William H. Willimon - "Jesus beyond the Boundary" (August 15, 1999)
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- | Is from the book of Matthew, the 15th chapter. | 0:04 |
Jesus left that place and went away | 0:10 | |
to the district of Tyre and Sidon. | 0:13 | |
Just then a Canaanite woman from that region | 0:17 | |
came out and started shouting, | 0:20 | |
"Have mercy on me, Lord, Son of David. | 0:22 | |
"My daughter is tormented by a demon." | 0:26 | |
But he did not answer her at all. | 0:30 | |
And his disciples came and urged him, saying, | 0:35 | |
"Send her away, for she keeps shouting after us." | 0:39 | |
He answered, "I was sent only to the lost sheep | 0:45 | |
"of the house of Israel." | 0:48 | |
But she came and knelt before him, saying, | 0:51 | |
"Lord, help me." | 0:55 | |
He answered, "It is not fair | 0:59 | |
to take the children's food | 1:01 | |
and throw it to the dogs." | 1:03 | |
She said, "Yes, Lord. | 1:07 | |
"Yet even the dogs eat the crumbs | 1:09 | |
"that fall from their master's table." | 1:11 | |
Then Jesus answered her, "Woman, great is your faith. | 1:16 | |
"Let it be done for you as you wish." | 1:22 | |
And her daughter was healed instantly. | 1:25 | |
This is the word of the Lord. | 1:30 | |
- | Jesus has been teaching, | 1:42 |
and if you've ever heard Jesus teach, | 1:45 | |
you know that a primary way for his teaching | 1:49 | |
was with these parables. | 1:54 | |
These parables, these pithy little stories | 1:58 | |
that reveal some deep truth. | 2:03 | |
The kingdom of Heaven, | 2:08 | |
Jesus has said, | 2:10 | |
in the section just before today's gospel, | 2:12 | |
the kingdom of Heaven, | 2:16 | |
it's like, it's like a field | 2:17 | |
in which was sown good seed. | 2:21 | |
But when the seed germinated and grew | 2:24 | |
there were these weeds in the middle of the wheat. | 2:26 | |
Some of the hired hands came to the master | 2:31 | |
and said, "Master, do you want us | 2:33 | |
"to pull out these weeds?" | 2:34 | |
And the master said, "I'll sort it all out | 2:39 | |
"when it's time for harvest." | 2:44 | |
Jesus tries another. | 2:50 | |
The kingdom of Heaven is like the mustard seed. | 2:52 | |
The mustard seed is the smallest of all the seeds | 2:58 | |
but when it is planted and it grows, | 3:01 | |
it grows and grows up into a weed | 3:04 | |
about maybe three feet high. | 3:08 | |
So large that birds could nest in its branches. | 3:13 | |
Small birds. | 3:17 | |
One of the disciples said, "Jesus, | 3:20 | |
"are you comparing us to a bunch of weeds?" | 3:22 | |
The kingdom of Heaven, Jesus says, | 3:28 | |
is like a net. | 3:31 | |
The net is cast into the sea. | 3:32 | |
And when you pull the net in, | 3:35 | |
it is full of fish. | 3:36 | |
Good fish. | 3:39 | |
But it's also got a lot of bad fish. | 3:41 | |
The slimy, creepy, crawly kinds | 3:43 | |
of inedible kinds of things. | 3:47 | |
Jesus says, "God's kingdom is like that." | 3:51 | |
"Explain some of this stuff to us," said Peter. | 3:56 | |
Jesus said, "If you've got ears to hear, hear." | 4:00 | |
And it's right at that point that our gospel today kicks in. | 4:05 | |
Jesus and his disciples take a trip to the northwest. | 4:11 | |
They go up to Tyre and Sidon. | 4:15 | |
The northwest. | 4:19 | |
It was a hostile, irreligious sort of place, | 4:22 | |
way out on the boundary. | 4:26 | |
A place where the Gentiles lived. | 4:27 | |
So, like Oregon. | 4:32 | |
It's the northwest. | 4:33 | |
Tyre and Sidon. | 4:36 | |
And, um, | 4:39 | |
as one might expect in a place like that, | 4:43 | |
this Gentile woman comes pushing in | 4:46 | |
where Jesus is trying to instruct the inner twelve. | 4:51 | |
She pushes into the gathered believers, | 4:56 | |
this woman, whooping up at the top of her voice | 4:58 | |
about how Jesus ought to come out and heal her daughter. | 5:02 | |
Now the disciples who appear to have decided | 5:09 | |
that their function is to be like the Secret Service, | 5:11 | |
to protect Jesus from these pushy, | 5:16 | |
these kind of crazy people who show up. | 5:19 | |
They say to Jesus, "Send her away." | 5:23 | |
Anything to stop all this shouting. | 5:26 | |
"Look, lady," Jesus says, | 5:31 | |
"Get your own HMO. | 5:34 | |
"I haven't come for people like you. | 5:37 | |
"Gentile dog, you. | 5:40 | |
"I got my hands full with the lost sheep | 5:42 | |
"of the house of Israel. | 5:45 | |
"That's why I'm here. | 5:47 | |
"I can't get tangled up with strays like you." | 5:48 | |
Now I'll admit that this was not | 5:53 | |
one of Jesus' better moments. | 5:55 | |
Maybe he was tired. | 5:58 | |
You call me at 10 o'clock on a Saturday night | 6:00 | |
telling me you can't sleep, you need to talk to a pastor, | 6:03 | |
I won't call you a Gentile dog. | 6:07 | |
I may want to call you that. | 6:10 | |
But maybe he was just tired. | 6:15 | |
That was about the worst thing you could call somebody | 6:18 | |
in the first century. | 6:20 | |
You Gentile dog, you. | 6:21 | |
And throughout the gospel of Matthew, | 6:25 | |
has not Jesus made it crystal clear | 6:28 | |
that he has come, not for dogs, these Gentile dogs. | 6:31 | |
He's come for sheep. | 6:36 | |
He's come for the lost sheep of the house of Israel. | 6:37 | |
He's come to reconstitute, to regather | 6:40 | |
God's scattered family. | 6:43 | |
That's why he's here. | 6:45 | |
This woman is a Gentile. | 6:50 | |
She's not only a Gentile, she's a Canaanite. | 6:52 | |
And I don't have time to go into the specifics | 6:56 | |
of Canaanite fertility worship. | 6:59 | |
There are children here. | 7:02 | |
But if I did, you could see why | 7:03 | |
when Jesus calls her a dog, | 7:05 | |
he is speaking more than metaphorically. | 7:07 | |
She isn't part of Israel. | 7:11 | |
We're out in Gentile country. | 7:14 | |
The northwest. | 7:17 | |
She's a Gentile. | 7:19 | |
What is more, how dare this woman | 7:20 | |
push in there and attempt to have | 7:23 | |
a theological conversation with a male religious leader. | 7:25 | |
So, the disciples urged Jesus, | 7:32 | |
"Tell this woman where she can get off." | 7:37 | |
It turns out, this is one of those woman | 7:42 | |
who is not easily sent away. | 7:43 | |
She's got a problem. | 7:46 | |
Her life is in crisis. | 7:48 | |
She needs help. | 7:50 | |
She engages Jesus in debate. | 7:53 | |
"Okay," she says, "dog I may be, | 7:57 | |
"but don't even the dogs get to gather up | 7:59 | |
"some of the crumbs that the children drop off the table?" | 8:03 | |
She really gets to Jesus. | 8:09 | |
He exclaims in great amazement, | 8:11 | |
"How great is your faith." | 8:15 | |
How great is her faith. | 8:21 | |
How great is her faith that Jesus can heal her daughter. | 8:23 | |
And he does. | 8:26 | |
But maybe even more so, how great is her faith | 8:29 | |
that Jesus | 8:33 | |
has a blessing | 8:36 | |
for somebody like her. | 8:39 | |
Jesus | 8:42 | |
has compassion on her. | 8:44 | |
This story, I remind you, follows a whole series | 8:48 | |
of perplexing, hard to understand parables | 8:51 | |
about the kingdom of God. | 8:54 | |
And most of them, you will note, | 8:57 | |
appear to be parables about messy the kingdom of God is. | 8:59 | |
In the kingdom of God, you don't have nice, | 9:04 | |
pure fields of wheat. | 9:06 | |
You've got these weeds growing in the middle | 9:08 | |
of the wheat. | 9:10 | |
In the kingdom of God, you pull in the net | 9:12 | |
and you've got some good fish in the net, yeah. | 9:15 | |
But you've got some bad fish | 9:17 | |
caught in the dragnet as well. | 9:19 | |
That's the kingdom of God. | 9:22 | |
The kingdom of God is like, | 9:23 | |
it's like a weed. | 9:26 | |
It's like crabgrass that just messes up | 9:29 | |
the well manicured lawn. | 9:32 | |
The kingdom of God is like that. | 9:35 | |
And I'm wondering if maybe this woman | 9:40 | |
is also a parable. | 9:42 | |
Sometimes Jesus told parables in which he reveals | 9:45 | |
something, something that we had not seen | 9:50 | |
about him. | 9:53 | |
Or maybe something we don't want to see. | 9:56 | |
But sometimes Jesus does parables, | 10:00 | |
in which we see something about him | 10:04 | |
that maybe we didn't want to see. | 10:08 | |
Sometimes we see some things about ourselves | 10:11 | |
we didn't want to see. | 10:16 | |
Here is Jesus, | 10:19 | |
and he's out beyond the boundaries. | 10:21 | |
He's out in that shadowy northwest kind of | 10:24 | |
Tyre and Sidon kind of place. | 10:28 | |
We're not gathered here with a men's Bible class. | 10:32 | |
We're not gathered here with the elect, | 10:35 | |
just the insiders. | 10:37 | |
We're being intruded upon by this pushy woman | 10:38 | |
that just pushes in here, | 10:41 | |
who badly needs a miracle for her sick daughter. | 10:43 | |
And she refuses to be put off or pushed away | 10:48 | |
by Jesus' disciples. | 10:52 | |
Or even by Jesus. | 10:55 | |
We wish she would go away. | 10:59 | |
Hasn't Jesus' teaching been crystal clear? | 11:03 | |
He's come for the lost sheep | 11:06 | |
of the house of Israel. | 11:09 | |
He's come for us. | 11:11 | |
He's come for the sort of people | 11:12 | |
who would get up on an August Sunday | 11:14 | |
and come to church. | 11:15 | |
That sort of people. | 11:17 | |
And we tell Jesus, "Send her away | 11:18 | |
"so we can get on with our kingdom." | 11:21 | |
Our kingdom? | 11:25 | |
Whose kingdom is being parable-ized anyway? | 11:27 | |
Whose kingdom? | 11:31 | |
Whose walls are being erected around whose kingdom? | 11:33 | |
It's quite a picture we get of ourselves | 11:40 | |
in this parable. | 11:42 | |
Because whenever you see the disciples | 11:44 | |
crop up in these stories, | 11:46 | |
we're supposed to read us, church. | 11:47 | |
Maybe this parable says | 11:53 | |
the church consists of a bunch of people | 11:56 | |
gathered around Jesus, trying to protect Jesus | 11:59 | |
from other people. | 12:03 | |
How do you like that picture of the church? | 12:07 | |
You know, I've noted in churches | 12:12 | |
that take great pride and that they'll tell you, | 12:15 | |
"We are a very friendly church. | 12:18 | |
"We are the friendliest church in town. | 12:21 | |
"Everyone here is so warm and open and friendly." | 12:22 | |
But a lot of times, if you visit that church, | 12:27 | |
it impresses you as just the very opposite. | 12:30 | |
The very qualities that make that church wonderful | 12:33 | |
and warm and friendly on the inside | 12:36 | |
feel like a means of exclusion | 12:38 | |
of people who are on the outside. | 12:42 | |
Take my last congregation. | 12:47 | |
We hired a consultant | 12:49 | |
to help us grow as a church, | 12:52 | |
help us get back in touch with our neighborhood. | 12:54 | |
So we met with the consultant. | 12:57 | |
And the consultant, the first thing | 13:00 | |
the consultant said is, | 13:02 | |
"Where's the front door of this church? | 13:04 | |
"How do you get in?" | 13:07 | |
And we looked around and said, | 13:11 | |
"There's the front door over there." | 13:12 | |
Then the consultant said, | 13:16 | |
"How come it's always locked?" | 13:17 | |
And we said, "Because everybody knows | 13:20 | |
"you come in through the side door." | 13:23 | |
Then the consultant said, | 13:27 | |
"How can you find the minister's office?" | 13:30 | |
And we said, "You go down that hall, | 13:33 | |
"you take a left, | 13:36 | |
"then you take your second left | 13:37 | |
"and you come around there | 13:39 | |
"and then you're at the minister's office." | 13:40 | |
The consultant said, | 13:44 | |
"Well, how are we supposed to know that?" | 13:45 | |
And we said, "Everybody knows that. | 13:47 | |
"If you don't know that, | 13:49 | |
"you've got no business going to the minister's office." | 13:50 | |
(people laugh) | 13:53 | |
And the consultant said, | 13:56 | |
"And I wonder why y'all have not been growing." | 13:58 | |
We, we just, we wish this, | 14:05 | |
this pushy woman would just go away. | 14:09 | |
If maybe she could find her salvation somewhere else. | 14:13 | |
A few weeks ago, we had a guest preacher here | 14:19 | |
from this pulpit. | 14:21 | |
A preacher whom I had seen on TV. | 14:23 | |
And he is pastor of one | 14:27 | |
of the fastest growing churches in America. | 14:28 | |
Maybe you heard him preach when he was here. | 14:32 | |
I wasn't here when he preached, | 14:34 | |
but I heard his sermon later on the web. | 14:36 | |
And it was a very kind of Methodist, | 14:38 | |
kind of pietistic, kind of feel-good kind of sermon. | 14:40 | |
Well, it turns out a number of people | 14:45 | |
are upset because he preached in this pulpit. | 14:48 | |
I said, "Why are you upset? | 14:51 | |
"He's on TV. | 14:53 | |
"He's got a fast growing church." | 14:54 | |
And they say they don't like his sexual orientation. | 14:58 | |
And I said, "Look, I don't think Reverend Nelson | 15:02 | |
"asked him about that when he invited him to preach." | 15:05 | |
Not because Reverend Nelson was thinking | 15:09 | |
about this story, which he could have. | 15:11 | |
But Reverend Nelson is from South Carolina, | 15:13 | |
and his mother told him not to talk | 15:16 | |
about stuff like that in church. | 15:17 | |
(people laugh) | 15:19 | |
Sorry. | 15:21 | |
I take it they are folk whom the church has condemned | 15:25 | |
and rebuffed and walled out. | 15:28 | |
Still, | 15:31 | |
they just keep showing up. | 15:33 | |
They keep coming back. | 15:36 | |
They keep pushing in. | 15:37 | |
They're just dying to get some blessing from Jesus. | 15:39 | |
How great is their faith. | 15:44 | |
Some of us | 15:47 | |
lose our desire to be with Jesus | 15:49 | |
when we find we can't get our favorite parking place | 15:51 | |
on a Sunday. | 15:53 | |
And we're getting ready to come to the Lord's table. | 15:57 | |
And a lot of times, we wish it were our table | 16:02 | |
and not his table. | 16:05 | |
And here we try to have standards. | 16:09 | |
We try to have enough words in the worship | 16:12 | |
that are hard to understand. | 16:15 | |
We try always to sing at least a couple of hymns | 16:18 | |
that you don't know. | 16:20 | |
And you can tell by looking at this place | 16:22 | |
that we've been around Jesus a lot longer | 16:25 | |
than you have. | 16:28 | |
Still, a lot of times | 16:31 | |
when we open the scriptures, | 16:36 | |
and we're willing to be taught by Jesus, | 16:38 | |
whenever we gather at the Lord's table, | 16:42 | |
we know enough to know that | 16:47 | |
there's gonna be some outsider. | 16:51 | |
There's gonna always be somebody on the margin | 16:55 | |
who's got it through her head | 16:58 | |
that when Jesus says, | 17:01 | |
"I've come to invite everybody to dinner. | 17:04 | |
"I've come to gather everybody into the kingdom." | 17:08 | |
She's got in her head that maybe he means her. | 17:15 | |
As Jesus said, if you've got ears to hear, hear. | 17:20 |
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