Methodist preacher Thomas Long tells the story of a friend of his who “decided to put [today’s Scriptures] to the test. A well-respected leader in her congregation, she chose to appear at church one Sunday in the guise of a homeless person…. Now [Long’s] friend is by no means a “minks and gold rings” kind of woman, but it nevertheless took a great deal of effort, theatrical makeup and thrift-store clothing to transform her into a person whose appearance showed the ravages of the streets. Her experience at church was remarkable, transforming. Church friends who would normally have greeted her cheerily in the hallway turned their heads and would not make eye contact. When she was not being ignored, she was glared at, and, as she made her way toward the worship space, she could sense the ushers tensing for a possible confrontation. They seated her as far way from others as possible. There was an anxious moment when my friend stood up to speak during the joys and concerns. When she revealed who she was, this turned rapidly to astonishment, then embarrassment, and finally to many apologies after the service.” (Blog of the Christian Century, 8/31/09)
I imagine that church had a lot of soul-searching to do after that day, and this is nothing unusual. Numerous churches have had to readjust, question themselves and readjust again when confronted with new, unfamiliar, less attractive populations. And this is not just a modern problem – in our epistle today, James writes to a first-century church that was ingratiating itself with rich while ignoring the poor. We humans are very talented at sizing people up quickly and deciding whether they belong in our group or not – not just on the basis of wealth and social class, the subject of James’ epistle, but also on the basis of race, education, nationality, religion, family configuration, age, and a myriad of other ways we categorize ourselves and close ourselves off from other people. It seems to be part of human nature that we organize ourselves into tribes and clans, and close ourselves off from those in outsider groups. What I find fascinating about today’s scriptures is not that they state what is obvious to anyone who has paid attention to the gospel (everyone is welcome). It’s how common it is for human beings to close themselves off from others; not just ordinary, flawed human beings like us – but Jesus himself,
Today’s gospel gives us one of the strangest, most troubling stories of Jesus’ whole career. Jesus crosses the Sea of Galilee into Gentile country, apparently for a short vacation, but a desperate Gentile woman with a sick child approaches Jesus for healing, and he rebuffs her with the insult, “You don’t take the children’s food and give it to the dogs.” Jesus is willing to heal Jews, but not Gentiles. Now we could say that calling a woman a dog wouldn’t be the same kind of insult in Jesus’ time as it is today – and we would be right – it would be much worse – in Jesus’ time and place, dogs were not considered friendly, loveable house pets – they were considered dirty, disease-ridden scavengers. So insulting this woman in this way was an even worse insult then than now.
Jesus seems to be telling her that she is too low and insignificant even to come to God’s notice, that she is beyond the reach of the salvation Christ brings, and that God’s healing is just not available to her daughter or her people. Yet she persists, and Jesus changes his mind. Jesus changes his mind, and heals the daughter, and more than that, he keeps his word, and expands his mission to include the Gentiles. And apparently, realizing the significance of the fact that he has learned to open his ears to an outsider, the next thing he does is open the ears of a deaf Gentile. Something big has changed.
Now this story causes a lot of trouble for a lot of people who just don’t see how the Lord of love can insult and exclude a woman the way Jesus does. Commentators have tried to account for this story in a variety of ways, from saying that Jesus was obviously just testing woman’s faith (or the disciples’), to saying that this probably didn’t happen at all. But I have trouble with these ways of interpreting the story – I don’t see anything in the story that says that Jesus was just putting on a cruel act, insulting the woman to test someone; and I don’t think you can just throw out troubling Bible stories when they don’t fit what you already believe. I think the Bible is something you have to wrestle with on its own terms. The Bible has given us this account of Jesus, and we have to deal with it.
And here, this Bible story seems to say clearly that Jesus started out excluding and insulting a woman, and then he changed his mind. Jesus changed his mind – and what a bewildering thought this is. If Jesus could be so wrong about his own mission, and could change his mind, opening up a whole new direction for the church, what does that say about us?
Church tradition tells us that Jesus was fully divine and fully human. We tend to concentrate on the divine part, I think, and forget what it means that Jesus was human. And yet if we look at Jesus in this gospel story, I think we can begin to understand some things about his humanity, and about our own. Here we see a Jesus who is in a process of change and growth, who isn’t perfectly wise and all-knowing at all times, but who truly learns and responds at a deep and heartfelt level to the people around him. It is a Jesus who, in a very human way, allows his human upbringing to make up his mind about someone who is outside of his own social group, who closes his ears to the pleas of someone in need. Yet he listens, and allows her to move him to a different place, a place where his own ears are opened and he begins to believe something new about who he is and what he is called to do.
It is a picture of the Son of God changing in response to a human, opening his mind and his heart to the outsider, and learning something new about himself. So Jesus can change – and this, to me, is where hope lies. If Jesus is fully human, and finds that for him, life is a learning process, a time to constantly discern and re-discern his call, a time to pray and change and grow and respond differently to the world around him; if God can change his whole mission to the world in response to us – then that tells us that we need to be ready to do the same thing.
It is human temptation to close ourselves off from change and growth, to believe that we know truth, close our ears to new ideas; and yet this story tells us that the path to growth is through opening ourselves to the outsider. Rabbi Edwin Friedman, who wrote one of the most important works about how family systems work, and applied family system theories to congregations and other systems, says that healthy functioning within human organisms depends on people’s ability to do two things: To define ourselves – say honestly who we are and what we believe; While remaining connected – respecting the humanity and the good faith of those who disagree, and remaining in respectful relationship.
These two skills – defining oneself in a non-threatening way, while remaining connected with those who disagree, are skills that allow for mature and respectful functioning within all human systems. They allow us to state what we believe, while remaining open to learning and growth in relationship with others who might surprise us, change us, give us a new mission and new outlook on life. Because it is in relationship, ultimately, that all human beings learn everything they need to survive – relationship with others and relationship with God.
And, if Jesus can change and grow, fully human and fully divine as he was, then maybe we can too. We can open our ears to the cries of the poor and those who need our help, we can open our minds to new ways of thinking and being and worshiping, we can allow God to speak to our hearts and call us to new missions and ministries. We can open our church to new relationships and people who will change us. We can reach out our hands to those who need us. We can teach and preach and sing and worship and know that God is with us, marveling with us at the unpredictable and amazing things that are happening; we can transform lives and we can be transformed ourselves with the love of Jesus Christ.
