Matthew 15:(10-20), 21-28

Proper 15 (20) - Year A

 


The sea in which we swim is invisible to us. The water comes in and goes out. We live. In this regard, the stuff we are exposed to is simply the stuff we are exposed to. The good, the bad, and the ugly are all things we take in day after day. The junk food comes in, the junk jokes come in, the junk prejudices come in, the junk thinking comes in, the junk suffering comes in, the junk guilt comes in.

The junk we will have with us, always.

But all these influences that bombard us day and night are not determinants. We yet can learn and choose, rather than just junk react.

One key question here is about the validating responses we make. If we respond to the openness of GOD's love, we validate that. If we respond to the consumer drive of our culture, we validate that. If we respond to a belittling joke, we validate that. Etc.

What comes out of us completes a circuit with what went in. The longer the circuit runs the deeper rut it makes and the more difficult it is to break free without a major conversion event.

Let us not conspire with institutional racism and sweatshops. Let us not conspire with divisions and brokennesses of all kinds. Let us not conspire with rigid rules for the benefit of the present rulers.

Let us conspire with the love planted deep within us, as deep as creation. Let us conspire with our enemies that we might yet be friends.

http://www.kairoscomotion.org/lectionary/2002/august2002.html

 


 

It is not what goes into our mouths that defiles us. It is not what goes into the mouths of our enemies that defiles them. Our mouths are different but our need for food is the same.

It is so easy to focus on mouths with full lips or thin lips, rosebud lips or no lips. We can categorize mouths until the cows come home (been kissed by cow lips recently?).

This business is so difficult that even Jesus had trouble with distinguishing the limits of like lips from the commonality of food to pass those lips.

In today's world it easiest to find this same difficulty in the political realm of Party (whatever one you want to look at). We automatically give credence to our own and disparage anyone from a different Party.

The woman's faith was great, to keep on claiming her commonality. Jesus' faith was great, to finally hear that claim and respond to it in a positive manner.

How great is your faith? How great is the faith of the congregation with which you associate? How great is the faith of the community/nation you participate in as citizen?

http://www.kairoscomotion.org/lectionary/2005/august2005.html

 


 

Moral platitudes are distinguishable from moral behaviors. When we talk values talk it is important to emphasize that spoken commitments require expression in external action.

One of the interesting processes of life is the way in which we posit good stuff in one moment and in the next we find opportunity to put that to the test.

Its not what goes in to a person, but what comes out of them. What has gone into a Canaanite woman has been generations of a specific tradition and a life-time of relationships. What has come out of her has been advocacy for a sick daughter. What has gone into Jesus has been generations of a different specific tradition and a life-time of relationships. What has come out of him, eventually, has been satisfaction for a sick daughter.

As we proceed we will always be tempted by the various specific traditions we have experienced -- tempted to have the specifics divide and sub-divide us. Of better assistance will be moving through those specifics to a different set of specifics, the relationship ones, where we can more easily grow from the helpful, fertilizing, past of the traditions handed down to us and avoid the unhelpful, weedy, past of that same tradition.

Yesterday the news came that our ELCA cousins kept their status quo of tradition and left the healing of gay sons and lesbian daughters waiting for 2009. This is not a casting of stones as my own denomination has done that, and worse, but another great sadness that the time between when we mutter about dogs and their food and we affirm great faith coming from a surprising quarter seems to take forever.

The work of the Holy Spirit can still be found in this in-between time as we resist and struggle with learning new things once too difficult for our ancestors in our tradition, and even ourselves growing out of such a tradition. May our times between dogs and daughters be shorter and shorter.

http://www.kairoscomotion.org/lectionary/2005/august2005.html

 


 

Unity as "good and pleasant" is quite an understatement. Given our starting points, to arrive at some semblance of unity (an outcome of justice) is so remarkable that it calls for a more enthusiastic response.

To arrive at some given understanding that rejection is not the last word about the meaning of life (though it is often one of the first words we encode), a sense of relief in the face of such mercy needs a conversion miracle response.

Jesus' response to the woman responding to being called a dog, after pleading for her daughter, is too sterile. It is not as though some word-game had been played out that had no real consequence. It is not as though Jesus doesn't have an epiphany here - faith comes from every angle, not just the preauthorized.

- - -

gifts and calling
irrevocable
deniable

our life
is our gift
our calling

journeying
toward wholeness
finds our denial

beyond journeying
at a stopping point
we find irrevocability

whether rued
or rejoiced
life calls

gifts once dead
remain ours
to do

http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2007_08_01_archive.html


 

It's what comes out of the mouth that we are judged by, not what goes in. Likewise with what doesn't come out of our mouths.

These are easy maxims that trips easily off our tongue. As any good storyteller will tell you, this statement is a great setup line for a next scene.

Next we see Jesus with no word where a word of mercy is asked for. What doesn't come out of his mouth is of great import. "He didn't answer her at all."

Then we hear Jesus with a tribal aside to his inside circle in the hearing of one begging for mercy, as though she could hear not - an even greater dismissal than speaking to the woman. "I was only sent to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.

Out of Jesus' mouth is an unseemly silence and a thundering ignor-ance.

Listen then to the words of the woman from far away:

"Have mercy!"
"Help me!"
"Yes!"

Finally Jesus says, "Great is your faith." We wonder why this admission took so long.

The distance between our mouth and our own ear is ever so far. We can ignore what we are saying and not saying for a long time. Without bringing these two into closer harmony the disconnect between who we have been and who we desire to be remains huge. To constructively judge what comes from our mouths we need a renewed gift of listening.

May your faith find itself consistent in your mouth as you engage your life and the life of others. Sometimes speaking for yourself, sometimes for others.

"Have mercy!"
"Yes!"

And in letting your "Yes" be "Yes" may the "No" of the world be revealed for what it is – temporary.

http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2008_08_01_archive.html

 


 

We can hear it in every generation - it's not about who you are, it's about what you do with who you are (hate the sin, but love the sinner). That's very neat, but not real. Our being and our doing are intimately connected with one another.

A Canaanite woman (2 strikes for being both a woman and a Canaanite) calls out, puts a claim on mercy being extended. According to the earlier statement, one would expect Jesus to pay attention to what the person did/said, not who they were. Mercy was asked for and yet it was denied. Regardless of who is doing the asking, when asked, mercy is expected.

The disciples were also caught up in the doing and being, but in the other way around.

Note how the general cry for Mercy finally has to come down to both one's being and one's doing. Eventually, "Mercy!" needs to become "Help me!"

Questions come, just as in the abortion debate or any wedge issue - the daughter is healed, a fetus brought to term - and now what - simply being female is a problem in a patriarchic system that we are still too much a part of, whether in Sudan or America. What does it mean for this daughter to be healed in this moment only to be discounted later? It might be claimed that she is returned to only having 2 strikes against her (female and of another tribe) instead of 3 (female, of another tribe, and certifiably crazy). Discrimination doesn’t need any basis in reality, for it can always call her less than human again for being a woman or a foreigner. This story is about Jesus and his disciples not being able to initially see faithfulness when wrapped in the colors of another gang.

Seems a lot of us, in Peterson’s words, are “willfully stupid” or keep having the same limited perception that needs continual correcting. We keep trying to separate that which can’t be separated. Whether about being and doing or varieties of faith. 

Basic take-away - a daughter was healed, a society wasn’t - ask for more, go for 0 strikes. We need to pay attention to both a needed band-aid and systemic causations. If you are called to work with band-aids, put them on with gusto and support those working on causation. If you are called to shift paradigms, give it your all and encourage those who are caring for immediate needs. May your doing and your being reveal faith in an expansive and expanding “Love”.

http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2011/08/matthew-1510-20-21-28.html

 


 

As clear as we can be about the processes of life—

— it doesn’t always become the basis of our actions.

Here Jesus is clear that heart junk let loose on others is far worse than setting down the junk of tradition held so dear by some.

In the blink of an eye the junk of Jesus’ acculturated heart is let loose on a Canaanite woman. When called on it, Jesus affirms his prejudice. Direct action by the Canaanite woman finally broke through by reminding Jesus of the great hypocrisy — by definition my view is correct and yours is not.

At stake in a post Pentecostal time is whether or not our newer traditions are just as time-bound as those we have wiggled out of. Our question is whether we will take the time needed to reflect, recognize we have been caught being as bound as those we escaped from and we need to substitute basic mercy for our first-response in order that our secondary and tertiary response might have room to come forth and recognize “great faith” where once we could only point a finger and say, “Wrong!”

If this passage doesn’t ask a community to assist one another to better see their common hypocrisy, it has not taken advantage of its opportunity. May you pay attention to your interactions with others and do better.

http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2014/08/matthew-1510-20-21-28.html