the question of who Jesus is for us, we acknowledge that any deeper understanding of Jesus’ identity, any greater faith in Jesus is a ultimately a gift of God. Nevertheless, we also know that God uses multiple ways to help us grow and mature in our faith. First, we too can study Scripture more closely. We Episcopalians are not Biblical literalists: we do not believe in the inerrancy of Scripture, we understand that not every Bible story is literally, factually true, and we accept that much of Scripture was written in particular social situations for particular communities. We realize that the church’s and our own interpretations of Scripture may change over the years. Even so, as part of the one, holy, catholic and apostolic church, we continue to acknowledge that Scripture is the Word of God, and that God continues to teach us through serious study of Scripture. Secondly, we can also use our God-given powers of reason. We can study history and theology and learn how others have thought and are thinking about who Jesus is, and how we can most sincerely and effectively follow him. This does not mean that we believe because of what Paul, or Augustine, or Aquinas, or Julian, or Moltmann, or Marcus Borg, or Rowan Williams have said. We believe because God gives us the freedom and the ability to think through questions of faith and identity with our own minds. And third we can learn from the experiences of the saints and from our own experience of Jesus in daily prayer and contemplation. We can continue to let Jesus nourish us with his Body and Blood. While deeper faith is always a gift of God, for us as for Peter, God uses all three means, Scripture, reason, and experience, to show us who Jesus is, to help us grow in our understanding of Jesus and his work, and to empower us to witness to others that God was in Christ, thereby reconciling the world.
What does this mean for our lives here in this Christian community? If faith and knowledge are both necessary aspects of our life as disciples, if we can deepen our understanding of Jesus through study of Scripture, history, and theology, then we too must commit ourselves to continued study, to continued formation as Christians. We are concerned, and rightly so, to provide Christian formation for the children in our midst. But we must also take seriously our own formation as adults. This year, I challenge this community to commit itself to an adult Christian education program. Use the next two weeks to let me or Carolyn Cogar know the ways in which you would especially hope to deepen your faith this year. Then join us after Labor Day as we inaugurate a new phase in our growth together as Christians.
As we leave this place, we will sing, in the words of that grand hymn, that “the Church’s one foundation is Jesus Christ her Lord.” As you sing those words, pray about how you can know Jesus better. Commit yourself to letting your knowledge of Jesus continue to deepen and mature.
1. I depend on David Leininger, “Who do You Say That I Am?”, Tales for the Pulpit, (Lima, OH: CSS Publishing, 2007), 141-3, for much of this section.
Sunday, August 14, 2011
Great is Your Faith
It hasn’t been a good summer. Personally, of course, I broke my arm and had to postpone the trip to Ireland that I’d been looking forward to for so long. While I was catching up on my reading at home, I could contemplate with even greater dismay Congress’s irresponsibly descending into virtual gridlock over the debt ceiling only to finally act with hours to spare. Unfortunately, the last minute agreement didn’t stop our national bond rating from being downgraded and the stock market from going into a tailspin. On the other side of the pond, the Euro zone is falling apart, as the economies of Greece, Italy, and Portugal weaken to the point of their possibly withdrawing from the European Economic Community. In Norway Anders Bering Breivik went on a shooting rampage, killing seventy-seven people in the name of ethnic purity. Meanwhile, in the last three months 30,000 children have died of starvation in the horn of Africa, as that region suffers its worst drought in sixty years. And in the past two weeks, we’ve watched with horror as thugs and out-of-control youth trashed working class neighborhoods in London and other UK cities. It hasn’t been a good summer.
Ironically, or perhaps providentially, it’s been a wonderful summer in Scripture, and an especially rich summer in our Gospel readings. In these days of personal setbacks and troubling national and international news, we’ve had the chance to see again Matthew’s vision of Jesus as the bearer of Israel’s prophetic promises, and we’ve been able to ponder our own responses to what we’ve seen. Before I left, we looked at the role of prophets generally and our reactions to those who speak prophetic words to us. We pondered what kind of a guide Jesus is, and what kind of a yoke he lays on us. We also discovered that we can follow Jesus in continuing to fling out God’s word without concern about where the seed of the word is landing. As Jesus continued to demonstrate his prophetic powers, we pondered the wheat and weeds, and we heard him compare the Kingdom of Heaven to a mustard seed, a pearl of great price, and a net full of fish. As Jesus bid Peter walk on the water, we perhaps sympathized with his faltering faith. Perhaps we watched with awe as Jesus concretely demonstrated God’s abundant love for us in the feeding of a great crowd.
Now Matthew gives us one more miracle to contemplate, one more chance to consider our own responses to Jesus’ prophetic role. In a way this is a strange story. Following a contentious dispute with the religious leaders, Jesus reminded his disciples that living a just and honest life is more important than following the punctilious details of the Pharisees’ religious observances. After delivering that lesson, he deliberately headed northwest into Gentile territory. One wonders: had he gotten tired of duking it out verbally with the religious leaders, or did he already have a larger purpose in mind? He was approached by a Canaanite woman. Wrong, wrong, wrong on several counts. Women did not approach men in public. They didn’t shout at them -- ever. Jews and Gentiles interacted with each other as little as possible. Worst of all, Jews and Canaanites had been enemies for centuries. No wonder the disciples urged Jesus to get rid of the Canaanite woman. Perhaps too they inwardly agreed with Jesus when he first tried to ignore her and then insulted her by disdainfully claiming to be concerned about the health of only his own ethnic community.
But the woman didn’t give a fig for these social niceties. She would not be put off. She was desperate to save her daughter, and, unlike most of the people around Jesus she was sure that Jesus had the power to relieve her daughter’s torment. So, Gentile though she was, unworthy as she may have felt herself, unwanted as she was, enemy that she was, she recognized Jesus’ messianic identity, and she called out to him loudly. She then swallowed her pride and knelt before him. She deftly replied to his insulting claim by assuring him that whatever shreds or crumbs of his power he gave her would be enough for her. She asked for what she needed, and she persisted until she received it. The Gospel writer doesn’t tell us whether Jesus had a new understanding of his mission in his encounter with this woman, or whether he’d planned all along to demonstrate the breadth of God’s saving love by healing another Gentile – in Gentile territory. But we do know that Jesus granted the Canaanite woman’s request and publicly blessed her: “Woman, great is your faith! Let it be done for you as you wish.”
“Great is your faith!” “Great is your faith!” Is my faith great? Is yours? Is my faith passionate? Is yours? Or is our faith tepid, conventional, shallow, or even timid? Perhaps we feel unworthy even to approach Jesus, because of who we’ve been, or what we’ve done, or where we’ve been. Or perhaps we think we have no need for Jesus’ help, that our lives are going swimmingly, and we’re fine on our own. Do we care so little about the world around us that we have nothing for which we need to seek Jesus’ healing power? Or perhaps we feel that Jesus couldn’t care less about us. Do we feel silly putting our needs in front of Jesus? Do we think that modern people don’t do that anymore? We may all of us experience all these feelings and more. But, my friends, the good news is that Jesus is there for us, whoever, whatever, and wherever we are. If Matthew’s story demonstrates nothing else to us it is that there is no one who is beyond the reach of Jesus’ healing touch, no one whom Jesus can’t or won’t heal. If, like the Canaanite woman we ask, and persist in asking, God will respond. We can, as one writer has suggested, audaciously claim God’s promises.
Let me give you a more contemporary example to help you hear the good news of God’s willingness to hear us. On August 4th the Roman Catholic calendar remembered John Vianney, a parish priest known as the Curé d’Ars.1 Born in 1786 into a peasant family living near Lyons, John Vianney was the most unlikely candidate for the priesthood. Yet from a very early age, he knew the priesthood to be his vocation. By God’s grace he found a tutor who gave him the education he needed to win a place in seminary. Pulled out of seminary to serve in the army, he went into hiding. When a general amnesty was proclaimed in 1810, he resumed his seminary studies. In all honesty, he was such a weak student that his superiors hesitated to recommend him for ordination. Yet his piety and goodness, his holiness of life, and his persistence in prayer were so great that at last he was ordained at the age of twenty-nine. He became the priest he knew God had called to be. Even so, he was sent as curate to the small, supposedly insignificant village of Ars. There his life as a priest blossomed. As his deep love for his people became known, his fame as a caring confessor and spiritual counselor began to spread. Toward the end of his life, special trains were even sent to Ars to accommodate all those who sought him out. When he died in 1859, he was one of the most beloved figures in France. Yet despite his fame, he remained focused on drawing those who came to him into a deeper relationship with Jesus, into a deeper realization of Jesus’ willingness to hear us when we persistently ask for his help.
So what is it you are passionate about? Which of God’s promises are you asking God to fulfill? For what do you persist in beseeching God? Take some time to reflect on this question. Do you need physical healing? Is there something in your personal life that needs healing? Do you have an unfulfilled vocation? Do you long for authentic community? Is there something in our social or political life that deeply stirs you? Do you long for peace? Would you bring all the troops home from Iraq and Afghanistan tomorrow if you could? Would you like to see all people have access to adequate healthcare? Would you like to see us make a real dent in poverty, both in this region and abroad? What is it that so deeply stirs you that you persistently ask God for it? I challenge you to reflect on how you might follow the lead of the Canaanite woman and persistently knock on God’s door.
We wait in weariness, in loneliness.
And we pray: say the word and we will be healed.
say the word and our bodies will move with joy;
say the word and our body politic will function again;
say the word that you fleshed in Jesus;
say the word … we will wait for your healing “yes.”
And while we wait, we will “yes” you with our trusting obedience.
Amen.2
1. Taken from Robert Ellsberg, All Saints (New York: Crossroad, 1997), 334-5.
2. Walter Brueggemann, “Is there a balm … in Gilead anywhere?”, in Awed to Heaven, Rooted in Earth, Edwin Searcy, ed. (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2003), 127-8.
Ironically, or perhaps providentially, it’s been a wonderful summer in Scripture, and an especially rich summer in our Gospel readings. In these days of personal setbacks and troubling national and international news, we’ve had the chance to see again Matthew’s vision of Jesus as the bearer of Israel’s prophetic promises, and we’ve been able to ponder our own responses to what we’ve seen. Before I left, we looked at the role of prophets generally and our reactions to those who speak prophetic words to us. We pondered what kind of a guide Jesus is, and what kind of a yoke he lays on us. We also discovered that we can follow Jesus in continuing to fling out God’s word without concern about where the seed of the word is landing. As Jesus continued to demonstrate his prophetic powers, we pondered the wheat and weeds, and we heard him compare the Kingdom of Heaven to a mustard seed, a pearl of great price, and a net full of fish. As Jesus bid Peter walk on the water, we perhaps sympathized with his faltering faith. Perhaps we watched with awe as Jesus concretely demonstrated God’s abundant love for us in the feeding of a great crowd.
Now Matthew gives us one more miracle to contemplate, one more chance to consider our own responses to Jesus’ prophetic role. In a way this is a strange story. Following a contentious dispute with the religious leaders, Jesus reminded his disciples that living a just and honest life is more important than following the punctilious details of the Pharisees’ religious observances. After delivering that lesson, he deliberately headed northwest into Gentile territory. One wonders: had he gotten tired of duking it out verbally with the religious leaders, or did he already have a larger purpose in mind? He was approached by a Canaanite woman. Wrong, wrong, wrong on several counts. Women did not approach men in public. They didn’t shout at them -- ever. Jews and Gentiles interacted with each other as little as possible. Worst of all, Jews and Canaanites had been enemies for centuries. No wonder the disciples urged Jesus to get rid of the Canaanite woman. Perhaps too they inwardly agreed with Jesus when he first tried to ignore her and then insulted her by disdainfully claiming to be concerned about the health of only his own ethnic community.
But the woman didn’t give a fig for these social niceties. She would not be put off. She was desperate to save her daughter, and, unlike most of the people around Jesus she was sure that Jesus had the power to relieve her daughter’s torment. So, Gentile though she was, unworthy as she may have felt herself, unwanted as she was, enemy that she was, she recognized Jesus’ messianic identity, and she called out to him loudly. She then swallowed her pride and knelt before him. She deftly replied to his insulting claim by assuring him that whatever shreds or crumbs of his power he gave her would be enough for her. She asked for what she needed, and she persisted until she received it. The Gospel writer doesn’t tell us whether Jesus had a new understanding of his mission in his encounter with this woman, or whether he’d planned all along to demonstrate the breadth of God’s saving love by healing another Gentile – in Gentile territory. But we do know that Jesus granted the Canaanite woman’s request and publicly blessed her: “Woman, great is your faith! Let it be done for you as you wish.”
“Great is your faith!” “Great is your faith!” Is my faith great? Is yours? Is my faith passionate? Is yours? Or is our faith tepid, conventional, shallow, or even timid? Perhaps we feel unworthy even to approach Jesus, because of who we’ve been, or what we’ve done, or where we’ve been. Or perhaps we think we have no need for Jesus’ help, that our lives are going swimmingly, and we’re fine on our own. Do we care so little about the world around us that we have nothing for which we need to seek Jesus’ healing power? Or perhaps we feel that Jesus couldn’t care less about us. Do we feel silly putting our needs in front of Jesus? Do we think that modern people don’t do that anymore? We may all of us experience all these feelings and more. But, my friends, the good news is that Jesus is there for us, whoever, whatever, and wherever we are. If Matthew’s story demonstrates nothing else to us it is that there is no one who is beyond the reach of Jesus’ healing touch, no one whom Jesus can’t or won’t heal. If, like the Canaanite woman we ask, and persist in asking, God will respond. We can, as one writer has suggested, audaciously claim God’s promises.
Let me give you a more contemporary example to help you hear the good news of God’s willingness to hear us. On August 4th the Roman Catholic calendar remembered John Vianney, a parish priest known as the Curé d’Ars.1 Born in 1786 into a peasant family living near Lyons, John Vianney was the most unlikely candidate for the priesthood. Yet from a very early age, he knew the priesthood to be his vocation. By God’s grace he found a tutor who gave him the education he needed to win a place in seminary. Pulled out of seminary to serve in the army, he went into hiding. When a general amnesty was proclaimed in 1810, he resumed his seminary studies. In all honesty, he was such a weak student that his superiors hesitated to recommend him for ordination. Yet his piety and goodness, his holiness of life, and his persistence in prayer were so great that at last he was ordained at the age of twenty-nine. He became the priest he knew God had called to be. Even so, he was sent as curate to the small, supposedly insignificant village of Ars. There his life as a priest blossomed. As his deep love for his people became known, his fame as a caring confessor and spiritual counselor began to spread. Toward the end of his life, special trains were even sent to Ars to accommodate all those who sought him out. When he died in 1859, he was one of the most beloved figures in France. Yet despite his fame, he remained focused on drawing those who came to him into a deeper relationship with Jesus, into a deeper realization of Jesus’ willingness to hear us when we persistently ask for his help.
So what is it you are passionate about? Which of God’s promises are you asking God to fulfill? For what do you persist in beseeching God? Take some time to reflect on this question. Do you need physical healing? Is there something in your personal life that needs healing? Do you have an unfulfilled vocation? Do you long for authentic community? Is there something in our social or political life that deeply stirs you? Do you long for peace? Would you bring all the troops home from Iraq and Afghanistan tomorrow if you could? Would you like to see all people have access to adequate healthcare? Would you like to see us make a real dent in poverty, both in this region and abroad? What is it that so deeply stirs you that you persistently ask God for it? I challenge you to reflect on how you might follow the lead of the Canaanite woman and persistently knock on God’s door.
We wait in weariness, in loneliness.
And we pray: say the word and we will be healed.
say the word and our bodies will move with joy;
say the word and our body politic will function again;
say the word that you fleshed in Jesus;
say the word … we will wait for your healing “yes.”
And while we wait, we will “yes” you with our trusting obedience.
Amen.2
1. Taken from Robert Ellsberg, All Saints (New York: Crossroad, 1997), 334-5.
2. Walter Brueggemann, “Is there a balm … in Gilead anywhere?”, in Awed to Heaven, Rooted in Earth, Edwin Searcy, ed. (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2003), 127-8.
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