Pentecost 9: A Church of Dirty Foreigners and Uppity Women

Isaiah 56:1, 6-8
Psalm 67
Romans 11:1-2a, 29-32
Matthew 15:10-28

I am told there was a time the Church of the Saviour was the meeting place for the “great and the good” of Hanford, its pews filled Sunday by Sunday by the worthiest of civic worthies. And through its doors passed so many who looked to the Episcopal Church as the religious badge signifying they had “arrived”, socially, politically, economically. This is not to paint a dim picture of Hanford or of the Episcopal Church in Hanford. The situation here was hardly atypical of that in the Episcopal Church more generally – although it may have lasted longer in small towns like Hanford. The Episcopal Church was conservative, wealthy and white, and being or becoming an Episcopalian, or even being in the company of Episcopalians was a feather in anyone’s cap. If you know the film Driving Miss Daisy, there is a sure hint of that world. The Werthans are Jews, and one evening Daisy Werthan’s son is visiting his mother, but keen to get back home saying that his wife “Florene’ll be havin’ a fit if I don’t get home on time tonight.” His mother responds sarcastically, “Y’all must have plans tonight”. “Goin’ to the Andersons’ for a dinner party”, he says. She quickly observes, “This is her idea of heaven on earth, isn’t?...Socializin’ with Episcopalians!” An invitation to the Episcopal home of the Andersons was for Florene, and no doubt her other friends, a sign she had somehow “arrived”, was part of the inner circle.

But we all know that those days are over for the Episcopal Church. Some time in the 60’s or 70’s of the last century she experienced a profound conversion in which a more radical understanding of the Gospel was discerned; an understanding grounded in some of the more challenging Scriptural passages from the prophets particularly, but more importantly in a rediscovery of the ministry of Jesus himself. The Episcopal Church became somehow particularly attentive to and critical of the social, political, economic and even ecclesiastical forces that pushed people to the margins. She became critically able to draw parallels between the tribal and class solidarity which in the ancient world of the Scriptures created groups of people considered beyond the pale and how those same dynamics continued in the present and in the Church’s life itself.

It may be rather difficult for us to really understand the strict social and religious lines of divisions in ancient societies. Yet, what usually distinguishes Judaism and its daughter religion, Christianity, is their commitment to breaking down those sorts of divisions as well as their commitment to the de-privatistion not only of religion, but of God God’s self. If you recall, in the ancient world one’s god was one’s private possession, the possession of one’s tribe or nation. Other gods existed, but you hoped that yours was more powerful, capable of overpowering the gods of other peoples and therefore able to grant you and your fellows security and success. Judaism, and most particulalry the prophets, dared to suggest that perhaps the God of the Jews was the God of all peoples, and that tribal identity had nothing to do with one’s relationship to God, and by extension to others. And so the author of Second Isaiah dares to write: “And the foreigners who join themselves to the LORD to minister to him, to love the name of the LORD…will be accepted…for my house shall be called a house of prayer for all people.” (Isaiah 56:6, 7) God cannot be the private possession of Judaism, nor of anyone. God is God, the God of all creation and there is no other; and if there is no other than certainly this God must be God of the Jew and of the foreigner alike.

Of course, the temptation to possess God is a powerful one, and with enough religious and social power the appearance of possessing and controlling the divine is easily achievable. Jesus’ generation had listened no better to the prophetic vision than had previous ones; or our own for that matter. Religion had a become a way to feel superior, virtuous and pure. So when a foreign Canaanite – and a woman at that – approached Jesus in the crowd imploring he heal her daughter, his reponse was the enculturated one: “I came only for the lost sheep of the house of Israel” (Matthew 15:24) and then he insulted her in her foreign origin – “dog” is a term of abuse regularly leveled at foreigners: “It is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.” (Matthew 15:26) It is not easy for Christians to see Jesus in this unfavourable light, but it does highlight the power of group or tribal identity, that even Jesus bought into it, at least initially. The woman out of bravery or shere desperation challenges Jesus, challenges his vision of God and of God’s kingdom. Perhaps Jesus recalled the words of the prophet or perhaps he remembered his own outcast status, but not only does he include both the mother and daughter in God’s world of salvation and redemption, but he commends the mother’s faith: “Woman, great is your faith.”

Immediately, after this incident (although not included in today’s gospel passage), the writer of Matthew relates how were brought to Jesus “the lame, the maimed, the blind, the mute, and many others…and he cured them.” (Matthew 16:30) For curing one should read “including”. Social and religious convention dictated that like foreigners, those “damaged” or in any way disabled were also not part of the plan. God was the God of the able, not the broken and that indeed their very brokenness – whether physical or emotional – signalled their impurity, their alienation from the divine. For this reason in the gospels the question of sin is never far from the issue of illness deformity. Jesus’ parable in which a great party is hosted and none of the invited guests come highlights the same reality. Being turned down by those invited the host commands the servants, “Go out at once into the streets and lanes of the town and bring in the poor, the crippled, the blind, and the lame. Go out into the roads and lanes, and compel people to come in, so that my house may be filled.” (Luke 14:21b, 23b) One can see how the circle continually widened, and the early Church became the place for the broken, the damaged, the dirty foreigner and the “uppity” woman.

How far we have come from that early Church of the broken, the damaged, the misfit and misfitting. One of the aspects of the Episcopal Church that makes me most proud is how her conversion of spirit and direction has played out specifically with regard to those our world today considers damged or broken, those whom many churches consider beyond the pale of Christian life and Christian society, and hence beyond the reach of God’s love. I love how our Episcopal Church, like that host in the parable, has gone out into the streets and lanes of life and specfically welcomed those the world has made poor, whom society has labelled as moral cripples, those whose vision is compromised by the labels placed on them by others, those who have been so abused and demoralised by the powers that be they cannot even hardly walk with any dignity at all. The Church has broken down the walls and divisions, the theological cliques and spiritual huddles and said – “Come, you too are welcome. You are included. The message of salvation is for you too.” This has cost the Episcopal Church much, and for that reason makes her welcoming inclusion so much the more meaningful.

Many people ask me what my vision is for our parish. More and more I feel that I would like to see our parish further incarnate the reality of God’s love and invitation to the broken and damaged, the misfits. When so many churches find themselves obsessed with truth and certainty, I would like to be the Church that says, “Your doubts are welcome here. We don’t know either, but perhaps together we can find something of an answer”. Where so many churches brandish a simplistic understanding of family and family “values”, I would like to be the Church that says there are many wonderful ways of being a family and here in the household of God all are valued, accepted and affirmed, all recognised as sacred. When so many churches walk around as if they possessed God, I want to be the Church that says and really believes, “We can’t possess or own God, God owns us and that means we will always live out of the reality that God is already with us and with everyone.” When so many churches want to continue living by purity laws in order to feel superior, I want a Church of “dirty outsiders”, of the broken and damaged, of those who are far too aware of their imperfections; a Church that invites others who just do not quite fit in. I think we should be that place, that Church, in Hanford. I think we should want to be it. I think we are already becoming it, going some way to fulfilling that vision of Jesus and the prophets in which divisions come down and a new society is created in which all people are gathered together – foreigner, stranger and neighbor alike.