Provision of Care

A sermon preached with the people of St. Peter’s Episcopal Church in Westfield, New York.

This morning we find Jesus landing in the region of Tyre. And he is ready for a break. He stops at a house where he believes no one will find him. “Yet he could not escape notice.”

He could not escape the notice of an unnamed woman who hears he is in town.

I imagine:

She whispered questions to friends and neighbors: “Do you know where he is staying?” “Who is hosting him?” “How long will he be here?”

She tracked down her closest and most trusted friend, and asked her to stay with her child, just for a short while, promising she would repay the kindness of watching over this suffering little one very soon.

She walked quickly, or maybe ran, to her destination, because there was no time to waste.

She arrived at the house and presented herself. A woman and a gentile, here to see Jesus, this man known to heal the unhealable. There was some commotion as Jesus’ hosts prevented her from entering.

Did she push and shove? Did she scream?

Jesus came out of his room, finally feeling the need to see what all the fuss was about.

And the woman immediately falls to her knees. And begs him to relieve her daughter of suffering.

And Jesus responds to this woman bowed down at his feet: “Let the children be fed first, for it is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.”

She is compared to a dog, and she is ready for it. Why?

Because she is a Syrophoenician woman seeking care.

This has happened before. And it will happen again.

She is both practiced and clever. She answers by entering into the reality of the epithet itself “Sir, even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs.”

In other words, “okay let’s say I am a dog. Even us dogs lick up the leftover crumbs the children drop from the table.”

And it works.

“For saying that, you may go,” Jesus says. “’The demon has left your daughter.’ So she went home, found the child lying on the bed, and the demon gone.

In interpreting this story, some people try to soften Jesus’ first response to this woman’s request by imagining he was always intending to provide care, but that he was engaging in a rhetorical “teachable moment” to demonstrate the boundless love of God. But I tend to take the story on its face.

And, by the way, it still demonstrates the boundless love of God.

I tend to think Jesus – both fully divine and fully human – reacted out of cultural norms and biases and, quite possibly, out of exhaustion and a desire to be left alone for a while.

And then, he changed his mind.

Because I think in her response this woman reminded Jesus of who he is.

This woman showed true faith. She would not accept anything other than the truth of a God who cares for all people. A God who will not and does not deny care. To anyone.

A God who expects the same of us, God’s people.

This woman – this woman who was ethnically “other” to Jesus and his friends, this woman with a problem that was culturally taboo and scary to talk about; this woman in need of care.

She reminded Jesus of his own teachings.

She reminded Jesus of who he is.

And today, this woman reminds us of who we are as followers of Jesus.

In weak moments – particularly when we are exhausted and in need of a break – we may well fall back on pervasive biases; on generalizations that cause us not to recognize the person before us in need of care as a human being. As beloved. As made in God’s image. But instead to see them as something other. Something less than human. I know this happens to me. Maybe it does to you too.

And, when we followers of Jesus are at our very best, we overcome the temptation to fall back on these easy biases. We change our minds. And we act out of what we know from Jesus’ teaching: that we are to feed the hungry, welcome the stranger, clothe the naked, visit the imprisoned; we are to heal and to cast out demons.

In other words, we are to provide care for those who are so often the targets of our deeply embedded biases and assumptions. To remember that “mercy triumphs over judgment.” To look out for people in need of care.

Any kind of care.

That is who we are:

Those who show the boundless love of God in the world through our no-strings-attached, compassionate, respectful, loving provision of care to all of God’s people.