There are some words in our house that we don’t say. Well…at least we teach our children that they’re words we don’t say. We don’t say hate. “But Daddy other people say hate all the time. 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. And we don’t say fat, either. (Fortunately, we’re not quite dealing with all those other words…yet.)
But somehow, Heather and I in all our parental omniscience from up here have come to the conclusion that canceling these words out of our household vocabulary is good thing down there.
The problem is, when we slip. When the Cubs are playing the Braves, and Micah overhears me, groan, “Oh, I hate Chipper Jones!” When Heather is getting dressed for a dinner out and comes to ask the dreaded question for every spouse, “Does this outfit make me look…[well, I still won’t say that word.]” When I’m reading the news on my laptop while the kids are playing in the living room, and suddenly I completely lose all awareness of where I am, and shout “I can’t believe it! This guy’s an idiot!”
And in each of these circumstances we then have to engaged in the tricky parental activity of explaining ourselves, maybe apologizing, maybe making amends or exceptions, but always-always including an affimation that “they’re right.” Great is your faithfulness to what we said, son. But there 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 worlds…this time with a lesson on purity. It’s not what goes into the mouth that 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 are sailors actually, and their words might be foul but their hearts burn with purity. Their intentions are compassionate. Maybe you’ve known some 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 the 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:
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, fat, idiots who were always encroaching on his people – the real chosen Jews, not these half-bred aliens.
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 dogs.” A dog! Do you know how dirty dogs were then? Not adorable housebroken little pooches like Dolores’ little babies; dogs back then were mangy, flee-bitten mutts. 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 newspaper.* 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 friend 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 here. But great faith sloshes around down there. 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 he affirms her. (Forget the tricky explaining, like when Micah catches us 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.” Cover: not sure who’s helping/forgiving/blessing who. What is clear, is that Jesus is with her. Not up here. He’s in the mix, as sloppy as it all is.
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 here, but who always enters into the sloshiness of life down there.
Good teaching can trickle down from up here. But great faith sloshes around down there.
It’s one thing to preach it. And I pray daily that we can preach a good thing up here. (But we/I don’t always—sometimes the preacher’s words from up here are windy, 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. Great faith is down there, sloshing around. And, boy, 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’s 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. Remember that I’m down here with you too, and I’ll never leave.” AMEN.
*Anna Carter Florence, Festival of Homeletics, Nashville TN, 2010
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