Uncompromised (Matthew 15:21-28)

I want to tell you about several different biblical characters this morning. First up is Sarah, the wife of Abraham.

In so many ways, Sarah’s faith – like the faith of her husband Abraham – was tremendous. The two of them willingly followed God wherever God led them, even though the destination was unclear.

But one thing presented too great a challenge to their faith, and that was that they had no children. Children were a sign of God’s blessing, which of course is true today; but in ancient times, not having children was seen as a sign of being cursed. Today we recognize blessings in parenthood as well as blessings in those who, for whatever reason, do not have children.

But in ancient times, having no children meant you were cursed.

Eventually Sarah and Abraham grew old, well past the age of bearing children. At one point, God spoke to Abraham, telling Abraham just how blessed he was, but Abraham could only respond by saying, “Lord God, what could you possibly give me, since I have no children?”

Sarah knew how important it was for Abraham to have children. So she offered to Abraham her own personal slave, a woman named Hagar.  Sarah said to Abraham: “The Lord has kept me from giving birth, so go to my servant. Maybe we can have children through her.”

Abraham did, and Hagar became pregnant. Immediately Sarah regretted her decision. She began to treat her slave Hagar harshly, so harshly that Hagar tried to run away.

Eventually Hagar gave birth to a son and named him… Ishmael.

Scripture says that Abraham was 86 years old when Ishmael was born. That’s pretty old to become a new father.

Some years passed. When Abraham was 99, God came to Abraham and said that soon, Sarah herself would become pregnant and give birth. Abraham thought this was hilarious. Then God told Sarah, and Sarah laughed, since she was just about as old as Abraham.

And yet, within a year, their son Isaac was born.

By this time Abraham was 100 years old.

Do the math, and you realize that Ishmael was about 14 when his half-brother, Isaac, was born.

Now that Sarah had her own son, the grudge Sarah had against Hagar expanded to include Ishmael as well. She resented both of them.

A year or two later – Ishmael must have been at least 15 or 16 by this point – Sarah’s grudge led her to convince Abraham to expel Hagar and Ishmael from the household. “Just send them away!” she said; “they don’t belong here with us!”

So Abraham took some bread and some water, gave it to Hagar, and sent her and Ishmael on their way. The scripture says Hagar put Ishmael in her shoulder sling and headed out toward the desert, her eyes full of tears…..

Do you notice something strange about this part of the story? If Ishmael really was about 16 years old, as the math indicates, Hagar wouldn’t have been carrying him in her shoulder sling. More likely, Ishmael would have been carrying her!

Here’s the thing. These ancient stories were not written with historical accuracy in mind. In fact, they weren’t written at all, not for many generations; rather, they were told by one generation to the next, as parables about God’s love and faithfulness.

And in this case, that love and faithfulness included even the ones who people had excluded: namely, Hagar and Ishmael. God protected them, and God made of Ishmael a great nation. In fact, to this day, while Christians and Jews trace their ancestry to Abraham through Isaac, Muslims trace their ancestry to Abraham through Ishmael.

And both Isaac and Ishmael – and their descendants – are included in the love and faithfulness of God.

Unfortunately, that’s a hard lesson for many Christians to accept. We think that people who are different than us must become like us in order to dwell in God’s love and faithfulness. But who are we to say who God should include and who God should exclude?

So despite Sarah’s hatred and Abraham’s decision to get rid of Hagar, God still loved Hagar and her son Ishmael.

Sarah was clearly wrong for wanting to exclude Hagar and Ishmael. Scripture makes this clear. It broke Abraham’s heart to send Hagar and Ishmael away… but he did it anyway.

Even though Abraham was a good and faithful man, he wasn’t perfect. Even though Sarah was a good and faithful woman, she wasn’t perfect. Together, they committed an act of horrible injustice against Hagar and Ishmael.

But no one’s imperfections can stop God’s faithfulness and love.

So. Jesus met a Canaanite woman who asked him to heal her daughter.

I mentioned this story in a sermon a few weeks back, but this is one of those stories that really sticks with me, and I wanted to give it a little more attention.

She’s called a Canaanite in Matthew’s gospel. At the Pastor’s Conference, Brian McLaren told us that that’s an inaccurate description; there were no Canaanites in Jesus’s time.

It would be like, if there’s someone here with Mexican ancestry, calling you an Aztec; or if there’s someone here with Norwegian ancestry, calling you a Viking.

Why did Matthew call her a Canaanite? Mark’s gospel has the same story, but Mark calls her a Syrophoenician. Mark knows there were no Canaanites in Jesus’s day.

Maybe Matthew’s purpose isn’t historical details. Maybe he’s trying to tell something, in parable form, about God’s love and faithfulness, something that transcends a particular time and place. Maybe he uses this character in his story as representative of something more than just a single, historical person.

Clearly, this Canaanite woman represents a very different, unexpected “other.” Even Jesus has a hard time accepting her, including her, and ministering to her. Indeed, his first response is to ignore her, and his disciples urge him to send her away.

Just send her away… in the same way that Sarah and Abraham sent Hagar and Ishmael away. She doesn’t belong here, with us…

Jesus doesn’t send her away, but there’s a tension there. It does seem that he’s about to send her away, and that moment of suspense makes this a great story.

Jesus doesn’t send her away, but he tells her that his mission is not to her kind.

And the disciples are thinking, “Yeah. Maybe if you were like us… but you’re not.”

There are several ways this Canaanite woman could respond. She could downplay her Canaanite identity and convince Jesus that she is like him. “I’m not really a Canaanite; I’m like you!”

Or, she could just walk away, defeated.

But she doesn’t do either of those things. She doesn’t compromise her identity just to be part of the “in-group,” and she doesn’t give up.

Not even when Jesus insults her.

“You’re a dog,” Jesus says. “It’s not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.”

Does she deny it? Does she yell back, “How dare you! I’m not a dog!”

No.

She remains firm in her identity.

She says, “You call me a dog; fine. But even dogs eat the crumbs that fall from the table.”

She does not give in. She is who she is. She will not compromise her identity. She says, basically, “accept me as I am!”

And Jesus is impressed. Amazed, actually.

He’s awed by her faith and her determination; her faith in his ability to heal, and her determination to be seen for who she is.

Backing up a bit, I have to say that it’s really hard for me to hear a story in which Jesus is insulting and rude.

But just like the even-more-ancient stories from Genesis, the stories of Jesus in the gospels were not always written with historical details in mind. They were told – and then written down – as stories about God’s love and faithfulness.

Bible scholar John Dominic Crossan even calls many of the stories about Jesus parables about Jesus, because their concern is something greater than historical accuracy.

Whether you want to call this story about Jesus a parable or not, it is a story that shows very clearly how the love of God is not contained to a particular group, even though everyone in Jesus’s time and perhaps even in Matthew’s time expected God’s love to be contained in this way.

And in every age, there are those who we want to send away. “If they’re not going to be like us, then they shouldn’t be among us.” People have felt that way in every generation. I’m sure you can think of ways that the modern church has engaged in this kind of thinking, the kind of thinking that says, “If you want to be one of us, you must be like us.”

The story of the Canaanite woman is a direct challenge to that way of thinking.

In seminary, I took a class on “theology from a Hispanic perspective.” One of the things I learned in that class was the situation of many Hispanics in the U.S., who feel caught between two lands. They are often told to go back home by those in society who want to send them away, send them “back” south across the border. Just send them away.

Sound familiar?

But that’s not their home. Many of them have lived in the United States for generations, perhaps even longer than those who are telling them to leave.

So they really are caught between two lands, not really being made to feel welcome in either place.

Learning about this helped me understand what it was like for a Jew from Galilee.

The Jews in Jerusalem didn’t consider those from Galilee to be “real” Jews. But the Jews from Galilee weren’t really accepted by non-Jews, either. They were caught in the middle, accepted neither here nor there.

That was Jesus. A “dog” in the eyes of the Jewish elite.

A semester spent studying theology from a Hispanic perspective helped me understand that.

In the same way, a Canaanite woman, who – by not compromising her identity, and by insisting that she be accepted just as she is – helped even Jesus gain a greater understanding of his mission, and what he was sent for.

Seeing things through a very different set of eyes can help us see more clearly.