Matthew 15:21-28
August 14, 2011
Sermon preached by Rev. Donald Ng at the First Chinese Baptist Church in San Francisco.
As your pastor, one of the services that I offer is to officiate at funerals. But planning a funeral in the context of a Chinese American community requires an understanding and appreciation for the inclusions of some practices other than Christian. To convey our enduring love for our passed loved one, we would respectfully lay down blankets and come to understand the eternal truth that inasmuch as this person has tucked us into bed when we were children, we are returning such acts of love in the same way right now.
When we exit a funeral service, we would receive a little white envelope with a piece of candy to recognize that in this time of sadness, your life would be sweet hereafter. And the little red envelope containing a quarter now due to inflation is for you to buy something on the way home as an indication of continuing prosperity in your life. These envelopes and blankets are not found in our Bible or Christian traditions. They have come from our Chinese cultural religious traditions and we have reinterpreted them for our use today. As Christians, we have reached out to other faiths and in so doing come to understand our own faith better.
Our Scripture this morning is a story about Jesus encountering someone from another faith. We don’t know the specifics of this woman’s religious background, but we know she is not Jewish. When the woman persists in getting close to Jesus, he says clearly to his disciples, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” Clearly Jesus intends to seek and save Israel. Yet along the way, there are moments in Matthew when there’s a hint that Jesus’ mission might be broader than is first thought.
This Canaanite woman presses in upon Jesus, begging him to help her daughter who is ill. Jesus answers her, “It is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.” While we may be shocked to hear that Jesus refers to this woman as a “dog,” this was, in that day, a fairly conventional Jewish way, of speaking of gentiles. The woman persists and says, “Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters’ table.”
Jesus heals her daughter, just by saying the word. Then in front of his disciples, he praises this woman’s faith. Jesus has just blessed and praised a person who does not follow him, a person who is not even a member of his faith.
Encountering Other Faiths
Christians throughout the ages have encountered other faiths and today is no different. Those of us who have had the opportunity to visit Israel learned about the successive conquests that led to Judaism interfacing with other religions. During the Middle Ages, we read about the Islamic conquest as well as the crusaders attempt to retake the Holy Land. Today, our next-door neighbor or coworker might be Hindu. And without a doubt, we have family members who are Buddhist and practice a Confucian way of living.
The church has, through most of its history, lived with the fact that there are those often a majority who disagree with our view of reality and assert a counter view. Christianity has had fierce resistance to its truth claims from every culture in which it found itself, including the very first cultures in which we found ourselves. Other faiths are simply what the Bible calls “other gods” or not too charitably “false gods,” and the people who follow these faiths are “Gentiles,” like the woman in today’s Gospel.
It’s important to remember that when we speak about other faiths we speak as honorary Jews, as those who are what Scripture would call, “Gentiles.” We believe that the promises of God spoken only to Israel have somehow got extended even to us. By the grace of God, we who were once gentiles are now God’s holy people.
When Paul was rejected after speaking in the synagogue at Antioch, he says that he now turns “to the Gentiles,” citing Isaiah 49:6 as precedent, “I have set you to be light to the Gentiles, that you may bring salvation to the uttermost parts of the earth” (Acts 13:47). Much of the New Testament is an attempt to explain how the salvation of Israel is now offered even to the Gentiles, that is, to us. In talking about “other faiths,” we are talking about our own ancestors.
Jesus heals the Canaanite woman’s daughter because of her great faith. Jesus talks about people having “little faith,” but this is the only place in Matthew where Jesus talks about someone having “great faith.” We should be not be surprised to discover God at work in other religions. We should not be shocked to discover that God is working, not just among good Torah-believing Jews, not just among good Bible-believing Christians, but also across the street in the home of another religious believing family.
We are awakened to the discovery that God has a considerably larger notion of what “family” is. One of the major reasons why Jesus was crucified was for telling all of us righteous ones that “tax collectors and prostitutes are entering the kingdom of God ahead of you” (Mt. 21:31).
As we see in today’s Gospel, one of the unique, and to many maddening, things about Jesus was his scandalously inclusive love and work. When we think “Jesus Christ” we think about his reach, his embrace, his inclusion because that’s what the scriptures tell us about him and that’s how we’ve experienced him in our own lives. If he can reach out to a sinner like me, reaching out toward a nice person who is a Buddhist in our family is not much a reach. To say, “God was in Christ reconciling the world” (2 Cor. 5:19) is to make the most inclusive statement of who Jesus is.
Christians are able to love and respect Buddhists as uniquely Buddhist, precisely because we are followers of the unique mediator of salvation, Jesus Christ. I’m saying that the nature of Jesus Christ himself gives us our best hope for fruitful relationships with other faiths.
Christ is the One
Our differences do matter. The woman in today’s Gospel was a Gentile. She wasn’t a Jew in Gentile clothing; she was a Gentile. Differences must be respected and honored. We are not to harmonize and generalize to say that all religions believe that loving your neighbors as you love yourself is all there is to believe.
True encounter with other faiths begins in recognition that we are not basically “saying the same thing.” If there were no genuine differences, no truly other, why talk in the first place? The demand that one relinquishes any claim to significant, genuine difference is the height of intolerance.
Christians believe that Jesus Christ is the One toward whom all truthful accounts of the world, all true stories point, even if they do not point to him by name. Christians cannot avoid witnessing to what we believe God has worked in Christ. The only true God whom I know in my own personal life journey, in all of my biblical and religious studies, and in my call and conviction to Christian ministry is Jesus Christ, the Son of God, Redeemer and Savior of the world. Jesus is indeed the only way, the truth and the life.
In today’s Gospel lesson, Matthew presents this Gentile woman as a way of presenting something wonderful about Jesus. This suggests to me that it’s good to be in conversation with believers of other faiths, not in the hope of only gaining one more recruit, but in order to more fully attuned with the constant reach of Christ, in order to risk receiving correction and judgment from the person of another faith, in order to discover again the oneness and uniqueness and wonder of Christ; and perhaps even to witness Christ’s moving upon another life.
As our world continues to be ever more connected, we undoubtedly will come in contact with people who believe in another faith. Our workplaces are comprised of people from all walks of life—race, culture, languages, ethnicity, and religious backgrounds. When we remember Jesus on Good Friday, we’ll continue to find ourselves in an awkward relationship with our Jewish colleagues. As Christians, we are puzzled in understanding Islam even when we know that all three of the major world religions trace our roots back to Abraham. And there will still be times when you’d ask me to officiate at your loved ones’ funerals but your loved one was not a Christian. Should we read Scripture? Can we still do the blanketing and pass out the little white and red envelopes?
Jesus’ intention was to save the lost sheep of the house of Israel, but this persistent Canaanite woman whose faith was great got Jesus to heal her sick daughter. While our tendency today is to see other religions to be terribly dangerous and the source of great conflict and peril, Jesus was persuaded to call this woman’s faith great.
Reach Out
You heard that this year’s Youth Camp theme was, “Do the Right Thing,” a focus on social justice. How do we relate with our neighbors justly? This is also our church annual theme of trying to answer the question, “Who Is My Neighbor?” In many cases, if we were honest with ourselves and literally reaching out to our neighbors, we would discover that they may be followers of another faith. They may be more like the Canaanite woman.
Christ said that he came, not just for us, but “to give his life a ransom for many” (Mk. 10:45). As Paul put it, “Chris the One has died for all” (2 Cor. 5:14; Rom. 5:18). While no other mediator than the crucified Jesus has reached out to us, we believe that Christ is reaching out to others in saving ways.
At Youth Camp, our speaker talked about setting a table of hospitality to welcome the stranger in. Christians sometimes have trouble inviting certain kinds of people to enjoy the same benefits of God’s grace and mercy as they do. We have been guilty of exclusiveness, and Jesus gives us an example with the Canaanite woman, some ideas of practicing inclusiveness. If this woman and all she represents can be given a seat at the table, then there’s hope for the rest of us.
For we, too, were once outsiders, Gentiles and disobedient, but now we are recipients of God’s mercy. There’s a Christian practice that I grew up with of setting an extra place at the table. At your Thanksgiving dinner, this extra place at the table is for any stranger who might need a hearty dinner. At the memorial meal or “sow chung,” this extra place at the table is to remember your passed loved one. At your Easter dinner, this extra place at the table is for the Risen Christ who promised that he will return and reign on earth. Are you willing to set an extra place at the table?
The reach of Christ goes beyond our own ability to invite and include everyone for whom we seek God’s forgiveness and mercy. If Jesus were able to see the great faith in the Canaanite woman, let us see how God is doing good work in others including those who may share a very different faith than we do.
If Jesus welcomed children, tax collectors, prostitutes to be his guests, let us welcome people who are different from ourselves and set an extra place at the table.
If we truly believe that Jesus Christ is the way, the truth and the life and no one comes to the Father except through Christ, then, let us be in conversation with believers of other religions in the hope that we would be fully attuned with the constant reach of Christ and perhaps even to witness the life-giving power of Christ moving upon another life.
Let us pray.
Lord, give us the grace to see our relationship to you as your gift to us rather than as our religious achievement. Give us the insight to see others as you see others: as your beloved children, and as our sisters and brothers. Teach us to walk humbly with you and charitably with our neighbors so that others might see some of your light and your love through us. Amen.