The Blessing of the Backpacks

A litany of thanksgiving as a new school year begins.

For our minds and the ability to think and reason;
We thank you, Lord.

For the passion and dedication of all who teach;
We thank you, Lord.

For the gifts of wonder and creativity and the vision to see you, Lord, in things that are new;
We thank you, Lord.

For schools and the opportunity learn;
We thank you, Lord.

For our friends at school, who share the good times and the hard times with us;
We thank you, Lord.

For our families, for their love and support;
We thank you, Lord.

For computers and calculators and all the other tools that help us learn and explore;
We thank you, Lord.

For words and stories and ideas and the chance to share them with others;
We thank you, Lord.

For music and art and drama and joy;
We thank you, Lord.

For games and times of recreation and renewal;
We thank you, Lord.

For all those people who help us learn and all those whom we are able to help;
We thank you, Lord.

For our own unique gifts and talents and the opportunity use them in your service;
We thank you, Lord.

God of power and hope, we pray your blessing upon these backpacks, on the students who carry them and on all students and teachers everywhere. Bless us all in our vocation as learners, in Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.

The Tenth Sunday after Pentecost

A Peculiar Church
Matthew 16:13-20

The passage we heard as this morning’s Gospel is usually referred to as the “Confession of Peter.” Peter witnesses, proclaims, “confesses,” that Jesus is the Son of God. Similar passages appear in Mark and Luke’s Gospels. God reveals to Peter the wonder of Jesus’ identity. It’s a powerful and important passage and remains a strong witness to us today of who Jesus is.

As powerful and important as Peter’s words are as witness and revelation, interpreting Jesus’ words is a bit more problematic. As I work to interpret Jesus’ words I’ve drawn heavily on a commentary on Matthew’s Gospel by Eduard Schweizer that we used in seminary. My focus in particular is on the phrase spoken by Jesus: “You are Peter and on this rock I will build my church.”

What was Jesus’ vision for the future for his followers? What did Jesus hope to build?

When Jesus says, “on this rock I will build my church,” the Greek word that is translated “church” is ecclesia. It is the root of our contemporary churchy words like ecclesiastical. But there are two very important things to know about that word ecclesia as it is used in the Bible.

One. Although it has now come to be a part of words meaning church, it was not a religious word in Jesus’ day. It was a general, entirely secular word meaning simply “gathering” or “assembly.” It did not mean “church.” Schweizer translates it “community.” It just meant any community of people who were gathered or assembled.

Two. The word is virtually absent from all four Gospels. It appears here and in one other place in Matthew and that’s it. It appears a lot in Paul and the post-Easter letters, but it is not a part of the Gospels. The words and activities of Jesus' life and ministry do not include the word “church.”

Jesus’ proclamation to Peter about being the rock upon which Jesus will build his church does not appear at all in Mark or Luke’s telling of the Confession of Peter. (The Confession itself is not recounted at all in John.) Writing about this particular phrase, Schweizer states: “the saying about the community [or church] is a post-Easter addition, possibly Matthew’s own. In all four Gospels the word “community” appears only here and in 18:17. In the post-Easter epistles and in Acts it appears frequently, but always in the phrase “community of God,” which translates the Old Testament expression “levy of God,” meaning Israel. The New Testament is aware throughout that Jesus, unlike the Qumran community or the Pharisees, does not seek to establish a special community but to call the whole people of God back to their Lord.”

Whether or not Jesus actually said the words proclaiming Peter as the rock upon which the church would be built is a matter of scholarly debate. Schweizer thinks that Jesus did not say these words; that the words were added by a later author. So what can we say about Jesus’ vision?

I think we can say that Jesus had absolutely no idea whatsoever of anything that we might call “church.” Nothing that we might call church was a part of Jesus’ vision… Church as an institution with any sort of organizational and leadership structure, whether that leadership be papal, episcopal or congregational… Church as something with defined membership guidelines… Even church as a group of people ascribing to a particular creed or confession… None of these was a part of Jesus’ vision.

The word “peculiar” shows up in some of our hymns and Rite 1 collects in its archaic sense of “special.” We sang one last week, which is probably why it’s in my head: “Let every creature rise and bring peculiar honors to our King.” “Peculiar” always means particular. It used to mean particularly special, uniquely wonderful. Only in the 17th century did it come to mean particularly odd, uniquely strange.

I’m not sure how far to push this idea, but maybe it’s helpful to think of everything we call church as peculiar. In both senses of the word. Our own special, uniquely wonderful way of knowing and sharing and praising God. But totally strange, odd, unknown to Jesus. Our current churches would be peculiar indeed to Jesus’ vision.

Jesus does not talk about ecclesia or church. The words Jesus uses are words like people and kingdom. Jesus talks about all of God’s people. All of God’s people. And about bringing them to God’s kingdom and bringing God’s kingdom to them. Jesus’ ministry is about making God’s kingdom real for all of God’s people.

To say that Jesus’ did not talk about ecclesia, whether you translate it church or community, is not a license for us to abandon our particular faith communities. That, I think, would be equally incomprehensible to Jesus. There is only the “people” of God; not "a person" of God. There is no singular.

God only knows if there are any limits on how broad the expanse of God’s people is. Only God knows.
But the people of God are a people bound together by God. Bound. United. Held together by God. Not by human choice, but by God. The people of God are not just individuals, each cared for by God; they are a people… a people bound to one another by God. Not by our choice, but by God's power.

The absolutely greatest differentiation we might imagine amongst us is trivial compared to what binds us one to another. The link is forged by God’s desire and by God’s power. It is literally infinitely stronger than anything on earth.

I am bound to people of God whom I do not know by the power of God.  People I do not know, do not understand, maybe don’t even like… the bond uniting us is full of God’s power.

That turns the world upside down.

Whether the words in Matthew’s Gospel about Peter and the church are Jesus’ own or a post-Easter addition is an issue debated among scholars. The collect appointed for this day is definitely post-Easter, appearing first in the 1928 Book of Common Prayer. “Grant, O merciful God, that your Church, being gathered together in unity by your Holy Spirit, may show forth your power among all peoples, to the glory of your Name.” It is the Holy Spirit’s presence and power that gathers, unites the people of God. It is God’s spirit, love and power that gathers us into unity. Not us. The Holy Spirit. That gathers the people of God into unity. And then we pray that we may, by how we live and serve as God’s people, show forth God’s power to the world. That we, by our words and actions, may proclaim God’s power to gather and unite. That’s the particular power this collect is talking about—God’s power to gather and unite. We pray that even this peculiar church may be a witness to the world of God’s power to gather and unify.

The Ninth Sunday after Pentecost

What if God Doesn't Like Me? 

Matthew 15:10-28

The story we just heard in the second part of today’s appointed Gospel reading is a challenging one. Jesus and the Canaanite woman. What could God be saying to us today in the words of this story? How are we to interpret this passage?

To begin, we should remember that in Jesus’ day, the Hebrew people knew the Canaanites as foreigners and pagans. They were foreigners and they did not worship the one, true God. In the perception of the Jews, the Canaanites were the very people whom God had displaced when God brought the Jews into the promised land.

In addition to being a foreigner and a pagan, she was a woman. She didn’t count. No census of the day would have counted her  among the living. In this story she doesn’t even have a name. No identity worth noticing.

When she comes before Jesus with her intercession, Jesus first ignores her completely. Then Jesus more or less says, “I did not come for such as you.” Then Jesus says, “It is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.” You are no more than an animal to me. Jesus says.

One tempting way to try to interpret this story is to focus in on just single facets of the story. There is the woman’s persistence and courage. That persistence and courage ultimately pay off. That’s a good message and one that Jesus himself makes elsewhere. Persist in prayer; persist in intercession. The woman’s persistence can be an encouraging model to us.

If we look at the passage as a whole, however, we cannot avoid Jesus’ words. Jesus’ hurtful, hateful words. Jesus’ name-calling that defines this woman as literally subhuman.

I suppose these words of Jesus could be used by some people as justification for their own desire to label some other people as subhuman. After all, if Jesus calls pagans dogs, if Jesus calls women dogs, if Jesus calls foreigners dogs…. Well then I ought to be able to call people whatever I want to. Some people might use Jesus’ words to justify their frustration with the demand to use “politically correct” language. Or even worse, some people might use Jesus’ words to justify their hatred of others who differ from them. If anyone is even remotely tempted by this argument, bear in mind that Jesus does not ultimately destroy the Canaanite woman, or cast her away or even “correct” her perceived shortcomings—he helps her.

Other people (and I would put myself in this category) might be tempted to just chuck out this whole particular passage from Matthew’s Gospel. This passage can’t be as important as the other ones that I like better.

In past years (and this Gospel comes around every three years) one of the sermons I’ve preached focuses on the human Jesus. Maybe the human Jesus, conditioned by his own human experience and the social setting of his day, could have spoken those words, but thank God the divine Jesus won out in the end! That’s a spin on the passage that can teach us something, but it’s really pretty bad theology. The two natures of Jesus—human and divine—are not that separate. The human and divine Jesus don’t settle issues by debate or arm wrestling. There is one Jesus. The divine Jesus spoke these difficult words as fully as the human Jesus did.

One on-line sermon I found skirted the issue very creatively, focusing on the disciples' impatience with the woman’s shouting on behalf of her daughter. Jesus’ message, then, in helping the woman, is to affirm that it is OK to get overly emotional where your children are involved.

I’ve said all this up to this point to point out—again!—the complexity of Biblical interpretation, if we take it seriously. If we take Biblical interpretation seriously it is complicated and difficult work.

Here’s how this passage speaks to me this year.

The context is real. We can’t narrow our focus so much that we lose the context of Jews and Canaanites… the “us” versus “them” animosity between Canaanites and Jews. I don’t know if Jesus actually said the words calling this woman a “dog.” It’s hard for me to imagine that he did, but I can’t know for sure. I can’t know for sure. It is ironic, though, to say the least, that just a few lines earlier in this Gospel passage, Jesus himself says that “what comes out of the mouth defiles…” The words that come out of a human mouth defile the speaker when those words express “evil intentions or slander.” Jesus’ words about the Canaanite woman seem slanderous. So either he didn’t say both parts of this passage, or he proclaims himself defiled…

We cannot be absolutely certain what specific words he said. But I think we can be pretty confident that most of the Jews of Jesus’ day would have seen the Canaanite woman as no more than an animal. They would have dismissed her out of hand. Jesus’ disciples would have seen her that way… the writer of Matthew would have seen her that way… and she, herself, would have seen herself that way. That’s what grabs my attention. She would have seen herself as contemptible, of no account, in the eyes of Jesus. Just because of who she was. As a Canaanite woman, she had every expectation that Jesus would dismiss her, dislike her.

Do you think Jesus likes you? We always make these sweeping statements about God’s limitless love, but do you think that Jesus likes...  you? Would like to spend time with you, on a human level? Likes you for who you are?

You’ve been taught, I hope, that God loves you unconditionally (and therefore will forgive you when you sin). But, beyond this theological affirmation, do you feel like Jesus likes you? Do you think Jesus has any reason to care for you in particular? Most of us want to feel liked. It’s distressing to feel disliked. We work to be liked. Do you think Jesus likes who you are?

God acts with healing and hope regardless. Regardless of what you think God thinks of you, God acts with healing and hope in your life.

These are two things we know from this story: The Canaanite woman saw herself as contemptible in Jesus' eyes. Jesus healed her daughter.

It isn’t about what we think God thinks of us. Even if and when you think of yourself as unlikeable in God’s eyes, God will act with hope and healing in your life. Even when you see yourself as beneath God’s notice, God acts with hope and healing. Even if you feel contemptible before God, God acts with hope and healing.

One final word… It’s also important to remember that those "other" people whom you think that God couldn’t possibly like, for whatever reason… God acts with hope and healing in their lives, too.