"Brood of Vipers" Reprise

Matthew 21: 23-32

When Jesus entered the temple, the chief priests and the elders of the people came to him as he was teaching and said, “By what authority are you doing these things, and who gave you this authority?” Jesus said to them, “I will also ask you one question; if you tell me the answer, then I will also tell you by what authority I do these things. Did the baptism of John come from heaven, or was it of human origin?” And they argued with one another, “If we say, ‘From heaven,’ he will say to us, ‘Why, then, did you not believe him?’ But if we say, ‘Of human origin,’ we are afraid of the crowd, for all regard John as a prophet.” So they answered Jesus, “We do not know.” And he said to them, “Neither will I tell you by what authority I am doing these things.

“What do you think? A man had two sons; he went to the first and said, ‘Son, go and work in the vineyard today.’ He answered, ‘I will not,’ but later he changed his mind and went. The father went to the second and said the same, and he answered, ‘I go, sir,’ but he did not go. Which of the two did the will of his father?” They said, “The first.” Jesus said to them, “Truly I tell you, the tax collectors and the prostitutes are going into the kingdom of God ahead of you. For John came to you in the way of righteousness, and you did not believe him, but the tax collectors and the prostitutes believed him, and even after you saw it you did not change your minds and believe him.

“You Brood of Vipers!”  That’s what John the Baptist called this same group of “suits” who confronted Jesus in the temple in today’s Gospel.  Back in Chapter 4, John had seen right through this same flag-lapel-pin-wearing, dark money grabbing, Bible verse quoting, syndicate of corrupt politicians.  He sent them away with some homework from the Prophets:  “Bear fruit worthy of repentance” he said.  In other words:  No more Posts, Pins, or Prayers!  No more smooth talk!  You all need to walk the walk! 

When this same bunch of “suits” showed up in the Temple, Jesus didn’t let them off John's hook.  “Did you guys even START doing what John told you to do?”  “Did you even look at the Isaiah homework he gave you to do?”  Suffice it to say, they had not.  

But what was the Isaiah homework John had told that Brood of Vipers they needed to do?  Well, in that respect our Secretary of Defense has done us all an unexpected favor this week by calling our attention once again to the Prophet Isaiah and what Isaiah was called by God to do… and by extension… what John the Baptist had called these Suit wearing Snakes to do too.  

This week, the Secretary embarked on his “Send Me” campaign in which he uses Isaiah 6:8.  This verse is Isaiah’s response to what God was calling Isaiah to do, which was to confront the nation’s leaders about their rampant corruption, greed and bribe taking.  To confront their gross abuse of the vulnerable, and their use of religion to mask their over the top injustice.  God’s call to Isaiah was to let the leaders of the nation know that if they kept doing what they were doing, the whole nation would be brought to complete ruin.  

In STARK (and genuinely blasphemous) contrast, the Secretary of Defense used this same passage, not to stop corruption and abuse but to try and baptize it!  He used this verse drum up military support for an illegal war born out of corruption, greed, and bribe taking.  He is trying to make “holy” a war that further crushes the vulnerable, both here at home and around the globe, and he’s using religion to mask this over the top injustice!  The Secretary is using this verse to support the ABSOLUTE OPPOSITE of what Isaiah’s call was all about.

What our Secretary of Defense is doing now, is EXACTLY what led John the Baptist to call his day’s politicians “a Brood of Vipers” and it is that exact same bunch of slick haired politicians that come into the Temple in today’s lesson.  THIS is why Jesus brings up John the Baptist.  Because they still have not done their homework.  They remain unrepentant.  They have not yet begun to “Bear Fruit worthy of Repentance” and they are still running the world toward ruin.  

Some of what Jesus says in the Gospels is difficult to decipher… this isn’t.  This Gospel doesn’t mumble.  Jesus makes it clear that words and rituals don’t matter when compared to how we care for our neighbors.  If what someone is doing is deeply corrupt and abusive to their neighbors, there are no Bible words that can cover that up… no ritual to make it better.  The ONLY way to make corruption, greed, and taking advantage of the vulnerable better is to STOP DOING IT… TURN AROUND… and start DOING better!  MUCH… MUCH… MUCH… BETTER.  

You see, for Isaiah, John the Baptist, and for Jesus, faith isn’t about wearing the right suit, holding up a Bible for a photo op, or slapping a Bible verse on something ugly like lipstick on a pig.  For Isaiah, John the Baptist and Jesus, faith is entirely about DOING THIS LIFE IN SELF-GIVING LOVE… FOR THE OTHER… FOR YOUR NEIGHBOR… FOR ALL YOUR NEIGHBORS… NO MATTER WHERE THEY WERE BORN OR WHERE THEY LIVE… INCLUDING THE NEIGHBORS WE CALL OUR ENEMIES.

Now… everyone loves a good ranting sermon against the powers who are wielding corruption, greed, bribery, violence and inhumanity and running our nation into ruin.  I love writing them.  You love hearing them.  Beside that, and in all seriousness, evil absolutely needs to be named and called out for what it is, or else others might take our silence to be a passive endorsement.  

But having called it out.  Is there anything here in this Gospel for us, beyond the necessary rant?  I think there is.  While nobody here is going to start an illegal war, make policy that leads people into starvation, or take health care away from three quarters of a million people… I think we all are tempted these days to step back from the “heart and hand” sort of love for our neighbors we've been called to do.  We’re all so tired.  I have found because I’m tired I tend to push those “heart and hand” things further down my to-do list.  Maybe that’s something you’ve found too?  

Maybe what this Gospel has for us then, is not an indictment (as it was for the suits) but an encouragement to help one another not put off those tangible… heart and hand ways we are called to love our neighbors any longer.  To not put off sending that text… checking in with a call… doing that hour of service… inviting so and so to lunch… or dropping off a container of soup.  

I think this Gospel IS telling us we must call out evil, but it is also telling us not forget to do those seemingly small acts of love for our neighbors with heart and hand along the way.  Because while calling out evil is necessary for our existence… Loving our neighbor is the only thing that makes this life genuinely worth living.  Amen.  

The Tyranny of Certainty

Jonah 3:10-4:11

When God saw what they did, how they turned from their evil ways, God changed his mind about the calamity that he had said he would bring upon them, and he did not do it.

But this was very displeasing to Jonah, and he became angry. He prayed to the Lord and said, “O Lord! Is not this what I said while I was still in my own country? That is why I fled to Tarshish at the beginning, for I knew that you are a gracious and merciful God, slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love, and relenting from punishment. And now, O Lord, please take my life from me, for it is better for me to die than to live.” And the Lord said, “Is it right for you to be angry?” Then Jonah went out of the city and sat down east of the city and made a booth for himself there. He sat under it in the shade, waiting to see what would become of the city.

The Lord God appointed a bush and made it come up over Jonah, to give shade over his head, to save him from his discomfort, so Jonah was very happy about the bush. But when dawn came up the next day, God appointed a worm that attacked the bush, so that it withered. When the sun rose, God prepared a sultry east wind, and the sun beat down on the head of Jonah so that he was faint and asked that he might die. He said, “It is better for me to die than to live.”

But God said to Jonah, “Is it right for you to be angry about the bush?” And he said, “Yes, angry enough to die.” Then the Lord said, “You are concerned about the bush, for which you did not labor and which you did not grow; it came into being in a night and perished in a night. And should I not be concerned about Nineveh, that great city, in which there are more than a hundred and twenty thousand persons who do not know their right hand from their left and also many animals?”

Matthew 20:1-16

Jesus said to the disciples, “For the kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out early in the morning to hire laborers for his vineyard. After agreeing with the laborers for a denarius for the day, he sent them into his vineyard. When he went out about nine o’clock, he saw others standing idle in the marketplace, and he said to them, ‘You also go into the vineyard, and I will pay you whatever is right.’ So they went. When he went out again about noon and about three o’clock, he did the same. And about five o’clock he went out and found others standing around, and he said to them, ‘Why are you standing here idle all day?’ They said to him, ‘Because no one has hired us.’ He said to them, ‘You also go into the vineyard.’ When evening came, the owner of the vineyard said to his manager, ‘Call the laborers and give them their pay, beginning with the last and then going to the first.’ When those hired about five o’clock came, each of them received a denarius. Now when the first came, they thought they would receive more; but each of them also received a denarius. And when they received it, they grumbled against the landowner, saying, ‘These last worked only one hour, and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the day and the scorching heat.’ But he replied to one of them, ‘Friend, I am doing you no wrong; did you not agree with me for a denarius? Take what belongs to you and go; I choose to give to this last the same as I give to you. Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me? Or are you envious because I am generous?’ So the last will be first, and the first will be last.”

Jonah was CERTAIN.  The vineyard workers were CERTAIN.  

Jonah became angry when God did not work the way he was CERTAIN God should work… angry enough to die… it says.  

The vineyard workers became angry when the landowner did not pay in the way they were CERTAIN he should pay.  Angry to the point of grumbling… it says. 

Both Jonah and the vineyard workers were CERTAIN they knew how God worked… how God SHOULD work… how God MUST work!  And in these parables, one from the Hebrew Prophets and one from Matthew’s Gospel, we see both Jonah and the vineyard workers crash headlong, at full speed, without a helmet, into the solid brick wall that is human certainty when it encounters things Divine.   

Both Jonah and the vineyard workers both come to their different situations settled in the comfort of their certainty.  Certainty is so tempting because it offers us something both comfortable and comforting.  Think about gravity.  We don’t worry about whether today gravity will be “on” or “off” as we go about our day.  We are certain it will be “on” and that certainty is comforting.  It is always there.  Sometimes gravity results in pain, sure, but that pain always makes sense.  The pain is because we fell.  Because gravity was “on” as it always is.  It makes sense and things that make sense are comforting, even while the bruises are uncomfortable.  

So as each of us and the Divine draw closer, our temptation is, like it was with Jonah and the vineyard workers, to bring the kind of certainty we have about gravity to the Divine encounter as well.  We want God to be both comfortable and comforting… always “on” in the ways we have decided are best or right or fair.    

But what both Jonah and the vineyard workers discover, is that in applying certainty to their encounter with the Divine, in each case, God reveals their certainty to be, not at all a comfort, but something else entirely.  Earlier this week I tried and failed to recover a particular phrase I had heard for what certainty becomes as we move closer to the Divine.  

I never really recovered that one little phrase, but when we move closer to the Divine certainty becomes, not a comfort, but something like “Idolatry” worshiping a “little g” god who does things our way.  That’s a Jason Larson idea.  Or it becomes like a “Sin” as we insist God follow our rules and not be free.  That’s a Peter Enns idea.  Or it becomes an “Addiction” where with each encounter the comfort we seek demands more and more certainty.  That’s a Peter Rollins idea. Or maybe as we and the Divine draw close, certainty transforms into a Tyranny, cutting us off from the fullness of God’s grace and love, because we are certain it just can’t be genuinely that enormous.  

Whatever the “right” phrase is, the truth is that when we and the Divine grow near, the easy illusion of certainty we experience with things like gravity begins to fall apart and it transforms from a help to a hinderance.  It goes from being a liberator to a jailer… from a mercy to mercilessness.  

This is the wall Jonah hit when he brought certainty into his close encounter with the Divine.  Jonah decided that he would rather die holding onto his certainty about God than to let go of all he THOUGHT he knew and embrace, with radical acceptance, that God will do what God will do.    

This is the same wall that the vineyard workers hit when the manager called them in to be paid.  They had been certain about how the vineyard owner would pay them all, and when the owner did not do as they were certain he would do, they grumbled rather than letting go of what they THOUGHT they knew.  They chose not to embrace, with radical acceptance, that the vineyard owner was going to do with the vineyard owner’s money whatever the owner wanted to do.  

The temptation to seek certainty as a way to find comfort is strong.  I find myself drinking from the firehose of the news these days hoping, beyond hope to mine just one little nugget of certainty that might give me just a tiny bit of comfort.  So, I know… trying to hold onto certainty is completely understandable… after all, certainty very often gives a very convincing illusion that it is working… like it does with gravity!  

But when it comes to our encounters with the Divine in particular, certainty fails us, and the more we insist upon it, the more certainty grows into an addiction, an idol, a prison, or a tyranny that leads us into angry grumbling at best or wanting to die at the worst.  

These two parables do many, many things and teach many, many lessons, but today I want us to hear just one of them. As you and the Divine draw close to one another… hold your dogmas as loosely as ever you can… use the lightest of touches as you steer your doctrines, and let the certainty you hold in your clenched fist, slip through your fingers and allow God to do what God chooses, remembering always that God chooses BOTH… the first… as well as the last and both arrive back in the love from where they began.  Amen.  

Bible Math Class

Matthew 18:21-35

Then Peter came and said to him, “Lord, if another member of the church sins against me, how often should I forgive? As many as seven times?” Jesus said to him, “Not seven times, but, I tell you, seventy-seven times. “For this reason the kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who wished to settle accounts with his slaves. When he began the reckoning, one who owed him ten thousand talents

was brought to him; and, as he could not pay, his lord ordered him to be sold, together with his wife and children and all his possessions, and payment to be made. So the slave fell on his knees before him, saying, ‘Have patience with me, and I will pay you everything.’ And out of pity for him, the lord of that slave released him and forgave him the debt. But that same slave, as he went out, came upon one of his fellow slaves who owed him a hundred denarii; and seizing him by the throat, he said, ‘Pay what you owe.’ Then his fellow slave fell down and pleaded with him, ‘Have patience with me, and I will pay you.’ But he refused; then he went and threw him into prison until he would pay the debt. When his fellow slaves saw what had happened, they were greatly distressed, and they went and reported to their lord all that had taken place. Then his lord summoned him and said to him, ‘You wicked slave! I forgave you all that debt because you pleaded with me. Should you not have had mercy on your fellow slave, as I had mercy on you?’ And in anger his lord handed him over to be tortured until he would pay his entire debt. So my heavenly Father will also do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brother or sister from your heart.”

Welcome to Bible Math Class.  I am your professor, the Rev. NOT-Doctor Erik Karas.  This class of Bible Math begins with Jesus telling Peter he needs to forgive “77 times” which sounds like a lot, but in Bible Math, “7” is not a literal number.  It’s a symbolic number which means… “the perfect amount” and “77” is symbolic for… and this is technical language… the “super-perfect” amount.  Jesus was telling Peter that he needed to forgive others the “super-perfect” amount of times… in other words he needed to forgive others the way God forgives him… no matter how many times it might take.  

Our Bible math class moves next to the accompanying parable.  We start with the second slave first.  He owed the first slave 100 denarii, but what’s a denarii?  A denarius (singular) was a day’s wages for a field worker, so in Massachusetts the minimum wage is $15 an hour, so working for 8 hours…  that’s 120 bucks… times 100 and the second slave owes the first one 12 grand.  In Connecticut he’d owe close to 14 grand, where the minimum wage is linked to inflation automatically.  Either way… that’s an Ouch!  

THAT, however, is peanuts when we turn our mathematical eye to the first slave who owed his King 10,000 Talents… but… what’s a Talent?  Well, it takes 6000 Denarii to make just ONE Talent… so 6000 times $12,000 equals $720,000.  That’s just for ONE Talent.  But this guy owed 10,000 Talents!!  This guy owed the king 7.2… BBBBBB Billion dollars!  That’s more than the GDP of around 40 COUNTRIES in today’s money!  If that slave tried to pay back that debt to his king (without interest mind you) at even a million dollars a year, it would take him 7200 years to pay what he owed.  

Jesus is using Bible Math in this parable to do what Bible Math in parables always does… it shocks us into learning something about the way God works.  Jesus uses this “can’t wrap your mind around it” amount of money… more than the GDP of entire countries… to show us the mind blowing extent of God’s forgiveness.  When we pray the Lord’s prayer and it says, in one version, “Forgive us our debts” THIS is the level of debt it talks about God forgiving!  This lesson in Bible Math is teaching us that there is absolutely, positively, no possible way for any of us to do anything, anything, ANYTHING that God would not or could not forgive.

But now we need to go back to the second slave and his encounter with the first slave over his debt of a measly 12 grand.  Even though the first guy had just been forgiven his 7.2 BILLION dollar debt, he refused to pass on the same compassion, grace, and forgiveness with the same generosity that he had first received.  Jesus added this part to the parable because he knew very well that we’d all very much like RECEIVING God’s unlimited, unconditional forgiveness, love and compassion BUT we’d also have TERRIBLE TROUBLE passing it on to others, even at a minuscule fraction of what we first received.  

Jesus knew that even though the King in the parable was into radical forgiveness, the rest of us humans tend all too often to want to sprinkle in some retribution with any forgiveness we might give.  But this part of the parable is here to remind us that passing on less than the unconditional love, grace, and generosity of forgiveness that we’ve first received is not the Way, the Truth or the Life. 

It’s not the Way because IF we only pass on only a portion of what we’ve received, then we will inevitably find that it is US who are not free.  It will be US who remain tortured.  Not tortured by God in some cosmic hot place, but by the simple truth that when we don’t let all the debt, all the hurt, all the pain, and all the resentment go, the part we hold onto just grinds away inside of us.  We churn it over and over in our minds.  We work ourselves up into a lather.  We torture ourselves and it feels… well… like hell.  

Jesus gets his point across here very clearly… the more we forgive… the more we let go of the wrongs that have been done to us… the more we strive to be generous, even when others have not been generous with us… the more we will experience the freedom, fullness, and abundance of life God created us to live.  The tighter we hold those resentments, the longer we grind those grudges, the more we look to get even, the more hold back the compassion, generosity and love we have first been given by God, the more our lives will feel like hell.  

But how do you genuinely let it all go?   How do you let all that hurt go?  It’s really, REALLY hard!  This parable tells us the answer is found in community.  We can’t do it alone.  We ALL need help living toward that Divine level of forgiveness.  We ALL need help dying to our brokenness, our woundedness, our past hurts and rising toward being ever more generous, compassionate and forgiving.  

And that is exactly the homework this Bible Math class gives us.  To sit together and acknowledge with one another our shared old hurts, pains, and wounds.  To listen to one another as we get those hurts up and out and discover we are not alone.  To encourage one another as we practice generosity, gratitude, forgiveness and compassion for the people around us.  Because living out of an equation of forgiveness, gratitude, and generosity rather than the equation of resentment, condemnation, and retribution will lead us each day toward a much less tortured, and infinitely more abundant, life.  Amen. 

Turning Away From Christian Nationalism

Matthew 16:21-28

From that time on, Jesus began to show his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and undergo great suffering at the hands of the elders and chief priests and scribes and be killed and on the third day be raised. And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him, saying, “God forbid it, Lord! This must never happen to you.” But he turned and said to Peter, “Get behind me, Satan! You are a hindrance to me, for you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.”

Then Jesus told his disciples, “If any wish to come after me, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it. For what will it profit them if they gain the whole world but forfeit their life? Or what will they give in return for their life?

“For the Son of Man is to come with his angels in the glory of his Father, and then he will repay everyone for what has been done. Truly I tell you, there are some standing here who will not taste death before they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom.”

Last week, Peter was sure Jesus was driving the bus in the direction he had been taught and expected the Messiah to drive the bus.  Toward rallying the people, raising an army, expelling the Romans, and sitting on the throne as King of Israel!  That’s why last week we heard him say, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.”  This week, Jesus dramatically turned the bus away from the direction Peter had been taught and expected the Messiah to go, and Peter’s reaction to that shocking development was, “God, forbid it!”  

This week Jesus turned the bus toward sacrifice rather than power… toward peace rather than violence… toward the Kingdom of Heaven and not toward a Kingdom of Israel.  To Peter all that sounded like horrible woke nonsense!  It was weak!  What Peter expected… what Peter wanted… what Peter understood to be the ONLY thing the Messiah could be about, was embracing the world’s form of power… might makes right and power over, to make Israel an independent, religious nation with the Messiah occupying a throne that was religious, political and military.  Peter wouldn’t have used the term, but what he expected… what he wanted… was what we would call today… Christian Nationalism.      

Jesus saying that the way to change the world for GOOD, was for him to go to Jerusalem, be tortured, and die did not feel like a winning strategy to Peter!  Today, in our country, people STILL don’t see how sacrificial love could ever be a winning strategy either!  Today, we’ve all seen or read the stories of self professed Christians, who, when they are shown what Jesus said in the Sermon on the Mount say, “the world just doesn’t work that way any more”.  They say “that idea is weak” and instead of turning themselves to follow Jesus, they like Peter, insist that Jesus turn and follow them.  Christian Nationalists today insist that Power Over and Might Makes Right is the only way forward and as long as they slap a Jesus sticker on whatever means they use to achieve that end, no matter how cruel it might be, the ends justify the means and they are certain it will meet with Divine approval.  That’s Christian Nationalism.

What that creates is a “Christian” Nation where the words of Jesus have been completely expunged.  What that creates a “Christian” Nation where the Gospel is not just ignored, but actively demonized.  What that creates is a “Christian” nation without a welcome for the stranger, without the hungry being fed, without the sick being healed, without the oppressed being freed, without the sword being put away, and certainly without all our possessions sold and the money given to the poor.  What that creates is a nation filled with people who only care for themselves and for those who look, think, and believe the exact, same way.  

But Jesus and the Gospel insist on the direct opposite… Jesus and the Gospel insist that the outsider comes first… the foreigner, the stranger, the down trodden, the oppressed and the sinner… Jesus and the Gospel insists they come first!  Jesus pushes on that idea so hard that at one point he says we need to put the other first so much it looks like we are hating our own mother and father!  Of course Jesus isn’t asking us to hate our parents but he uses that shocking language to warn us that we must not let our little loves… our love for those who look, think, believe, and act just like us… get in the way of the big love to which we are called… the love for the outsider, the stranger, the outcast, the foreigner, and even for our enemies.     

The Jesus truth is that we can not love God and hate other people.  We can not love God and abuse the immigrant.  We can not love God and oppress the poor.  We can not love God and bully and exclude the outcast.  Each and every one of our neighbors bears the Divine image.  In our neighbor is nothing less than the face of God and Jesus makes it completely clear that our neighbors include every single human being starting with the ones we find hardest to love!  

Jesus acknowledges that driving the bus in that direction will lead to suffering.  He calls us to drive in that direction anyway.  Jesus admits that driving that direction will lead to sacrifice.  He calls us to drive that direction anyway.  Jesus calls us to drive in that direction, not because he demands sacrifice or wants us to suffer, but because he knows the direction we need to go to affect the change this world so desperately needs is very hard and incredibly painful, and yet THAT is the Way to, as Bishop Curry always said, “change the world from the nightmare it too often is, into the dream that God intends it to be.”  

Peter was, in his way, the very first Christian Nationalist.  He demanded that Jesus follow his ways… the ways of the world… the ways of might makes right and power over.  Jesus’ response to Peter’s demand was, “Get behind me Satan!”  

Today, Christian Nationalists continue to demand that Jesus’ name be attached to the ways of the world… to might makes right and power over.  But to those demands, Jesus’ own words once again ring out, “Get behind me Satan!”  

May the Christian Nationalists of today hear Jesus’ rebuke and turn around as Peter eventually did, and instead of demanding the Messiah follow them, return to a life of following the Messiah… walking in Jesus’ footsteps… no matter how strange or how woke they might look and follow Jesus no matter where Jesus leads. Amen.

Jesus Said the "D" Word!

Matthew 15:10-28

Then Jesus called the crowd to him and said to them, “Listen and understand: it is not what goes into the mouth that defiles a person, but it is what comes out of the mouth that defiles.” Then the disciples approached and said to him, “Do you know that the Pharisees took offense when they heard what you said?” He answered, “Every plant that my heavenly Father has not planted will be uprooted. Let them alone; they are blind guides of the blind. And if one blind person guides another, both will fall into a pit.” But Peter said to him, “Explain this parable to us.” Then he said, “Are you also still without understanding? Do you not see that whatever goes into the mouth enters the stomach, and goes out into the sewer? But what comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart, and this is what defiles. For out of the heart come evil intentions, murder, adultery, fornication, theft, false witness, slander. These are what defile a person, but to eat with unwashed hands does not defile.”

Jesus left that place and went away to the district of Tyre and Sidon. Just then a Canaanite woman from that region came out and started shouting, “Have mercy on me, Lord, Son of David; my daughter is tormented by a demon.” But he did not answer her at all. And his disciples came and urged him, saying, “Send her away, for she keeps shouting after us.” He answered, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” But she came and knelt before him, saying, “Lord, help me.” He answered, “It is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.” She said, “Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters’ table.” Then Jesus answered her, “Woman, great is your faith! Let it be done for you as you wish.” And her daughter was healed instantly.

Did you hear what Jesus just called that poor woman?  

He called her the “D” word.  

In the U.S. that would be like calling someone a…  well… I can’t say THAT word in church!  In Ireland, from what I’ve learned, it would be like calling someone a… well, I can’t say that word in church either!  

Let’s just say that what Jesus called that poor woman was one of the most vile, nasty slurs you could call another person in that culture.  So what was Jesus thinking?  

Maybe what he was thinking, was that if he wanted even a chance to get through to these hard headed Pharisees, he was going to need to change tactics.  

He was going to need to get clever… get tricksy… get cute.  

Maybe what he was doing was baiting a hook with a nice, juicy slur that the Pharisees’ just couldn’t resist.  

You see, at the beginning of this reading, Jesus had argued with those same Pharisees about hand washing… 

and he had gotten nowhere.

 

The argument hadn’t really been about soap and water.  It had been about who is drawn inside God’s circle and who is left out.  

The Pharisees were certain that only people born to good Jewish parents and who followed their version of the faith could be drawn inside God’s circle.  For the Pharisees, this Canaanite woman had the wrong parents.  She had NO chance of EVER being drawn inside God’s circle.  

Jesus had tried to talk reason,  “It’s what comes out of you that God really cares about”, he told them.  

“It's how you love God and love your neighbors that really matters.”  

But it was like talking to a brick wall.  That’s when I think maybe Jesus changed tactics and went for shock value!  

“Woman, you're a dog”!

Well, that’s what the Pharisees would have called her and when Jesus said it, it had to have gotten the Pharisee’s attention.  “Oh, look” they would have said, “Jesus has FINALLY come to his senses!  He’s finally coming around to our way of thinking.”  

But then…when every last one of them was finally paying close attention…Jesus set the hook, 

"Woman great is your faith!”  

Jesus had baited and hooked the Pharisees!   

Can you imagine their shock?  Jesus had challenged them to go from seeing God’s circle of love drawn only around a few who looked, sounded, behaved, and believed just like them, to seeing God’s circle of love being drawn around ALL OF HUMANITY!  

That must have hit them like a ton of bricks!  The sort of dramatic change Jesus was suggesting is HARD!  

It’s hard, because when we think about drawing a circle that big… which includes SO many… it is easy to give into the fear that if we go and include all of THEM… there won’t be enough for all of US!  

Can there really be enough of God’s love for so many?  Will I still have enough… if all of THEM are included too?  

The fear of scarcity is a powerful fear.    

But as Christians we believe there IS enough of God’s love for ALL, even to overflowing… abundantly far more than we could ever ask or imagine!  

And personally, I like it when the circles of God’s love include ALL, because those kinds of enormously large circles end up including everyone… 

even bald Americans looking for a bargain holiday in Ireland!  

It’s a lot of change to swallow though.  Many people continue to struggle with including ALL.  The Pharisees continued to have trouble including ALL and around the world, people continue to have terrible trouble with the idea that God includes ALL and that God has made enough for ALL.  

Wherever people struggle to include ALL, at the root of it all… 

IS FEAR.  

Fear that there won’t be enough if we draw the sort of circle that include all of THEM?  

We’ve all seen what happens when people are afraid.  Fear-filled people end up doing horribly hate-filled things.  The fear lights the fire, the lies stir the anger, the hatred raises the heat, and then the violence boils over the top.  

All of that in a vain attempt to keep those they would label as “dogs” out of a circle which Jesus insists includes no fewer than ALL.

But here’s the thing.  All those fear-fueled, hate-filled attempts to keep people out?  They’re all already too late!  

In Christ’s death and resurrection, Jesus drew the circle of God's love so it already includes ALL!  On that first Easter morning, Jesus let every single one of us dogs in!  

Every single one!  

His death and resurrection cut a hole in the fence so big that even the biggest and mangiest of us dogs who are missing almost all of our hair, now all have a place at God's Table!  

ALL of US and ALL of THEM have been drawn inside God's circle.  ALL are included in the grace, love, healing and wholeness that God intends for all of creation.  

The truth of this lesson is that ALL are welcome in God’s Kingdom.  God sent his Son, not just to suggest it or to argue for it, but to make it happen with his life, death and resurrection.  

Now, you and I, as followers of the One who has drawn a circle so large it includes all of creation... WE are called to do the same… to draw our circles ever larger… 

until God’s Kingdom comes and God's will is done, on Earth as it is in Heaven. Amen.