Righteous Anger is All the Rage read an editorial. A tone of anger seems to be our “go to” mode these days when we engage with each other—most often in our public square. Unless we are talking with someone who agrees with our views on sports or politics or religion, most engagements begin at the slow burn level of discourse. It is hard to hear the voice of others in the din of criticism and suspicion. How often do we plan our rebuttal before fully hearing the thoughts of the other? This is especially true when we feel that we are being confronted for some lapse of ours—a misunderstanding, an oversight, a mistake, or a genuine contribution to someone else’s suffering.
Today, we have been asked by our brothers and sisters of the African Methodist Episcopal Church to open our ears, our minds and our hearts to something that we are well aware of, but that yet deeply challenges our ability to be present, open, and compassionate. Today we are being asked as Church to confess, repent, and make a commitment to end the sin of racism through our lives and our actions. As followers of the God of love who we believe created us all in God’s image and who commands us to love each other as we have been loved, we are being called upon to take action in this love, to begin to truly wrestle with what it means to be a part of the end of the racism that has enslaved our souls since the beginning of our country’s and our church’s beginnings.
But before we can act, we must listen, we must open our ears to the stories of all who suffer and we must engage in conversations among ourselves about our role and responsibility so we can begin to end racism by acknowledging its role and by committing to do our part. We never know where, when, or from whom we will hear the Gospel that opens our hearts and leads us closer to God’s kingdom.
In our Gospel reading this morning, we learn that prejudice and deafness was not invented in the 21st century. We hear a story that is also told, with a few adjustments, in Matthew’s Gospel. It is not our usual picture of Jesus. For most of us Jesus is the one who is always compassionate. Jesus is the one who welcomes all into the love of God—the one who goes out of his way to eat with those who are considered unclean and unacceptable, the one who in our reading from last week chastised the religious authorities for excluding people who could not maintain the purity codes due to their poverty and occupations.
This Jesus that we know so well as the one who cares for all the sheep and searches for the lost—in this story, Jesus sounds much too much like me. There must be something we are missing when we read that Jesus not only dismisses the woman in need, but insults her and her child as well. Some commentaries take the side that Jesus is testing the woman’s faith through his actions. Some commentaries note that Jesus uses the diminuitive form of “dog”— as in “puppies.” But I agree with others who remind us that Jesus was fully human and fully divine—and in this story, Jesus images his and our humanity. Jesus seems not to have fully understood the breadth of his mission.
Jesus has traveled to the region of Tyre in Phoenicia just north of Upper Galilee where he enters a house to get away from the large crowds that have been following him. He is trying to escape notice, but he is unsuccessful. A woman who is a Gentile of Syrophoenecian origin finds him. Falling at his feet she begs him to heal her daughter who is sick. This was a bold move on her part. Women were not to approach men on their own– even when seeking the well-being of their family. No mention is made of her family status. We do not know if she had brothers, a father, a husband who should have been speaking for her. We only know that she seeks out Jesus in this private home and begs for his healing mercy on behalf of her child. Jesus’ response as reported in this gospel is surprising. He says to her,
“Let the children be fed first, for it is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.”
The dog as we know it as a beloved family pet, much cared for and catered to, was not known in this culture. At the time of this story in the Mediterranean world, the term “dog” was a strong insult since dogs were seen as outsiders, scavengers, and unclean eaters of unclean food—like rats to us.[1] Dogs were animals that had to fend for themselves, they would never be willingly fed. This passage, in fact, is the only one in which dogs are described as being fed by humans, however off-handedly, suggesting that they are able to eat the food that falls from the table. So Jesus is likening this Gentile woman and her suffering child to dogs.
The woman does not respond to the insulting term. Instead she addresses Jesus as kyrios “Lord”. She acknowledges Jesus’ authority but challenges his statement. She says
“Sir, even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs.”
While she accepts that the Jewish people- as the children of God–will be served first, she sees the abundance of God’s mercy and goodness and argues that this abundance will be more than sufficient to meet her daughter’s need to be healed. She widens Jesus’ mission to include her daughter and beyond her to the Gentiles. She is the only person in Mark’s Gospel to best Jesus in an argument.
My summer reading this year was not the usual course of beach novels or life escaping mysteries. Instead I took on vacation with me two works that addressed the topic of racism. I knew that in my time away I would be able to read and truly ponder the words of the authors, listening carefully and reflecting on them through my own experience and contemplating my response as a Christian. I finished “Blood Done Sign My Name[2] by Timothy Tyson a story about his growing up in the south as the white son of the minister of the all white Methodist Church and the brutal encounters he had with the white and black people of his town. It told of a history of violence against black people, and how his eyes were opened as a child to both the inhumanity and the heroism of the people with whom he lived.
I also read Between the World and Me[3] by Ta-Nehisi Coates, a brilliant young author who writes this book as a letter to his young son. I was struck by his ferocious writing and the painful way that he describes his place in our world as a young black man. Though fiercely intelligent, highly educated, stunningly articulate, and happily secure in a loving family, Coates states with precision that he recognizes that as a black man he is never seen first as a man, but always as a black man which carries with it judgment and punishment that other men do not carry. He shares a story that is both historical and personal as he wrestles with what it is like to find a way to navigate a life in our country as a black man. While it is a difficult story, it is, I believe, an important one to hear. Because if we truly want to exorcise the demon of racism that infects relationships, communities, structures, institutions, we must listen to each other. We must have actual conversations. We must engage in sacred listening with each other where everyone has the space to tell their stories without the fear of being dismissed or ignored. This is a critical first step.
Because we never know where, when, or from whom we will hear the Gospel that opens our hearts and leads us closer to God’s kingdom.
What is most disturbing today is the way that we too often retreat from each other across racial and ideological lines instead of bravely and compassionately stepping forward to listen and engage those who have different stories to tell—whose lives have a different narrative arc—and from whom we have much to learn. Rather than listening carefully, asking compassionate questions, and sensitively reflecting on the truth as we receive it, we too often mirror back the anger found in the public square. People are angry. And for good reason.
As the Church we must begin the honest examination of our history, we must in God’s mercy ask for forgiveness, and we must begin the hard work of faithful, deliberate reconciliation and restoration. As the Rev. Marcus Halley, a priest near Ferguson MS says, “The Church as a community gathered around the Risen Christ must constantly challenge one another towards the Kingdom of God. We are not bullhorns; we are heralds of a greater reality—the Kingdom of God.”[4]
The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., had this ability to name the painful truths of segregation, racism, political and economic marginalization, and violence through the lens of the Gospel and in doing so move the conversation through the darkness into the light of the Kingdom of God. Though he admitted that this reconciliation often touched the hearts of those who were disenfranchised more readily than those with power, love was central to the movement he led. He knew that Christ not only calls us to reconciliation, but Christ could be found standing at the place where the world was most divided, calling us forward and pronouncing God’s blessing on the new communities being created.
As Church we must listen and respond to the voices of Black lives matter and Hands up and Speak her name. Knowing that all lives matter because all are God’s beloved, we must actively engage in insuring that violence, economic inequities, crumbling schools underfunded education systems, and an unjust justice system does not continue to disproportionately affect black communities. As Christian people we must engage this work of reconciliation—of building new communities from the ground of transformed relationships—by standing in the perilous gap between communities in conflict, pointing towards the reality of the Kingdom of God which radically reforms human relationship.
The Syrophoenecian woman called Jesus to a mission of infinite compassion. She refused to accept that God’s abundant grace was unavailable for her daughter’s healing. And here is where Jesus’s example teaches us all. He listened. He heard her truth and he responded. Because the woman continued to speak her truth, her daughter was healed. And Jesus’ power was not diminished by listening and responding to this Gentile woman. Rather it was expanded. He will go on to feed four thousand people in this largely Gentile territory. His saving grace will be shared with all who come to him.
As followers of our Savior Jesus Christ, we are called to risk, to step out and take the chance, to begin to remove the barriers that separate us from each other. Our call is to listen with compassion, to repent with wholeheartedness and to act in love. It is well past time for the evil of racism to truly be rooted out and ended for our sake, for our children and our grandchildren, and for all generations. This sickness must be identified and exorcised from our hearts so we can all receive the healing that can only come from us all doing our own work and then moving towards each other in love.
Jesus understands our difficulty in being open to others, but the healing he provides to the daughter of the Syrophoenician woman is available to us all if we but recognize that no one is outside the embrace of God that when black lives matter, all lives matter.
May God bless us and forgive us as we pray and act with our partners beginning today and continuing in the years to come. In the words of the prophet Isaiah, may we see the day when “waters shall break forth in the wilderness, and streams in the desert; the burning sand shall become a pool, and the thirsty ground springs of water.”
We never know where, when, or from whom we will hear the Gospel that opens our hearts and leads us closer to God’s kingdom.
[1] Bruce J. Malina and Richard L. Rohrbaugh. Social-science commentary on the Synoptic
Gospels. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2003, 177.
[2] Timothy B. Tyson. Blood done sign my name. New York: Broadway Brooks, 2004.
[3] Ta-Nehisi Coates. Between the world and me. New York: Spiegel and Grau, 2015.