Sermon for Sunday 16th August 2020 by Fr Bernard
This Gospel story goes in at least two different directions, as far as I’m concerned, and neither of them is particularly easy: let that count as warning for what follows!
And the first thing to say, for me, is that this is yet another passage I don’t much like – and there seem to have been a worryingly large number of them recently, which may say more about me than Scripture or the Lectionary, of course! Worse, I love the bit from Romans, yet again, but it gets cut off just before the really good bit: verse 33: “O the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways!”
So we have the horrible and disturbing episode of the Syro-Phoenician woman, and not that, which is a poor swap, I think!
And this story has disturbed me ever since I was a Curate on my POTTY training, as it used to be called: Post-ordination training, that you have to do while you are still a Curate. And I remember on one of those days, being the object of horrified shuddering pity from a fellow Curate, because I was disturbed by this episode: and I am very relieved to find that Bishop Michael of Hertford agrees with me! I looked at his sermon for today on the Diocesan website, just because I find this story so challenging, and I found that he entirely agrees with me, which is very re-assuring! Because it seems to me, as though Jesus is basically being racist, here: and I do not say that lightly, or without being aware of the problems that it raises.
My fellow Curate, who would remain horrified with me I fear, Bishop Michael’s support notwithstanding, took the view – as indeed many do – that Jesus is simply testing the woman: and perhaps, testing us as well. In which case I fear I have failed! But of course, it might be true: maybe Jesus is testing her. But even if that is true, He is being racist and rude to her. He is rude and dismissive of her, and He effectively calls her a dog, which is a really terrible insult to make to someone in that day and age. It’s not nice now: it was far worse in a culture that saw dogs as unclean scavengers. It’s a dreadful thing for a Jew to say to a gentile woman. Dreadful, but by no means uncommon.
At which point, my sermon kind of splits into two – or has two tines, I should say: two prongs of the fork. And true to form, I am going to pursue both of them, though not at the same time, you will be glad to hear.
And first, I want to talk very briefly about what one might call “difficult texts”. There was some correspondence in the Church Times about that kind of thing recently: what do you do about the massacre of the Amalekites, or the exterminations of the Book of Joshua, for example? Generally, the lectionary ignores those kinds of thing, and we just skip over them, and pretend they are not there. Particularly on a Sunday, but to some extent during the week as well.
And in doing that, we are doing as a Church what we, in this society, and every other society that has ever been, all do with our histories. We forget and ignore the bits that we don’t like, that don’t reflect well upon us. In this country, for example, we remember the part that we played in combating the slave trade. What we have tended not to remember so clearly, though that is changing at the moment, is the large part we played in creating it in the first place. We remember the good and flattering bits of our history, and skip over the bad bits. And every country, and society and culture does exactly the same.
But the Bible does not. The Bible remains full of stories that cast us and our ancestors in a far from flattering light. Stories that remind us that we are not the chosen by virtue of our skill or grace or faithfulness; that there is no such thing as a consequence-free action. And that even the losers, and the defeated, are God’s children also. That He has a hand in every place and time and people.
The Bible makes us ask hard questions, and does not allow us to forget the cost of victory, or to hide from uncomfortable truths, in the way that we often do in our secular stories. And that is still true, even when those who are telling the stories seem unaware of the costs involved. The Bible never lets us get away with simple, comfortable conclusions.
So in one sense, this particular Gospel story is another example of that: a story that is a stumbling block to our easy pigeonholing of Jesus, and our comfortable assumptions that we know Him absolutely. This story, with its implications and challenges, brings us up short. It challenges us to be honest, and not to slide away from the truth. This is true of our understanding of Jesus: and of course, it is true of our understanding of ourselves, also. Because the truth is, that whether or not Jesus was racist – and we will return to that particular thorny problem in a moment – whether or not He was, we certainly are.
Racism in inherent in all of us: in every human being. Unconsciously, whether we are aware of it or not, all of us have a tendency to assume that people who look and sound like us, are ‘better’ than those who don’t. Better, more trustworthy, more employable, more likely to be right. And this is true of all people, right across the board: all of us have these unconscious assumptions that ‘people like us’ are better.
Now this unconscious default is of course not the same as explicit, deliberate, conscious racism of the sort that says, for example, ‘I hate black people, or Muslims, or Jews’. That kind of deliberate, conscious discrimination and hatred is obviously far worse. But it springs, in the end, from the unconscious prejudices that we all have, simply because we are human, and it is part of our evolutionary inheritance to trust our own tribe or family more than those to whom we are not related.
And so I suppose that the question then is, ‘Did Jesus share this prejudice?’ Was Jesus also guilty of at least this inherited assumption, that people like Him were better than everyone else?
Which brings us back to the tines of my sermon, and the point where it split into two.
Because it is obviously the case that God is not racist. This should not need saying, but I will say it just in case: God makes no discrimination between His children, and has no preference for one nation of culture above another. He loves every single one of us with a deep and profound passion, whatever our colour, creed, gender or culture. And He makes absolutely no discrimination whatsoever.
So how could Jesus? Is He not God incarnate? How could we even think that He might be racist, if we are clear that God is not? The fullness of God dwells in Jesus. Surely it is impossible for Him to be anything other than perfect?
To which I think the answer is, ‘Umm, well, yes: but what do you mean by perfect, in a human context? What does it mean to be perfectly human?’ And here I return once again with enormous gratitude to that wonderful suggestion that I found in the Anglican theologian and priest Austin Farrer, though he may have found it elsewhere, I honestly don’t know (but I found it in him): the suggestion that when we say that Jesus was perfect, we must remember that there is no such thing as a generic human. Jesus was a specific human being, as every human being is, and none of us are interchangeable. Each of us is unique, and meant to be so, and each of us is part of the family and culture into which we were born.
Jesus was not a perfect generic, universal human: there is no such thing. Jesus was a perfect first-century Palestinian Jew.
And that means that, for example, if you had come up to Him and spoken to Him in English, He wouldn’t have understood you. Of course, English didn’t exist then anyway, but you get my point. Jesus did not know about the existence of atoms or quarks, or galaxies beyond those visible to the naked eye. He didn’t have miraculous knowledge that no-one else in His day had: and there would have been people in the world around Him, in China and Rome, and wherever, who knew far more about various things than He did Himself. His algebra wasn’t up to much, for example! (No more is mine!).
Jesus was a perfect person of His place and time, and therefore it is inevitable, I think, that He would have grown up inheriting the common shared unconscious assumptions of His fellow Palestinian Jews about gentiles, and especially about those gentile communities close to Israel, with whom the Jews had always had such fractious relationships, as one usually does with one’s neighbours.
Being a perfect human does not mean being one who is somehow miraculously preserved from those elements of your inherited culture that are suspect, while still learning all the other bits that go to make you who you are. That’s not how humanity works: we aren’t born finished, any more than we are born fully clothed or fully grown.
Being perfect, for a human, means rather that you are a person who, when challenged, does not automatically become defensive and aggressive or fall back on your old certainties. Being perfect means being a person who is secure enough, mature enough, strong enough, loving enough, to let go of your own pride, of your own status. Being perfect, in a human context, means seeking the truth, wherever it is, and recognising it, whoever has it. Being perfect, in a human context, means being a person who learns; who can be taught, and who teaches themselves and others.
Jesus was the fullness of God and the fullness of humanity. But the fullness of humanity, because it is humanity, needs to be nurtured and to be developed, and to be loved, as any child does. If Mary had abandoned Jesus in the stable, He would have died. He was as vulnerable and tiny, as any other baby. And He cried when He was tired, or hungry, or dirty, just as any other baby does: because that is all they can do, and it is all they know, at that point. But they learn, how quickly they learn! And Jesus never stopped learning. 4
Which of course is quite an irony.
The Pharisees and Sadducees who come to challenge Him do not really see Jesus. They don’t see Him for who He is, and they certainly don’t see God in Him. They are unprepared to see a new thing, especially from one such as Him: they are blinkered – almost literally. And they are entirely unprepared to learn anything new from Him. They will not let themselves be taught or challenged, and they will not let go of any of their old securities, of the things they have been brought up to know.
But Jesus, by contrast – ah well. The Syro-Phoenician woman recognises Him, where the professionally religious have failed to do so. Her need drives her, need and desperation, as is so often the case, in fact. Those who truly see Jesus are often those who have nowhere else to turn. Desperate need makes our barriers and complacencies fall. She sees Him, and she won't let go, won't give up. She lets go of her own pride, because her need is overwhelming.
And Jesus, in turn, also learns. He lets Himself be taught by her: He comes to see who she really is, because He is always looking, always looking for the truth, no matter how much it might cost Him. He lets go of some old, unconscious assumptions; of the need to be right all the time; of the refusal to be taught, especially by a gentile, and a woman.
He already knows, of course - indeed, He has just said – that defilement comes from inside you, not from outside you. And now, by the grace of His Father, He gets to add racism to that list of things that come from inside and defile us. God gives Him this opportunity to learn and teach something new.
Jesus is perfectly human, not because He has inherited the perfection of the eternal Godhead, but because of His total confidence and faith in His Father’s love: that faith allows Him to see and to seek without fear or dissembling, and to let go of everything other than God Himself. Jesus has no need to cling on to self-esteem, or to anything else. He lets go everything to which we might want to hold fast, because He knows that all that matters is God.
And the Syro-Phoenician woman gives something to Jesus, and this in turn is a gift to her from God, and a gift to us from God, as well, that we too might learn, as Jesus did. We see, here, what it means to be a perfect human: to be one who is always learning, always secure, always being renewed, always letting go of whatever holds you back from going where the Spirit leads. As St Paul says of the Father, in the verses were denied today: “O the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways! "For who has known the mind of the Lord, or who has been his counsellor?" "Or who has given a gift to him that he might be repaid?" For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory for ever.
Amen.”
This Gospel story goes in at least two different directions, as far as I’m concerned, and neither of them is particularly easy: let that count as warning for what follows!
And the first thing to say, for me, is that this is yet another passage I don’t much like – and there seem to have been a worryingly large number of them recently, which may say more about me than Scripture or the Lectionary, of course! Worse, I love the bit from Romans, yet again, but it gets cut off just before the really good bit: verse 33: “O the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways!”
So we have the horrible and disturbing episode of the Syro-Phoenician woman, and not that, which is a poor swap, I think!
And this story has disturbed me ever since I was a Curate on my POTTY training, as it used to be called: Post-ordination training, that you have to do while you are still a Curate. And I remember on one of those days, being the object of horrified shuddering pity from a fellow Curate, because I was disturbed by this episode: and I am very relieved to find that Bishop Michael of Hertford agrees with me! I looked at his sermon for today on the Diocesan website, just because I find this story so challenging, and I found that he entirely agrees with me, which is very re-assuring! Because it seems to me, as though Jesus is basically being racist, here: and I do not say that lightly, or without being aware of the problems that it raises.
My fellow Curate, who would remain horrified with me I fear, Bishop Michael’s support notwithstanding, took the view – as indeed many do – that Jesus is simply testing the woman: and perhaps, testing us as well. In which case I fear I have failed! But of course, it might be true: maybe Jesus is testing her. But even if that is true, He is being racist and rude to her. He is rude and dismissive of her, and He effectively calls her a dog, which is a really terrible insult to make to someone in that day and age. It’s not nice now: it was far worse in a culture that saw dogs as unclean scavengers. It’s a dreadful thing for a Jew to say to a gentile woman. Dreadful, but by no means uncommon.
At which point, my sermon kind of splits into two – or has two tines, I should say: two prongs of the fork. And true to form, I am going to pursue both of them, though not at the same time, you will be glad to hear.
And first, I want to talk very briefly about what one might call “difficult texts”. There was some correspondence in the Church Times about that kind of thing recently: what do you do about the massacre of the Amalekites, or the exterminations of the Book of Joshua, for example? Generally, the lectionary ignores those kinds of thing, and we just skip over them, and pretend they are not there. Particularly on a Sunday, but to some extent during the week as well.
And in doing that, we are doing as a Church what we, in this society, and every other society that has ever been, all do with our histories. We forget and ignore the bits that we don’t like, that don’t reflect well upon us. In this country, for example, we remember the part that we played in combating the slave trade. What we have tended not to remember so clearly, though that is changing at the moment, is the large part we played in creating it in the first place. We remember the good and flattering bits of our history, and skip over the bad bits. And every country, and society and culture does exactly the same.
But the Bible does not. The Bible remains full of stories that cast us and our ancestors in a far from flattering light. Stories that remind us that we are not the chosen by virtue of our skill or grace or faithfulness; that there is no such thing as a consequence-free action. And that even the losers, and the defeated, are God’s children also. That He has a hand in every place and time and people.
The Bible makes us ask hard questions, and does not allow us to forget the cost of victory, or to hide from uncomfortable truths, in the way that we often do in our secular stories. And that is still true, even when those who are telling the stories seem unaware of the costs involved. The Bible never lets us get away with simple, comfortable conclusions.
So in one sense, this particular Gospel story is another example of that: a story that is a stumbling block to our easy pigeonholing of Jesus, and our comfortable assumptions that we know Him absolutely. This story, with its implications and challenges, brings us up short. It challenges us to be honest, and not to slide away from the truth. This is true of our understanding of Jesus: and of course, it is true of our understanding of ourselves, also. Because the truth is, that whether or not Jesus was racist – and we will return to that particular thorny problem in a moment – whether or not He was, we certainly are.
Racism in inherent in all of us: in every human being. Unconsciously, whether we are aware of it or not, all of us have a tendency to assume that people who look and sound like us, are ‘better’ than those who don’t. Better, more trustworthy, more employable, more likely to be right. And this is true of all people, right across the board: all of us have these unconscious assumptions that ‘people like us’ are better.
Now this unconscious default is of course not the same as explicit, deliberate, conscious racism of the sort that says, for example, ‘I hate black people, or Muslims, or Jews’. That kind of deliberate, conscious discrimination and hatred is obviously far worse. But it springs, in the end, from the unconscious prejudices that we all have, simply because we are human, and it is part of our evolutionary inheritance to trust our own tribe or family more than those to whom we are not related.
And so I suppose that the question then is, ‘Did Jesus share this prejudice?’ Was Jesus also guilty of at least this inherited assumption, that people like Him were better than everyone else?
Which brings us back to the tines of my sermon, and the point where it split into two.
Because it is obviously the case that God is not racist. This should not need saying, but I will say it just in case: God makes no discrimination between His children, and has no preference for one nation of culture above another. He loves every single one of us with a deep and profound passion, whatever our colour, creed, gender or culture. And He makes absolutely no discrimination whatsoever.
So how could Jesus? Is He not God incarnate? How could we even think that He might be racist, if we are clear that God is not? The fullness of God dwells in Jesus. Surely it is impossible for Him to be anything other than perfect?
To which I think the answer is, ‘Umm, well, yes: but what do you mean by perfect, in a human context? What does it mean to be perfectly human?’ And here I return once again with enormous gratitude to that wonderful suggestion that I found in the Anglican theologian and priest Austin Farrer, though he may have found it elsewhere, I honestly don’t know (but I found it in him): the suggestion that when we say that Jesus was perfect, we must remember that there is no such thing as a generic human. Jesus was a specific human being, as every human being is, and none of us are interchangeable. Each of us is unique, and meant to be so, and each of us is part of the family and culture into which we were born.
Jesus was not a perfect generic, universal human: there is no such thing. Jesus was a perfect first-century Palestinian Jew.
And that means that, for example, if you had come up to Him and spoken to Him in English, He wouldn’t have understood you. Of course, English didn’t exist then anyway, but you get my point. Jesus did not know about the existence of atoms or quarks, or galaxies beyond those visible to the naked eye. He didn’t have miraculous knowledge that no-one else in His day had: and there would have been people in the world around Him, in China and Rome, and wherever, who knew far more about various things than He did Himself. His algebra wasn’t up to much, for example! (No more is mine!).
Jesus was a perfect person of His place and time, and therefore it is inevitable, I think, that He would have grown up inheriting the common shared unconscious assumptions of His fellow Palestinian Jews about gentiles, and especially about those gentile communities close to Israel, with whom the Jews had always had such fractious relationships, as one usually does with one’s neighbours.
Being a perfect human does not mean being one who is somehow miraculously preserved from those elements of your inherited culture that are suspect, while still learning all the other bits that go to make you who you are. That’s not how humanity works: we aren’t born finished, any more than we are born fully clothed or fully grown.
Being perfect, for a human, means rather that you are a person who, when challenged, does not automatically become defensive and aggressive or fall back on your old certainties. Being perfect means being a person who is secure enough, mature enough, strong enough, loving enough, to let go of your own pride, of your own status. Being perfect, in a human context, means seeking the truth, wherever it is, and recognising it, whoever has it. Being perfect, in a human context, means being a person who learns; who can be taught, and who teaches themselves and others.
Jesus was the fullness of God and the fullness of humanity. But the fullness of humanity, because it is humanity, needs to be nurtured and to be developed, and to be loved, as any child does. If Mary had abandoned Jesus in the stable, He would have died. He was as vulnerable and tiny, as any other baby. And He cried when He was tired, or hungry, or dirty, just as any other baby does: because that is all they can do, and it is all they know, at that point. But they learn, how quickly they learn! And Jesus never stopped learning. 4
Which of course is quite an irony.
The Pharisees and Sadducees who come to challenge Him do not really see Jesus. They don’t see Him for who He is, and they certainly don’t see God in Him. They are unprepared to see a new thing, especially from one such as Him: they are blinkered – almost literally. And they are entirely unprepared to learn anything new from Him. They will not let themselves be taught or challenged, and they will not let go of any of their old securities, of the things they have been brought up to know.
But Jesus, by contrast – ah well. The Syro-Phoenician woman recognises Him, where the professionally religious have failed to do so. Her need drives her, need and desperation, as is so often the case, in fact. Those who truly see Jesus are often those who have nowhere else to turn. Desperate need makes our barriers and complacencies fall. She sees Him, and she won't let go, won't give up. She lets go of her own pride, because her need is overwhelming.
And Jesus, in turn, also learns. He lets Himself be taught by her: He comes to see who she really is, because He is always looking, always looking for the truth, no matter how much it might cost Him. He lets go of some old, unconscious assumptions; of the need to be right all the time; of the refusal to be taught, especially by a gentile, and a woman.
He already knows, of course - indeed, He has just said – that defilement comes from inside you, not from outside you. And now, by the grace of His Father, He gets to add racism to that list of things that come from inside and defile us. God gives Him this opportunity to learn and teach something new.
Jesus is perfectly human, not because He has inherited the perfection of the eternal Godhead, but because of His total confidence and faith in His Father’s love: that faith allows Him to see and to seek without fear or dissembling, and to let go of everything other than God Himself. Jesus has no need to cling on to self-esteem, or to anything else. He lets go everything to which we might want to hold fast, because He knows that all that matters is God.
And the Syro-Phoenician woman gives something to Jesus, and this in turn is a gift to her from God, and a gift to us from God, as well, that we too might learn, as Jesus did. We see, here, what it means to be a perfect human: to be one who is always learning, always secure, always being renewed, always letting go of whatever holds you back from going where the Spirit leads. As St Paul says of the Father, in the verses were denied today: “O the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways! "For who has known the mind of the Lord, or who has been his counsellor?" "Or who has given a gift to him that he might be repaid?" For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory for ever.
Amen.”