We wake up every day
and step into a protective matrix
that surrounds us,
one that holds us
in an invisible,
rugged,
and tamper-resistant chrysalis.
When we get out of bed,
shower and dress,
eat our bowl of gruel
or feast on a sumptuous breakfast,
we are immediately surrounded
by a soft and pliable membrane
so strong it protects us
from innumerable injuries
and incalculable harm.
This invisible matrix
is knit together by thousands and
thousands and thousands,
of ordinary assumptions.
Each assumption feathering our nest
was inherited from others,
given to us by contemporaries,
or garnered from our own personal experience.
Here are a couple easy examples.
A bank is a safe place to keep money.
A gray sky means rain.
Certain kinds of people should be avoided.
Kale is – well, you fill in the blank.
We make thousands of assumptions every day;
we have to just to get by.
Some people navigate their lives
on the assumption that
all people are out to get them,
while others assume everyone
deserves the benefit of the doubt
until proven otherwise.
In truth, neither assumption conforms
to actual experience.
But that is just like an assumption:
some of them are stronger
or more elastic
than even our own experience.
For example, there is an age-old
theological assumption
that God is perfect,
and that in that divine perfection
God is unchanged
and unchanging.
We even have hymns that declare it.
And yet our experience,
along with every thread of knowledge
we have about this Creation that God created,
is that God’s Creation is ever changing,
always evolving,
forever adapting
and even mutating.
If the very nature of the Creation
to which God gave birth
is change,
then the assumption that God is unchanging
seems, well, it seems odd.
An unchanging, unchangeable God
seems to defy every experience humans have,
and yet it is a pernicious assumption
to which popular Christianity holds onto
like a man-overboard clutches a lifeline.
That’s an example of how powerful assumptions are.
I would like to suggest
there is a direct relationship
between the assumptions we make
and the depth of wisdom we hold.
Our assumptions
can actually lead us to or away from
the God who is present in every moment.
Many of our assumptions,
if not most of them,
lead us away from the ordinary presence of God.
The story in Matthew’s Gospel
is a wonderful example
of just how blinding our assumptions can be.
Now here is a startling but delicious thing:
for nineteen centuries
the common read on this story
was that it is an example
of how benevolent Jesus is.
“SEE!” the story shouts,
Jesus even lowered himself
far enough to address the needs
of a Canaanite woman.
How low is that?
Well, really really low.
The story we heard this morning
got lumped in
with all those stories about
Jesus touching lepers
and engaging in risky behavior
to befriend or advocate for poor,
marginalized people.
In short,
they were hero stories
that mark Jesus as the best of the best.
But something doesn’t add up with this story.
It begins with Jesus ignoring the woman.
And his bigotry toward her
is pretty front and center in the story.
He as much as calls her a dog –
in fact he does call her a dog
in relation to people like him.
Christian tradition ignores this dark side of the story
because after all,
Jesus is perfect.
Being perfect,
not only would Jesus not be so mean,
but changing his mind mid-story
would suggest he had been wrong in the first place.
See how assumptions corrode experiential wisdom?
So despite clear evidence to the contrary,
this story has always been interpreted
as Jesus condescending to the woman’s need
and humbling himself
while motivated by profound compassion.
But about ten or fifteen years ago
I started to hear a new take on this story –
from seminary faculty and preachers.
It was based upon the assumption
of Jesus’ humanity instead of his perfection;
an assumption that even fits
with orthodox ideas about Jesus
because he was, we are told,
fully human.
So what I am about to suggest
is not some hair-brained Cam idea,
but one that has moved into the mainstream
and even appeared in “Christian Century” –
a liberal Christian periodical
but not avant-garde by any means.
If we presume that Jesus was truly human
it of course means he was imperfect,
and so we can read this story
in a way that makes more sense
than the traditional interpretation.
A mother desperate to save her child,
and who has tried everything else, accosted Jesus.
Consider what we know
about the plight of peasants in those days.
No social safety net.
No medicine.
No access to spiritual healers even.
It was a social caste system
that left poor women utterly powerless.
It was a society that placed children
on the absolute bottom rung of the ladder
where their value was measured
by their potential for labor
or a female child’s marriage-ability.
As a matter of fact,
a poor female child possessed by a demon –
or with mental illness if you prefer –
was truly a life without value or worth,
and completely vulnerable to human cruelty.
The mother is beside herself;
woeful in her fear about what is to happen
to the daughter she loves.
What mother would not chase down
any and all options?
So despite the social and ethnic wedge
between them,
she goes after Jesus.
Obviously she has already learned
not to be too polite:
she charges toward them and shouts; she shouts.
She yells for Jesus to stop and have mercy.
I like the image here
of Jesus as a deer in the headlights.
He is accosted and begged for mercy,
which after all, is a special stump speech of his.
A yucky-poo person begs him for mercy.
So the first thing Jesus does
is ignore her.
How human.
Ignore it and hope it goes away.
But his disciples do not allow for this strategy because they beg him to ‘get rid of her.’
“Uh, um, I’m not here to help Canaanites, lady.
I was sent to help the lost sheep
among my fellows Jews.”
Let’s remember what Jesus has said
just prior to this event:
“…What comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart,
and this is what defiles. For out of the heart come evil intentions…”
Something dark has just slipped from his heart.
Now the question is,
what will he do about it?
In the more traditional interpretation
that proceeds from the assumption
that Jesus is perfect,
this bit of nastiness
was regarded as a “test” of the mother’s faith.
Jesus was just testing (he didn’t really mean it).
But if we assume that Jesus was human,
like you and I are human,
we begin to realize
he was subject to the bigotry and prejudices
of his own day
just as we are in ours.
So instead of testing her,
it comes off as more of a test that Jesus fails:
“Go away lady, you are not my concern.”
But wait.
There are lots of good reasons
for Jesus to ignore her
and to put some immediate distance between them.
Jews saw Canaanites as morally unclean
and socially despicable
and ritually filthy
and keeping a distance was actually
the practice of good faith.
For Jesus, social distance and bigotry,
in this case, was “good faith.”
Add to that
the fact that she is an unattended woman
Jesus had plenty of reasons not to get close.
Social policy dictated
that men not enter into conversation
or deal with in any way,
an unrelated woman –
especially one that was not with a man.
So Jesus wants her to go away.
He does not want to help her.
He is perhaps even disgusted by her.
His compassion is not aroused,
nor his mercy.
He is repulsed instead,
and closed off.
That is the reasonable interpretation
of this story if we do not begin with the assumption
Jesus is perfect.
But for nineteen centuries,
in spite of our own experience that tells us
we all are all bigoted in some way,
and we all carry with us prejudices of some kind,
the assumption of Jesus’ perfection
would not allow us to see and hear
what is actually happening in this story.
We know darn well
that our bigotry
and our prejudices
block mercy
and cloud any impulse toward compassion.
That is our experience…
over and over and over again.
If we begin from that assumption
then this story takes a different turn.
It is a measure of the mother’s desperation
that she responded as she did:
“But even the dogs
get to lick up the crumbs
under the master’s table.”
Imagine the pride she had to swallow.
Imagine the anger and resentment
she had to manage
at the very moment she needed this man the most.
She did not believe she was a dog,
and certainly not her daughter.
Canaanites did not view Jews as their superiors
any more than modern-day Palestinians do.
But she was desperate.
How many people and places
had she already tried
and yet her daughter still lived at the edge of survival?
It is her willingness
to subject herself to degradation
that finally pierces Jesus’ bigotry.
Ouch.
The woman’s fierce love and devotion
has revealed something to Jesus
that he did not want to see in himself.
Jesus knows,
he knows in his bones,
that there are no dogs
when it comes to the love of God.
Jesus knew above all else
that God is compassionate and merciful
and that therefore,
his spiritual task
was to be compassionate and merciful also.
The woman held up a mirror of sorts
and Jesus could see and hear
his own failure.
We all have a moment like that, don’t we?
Don’t we have a little hidden box of horror moments
when our own prejudice and bigotry,
or lack of compassion and mercy,
have been revealed –
even if only to ourselves?
Isn’t it powerful to see Jesus
with such a moment?
Even Jesus?
Pick a prejudice, any prejudice.
Rich
poor
black
white
wasp
Hispanic
Italian
male
female
homosexual
heterosexual
Iraqi
Israeli
Fundamentalist
Republican
Democrat…
If it is a prejudice, a bigotry,
then it dilutes our compassion
and tarnishes our sense of mercy.
That is the implication of this story from Matthew.
If we delete our assumption that Jesus was perfect,
and come to this story with eyes wide open,
then this story makes a lot more sense.
Eyes wide open,
that is our spiritual task.
Our assumptions usually close our eyes
and keep us from looking
for what we have not yet seen.
Eyes wide open
is a natural consequence
of removing assumptions
and the filmy cataract coating our vision
that they spawn.
Not all of our assumptions are wrong,
and many of them protect and defend us
in ways we cannot even fathom,
but all of them are worth visiting
and all of them can be examined for the impact
they have on our compassion and mercy.
Eyes wide open
means our assumptions inspected
and their influence revealed.
Eyes wide open,
along with compassion and mercy,
is our spiritual task.
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