Also on the 14th our Church
celebrated the feast of Jonathan Myrick Daniels. Jon was The Rev. Judy Upham’s boyfriend , my long-time companion, when
they were in seminary. In response to Dr. Martin Luther King’s call to
witness the inhuman treatment of the freedom demonstrators in Selma, Alabama in
1965. Jon and Judy stayed in Selma that spring. Jon was murdered by a deputy sheriff that August. He, too, was a 20 something man, who was doing what God had called him to do, to call for the just treatment of others. It was the death of Jonathan that helped
galvanize the Episcopal Church and the hearts of the Northeast to bring about
the legislation that has helped to bring about the strides that have been made
in race relations over the past 50 years. Strides which have even included the right to aspire to any office in the land And there has been a dramatic change of
attitude throughout our world. Those of
us who are a bit long in the tooth have seen it. . But we still have a long way to go.
The show of
force by the Ferguson police in the face of death of a young man of color in
2014 at the
The reading
from Sunday’s Gospel is an example of a change in attitude. A Canaanite woman with a sick child prevails
upon Jesus when he is visiting in the Canaanite regions of Tyre and Sidon. She cries out to him. The Greek word for her cries is the word for
the call of a raven. A colleague says
Jesus knew
what his call was: He was to go to the
lost sheep of the House of Israel. He
was supposed to minister to his own people who had been displaced in the
Greco-Roman divisions of what had been greater Israel. But this Canaanite woman, this woman who was
squawking after him knelt before him and all but prostrated herself before him
begging for her child. And Jesus says
such an uncharacteristic thing: “It is
not fair to take the children's food and throw it to the dogs." Most of us hear this and are scandalized by
what he says. But I doubt if was scandalous
to Matthew’s readers as they read it in the latter part of the 1st
century. It was the way that most of them understood their
position in the Church.
The Synagogue
of the First Century was badly divided as the Christian movement. The Jews were divided by various sects
following the destruction of the Temple in 70 AD. Synagogues also had incorporated many
non-ethnic Jews who followed the Law of Moses.
In addition to this, the various incorporation of the followers of the
various rabbis, made for a vigorously diverse type of Judaism that was having a
hard time holding center. Toward the end
of the centuries some synagogues were expelling those who followed Jesus. So there developed a split between the Greek
speaking Christians and the Aramaic or the Ethnically Jewish who followed
Jesus.
Matthew’s
Gospel was decidedly written for those who were familiar with the customs of
Judaism. He knew that the kind of
comment of “the children’s [of Israel] food, would be understood as what
The uppity
woman of Canaan reminded Jesus of the wideness of God’s mercy, too. His mission to the lost sheep of Israel would
have ramifications for those far beyond his ministrations. And in this moment Jesus saw the truth of the
woman’s pleas: God’s mercy is
unlimited. God’s mercy is not just for a
few. God’s nurture and mercy is not for certain
populations—it is for all. There was a
change in attitude for Jesus---at least in the Gospel of Matthew.
If our era
has any common theme over the past 50 years, it has been changes in
attitude. We are beginning to see the
genuine changes of attitude all over the world.
There are watershed moments
Judy went to Harvard as an economics major hoping to figure out how to feed the world. She found in her first class that the earth had the capacity to feed all of creation, but she was taught it was not expedient to do so. That is when she realized that after her cum laude degree in economics, she
So what is in the events of this week and the sinfulness of our age? What allows us 50 years after Selma to continue brunt force options to gain control when we are afraid? What allows us to become more than what we were 2000 years ago in the face of a squawking mother calling out for deliverance for her child? It requires a change of attitude. It takes a willingness to see our own fear healed in the light of God's mercy and know it profoundly. It takes the willingness to pay attention to squawks of those calling out for justice and nurture. It requires of us, both individually and corporately, to change attitudes so that God's mercy can be seen.
Jesus found it in the faith of the Canaanite woman. I saw it in the act of a President. Where do you see it? We need to be willing to proclaim that mercy of God to the world--it is what we are called to do by all that is Holy.
