14 PENTECOST, PROPER 15

SERMON PREACHED AT CHRIST EPISCOPAL CHURCH, NORWAY, MAINE

THE REV. ANNE G. STANLEY

17 AUGUST 2008

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Genesis 37:1-4; 12-28; Psalm 133; Romans 11:1-2a, 29-32; Matthew 15: 10-28

As you have no doubt already surmised, the theme running through all the readings today, even the psalm, is reconciliation and unity. Unity and reconciliation.

In the continuing saga of Abraham’s family, his grandson Joseph comes together at long last with his brothers, even after their cruelty to him—pushing him into a well, selling him to strangers. “…he kissed all his brothers and wept upon them…”

“Oh, how good it is…when brethren live together in unity!” sings the psalmist, rejoicing even to the extent of pouring celebratory oil and happily letting it run down his head and into the beard. Brethren living in unity…

Paul in the Letter to the Romans writes about God’s mercy extended to ALL.

And in the gospel, Jesus, caught up short by the bold Canaanite woman, realizes he must expand his mission way beyond the house of Israel.

This gospel story, more than any other, to my thinking, gives us a glimpse of Jesus as a human being. Look at him.  A foreign, an alien Canaanite woman pesters Jesus to heal her daughter. The disciples tell him to send her away, no Good News for her, no healing for her daughter. We don’t bother with people like her. She’s not one of us. Jesus agrees,  petulantly stating that he was sent to the lost sheep of the house of Israel and nobody else. “It isn’t fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.”  But the woman comes right back at him: “Yes, Lord, but even the dogs eat the crumbs from the master’s table.”  And in an instant, Jesus recognizes his error.  He had turned the woman away, not because he was tired, or because he needed a well-deserved break. Jesus had turned her away because she was a non-Jew, a stranger. He had turned her away because she was different from his own kind.

Woops. Jesus stood corrected. Immediately his horizon moved outwards. The Good News was available not just to some, but to everyone,. Beginning with the foreign woman, the woman from the other side.

Remember last week’s gospel? When Jesus ordered his disciples to cross

over, across the sea, to the other side? To be with people who were different from themselves? Today, thanks to the Canaanite woman, Jesus follows his own preaching!     

Last week I told you something about the recent Lambeth Conference, the recent gathering of Anglican bishops in England. I said that what had been reported by those who had actually participated, the bishops and their spouses, not reporters and third-hand editorials, is what is valuable to us who want to know what “really happened” at Lambeth. How the participants had actually spent most of the time listening to people from very different places from their own, very different contexts, with very different experiences. How the participants left and went home having really learned from each other.

I’m going to read from a short piece in the Guardian UK newspaper, an article written by our own Presiding Bishop, Katharine Jefferts Shori. She gives a tiny sampling of specific things that some of the participants shared, the “deeper realities of the contexts in which each seeks to spread the gospel.”

“One bishop from India reported a legislative requirement to obtain a magistrate’s certificate before baptizing a convert, with a prison term of several years and a significant fine as the penalty for proceeding without legal sanction.

A bishop’s spouse from Africa reported the church’s difficulty in supporting widows who are pressured to marry the dead husband’s brother (even if already married), or else forfeit their children and property.

Bishops from Madagascar told of cyclones that destroy their people’s homes and crops, often several times a year, and how they seek to build strong church buildings that can be havens from the storms as well as seats of learning.

Western bishops spoke of the church’s pastoral role in seeking to provide sacred support for same-sex couples living in monogamous, life-long relationships.

Bishops from Africa and Asia told of the difficulty of evangelism in majority Muslim societies. Sudanese bishops sought partnerships as they seek to resettle returning refugees and rebuild a devastated church structure. A Tanzanian bishop lamented the difficulty of biblical study without libraries or access to the scholarly tools Westerners take for granted. Japanese bishops spoke of the church’s inability to address social change when Christianity is such a small part of society. And bishops from countless places spoke of their gratitude for the support of others as they struggle with natural disaster, corruption, war, disease, hunger, climate change and counterproductive social pressures.

Given divergences that look interplanetary in degree and scale, what does this diverse body have in common? Certainly a recognizably common framework of worship, descended from the Church of England. A reliance on sacred scripture, in common with tradition and reason, also characteristic of roots in British Christianity. And a passion for the caring for their flocks—the hungry, the sick, the aged and infirm, widows and orphans, and the forgotten, as well as those who know no good news.

But the forms and structures of the various provinces of the Anglican communion have diverged significantly, in ways that challenge those ancient ties to England and the Archbishop of Canterbury. Those provinces are the result of evangelism tied to colonial structures, whether of Britain or her former colonies, and that colonial history has still to be unpacked and assessed.  The present attempts to manage conflict in the communion through a renewed focus on structural ties to old or new authorities have generated significant resistance, both from provinces who largely absented themselves from Lambeth and from dissenting voices among the attending bishops.

The Anglican communion’s present reality reflects a struggle to grow into a new level of maturity, like that of adult siblings in a much-conflicted family. As we continue to wrestle, sufficient space and respect for the differing gifts of the siblings just might lead to greater maturity in relationship. This will require greater self-definition as well as decreased reactivity. Jesus’ own example in relationships with his opponents and with his disciples will be instructive.”

….Jesus’ own exchange with the Canaanite woman in today’s gospel is one of those instructive examples. That day when Jesus was forced to listen to his own words, which echoed the disciples’ limited view of who gets to benefit from the Good News. The day when the woman with the different voice, the woman from the “other side,” got Jesus’ attention and Jesus suddenly realized that God’s unifying, reconciling reach, which he had been sent to extend, was unlimited. The day when he, even he, grew fully into a new level of maturity. May we, in our lives, in the church and, indeed, in the nations of the world, grow likewise.