Especially when our kids were younger than they are now, there were some words in our house that we just didn’t say. This is still true to some extent, but they’ve learned and understand a lot more now. But back in the day when they were little…we taught our Micah and Katie that they are words we don’t say under our roof: We don’t say hate. “But Daddy other people say ‘hate’ all the time,” Micah questioned, “and my teacher said it’s not a bad word.” That may be true, Micah, but we don’t use that word. We don’t say ‘stupid’. And we don’t say ‘idiot’. We don’t say ‘shut up’. And we don’t say ‘fat’, either.
Somehow, Heather and I in all our parental omniscience from up here came to the conclusion that canceling these words out of our household vocabulary is good thing down there.
The problem is, when we slip. When I’m watching a Cubs baseball game and blurt out, “Uh, I hate AJ Perzinski!” When I’m reading the newspaper in the living room, while Katie is doing her homework in the kitchen, and suddenly I completely lose all awareness of where I am, and shout “I can’t believe it! This guy’s an idiot; I wish he would shut up! He so stupid, I hate him.” OK...a bit of hyperbole there. But you know I slipped up...
And in each of these circumstances we/I then had to engage in the tricky parental activity of explaining ourselves, probably apologizing, maybe making amends or exceptions, but always-always including an affirmation that they’re right, “You’re right, I shouldn’t have said that.” I said we shouldn’t say those words, and here I am saying them myself...
Great is your faithfulness to what we said, Micah. Great is your faithfulness to what we said, Katie. But here we are: sloshing about.
It’s one thing to preach it. It’s something much different to live it. Good teaching can trickle down from up here. But great faith sloshes around down there.
Our Gospel passage today starts out with some great teaching from up here: Jesus again is crumbling up the Pharisees’ neatly sliced world…this time with a lesson on purity. It’s not what goes into the mouth that’s unclean. It’s what comes out of it. Words.
But Jesus isn’t just teaching us not to swear.
Let’s not get too caught up with just bad words like stupid or idiot or fat, and whole bunch of others that unfortunately we all know.
I’ve known people who “swear like sailors” (some of them are sailors...and have hearts of gold. [pause] Their words might be foul but their hearts burn with purity. Their intentions are compassionate. Maybe you’ve known people like this too. While others, proud of their purity and squeaky clean mouths, shoot daggers and explode gossip with their curse-less words. Sure we should watch our language, but Jesus isn’t teaching us here not to swear.
He’s teaching about heart surgery.
The heart, you see, in that culture, was understood to be the source our thoughts and our decisions about how to live in the world. Jesus is teaching us about slicing away all that harms us and our neighbors and our world. That’s a good teaching from up there.
But it’s one thing to preach it. It’s something much different to live it. The story goes on, in our text today, and it says that Jesus left his pulpit. He left that place and went away to a different region. He left the pureness-of-heart-lecture notes on the stand, came down to another region, and this is where it gets sloppy, sloshes around:
A woman approaches, who is not from his tribe. A strange woman, a Syro-phoenician. Jesus grew up a neighborhood where such women were despised.
They were hated, stupid, idiots who needed to shut up, who were always encroaching on his people – the real chosen Jews, not these half-bred aliens. Do you see what’s happening here?
And so, Jesus – JESUS, the prince of peace, the one who just got done preaching about purity of heart – calls her a dog: “It’s not fair to take the children’s bread and throw it to the dogs.” A dog! Do you know how dirty dogs were then? Not adorable, housebroken, little pooches that we bless when we do the Blessing of the Animals...dogs as glimpses of God. No, dogs back then were mangy, flee-bitten mutts, that were as irritating as flies. And calling a person a dog, that as offensive as a white person calling a black person a word that we won’t even print in the paper. A dog, he calls her.
It’s one thing to preach it. It’s something much different to live it.
What do we do with this text where our precious Jesus himself is falling for the same old racial slurs, the same old arrogance, the same old self-righteousness, the same old divisions, the same old hatred that has plagued generations and cultures throughout history, and still plagues us today?! Words escalate to threats; and threats to violence; and violence to wars. There’s nothing new there.
This is a side of Jesus, that many are tempted either to ignore, or rationalize away, or defend…as if the Savior of the world needed saving. I can’t explain Jesus out of this offense, out of his calling this woman a dog.
But I can share with you what I see happening, ultimately: [sloppiness, thanks be to God, even if we don’t want sloppiness—and none of us do, we want neat and tidy, clear cut, like the Pharisees, where life is a set of rules to keep and roles to fill. But the gift is sloppiness.] I see Jesus, fully Divine and fully human, coming down from on high…to be in the mix of it all. Good teaching can trickle down from up there. But great faith sloshes around down here. It’s one thing to preach it, it’s another thing to live it.
And in this case, God surprises us again, as a Syrophoenician woman, calls Jesus out. Watch how she responds; not by hitting back; not by going away: “Yes Lord,” she says, “but even the dogs eat the bread from the master’s table.” I might be a dog, but I’m still hungry. I’m broken alright, which is why I need the bread that only you can give. She doesn’t fight back with hateful words, and she doesn’t back away either.
She stands up strong and demonstrates faith. She makes a statement of faith: Only you, Jesus, offer the bread that I need, the healing that I need, the salvation which you have prepared.
And something must have snapped in Jesus, for immediately his tone changes and then he affirms her. (Forget the tricky explaining, like when my child catches me using a word that’s off limits—I can’t explain that.) We’ll just have to jump to the affirmation. “Woman, great is your faith.” In a way, I’m not sure who’s helping/forgiving/blessing who. What is clear, is that Jesus is with her. Not up there. He’s in the mix, down here as sloppy as it all can.
And that’s the heart of the Gospel.
Sisters and brothers in Christ, it’s not always neat and clean unfortunately, but we have a Christ who gets close, who plunges into the mix.
We have a Christ who kneels down, who takes our hand and we take his. We have a God who doesn’t stay up there, but who always enters into the sloshiness of life down here. Good teaching can trickle down from up there. But great faith sloshes around down here.
It’s one thing to preach it. And I pray daily that we can preach a good thing up here, up at the church. (But we/I don’t always—sometimes the preacher’s words from up here are winded, or fake, or confusing or sometimes just wrong.) Good teaching and preaching can trickle down from up here. But the real action is down there, down in our living rooms and kitchens and basements, down in our offices and stores and on the roads. Great faith is down there, sloshing around. And man, it sloshes, it’s sloppy, and messy and soggy. It ain’t easy— this practice of purity of heart, this discipline of choosing words of compassion not violence. It ain’t easy staying in touch with each other, in relationship with one another and with the stranger and with the world. It ain’t easy, remaining faithful, coming back, giving ourselves to the rhythms of the church and nudgings of the Spirit. And as soon as I’m finished preaching up here, I’m right back down there, sloshing around…and thank God we slosh around together.
And thank God we slosh around with Jesus, who enters the sloppiness of this life and stays, maybe even more than we wanted. Who banters back and forth with us, albeit sometimes a struggle. Who names and commends our great faith: “Women, great is your faith. Men, great is your faith. All siblings in Christ, great is your faith. Remember that I’m down here with you, and I’ll never leave.” AMEN.
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HoD: ‘O God Why Are You Silent’ from the Lament section of our hymnal. Woman calling Jesus out, asking for what we need. Great is her faithfulness and ours too as we sing this with our hearts, and demand Christ’s healing in our lives and our world. And Christ responds.
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