The Purple Cord Sisterhood

The Purple Cord Sisterhood
Matthew 15:21-28

Are you familiar with the term “boggle threshold”?  This is the point the mind boggles when confronted with some new idea.   We are, the boggle line tells us, sensible, reasonable people. When someone hits our boggle line with a new idea, we struggle because our comfort zone has been violated. By and large, we don’t like to be boggled.

A Canaanite woman cries out to Jesus.   Some names, places, peoples have such a connected biblical history that we can’t really talk about this woman until we grasp what it means to have been a Canaanite.  Canaanites were the original, primary enemy of Israel.  The Scripture seems clear: The only good Canaanite is a dead Canaanite.  Time and again commands are given to kill all the Canaanites – men, women, and children.

The slogans tell us all we need to know: “The Only Good Canaanite Is a “Dead” Canaanite;” “I Don’t Have Anything Against Canaanites as Long as they Leave the Country;” “My Best Friend Is a Canaanite.”

Our culture has accumulated an arsenal of demeaning names for people considered less than, people considered evil or disgusting. We label people and we repeat these names to one another so they stick and in repeating they become even stickier. Think of the names thrown about in your lifetime for Japanese, Germans, Chinese, African Americans, Native Americans, gays, immigrants. An entire dictionary of the disgusting has been produced by good Christians led by good preachers. Abomination. Abject. Disgusting. We are cruel when it comes to sticking people with names. See Less than Human

The “Japs” were considered animals, and were often portrayed as monkeys, dehumanization is a joint creation of biology, culture, and the architecture of the human mind.

Dehumanization is the belief that some beings only appear human, but beneath dehumanizing. The ultimate putdown.

I am wed to Barth’s remark: “to say ‘God is’ is to say ‘God loves.’”

I have serious theological difficulty imagining God standing before the troops of Israel as they cross the Jordan River, exhorting the soldiers into battle, screaming, “Kill them all!”  67 times in 61 movies the phrase, “Kill them all,” is shouted.  In Star Trek: The Next Generation – “Kill them.  You must kill them all, before it is too late!”

The Culture of Emotion

The Bible is a cultural artifact as complex as our own lives. The Bible records everything and that includes the history, the cultural practices, and the moral practices of the Israelites.  This is part of the hard work of interpretation because we must discern what is ancient culture – xenophobic, patriarchal, classist, and bloodthirsty – and what is commandment and gospel.  This is why the study of the history, culture, philosophy, and theology of the ancient world that produced the Bible is so much a part of our work of interpretation.

The writers of Scripture ascribe all Israelite cultural attitudes and behaviors to the will of God: “God told us to hate the Canaanites.”  “God said kill all the Canaanites.”  Cultural attitudes resist conversion, but court divine approval.  It takes centuries to undo cultural ways because they are so thoroughly assimilated with the faith.  Preachers have a history of being “court” preachers unaware that it makes them court jesters. People of faith often willingly support cultural ways that seem to authorize appalling abuse, even murder of women, Jews, slaves, aliens, and children.

For example, most Christians will insist that Jews should enjoy the same rights as Christians because we are all equal.  Most Americans were sickened by that crowd of “nasties” shouting “Jews will not replace us” and standing outside the synagogue with automatic weapons, marching past with Nazi flags and shouting anti-Semitic slogans. The congregation was inside trying to worship God. The rabbi sent them home in groups and out the back door for safety. He said, “I couldn’t believe this was America 2017.” Well, Americans almost never give serious attention to the demons that hide behind our boggle line and therefore we ignore how many Christians think Judaism is inferior to Christianity. And how many Christians think the Old Testament God is the God of the Jews and the New Testament God is the God of the Christians. And how many of you are convinced that Islam is an evil religion? Why can’t religions just be different instead of inferior or superior, righteous or wicked? What good is served by Christians insisting that our religion is the only true one? Why are white people so afraid in America? I think they are afraid of “cultural replacement.” Having been lord of the manor since the beginning, some whites are no longer happy with not being the majority in America. How odd that Christians thrive as a majority but resist minority status. The resentment and the anger is leading to violence and it ought not bear the name of Jesus. Instead, we should live Christian lives; testify to the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and stay away from the chest-bumping, swaggering, blustering arrogance of we are the only ones with the truth.  What needs blowing up in America is our boggle meter.

Preaching prejudice against other religions, other races, and other nations is not the gospel of Jesus Christ. In your heart of hearts you know that preaching hatred is not the gospel.

The text today forces us to deal with a subject that we often ignore: the role of women in human life. I can prove that we don’t really take women seriously because no one has any intention of making sure that women receive equal pay. And even churches that ordain women as denominational policy, will often say, “Our church is not ready for a woman pastor.” Not ready? Are you kidding me? Will we be ready next week? Nexzt month? Next century? How long do women have to wait before they are actually equal partners in the human life they make possible? Women have waited too long, been too gracious and too understanding. It is time for a woman’ rebellion against the big-mouth, arrogant, blustering, macho, beer-guzzling, often abusive, oppressive Man, with a capital M. Women have been denigrated, oppressed, and mistreated for longer than any other group in the world.

Well it is not only late it is past time that this nation stood up for women. They are the sisterhood of the purple cord of history. And the woman in our reading is a Canaanite woman – a double whammy. Thank God Scripture has more to say about Canaanites than the conventional wisdom of hatred and violence. There are other readings within Scripture which undermine the hard line stance.

Canaanites are God’s children too.  Canaanites are not as wicked as painted.  “It is noteworthy that all the Canaanites who are not faceless – that is all who have names or any real narrative presence – are in fact ‘friendlies.’”  Prejudice always has more power against nameless groups.  When you know someone has a name, you know they are real people.  When you get to know someone and discover that you like them, you can no longer maintain your prejudice.

Remember Rahab? She was a Canaanite woman.  She operated a brothel in downtown Jericho (2:2).  She is the first person to confess faith in YHWH within the borders of the Promised Land, and to an Israelite audience.  “The Lord your God is indeed God in heaven above and on earth below.”  “It is due to the religious perceptiveness of a Canaanite woman and harlot, for God’s sake, that the Israelites first gain a toehold in the Promised Land.”  Rahab is not the last foreign woman to confess such faith.  Who said: “Your God shall be my God”?  Ruth said it – A Moabite.  Line up all the alleged enemies and they are not as evil as painted: Hittites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites, Jebusites, Moabites, Republicisites, Democites – all God’s children.

Rahab turns up in the New Testament – as an ancestress of Jesus Christ, along with Tamar, Ruth, and Bathsheba.  There is a common cord connecting Rahab, an ancient Canaanite woman, and the Canaanite woman facing Jesus.  In my homiletical imagination there is a scarlet cord that weaves throughout the Bible from Rahab to the present.  The spies said: “Tie this crimson cord in the window through which you let us down.”  That crimson cord is the symbol of God’s approval, of God’s divine purpose, to include women in all of the life of faith.

There is a scarlet cord that runs through the Bible connecting the women, who are often judged by society as “scarlet women,” but the scarlet cord speaks of redemption.  Call it the Divine Order of The Scarlet Cord Sisterhood.  The culture, religion, and community judged these women, but not Jesus.  Today, our culture still resists the true dignity and place of women: churches won’t ordain women, corporations won’t pay women equally, Congress doesn’t respect the rights of women.  It is no accident that a Congress dominated by Southern Baptist theology and a Supreme Court dominated by conservative Catholics is less than helpful to women.  The scarlet cord is a visual protest against every form of mistreatment visited on women – from the personal to the political.

The scarlet cord is carried by the Samaritan woman – 5 times married and now living with a man, but she drinks the water of eternal life.  There’s sinful woman at the house of Simon, crashing the party, and anointing Jesus.  And Mary Magdalene from whom 7 demons were cast and then she becomes the first preacher of the resurrection.  There’s the woman unfairly hassled because she had somehow been caught in the act of adultery, and to her Jesus says, “Neither do I condemn you.”  There’s the crippled woman who was bent over and could not stand – representing centuries of male abuse and men using religion to control women and keep them in their so-called place, and Jesus heals her.  These are the women of The Divine Sisterhood of the Scarlet Cord and they are all smeared with degrading reputations, indicative of the crushing judgmentalism of the culture, and yet in relation to Jesus, they are lifted up, they stand up tall and straight, they glorify and proclaim God.  And that scarlet cord, that sign of protection and security and the salvation of God comes full circle into the possession of the Canaanite woman – descendent of Rahab.  THESE WOMEN HAVE TURNED THAT CORD INTO THE SCARLET FLAG!  There are going to be a lot of shocked men at the gate of heaven when they see that scarlet flag waving proudly over the kingdom of our Lord.

So it is, that one day, Jesus travels to Tyre and Sidon – the land of the Canaanites, home of the enemy of old.  The scarlet cord that once hung from the window of Rahab’s house was still blowing in the breeze here in Canaan where it all started.  Jesus becomes an alien, an undocumented foreigner.  We are all aliens and God loves us anyway.

The Canaanite woman grabs the scarlet cord and holds on for dear life.  She will face any man on behalf of her daughter, even the Son of Man.  Now she’s shouting: “Have mercy on me, Lord, Son of David!”  How did she know?  We have centuries of being Christian in our DNA and we often forget that the best way to get the attention of our Savior is the cry for mercy.  Seriously, if you knew that you were standing in line to have the chance to speak one sentence to Almighty God, to have one request granted, what would you say?  When your turn came, when you stood there before the throne of grace, would you actually say, “God you need to destroy the Muslims”? Would you waste your one sentence on a request to get your party elected to the White House? Or would you have the sense to say, “God be merciful unto me a sinner!”

The woman is houting at Jesus at the top of her lungs.  The first response strikes us as strange, so unlike Jesus.  BUT HE DID NOT ANSWER HER AT ALL.  And the disciples are even worse: “SEND HER AWAY, FOR SHE KEEPS SHOUTING AFTER US!”

That must have been the most embarrassing moment in the Canaanite woman’s life.  And then it gets worse.  Jesus says, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.”  There’s the hard line party line dusted off from Leviticus and Numbers.  Some people have no shame at throwing old verses of Scripture in the face of others in desperate attempts to win arguments.  It is as if Jesus is saying, “The gospel is not for everyone.  It is not for Canaanites.”  Sure, the command to kill has been muted, but the response will lead to the same result: the little daughter of the Canaanite woman will still die as surely as if she had been stabbed in the chest with an Israeli sword.

Undeterred, with nothing to lose, the woman knelt before Jesus and says, “Help me!”  Surely, now he will do something.  Instead, we get words that cause me to shudder and blow up my boggle threshold: “It is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs!”  Jesus maintains the party line.  The gospel is not for Gentiles.  Look, I have read the tortured explanations that attempt to let Jesus off the hook, but I say let the words stand and let us watch our Savior struggle with what is shown here as a new idea for him.  Let us see Jesus not reach for some scraggly verse of Scripture, but consider the possibilities that the Canaanite woman speaks the truth.  This story would have turned Matthew’s entire congregation into boggle overload because they were debating, fighting over, disagreeing over, threatening to split from one another over this very issue: Is the gospel for Gentiles or for Jews only?

The woman now does the unthinkable.  She talks back to Jesus.  She refuses to bend to the inscrutable will that would deny her access to the grace of God.  I applaud her.  When preachers, not knowing what to say, appeal to God’s mysterious ways that we can’t presume to understand I am flabbergasted.   When a Calvinist seminary president, absolutely intoxicated by the grandeur of divine sovereignty, proclaims that Jesus only died for the few, the select, the elect, the Platinum card-holding, first-class passengers on heaven’s jumbo jet, I want to scream.  When he then insists that this is a direct expression of the divine will – that some are heaven-bound but the majority are hell-bound and all of this by the hidden and eternal counsels of God pre-decided before the beginning of time, and that it would be impious of us to attempt to penetrate this iron-clad will, I want to explode.

This Canaanite mother reaches her own theological moment of brilliance: “Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters’ table.”  Oh, be still my heart.  I would rather take my chances with the crumbs that fall from the table of Arminius and his free will theology than stay even for a second in the hallowed halls of austere Calvinism.

And of all things, Jesus submits to being taught a lesson on holiness by a Canaanite woman.  And he heals the child and he says, “You are a woman of great faith!”  The holiest of the holies exercises profound humility, opening himself to something previously unimaginable about the fundaments of life with God.  Jesus learns from the “least of these.”

Try to imagine this scene: Jesus is an immigrant, an illegal alien without papers.  And he is going home to Israel with a lighter heart, and a new understanding.  Who would have ever guessed that one of the teachers of Jesus, the youngster who at the age of 12 had confounded the teachers of Israel would one day learn that the boundary of God’s grace had been forever exploded and learn it from a woman of Canaan!  Boggle that!

Grasp the scarlet cord and join the throng of the unexpected, surprising people of “great faith!”  Amen.