A Sermon By: The Rev. Dr. Frank Kirkpatrick for Proper 15A
Posted on
August 20, 2017
Proper 15
Year A
Trinity Church, Hartford
The Rev. Dr. Frank G. Kirkpatrick
Isaiah 56:1,6-8; Romans 11:1-2a, 29-32; Matthew 15: (10-20), 21-28
At the heart of the readings from Scripture this morning is the theme of rejection and inclusion. In the lesson from Isaiah, God responds to the plight of the foreigners and the outcasts of Israel by promising to gather them into his holy temple. In his letter to the Romans St. Paul speaks to the anxiety of the Jews who fear being rejected by God if they do not accept Jesus as the Messiah. And in the gospel the anguish of the Canaanite woman over her daughter’s being tormented by a demon is resolved by Jesus eventually accepting her plea despite the hostility of the people of Israel toward the Canaanites as a rejected and unclean people. The Canaanites were those living among God’s chosen people who failed the test of religious or ethnic purity and whose plight was consequently, at the outset, not worthy of Jesus’ attention.
Each of these readings reflects a situation in which people are divided from each other because of religious boundaries created by the dominant religious group, which normally meant that it was also the dominant political group. In the reading from Isaiah, the people of Israel have been called to be God’s chosen people. This raises the question of the status of those who don’t belong to the chosen people. Do they have to become Jews first in order to be part of the covenant? The question of status in God’s eyes is raised again, and reversed in a way, when Paul wonders if God’s promises to the people of Israel will continue to be honored even when God has offered a new way for people to attain the kingdom of God and personal redemption, a way that does not go through Israel itself. And in ancient Israel the Canaanites are the people whose land Israel took by conquest and who are Israel’s enemy. As such they deserve scorn and repudiation.
In light of recent events there is no doubt that these three stories find abundant resonance in today’s world. In our own country, as well as abroad, the question of what to do with large numbers of non-citizens, or immigrants, and especially refugees fleeing persecution and terror, has become a lightning rod for the fears and anxieties of both citizens and newcomers. Families are now being broken up as some members are being deported, not for crimes, but because they don’t have the right documents to authorize their continued residence here with their families. Many people are exploiting the fear of undocumented immigrants by stoking the fires of resentment against people of different religions and ethnicities, especially Muslims from the Middle East and those south of our borders seeking a new life here, free from the poverty, drug fueled violence, and the brutal rule of dictatorships. The violent and morally repugnant actions of the white supremacists, racists, neo-Nazis, and Ku Klux Klanners in Charlottesville last weekend were born out of a sense that the inherent rights of white people were being threatened by the inclusion of black people, Jews, and foreigners in the American dream. The monuments whose removal they are protesting were created to honor the thoroughly unjust inhumane institution of slavery and a rebellion against the Union that was nothing other than treason and sedition. Those whom the protestors were denouncing have become in effect the Canaanites of American society whom many do not want to reach out to or embrace in our nation’s promises because they are perceived as a threat to what many perceive as the dominant identity in America today, which is essentially white, male, and Christian, at least in name.
We’ve been through this before: there was a time when Paul’s reminder that God has by no means annulled his promise to the Jews was ignored by Christian societies. Jews were hunted down and killed because they wouldn’t convert to Christianity. The pogroms against Jews continued down to and culminated in one of the worst atrocities in human history: the Shoah or the Holocaust. Painful echoes of the Nazi’s treatment of the Jews, often abetted by some Christian groups, were heard in Charlottesville. To be sure, some attempts have been made by many Christians to atone for the centuries of anti-Semitism. Some Christian churches have gone so far as to say that as long as Jews remain faithful to the Torah, they do not need to become Christians first, though other Christian teachers insist that unless a Jew becomes a Christian he cannot be saved. Some Christian churches today are offering themselves up as ‘sanctuaries’ for those in danger of deportation, even though the legal status of sanctuary is contested. But these Churches are responding to a higher calling rooted in the biblical proclamation that the people of Israel were required to welcome the immigrant, the foreigner, and the stranger into their midst because God had created all of them and is gathering them all into his holy temple, not just those with the proper documentation. As Isaiah says:
for my house shall be called a house of prayer
for all peoples.
Thus says the Lord God,
who gathers the outcasts of Israel,
I will gather others to them
besides those already gathered.
If we can take anything from these lessons it is that our humanly devised borders, boundaries, barriers, and socially constructed identities mean nothing to God. God wants our humanity, not our nationality or our ethnicity or our race or our sexuality. God makes it clear at the beginning of the reading from Isaiah that the credential that matters is that one ‘maintain justice and to do what is right.’ Justice is not a possession to be charitably doled out by the rich and powerful. Justice is a universal moral imperative that must be done by anyone of any background in order to meet the needs of the vulnerable, the disadvantaged, and the dispossessed. It is by the standard of justice that our actions will be judged by God, not by how pure we have kept our national, ethnic, sexual, or racial identities. This doesn’t mean that we can simply ignore the complexities of the laws regarding admittance into our society. Nations with no borders at all probably cannot adequately meet all the demands for legal entry. But beyond these complexities, we need something higher to guide us beyond the tortured politics of immigration law. Nations need a beacon or a vision calling them to reimagine what it means to be fully included in all their benefits and promises. Without that light they will have nothing to keep them from falling into the worst excesses of xenophobia, race-baiting, mindless chauvinism, and bombastic parochialism: all of which are destroyers of the human spirit because they want to reduce us to the lowest level of our humanity, to stultify the best instincts and desires of our God-created potential. We need, as our sequence hymn puts it, “in earth’s darkest place, through the world far and wide, let there be light.”
There is, fortunately, one small example of conscientious people doing justice and bringing light beyond national borders. This group’s work reminds us of the possibility of transcending our parochial identities and exclusions. It’s a group that has boldly and courageously defied the sanctity of borders in the name of compassion and care to the sick and needy anywhere in the world: that group is Doctors Without Borders. Medicines Sans Frontiers.
MSF provides assistance to populations in distress, to victims of natural or man-made disasters, and to victims of armed conflict. They do so irrespective of race, religion, creed, or political convictions.
MSF observes neutrality and impartiality in the name of universal medical ethics and the right to humanitarian assistance and maintains complete independence from all political, economic, or religious powers.
This incredible body of courageous caregivers keeps alive the light of unity amidst division; of inclusion amidst political antagonism; and of the commonness of all human life despite wars, poverty, and illness. If this essentially secular agency can hold out the beacon of a common brotherhood and sisterhood, then surely we in the church can do the same. The work of Fr. Tom Furrer in Nigeria is a shining example. For we have as our foundation and light bearer the love of God and God’s compassion for all persons no matter how constricted and exclusionary their localized and narrow identity threatens to become when it is seduced by false prophets and chauvinistic parochialism. That love is our ultimate testimony against hate and fear and the exclusion of some from the community of all persons God calls us to build and to sustain. We need only to identify those we are treating as the Canaanites among us and work justly to bring them into the fullness of the kingdom from which none are ever excluded.