Grace is Always Grace
(Free Version)- Twelfth Sunday After Pentecost: Genesis 45:1-15; Romans 11:1-2a, 29-32; Matthew 15:21-28
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This week, we hear proclamations of grace. God is faithful. God forgives. God invites us to draw close to Godself. God will not give up on us.
In our Old Testament reading (Genesis 45:1-15), Joseph reveals himself to his brothers. In the midst of their father’s grief, Joseph reveals that he is alive. In the midst of their shame, Joseph declares forgiveness. And he cites God’s faithfulness as the basis for both. Joseph is a forerunner of Jesus when he says to his brothers, weary and heavy laden from years of guilt: “come close to me.” In the midst of his brothers’ fear of Joseph’s wrath, he says to them, “do not be distressed and do not be angry with yourselves…” We remember the command of Jesus: “Do not be afraid.”
Though our Romans reading (Romans 11:1-2a, 29-32) is complex and we are left with many questions about its implications, Paul’s underlying proclamation is that God will always be faithful to his promises and to his people. Even disobedience does not stop God’s love. The gifts and calling of God are irrevocable! Praise be to God that this is true about God’s love for you and for me. Also, praise be to God that this is true for your neighbor and mine! No one is outside of God’s embrace.
In our gospel reading (Matthew 15:21-28), we hear the challenging story of the Canaanite woman who is persistent in faith. The reader feels tension between Jesus’ mission specifically to the family of Israel, and the fulfillment of Israel’s calling to bless all nations.
In Jesus, faithfulness and blessing go together, because God’s story has always been about blessing. Every part of the story is about self-giving love. Every part of the story is about God’s love for those previously deemed “outside.”
Jesus stands, as the only one who is truly faithful all the way through and reminds us that true faithfulness requires welcoming the outsider. And, this Canaanite lady gets it.
Such a story ought to radically changes how we identify the “teachers” in our society. We think we know who we can learn from. Subconsciously, we separate people into those who are successful and those who are not, those who are holy and those who are not, those who have something to offer, and those who do not even deserve the scraps. Jesus completely reorganizes our charts. Jesus acknowledges the woman’s great faith and tells the church to learn from her. It is one thing to welcome someone. It is another, and greater thing to believe that I can learn from them.
This story tells us something about God. In Jesus, we see the the God who is so self-giving, so others-exalting, not only does he heal the woman, he elevates her to a place of honor, to the place of teacher.
It would be enough if we read a story of Jesus approached by a Canaanite woman, telling the crowd that God loves her, and then shocking them all by healing her. This story would be wonderful, and it would not challenge us quite so much. This is precisely not what he does. Instead, Jesus puts himself in the place of the one who needs to be corrected. Jesus literally lays down his privilege as an honored, male teacher to include this woman whom God created and loves. He lays down even his own privilege of teaching a lesson about exclusion!
This story is certainly cross-shaped. On the cross, Jesus takes the nature of a servant. To the world, he looks as the one who failed, the one who lost for the sake of the world. Paul speaks of Jesus in Philippians 2,
“Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage; rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death—even death on a cross!” (Phil. 2:6-8)
Think about the fight in this woman. She fights for what she knows is right even though it was yet to come. Gentiles would not be officially declared part of the Christian faith until much later. Yet, she fights.
It is appropriate to remember those who have fought for justice even when they, like Joseph, were led only by dreams. A dream is just that: something that is not yet a reality, a picture of a new and different world.
I think about Dr. Martin Luther King’s dream. He proclaimed, even to his death, a different and better world. I think about Rosa Parks who stood…or better, sat, in contrast to the “rules” of a broken society, pointing to a better world.
If you go back further to the nineteenth century, William Wilberforce an English parliamentarian who knew in his gut that slavery was wrong. He fought, and fought, and fought and failed, and failed, and failed, all the while pointing to a better world.
All of these, and many others, worked; but their work was undergirded by prayer because they knew that God’s new world is not ultimately brought about by them, but by the God of grace working in, through, and outside of them. They believed that God’s future could somehow find its way into the present. They were led by faith, holding on to a dream which was not yet realized.
We as the church are to be those people who point to new creation, a new world. May we hear the good news that we are forgiven; that God’s gifts are irrevocable; that our faith is great and that our healing has come.