Proper 18

September 6, 2009

The Rev. Dorian McGlannan

When I was in high school, I could not stand my mother. This was not the typical conflict that often happens between parents and children at this age; the thought of her sent me reeling.  She had not lived in our home for several years being permanently hospitalized because of her mental illness but I did not have a shred of pity for her.  Yes, I must confess I had a serious case of the “it’s all about me” syndrome from which many teenagers suffer.  Many years later and following a great deal of therapy and prayer, I learned to forgive myself for being so incredibly selfish, self-centered and just plain mean-spirited when it came to my mother.  This was not an easy journey as I went through a dark time of feeling that I was somehow responsible for my mother’s crippling depression which eventually caused her to take her own life when I was 19 years old.  The healing power of faith and prayer is remarkable because it was through faith and prayer that my change of heart happened. Therapy helped me to understand; faith and prayer healed and changed my heart.  

Being open to a change of heart is perhaps one of the most important spiritual practices we will ever encounter.  In the book of the prophet Ezekiel, we are told about how God can change hearts of stone into hearts of flesh:  “And I will give them one heart and put a new spirit within them.  And I will take the heart of stone out of their flesh and give them a heart of flesh.”   Think about your own life and how you have encountered significant moments of change or the softening of your heart.  Those are the spiritual landmarks that have made the difference in your life.  Sometimes we might think that once we become adults that our values and opinions are shaped for life and in some sad cases that actually does happen.  Peoples’ spirits can become rigid by the time they are 30 years old and that is it.  But the spiritual path, when it is walked with honesty and integrity, is one on which we are constantly interacting with God and constantly seeking a more Godly way of seeing and living in the world.  Seeking new ways of understanding the world and God is what keeps us from developing hearts of stone. It is what keeps us spiritually alive.

In today’s gospel reading, we encounter a mother who is willing to break all kinds of social customs to fight for her daughter but we also encounter a Jesus who is as mean-spirited as they come:  “Let the children be fed first, for it is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.”  And as we all know, in this case, Jesus is not taking about actual dogs; he is talking about the woman right in front of him.  How can this be?  Where is the compassionate and loving Jesus?  To understand this encounter, we need a bit of background on this woman.

 The Syrophoenician woman who barged into Jesus’ life had everything going against her.  First of all she was a woman and in Jesus’ day women did not publically interact with men.  The second strike against her was that she was a Gentile and at this point in his ministry Jesus had nothing to do with Gentiles.   Finally, she was from an economic group that had oppressed the Jews. 

At any rate, you get the idea that the appearance of this woman was shocking and disruptive to Jesus.   We in our modern understanding of Jesus would expect him to take this in stride and extend a loving and helping hand to this woman and say: “Of course, I will help you and save your daughter.”   But he doesn’t because of who she was and her background and this story perhaps more than any others is a story in which we encounter Jesus’ humanity.  Jesus’ response is one of the most painful statements we hear from him in all of the gospels.  “Let the children be fed first, for it is no fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.”  Wow – this is about as harsh and unloving as Jesus gets.  The children are the Jews, those whom he has come to save.  The dogs are everyone else, including this Syrophoenician woman.  To put this in a slightly more contemporary context, imagine a former slave owner crashing in on a dinner involving freed slaves.  Imagine the former slave owner insisting that a former slave, who has healing power, heal his child.    Perhaps this helps us to understand why Jesus was so awful to this woman.

But then the most incredible thing happens.  Jesus goes through an entire change of heart.  He lets go of his general negativity about the gentiles and responds to the particular woman who is front of him and who confronts him with his own prejudice:  “Even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs.”  Jesus changes his entire stance and responds by saying:  “Because of what you have said, you may go – the demon has left your daughter.”

Perhaps the most important lesson for us is that of being open to changing how we think.  In my more than 20 years of ministry, I have seen people go through significant changes of heart which is what happens to Jesus in this reading.  I was ordained in the first decade of after the ordination of the famed Philadelphia 11 in 1975, the first group of women in the Episcopal Church who were ordained to the priesthood.   In my more than twenty years in the ministry, I have seen enormous changes with regard to people’s attitudes toward women priests.  From outright hostility to much more subtle means of denying women authority, I have seen and experienced a great deal over the years.  I have also seen people change their hearts and warm up when I never thought they would, to the point where we now have a woman Presiding Bishop. 

There are so many deep prejudices that plague the world in which we live that it is difficult to imagine how it could ever get untangled.   Deeply rooted fear and hatred of the other just seems to be woven into the fabric of humanity.  Whether it is skin color, gender, religious persuasion or sexual orientation, there is enough hatred in this world that I sometimes wonder if God doesn’t spend all of His time weeping at the mess we humans have made of the world which God so lovingly gave to us.  But…things do change though at times it seems excruciatingly slow.  Change happens in many ways: sometimes it happens through war as when the Jews were liberated in WW II, sometimes it happens through protest such as the Civil Rights movement but the most effective and enduring method of change happens when people come to the table and talk. And today’s gospel reading gives us a stunning example of how a change of heart happens when people come together.