Church and China

Went to Morrilton to preach this morning and got to meet our friends' new exchange student from China. Kendi is from Guangzhuo (guan jo), China and will be a senior at Morrilton High School this year. In our ongoing it's-a-small-world kind of life, we already know someone who has lived in in Guangzhuo--Skip's buddy Greggo from college. He did one of his many post-doc stints there. I believe today was probably Kendi's first church service, and I know it was his first experience with Mexican food! He has only recently arrived, so I know he must be super shell shocked, but was just delightful. When we got back to our friends' farm house, he shared with all of us a traditional Chinese moon cake and told the story behind the moon cake.

Our friends will be a great host family and I know both Kendi and they will be blessed by this time. What a great experience for their boys, who are in kindergarten and second grade.

When we were at lunch, another friend who came to church this a.m. commented how "international" lunch was. He commented that he was eating in a Mexican restaurant (run by Mexican immigrants), and eating with an exchange student from China and friends who had just returned from three years in Germany and England. I told him that this kind of gathering was likely to become more the norm than the exception.

There was a woman at church this morning who had lost a grown son only two weeks ago. She told me that she really needed to hear what I had to say this morning. Interestingly enough, I almost always preach the lectionary, but I couldn't really find a groove with the passages for this week, so I kind of just chose one at random. One of those God Things, as a friend of mine would say. So I thought I'd post it here.

The Canaanite Connection

Matthew 15:21-28

Our scripture this morning bothered me for many years. This woman with a demon-possesed child comes to Jesus for his help and he can’t be bothered. He even ends up insulting her.

This is not my kind of story. The Jesus in this story is not my Jesus. My Jesus is the one who touches lepers, who treats women like people, who feeds the hungry, who heals the sick. My Jesus would never treat a woman with a sick child in this manner. So my entire relationship with this particular passage of scripture has been based around the question of why Jesus would behave in this manner.

Perhaps this is supposed to be the story that explains how Jesus realizes that his ministry is meant to go beyond the Jews and reach Gentiles as well. Maybe the whole thing was a set up to provide a teachable moment to the disciples. Maybe Jesus had low blood sugar and it was making him cranky. It doesn’t really matter to me anymore. I’m not so concerned with why Jesus acted as he did. For now, for me, this story is about the faith of a woman.

The faith of a Canaanite woman. A woman who is the other. A woman who doesn’t belong. She is an outcast. She isn’t a part of the people Jesus came to save. She isn’t deserving. But she is pushy and clever and persistent. I like that. She and I. Me and her. We could be friends.

Hers is an active faith. So often when we talk of faith, it’s in a passive, almost resigned way. Have you ever noticed that people tend to say, “Well, you just gotta have faith.” When they don’t know what else to say or do? But this Canaanite woman’s faith isn’t one of resignation, it’s one of action. She wasn’t giving up. Even though she had absolutely no business being there. She was a Canaanite. Jesus wasn’t supposed to touch her or even talk to her. He wasn’t even supposed to be there for her.

But that didn’t stop her, and in the end it earns her something that no other person in the book of Matthew receives. Jesus tells her she has great faith. A pushy broad who loves her child is declared to be a woman of great faith. Maybe this is my kind of story after all.

This story is a good reminder to us all of what theologian Krister Stendahl has suggested—that we are merely honorary Jews. We, too, are the outsiders. We are Gentiles. Paul reminds us in Romans that it is by grace alone that we have been admitted to the ranks of God’s people. We have no right to demand help from Jesus. It is not a right, but a gift of grace.

Like the Canaanite woman in the story, we humbly beg for his mercy. We are the other.
There are times in our walk of faith that we know exactly what it is to be the Canaanite woman.

We come, like the Canaanite woman, when we get a medical diagnosis that changes our life forever.

We come, like the Canaanite woman, when we have desperately tried to follow the path God wants for us but seem to keep taking the wrong turns.

We come, like the Canaanite woman, when we have heard one too many stories of our brothers and sisters meeting violent ends.

We come, like the Canaanite woman, when a relationship falls apart and we don’t seem to have the tools to repair it.

We come, like the Canaanite woman, when we have done everything humanly possible for our children but cannot cast out the demons that possess them.

We know what it is to be the Canaanite woman. When we’ve given up any pretense of being good enough to deserve God’s favor. When we’ve let go of the notion that God owes us anything. When our experiences seem to tell us that God doesn’t care, but our faith demands that we believe that God must indeed care. We know what it is to be the Canannite woman.

Some years ago in Detroit, Nobel Peace Prize winner Elie Wiesel spoke on the subject: "After Auschwitz, Can We Still Believe!" Jews and Gentiles alike filled the great synagogue to listen to the recollections of a man who survived Dachau. Wiesel is a small and fragile man. And he stood at the podium for nearly an hour telling one story after another of the horror and despair of those bleak days in the '30s.

Painfully, silently, the audience relived the events of Wiesel's young life when he was the only surviving member of his family. Finally the stories ceased. His eyes dropped to the floor. There was no sound at all in that mammoth room for what seemed an agonizing eternity. Then he repeated the question, "After Auschwitz, can we still believe?" He shook his head slowly, sadly, "No, no,..." before concluding powerfully, "but we must!" *

We must! Concerning whether or not to have faith, there is no choice. There was none for the Canaanite woman, none for Elie Wiesel, there is none for you and me. There will be times when you believe that being faithful makes no difference. Be faithful anyway. There will be times when it seems like God doesn’t hear you. Call out anyway. There will be times when you feel like God doesn’t love you. Know that you are loved anyway.

Let us be like the Canaanite woman, humbly bold in our faith. Humble enough to know that we don’t deserve God’s grace and mercy, and bold enough to ask for it anyway.

*Retold from Hang In There!, David E. Leininger, Christianglobe Networks, Inc.