Boundaries

Pentecost 10A, 8/17/14

Isaiah 56:1-8; Matthew 15:21-28

Lord, bring your salvation and reveal your covenant. Gather us to you on your holy mountain. Amen.

I’ve seen a lot of articles in the past several days about insiders and outsiders – about who counts and who doesn’t. The news has been full of tragedies, and just about every story describes people who have some kind of power controlling other people who don’t.

White people verses black people.

Police officers versus civilians.

Rich people verses poor people.

Mainstream media outlets and the way they tell a story versus social media and grassroots attempts to tell a different story.

On Thursday night, as a way to escape from all the craziness in the world, my mom and I got together to watch a Lauren Bacall movie.

We searched on Netflix and the only film of hers that was available for instant streaming was How to Marry A Millionaire.

In case you haven’t seen this one, here’s a quick plot summary. Lauren Bacall, Marilyn Monroe, and Betty Grable are all models, and they move in together to a fancy apartment in New York. Their goal is for each of them to find and marry a millionaire, so that they can live the lifestyle they’ve always wanted and that they think they deserve.

Bacall’s character has some pretty strict guidelines on who the girls can bring in to the apartment – on what kind of men are worth their time.

To start with, no one is allowed who doesn’t wear a necktie.

Also, Bacall apparently has a thing for bad boys – for gas pump jockeys, she says – so she tries her hardest to keep away from anyone who reminds her of the guys she’s fallen for in the past.

You can imagine where the story goes from there.

But the point is, there are strict rules about who is in and who is out.

This is a story of exclusion and inclusion.

So are all the news stories we’ve been hearing lately.

So are today’s Bible stories.

The readings we heard from Scripture today tell us how God responds to people who lie on the edges of society – those bad boys that Lauren Bacall warned her cohorts against.

God welcomes outcasts.

In the first reading, from Isaiah, God is talking to Israel about foreigners, about people who are living on the margins of Hebrew society. God promises to welcome the   outsider      in.

 “These I will bring to my holy mountain,” God says, “and make them joyful in my house of prayer; for my house shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples. … the Lord God, who gathers the outcasts of Israel, …will gather others to them besides those already gathered.” (56:7-8)

God has a plan to make outcasts included – to fix the things that separate them from the general population and give them standing in society.

This is a radical, miraculous, rule-breaking plan.

You may have noticed that a few verses are left out of the first reading today. We heard Isaiah 56, verse one, and verses six through eight.

This passage gives us a great overview of God’s plan to welcome all people, including outcasts and foreigners.

In the missing verses, we get a specific example of God’s overwhelming attitude of welcoming.

Listen to what those verses say: …do not let the eunuch say, “I am just a dry tree.” For thus says the Lord: To the eunuchs who keep my sabbaths, who choose the things that please me and hold fast my covenant, I will give, in my house and within my walls, a monument and a name better than sons and daughters; I will give them an everlasting name that shall not be cut off. (56:3b-5)

OK, as you probably know already, eunuchs were men who had been castrated so that they could serve as trusted slaves for wealthy families. Eunuchs would pose absolutely no threat to the women in the household, or the lineage of inheritance in a family.

These eunuchs are the epitome of outcast people in Isaiah’s time. They were not allowed to enter the assembly of the Lord, according to a law in Deuteronomy – they were outcast from the faith community. And they were had no standing in society, because not only could they have no families of their own, but their family line would die with them, ensuring that their memory would be forgotten.

In verse 5 God promises the eunuchs an everlasting name – but one’s family name can only continue if someone has children. Impossible! In a radical, game-changing move, God grants the promise of children to the slaves who have been castrated!

We don’t get details – maybe the eunuchs will miraculously be granted children, or maybe God has another way to give them an everlasting name.

But the point is, God promises to fix the very things that separate outsiders from society. God will make the distinctions that we draw between each other completely irrelevant.

This reading seems to be saying, expect the unexpected!

God welcomes outcasts, in ways we could never imagine.

So it seems from this Isaiah reading that we’ve got an answer to the question, What Would Jesus Do? Of course, Jesus would welcome the outcast.

Right?

Well, maybe it’s a little more complicated than that. Let’s look at what happens in the Gospel lesson.

A Caananite woman approaches Jesus in today’s story. She would have been outcast in Jewish society in at least two ways – first, she was a woman, a female in a male-dominated society where men made all the rules. Women didn’t count as full citizens in that society.

Second, this woman was Caananite, not a Jew, not a member of the tribes of Israel but an enemy. She may have been considered a foreigner in the land promised to the Hebrew people.

And yet this woman comes to Jesus for help, asking him to heal her daughter.

The first thing Jesus says to the woman is, “you’re not my problem.” Helping the woman doesn’t fall into his job description, he says – it’s not part of his mission statement.

You’re not in my family, not from my community, you don’t belong to my church, you support the wrong policies… pick your insult.

Jesus calls the woman a female dog. That is not a flattering name, even in today’s society. Think about it. She’s not his problem and he tries to get rid of her with name-calling.

But the woman is persistent. She brushes off his name-calling. In fact, she embraces it. OK, I’m a dog, she says. And you treat dogs with a certain level of care and respect. Can’t you do the same for me?

Jesus is impressed with the woman’s faith. He responded at first like any human would do, but then the woman asked for more.

She reminded Jesus that God treats outcasts differently than humans do. She helped him remember and demonstrate that his mission as son of God is more than a human mission, his mission is to live up to the actions of God.

Jesus is fully human, and he shows it today by designating the boundaries of insider and outsider. But Jesus is also fully divine, thank God, and the Caananite woman reminds him of this.

First Jesus tries to pass the woman off as an outcast, but she won’t just be brushed aside. She won’t go away until she’s been recognized and had her needs met.

Outcasts can be like that in our society, too. We can’t just ignore them and hope they’ll go away. They have needs that must be met, and our calling to help them is divinely inspired.

So Jesus accommodates the Canaanite woman. He gives her what she asks for. He welcomes her as an outcast – cares for the person on the margins of society.

The disciples don’t understand it. As one author writes, “For the disciples, one should conduct one’s ministry by acting in a way that would avoid anything that could displease people; one should avoid disquieting confrontations. But, for Jesus, this is precisely not the way of conducting one’s ministry.”

Daniel Patte (The Gospel According to Matthew: A Structural Commentary on Matthew’s Faith)

Jesus’ ministry, when he’s doing it the best he possibly can, is to embrace all the people of the world as if they are God’s chosen people – just like we heard God promise to do in Isaiah.

There’s enough grace for all people, not just the “insiders.”

Do you remember the miracle of the feeding of the 5000? At that meal, feeding 5000 people with only 5 loaves of bread and 2 fish, there were 12 baskets of crumbs left over once everyone had been fed.

There is enough food to feed thousands, with baskets leftover… enough crumbs fall from the children’s table to feed the dogs as well… there is no limit to God’s grace.

Perhaps healing the Canaanite woman’s daughter was outside of Jesus’ calling, but doing so didn’t take anything away from the people Jesus was sent to.

Today’s Bible passages warn against an “us versus them” mentality.

It may show up all over the news, but it’s certainly not what God intends for our relationships with one another. Today’s lessons show us that grace extends to the outsiders in society.

People who are different than us can be included in our communities.

Welcoming others crosses all divisions and boundaries.

God will find a home for all people, so they have somewhere they belong.

Thanks be to God.

Amen.