We cannot defend Christianity or Christians, or even God, with words; only by lives transformed by the Holy Spirit into Christly, self-giving love, can we truly witness to the grace of God made known to the world in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
Festival of St. Bartholomew, Apostle
   texts:  John 1:43-51; Psalm 12

Sisters and brothers in Christ, grace to you, and peace in the name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen

I read a book by an atheist last week.  It was witty, hilarious, really.  Also very profane and vulgar, shocking, even.  I found myself liking and respecting the author from the very beginning, as different from me as he is.  He seems like a good person who loves his wife and children and friends, who tries to live as a good person.

He also makes deeply pointed and painful observations about Christians that are impossible for me to brush away.  There is far too much truth behind them, truth I’ve seen myself.  What surprised me was the growing sense as I read that while I grew to respect and like him, I wondered if he would respect and like me.  From this reading, I think he probably wouldn’t pre-judge me.  He’d give me a chance to be a jerk first.  But there is this truth, that I am a Christian, a person of faith, not something he’s had good experiences with.

It’s strange to realize that our very identity as baptized children of God in Christ could be what drives people away.  Simply because we are who we are.

This isn’t new for us, it’s something many have experienced from society and others, over many things more than just one’s faith.  It’s sometimes even true for me.  I am a white, straight American male from European ancestors.  I have lived a life of privilege, privilege that includes a good education, ample resources, ability to get and keep jobs, and respect of others.  In most of my encounters, these attributes have given me a leg up, an insider’s path.  Not because of anything I did, simply because of who I am, most of which is not of my doing.

There have been places, however, where these attributes have inspired a Nathanael-like comment or thought from others.

Nathanael Bartholomew says of Jesus, “Can anything good come from Nazareth?”

It’s hard to know what he meant, but clearly he had ideas.  In the greater church these days white, straight, European-American males are sometimes treated as if we cannot know or speak truth about issues such as race in the church or society because we are part of the problem.  “Can anything good come from such people?”  I’ve run into that since seminary.  I say this not to complain; how can I complain given my privilege?  I say it as truth: in a diverse church there are places where people like me are not trusted.  That’s certainly fair.

There were likely some of these attributes that might have caused some of you to wonder about me when I came here.  What overrode all was that you called me as your pastor.  From the first day I came you have received me as that, whatever doubts you may or may not have had.  But for this atheist author, adding “pastor” to my attributes is adding more gasoline to the fire.  How many people trust a Christian pastor these days, except people in the pews?  (And there are plenty of them who have come to not trust the clergy, for good reason.)  If there’s any characteristic that might inspire “can anything good come from him,” it might be that I am a pastor.  That which leads you to trust me can lead others to write me off.

So it is with our Christian identity.

Nathanael raises a question we must take seriously.

“Can anything good come from a Christian?”  “A Lutheran?”  “Someone from Mount Olive?”  There is another direction to this, our own prejudices.  Who are the people, what are the places where we’re tempted to say, “Can anything good come from them?”  We need to be aware of those and address those.

However, we first need to ask this today: what does it mean that we bear the label “Christian” in a world where so many Christians have done horrible things?  What does it mean that we sit in privilege and wealth, bearing Christ’s name, and by our very lifestyles and attitudes prove that people shouldn’t trust good to come from us?

The last thing we want to do, the last thing we should do, is spend time saying, “We’re not like those other Christians.”  “We believe something different.”  It’s tempting; I’ve said it myself.  I no longer think we can do that, not with integrity and honesty.

Because in this case, words mean nothing.  If people can’t tell by who we are that we belong to Christ and who Christ truly is, any protestations or proclamations we make have no meaning, no value.

But Jesus’ way of handling Nathanael’s critique might be worth examining.

Jesus answers his prejudice with this: “I admire your honesty.”

The way John tells it, Jesus didn’t hear Nathanael’s dismissal.  Somehow he had a vision of him under the tree, but his opening statement clearly implies he knew something of Nathanael’s attitude, “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?”  Jesus says, “Here’s someone who doesn’t lie.”

Interesting.  Jesus doesn’t try to convince Nathanael he’s wrong about Nazareth.  Jesus simply is himself.  Since he likes honesty, he praises Nathanael for not holding back on his views.

What is impressive is that Jesus lets Nathanael come to know him as he really is, leaving his own actions to be what Nathanael learns to trust and see.  “You will see greater things than these,” he says, and it’s true.  Visions are nothing compared to the grace of God Jesus reveals to Nathanael and the rest of the twelve in the years ahead.

Jesus is our model.  Actions, not words, are the only thing we can bring into the world.

We simply can’t say, “That’s not us.” We must earn respect and trust by how we embody Christ.  As the psalmist said today, lots of people lie about who they are, and the needy go hungry.  In fact, Jesus suggests that we start by acknowledging the honesty and mistrust of people who have good reason to think we’re not worthy of trust.

We’re in the middle of our interview process for our new staff person to lead us in our outreach and ministry in this neighborhood.  We’ve had very good interviews, and I’m hopeful that God is leading us to find the right person God needs here.  But this encounter with Nathanael only underscores that we need to take seriously what we said throughout the visioning process about our presence in the world as the people of God.

What we heard from each other was a real hunger to understand how meeting God in this room each week, worshipping and being blessed by the grace and love of God, connects with our meeting God out in our lives, in the world.  How the life we cherish here of being blessed by God in our worship might become a life we cherish in our daily lives, of also being blessed by God.

We need to realize that whomever we ask to do this job among us, we are telling him or her to help us get to work, to embody Christ.  To help us listen to the movement of the Holy Spirit who would transform us into people whose lives are deeply rooted not just in here, but in our neighborhood, and the neighborhoods we live in.  We’re not hiring someone to do our Christly work for us, but to walk with us and help us into our ministry and mission in this world.  Into becoming people who expect to meet God not just here in Eucharist but in the streets where our Lord Christ has said he will be.

I am convinced the Holy Spirit has led us to this point, to where we discover in new and powerful ways who we can be in this city, what it means to be Christ.  We’ve done much over the years.  Now we are feeling a call to find deeper integration between our worship and our service, deeper awareness of how we are shaped to be Christ.  And to act on that shape, that reality.

This is tremendously exciting.  And it is our answer to our Nathanaels.

We have no right to tell others to trust us.  We only can ask the Spirit to make us trustworthy.

That’s a really good thing.  The death and resurrection of Christ Jesus began the overturning of this world, began God’s new resurrection life poured into believers.  For all the evil spoken by Christians, hateful actions done, countless reasons the world has not to trust us, there have also always been faithful followers of this Lord who lived embodied as Christ in the world, living sacrificial lives of love, quietly offering a witness of the One who has ended the power of death and brought God’s love to the whole world.

This, then, will be our answer: our lives lived as Christ, bearing the love of God in the world. Since Jesus has said he is in our neighbor, we will also find our lives blessed in receiving the love of God from our neighbors as we walk with them.

It would be wise for us to keep our mouths closed for a while.  Those who don’t trust us have legitimate reasons.  Like Nathanael, they’re only being honest.  Let us rather pray that the Holy Spirit so transform us that at least when people meet us, they begin to see the love of God for this world, and we begin to see it in them.  Then God’s healing can truly begin.

In the name of Jesus.  Amen

We cannot defend Christianity or Christians, or even God, with words; only by lives transformed by the Holy Spirit into Christly, self-giving love, can we truly witness to the grace of God made known to the world in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
Festival of St. Bartholomew, Apostle
   texts:  John 1:43-51; Psalm 12

Sisters and brothers in Christ, grace to you, and peace in the name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen

I read a book by an atheist last week.  It was witty, hilarious, really.  Also very profane and vulgar, shocking, even.  I found myself liking and respecting the author from the very beginning, as different from me as he is.  He seems like a good person who loves his wife and children and friends, who tries to live as a good person.

He also makes deeply pointed and painful observations about Christians that are impossible for me to brush away.  There is far too much truth behind them, truth I’ve seen myself.  What surprised me was the growing sense as I read that while I grew to respect and like him, I wondered if he would respect and like me.  From this reading, I think he probably wouldn’t pre-judge me.  He’d give me a chance to be a jerk first.  But there is this truth, that I am a Christian, a person of faith, not something he’s had good experiences with.

It’s strange to realize that our very identity as baptized children of God in Christ could be what drives people away.  Simply because we are who we are.

This isn’t new for us, it’s something many have experienced from society and others, over many things more than just one’s faith.  It’s sometimes even true for me.  I am a white, straight American male from European ancestors.  I have lived a life of privilege, privilege that includes a good education, ample resources, ability to get and keep jobs, and respect of others.  In most of my encounters, these attributes have given me a leg up, an insider’s path.  Not because of anything I did, simply because of who I am, most of which is not of my doing.

There have been places, however, where these attributes have inspired a Nathanael-like comment or thought from others.

Nathanael Bartholomew says of Jesus, “Can anything good come from Nazareth?”

It’s hard to know what he meant, but clearly he had ideas.  In the greater church these days white, straight, European-American males are sometimes treated as if we cannot know or speak truth about issues such as race in the church or society because we are part of the problem.  “Can anything good come from such people?”  I’ve run into that since seminary.  I say this not to complain; how can I complain given my privilege?  I say it as truth: in a diverse church there are places where people like me are not trusted.  That’s certainly fair.

There were likely some of these attributes that might have caused some of you to wonder about me when I came here.  What overrode all was that you called me as your pastor.  From the first day I came you have received me as that, whatever doubts you may or may not have had.  But for this atheist author, adding “pastor” to my attributes is adding more gasoline to the fire.  How many people trust a Christian pastor these days, except people in the pews?  (And there are plenty of them who have come to not trust the clergy, for good reason.)  If there’s any characteristic that might inspire “can anything good come from him,” it might be that I am a pastor.  That which leads you to trust me can lead others to write me off.

So it is with our Christian identity.

Nathanael raises a question we must take seriously.

“Can anything good come from a Christian?”  “A Lutheran?”  “Someone from Mount Olive?”  There is another direction to this, our own prejudices.  Who are the people, what are the places where we’re tempted to say, “Can anything good come from them?”  We need to be aware of those and address those.

However, we first need to ask this today: what does it mean that we bear the label “Christian” in a world where so many Christians have done horrible things?  What does it mean that we sit in privilege and wealth, bearing Christ’s name, and by our very lifestyles and attitudes prove that people shouldn’t trust good to come from us?

The last thing we want to do, the last thing we should do, is spend time saying, “We’re not like those other Christians.”  “We believe something different.”  It’s tempting; I’ve said it myself.  I no longer think we can do that, not with integrity and honesty.

Because in this case, words mean nothing.  If people can’t tell by who we are that we belong to Christ and who Christ truly is, any protestations or proclamations we make have no meaning, no value.

But Jesus’ way of handling Nathanael’s critique might be worth examining.

Jesus answers his prejudice with this: “I admire your honesty.”

The way John tells it, Jesus didn’t hear Nathanael’s dismissal.  Somehow he had a vision of him under the tree, but his opening statement clearly implies he knew something of Nathanael’s attitude, “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?”  Jesus says, “Here’s someone who doesn’t lie.”

Interesting.  Jesus doesn’t try to convince Nathanael he’s wrong about Nazareth.  Jesus simply is himself.  Since he likes honesty, he praises Nathanael for not holding back on his views.

What is impressive is that Jesus lets Nathanael come to know him as he really is, leaving his own actions to be what Nathanael learns to trust and see.  “You will see greater things than these,” he says, and it’s true.  Visions are nothing compared to the grace of God Jesus reveals to Nathanael and the rest of the twelve in the years ahead.

Jesus is our model.  Actions, not words, are the only thing we can bring into the world.

We simply can’t say, “That’s not us.” We must earn respect and trust by how we embody Christ.  As the psalmist said today, lots of people lie about who they are, and the needy go hungry.  In fact, Jesus suggests that we start by acknowledging the honesty and mistrust of people who have good reason to think we’re not worthy of trust.

We’re in the middle of our interview process for our new staff person to lead us in our outreach and ministry in this neighborhood.  We’ve had very good interviews, and I’m hopeful that God is leading us to find the right person God needs here.  But this encounter with Nathanael only underscores that we need to take seriously what we said throughout the visioning process about our presence in the world as the people of God.

What we heard from each other was a real hunger to understand how meeting God in this room each week, worshipping and being blessed by the grace and love of God, connects with our meeting God out in our lives, in the world.  How the life we cherish here of being blessed by God in our worship might become a life we cherish in our daily lives, of also being blessed by God.

We need to realize that whomever we ask to do this job among us, we are telling him or her to help us get to work, to embody Christ.  To help us listen to the movement of the Holy Spirit who would transform us into people whose lives are deeply rooted not just in here, but in our neighborhood, and the neighborhoods we live in.  We’re not hiring someone to do our Christly work for us, but to walk with us and help us into our ministry and mission in this world.  Into becoming people who expect to meet God not just here in Eucharist but in the streets where our Lord Christ has said he will be.

I am convinced the Holy Spirit has led us to this point, to where we discover in new and powerful ways who we can be in this city, what it means to be Christ.  We’ve done much over the years.  Now we are feeling a call to find deeper integration between our worship and our service, deeper awareness of how we are shaped to be Christ.  And to act on that shape, that reality.

This is tremendously exciting.  And it is our answer to our Nathanaels.

We have no right to tell others to trust us.  We only can ask the Spirit to make us trustworthy.

That’s a really good thing.  The death and resurrection of Christ Jesus began the overturning of this world, began God’s new resurrection life poured into believers.  For all the evil spoken by Christians, hateful actions done, countless reasons the world has not to trust us, there have also always been faithful followers of this Lord who lived embodied as Christ in the world, living sacrificial lives of love, quietly offering a witness of the One who has ended the power of death and brought God’s love to the whole world.

This, then, will be our answer: our lives lived as Christ, bearing the love of God in the world. Since Jesus has said he is in our neighbor, we will also find our lives blessed in receiving the love of God from our neighbors as we walk with them.

It would be wise for us to keep our mouths closed for a while.  Those who don’t trust us have legitimate reasons.  Like Nathanael, they’re only being honest.  Let us rather pray that the Holy Spirit so transform us that at least when people meet us, they begin to see the love of God for this world, and we begin to see it in them.  Then God’s healing can truly begin.

In the name of Jesus.  Amen

Even in the most difficult times and unexpected places, Christ’s mercy is enough for us all.

Vicar Emily Beckering
Tenth Sunday after Pentecost, Lectionary 18 A     
   Text: Matthew 15:10-28 

In the name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.

After hearing that gospel, we may be left wondering where in that there was good news. It can be shocking to hear Jesus speak this way. Can this really be our Lord who seemingly so reluctantly offers his compassion to this woman who only asks for her daughter to be healed?

We are not the only ones to have been shocked by Jesus’ behavior or his teachings. The disciples, the Pharisees, or anyone else in that crowd would have been equally as surprised to watch this interaction between Jesus and the Canaanite woman.  Racial stereotypes and mutual disdain characterized the relations between Jews and Gentiles, and “dog” was a familiar derogatory term. Whereas it would have made perfect sense to the crowds for Jesus to say that he was only sent to the Jews, and that it wasn’t fair to give this woman what God had promised to Israel, the crowds would not have expected Jesus to engage the woman or to praise her faith. By the end of this encounter, however, Jesus turns expectations on their head.

In today’s gospel, Jesus challenges the Pharisees’ and the disciples’ notions of who God is for them and for all people. Today, our Lord Jesus does the same for us. He meets us in this gospel in order to challenge our beliefs and to quiet our fears about the limits of God’s mercy. God’s mercy is wide enough, God’s love broad enough, for us and for all.

We cannot separate this story from the rest of Matthew’s gospel or from whom Jesus has revealed himself to be on the cross. 

Mercy is central to the gospel of Matthew and core to Jesus’ proclamation and teaching. The same Jesus who speaks so harshly to the Canaanite woman is the One who told a parable of the unforgiving servant who when rebuked, was asked, “Should you not have had mercy on your fellow servant as I had mercy on you?” (Mt. 18:33). This is the Jesus who taught Peter to forgive not seven, but seventy-seven times (Mt. 18:22). This is the Jesus who, when he heard the Pharisees ask why he was eating with tax collectors and sinners replied, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. Go and learn what this means, ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice,’ for I have come to call not the righteous but sinners” (Mt. 9:12-13). And in the end, Jesus gives the commission to baptize people of every nation (Mt. 28:19).

Jesus doesn’t restrict his mercy; he doesn’t reduce people to judgment. Instead, as we have heard throughout this summer, Jesus scatters seeds with abandon, lets the weeds grow with the wheat, gives rain to the righteous and the unrighteous, and catches people of every kind, welcoming them to live in the kingdom of God.

In this encounter with the Canaanite woman, Jesus enacts his parables. He offers mercy rather than demands sacrifice. He illustrates what he just taught the crowd in the first 10 verses of today’s gospel: it is not what goes into the mouth that defiles a person, but what comes out of the mouth—that which comes from the heart—that defiles. The Canaanite woman is the embodiment of this teaching. Where she comes from, what she eats, and her ethnicity ultimately do not matter. What counts is her heart, which Jesus can see. In that heart, she holds an unwavering faith in Jesus’ mercy. She knows who he is, what he is all about, and by persisting until her daughter is healed, she holds him accountable to be who he has revealed himself to be, not only for Israel, but for all people.

The woman is like Moses who reminded God to be faithful to Israel by forgiving, rather than punishing them for the golden calf (Ex. 32:7-14). She is like Abraham who petitioned until God agreed to be merciful to Sodom if 50, then 40, then 30, or only 10 righteous people remained in the city (Gen. 18:16-33). She is prophetic in that her faith reveals that God is a God of mercy. She didn’t have to deny the place of the chosen people in God’s story in order to claim her own. Instead, she honors it and uses it as the basis of her faith. She understands that although mercy starts with Israel, it cannot end there because of the very nature of God. The woman knows that the foundation of Israel’s relationship with God is God’s decision to be merciful, which is what Moses learned when God told him: “I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will show mercy on whom I will show mercy” (Ex. 33:19; Rom. 9:15).

This is who the Triune God has decided to be and how the Trinity has chosen to relate to us—through mercy: by responding to our brokenness with forgiveness, our hatred with love, our rejection with acceptance.  God will be merciful because God is gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.

God will show mercy! We can’t control it, we can’t contain it!

This story exposes the ways in which we behave as if there are some people who are beyond the scope of God’s love, Christ’s forgiveness, or the power of the Holy Spirit. 

We do not harbor animosity for an entire ethnic group; our ways of limiting God’s mercy are much more nuanced than that. It happens when we withhold love and forgiveness, when we judge others as unworthy of representing Christ, or when we assume that there are some people through whom God can’t possibly work.

Who might our Canaanite woman be? The serial rapist? The fundamentalist? The bigot? Through this woman, God confronts us with anyone and everyone whom we have excluded, criticized, or condemned. Everyone who offends us. The people who we don’t have time for because they rub us the wrong way. The people who we refuse to forgive because they have hurt us or those whom we love and they don’t deserve it.

But to withhold our love or forgiveness, to refuse relationship, and to define ourselves against others is to live in opposition to who Christ has called us to be. These old ways of defining ourselves and others are dead. We don’t get to choose who is in and who is out. We don’t get to choose whom we love or whom we forgive. As Paul writes in his second letter to the Corinthians, “For the love of Christ urges us on, because we are convinced that one has died for all; therefore all have died” (2 Cor. 5:14).

Today, Christ offers us a new way to live and his love urges us on. 

We are not to be the church of our own whims and preferences, but rather the church of Jesus Christ. We are to scatter seeds, offer forgiveness, and give grace even when—and perhaps especially when—it doesn’t make sense or it isn’t deserved.

We can’t restrict God’s mercy. We can’t control it. We can’t contain it. But we can cling to it.

We can cling to it just like the Canaanite woman who was convinced that God’s mercy was enough for Israel and for her daughter and herself. Because Christ has died, all have died, and so we trust that God’s mercy is for everyone and that Christ is enough to redeem every situation.

Clinging to Christ’s mercy might mean that when we are tempted to write that person off at the office or the one who lives down the block, as completely ignorant and unworthy of our time, that this time, we make time, and make an effort not only to better understand that individual, but to open ourselves to the possibility that God might have something for us to learn from that person.

Clinging to Christ’s mercy might mean that rather than giving up and cutting ourselves off from that family member who always makes us feel foolish, unappreciated, or like we are less than, that we reach out to that person instead and try once again to build a relationship.

Clinging to Christ’s mercy might mean that when we are confronted with that Christian who, according to our standards, could not be further from the truth or represent our Lord any less accurately, that we trust that God can work in them, too, and that that person is Christ for the world, in ways that we can’t or won’t be.

Trusting in Christ’s mercy means that whenever we feel like holding back, we risk forgiving anyway, making room in our hearts anyway, and giving ourselves a chance to see how God is at work.

But when we fail to do this, as we have and will, Christ’s mercy is for us, too. 

No one is outside God’s love—not even us—broken as we are. Others’ judgments or criticisms of us—no matter how valid—don’t have the last word.

Of this we can be certain: God is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love. We can cling to this when we fear for our loved ones who don’t believe or when we fear for ourselves because we know how far we stray. We can pray with complete confidence, “Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner,” and trust that he will, that we are forgiven, just as he promised.

We can trust that Christ will heal us and keep changing us, making us new, until we do reflect him—the One who gave his life for all and the One who now invites us here to this table, where no one is a dog and there are no crumbs because his mercy is enough for us all.

Amen. 

Even in the most difficult times and unexpected places, Christ’s mercy is enough for us all.

Vicar Emily Beckering
Tenth Sunday after Pentecost, Lectionary 18 A     
   Text: Matthew 15:10-28 

In the name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.

After hearing that gospel, we may be left wondering where in that there was good news. It can be shocking to hear Jesus speak this way. Can this really be our Lord who seemingly so reluctantly offers his compassion to this woman who only asks for her daughter to be healed?

We are not the only ones to have been shocked by Jesus’ behavior or his teachings. The disciples, the Pharisees, or anyone else in that crowd would have been equally as surprised to watch this interaction between Jesus and the Canaanite woman.  Racial stereotypes and mutual disdain characterized the relations between Jews and Gentiles, and “dog” was a familiar derogatory term. Whereas it would have made perfect sense to the crowds for Jesus to say that he was only sent to the Jews, and that it wasn’t fair to give this woman what God had promised to Israel, the crowds would not have expected Jesus to engage the woman or to praise her faith. By the end of this encounter, however, Jesus turns expectations on their head.

In today’s gospel, Jesus challenges the Pharisees’ and the disciples’ notions of who God is for them and for all people. Today, our Lord Jesus does the same for us. He meets us in this gospel in order to challenge our beliefs and to quiet our fears about the limits of God’s mercy. God’s mercy is wide enough, God’s love broad enough, for us and for all.

We cannot separate this story from the rest of Matthew’s gospel or from whom Jesus has revealed himself to be on the cross. 

Mercy is central to the gospel of Matthew and core to Jesus’ proclamation and teaching. The same Jesus who speaks so harshly to the Canaanite woman is the One who told a parable of the unforgiving servant who when rebuked, was asked, “Should you not have had mercy on your fellow servant as I had mercy on you?” (Mt. 18:33). This is the Jesus who taught Peter to forgive not seven, but seventy-seven times (Mt. 18:22). This is the Jesus who, when he heard the Pharisees ask why he was eating with tax collectors and sinners replied, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. Go and learn what this means, ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice,’ for I have come to call not the righteous but sinners” (Mt. 9:12-13). And in the end, Jesus gives the commission to baptize people of every nation (Mt. 28:19).

Jesus doesn’t restrict his mercy; he doesn’t reduce people to judgment. Instead, as we have heard throughout this summer, Jesus scatters seeds with abandon, lets the weeds grow with the wheat, gives rain to the righteous and the unrighteous, and catches people of every kind, welcoming them to live in the kingdom of God.

In this encounter with the Canaanite woman, Jesus enacts his parables. He offers mercy rather than demands sacrifice. He illustrates what he just taught the crowd in the first 10 verses of today’s gospel: it is not what goes into the mouth that defiles a person, but what comes out of the mouth—that which comes from the heart—that defiles. The Canaanite woman is the embodiment of this teaching. Where she comes from, what she eats, and her ethnicity ultimately do not matter. What counts is her heart, which Jesus can see. In that heart, she holds an unwavering faith in Jesus’ mercy. She knows who he is, what he is all about, and by persisting until her daughter is healed, she holds him accountable to be who he has revealed himself to be, not only for Israel, but for all people.

The woman is like Moses who reminded God to be faithful to Israel by forgiving, rather than punishing them for the golden calf (Ex. 32:7-14). She is like Abraham who petitioned until God agreed to be merciful to Sodom if 50, then 40, then 30, or only 10 righteous people remained in the city (Gen. 18:16-33). She is prophetic in that her faith reveals that God is a God of mercy. She didn’t have to deny the place of the chosen people in God’s story in order to claim her own. Instead, she honors it and uses it as the basis of her faith. She understands that although mercy starts with Israel, it cannot end there because of the very nature of God. The woman knows that the foundation of Israel’s relationship with God is God’s decision to be merciful, which is what Moses learned when God told him: “I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will show mercy on whom I will show mercy” (Ex. 33:19; Rom. 9:15).

This is who the Triune God has decided to be and how the Trinity has chosen to relate to us—through mercy: by responding to our brokenness with forgiveness, our hatred with love, our rejection with acceptance.  God will be merciful because God is gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.

God will show mercy! We can’t control it, we can’t contain it!

This story exposes the ways in which we behave as if there are some people who are beyond the scope of God’s love, Christ’s forgiveness, or the power of the Holy Spirit. 

We do not harbor animosity for an entire ethnic group; our ways of limiting God’s mercy are much more nuanced than that. It happens when we withhold love and forgiveness, when we judge others as unworthy of representing Christ, or when we assume that there are some people through whom God can’t possibly work.

Who might our Canaanite woman be? The serial rapist? The fundamentalist? The bigot? Through this woman, God confronts us with anyone and everyone whom we have excluded, criticized, or condemned. Everyone who offends us. The people who we don’t have time for because they rub us the wrong way. The people who we refuse to forgive because they have hurt us or those whom we love and they don’t deserve it.

But to withhold our love or forgiveness, to refuse relationship, and to define ourselves against others is to live in opposition to who Christ has called us to be. These old ways of defining ourselves and others are dead. We don’t get to choose who is in and who is out. We don’t get to choose whom we love or whom we forgive. As Paul writes in his second letter to the Corinthians, “For the love of Christ urges us on, because we are convinced that one has died for all; therefore all have died” (2 Cor. 5:14).

Today, Christ offers us a new way to live and his love urges us on. 

We are not to be the church of our own whims and preferences, but rather the church of Jesus Christ. We are to scatter seeds, offer forgiveness, and give grace even when—and perhaps especially when—it doesn’t make sense or it isn’t deserved.

We can’t restrict God’s mercy. We can’t control it. We can’t contain it. But we can cling to it.

We can cling to it just like the Canaanite woman who was convinced that God’s mercy was enough for Israel and for her daughter and herself. Because Christ has died, all have died, and so we trust that God’s mercy is for everyone and that Christ is enough to redeem every situation.

Clinging to Christ’s mercy might mean that when we are tempted to write that person off at the office or the one who lives down the block, as completely ignorant and unworthy of our time, that this time, we make time, and make an effort not only to better understand that individual, but to open ourselves to the possibility that God might have something for us to learn from that person.

Clinging to Christ’s mercy might mean that rather than giving up and cutting ourselves off from that family member who always makes us feel foolish, unappreciated, or like we are less than, that we reach out to that person instead and try once again to build a relationship.

Clinging to Christ’s mercy might mean that when we are confronted with that Christian who, according to our standards, could not be further from the truth or represent our Lord any less accurately, that we trust that God can work in them, too, and that that person is Christ for the world, in ways that we can’t or won’t be.

Trusting in Christ’s mercy means that whenever we feel like holding back, we risk forgiving anyway, making room in our hearts anyway, and giving ourselves a chance to see how God is at work.

But when we fail to do this, as we have and will, Christ’s mercy is for us, too. 

No one is outside God’s love—not even us—broken as we are. Others’ judgments or criticisms of us—no matter how valid—don’t have the last word.

Of this we can be certain: God is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love. We can cling to this when we fear for our loved ones who don’t believe or when we fear for ourselves because we know how far we stray. We can pray with complete confidence, “Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner,” and trust that he will, that we are forgiven, just as he promised.

We can trust that Christ will heal us and keep changing us, making us new, until we do reflect him—the One who gave his life for all and the One who now invites us here to this table, where no one is a dog and there are no crumbs because his mercy is enough for us all.

Amen. 

We learn from Mary to say “yes” to God’s call, and to joyfully live into that yes with our lives, and we learn from Mary that it is God, not us, whose power transforms and upends the world through us.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
The festival of St. Mary, Mother of Our Lord
   text:  Luke 1:46-55

Sisters and brothers in Christ, grace to you, and peace in the name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen

What might we learn from our sister Mary who walks with us on our journey of faith?

There are saints who live in our lives, model faith to us, teach faith to us, walk beside us in the flesh for part of our own journey, pray for us, love us, and are God’s love to us.  These continue to be our inspiration, our guide even after their path has left ours and we walk on without them.

The great saints of the Church are more remote to us, they can’t compete with such closeness, such life as those blessed ones we knew.  But the Church has lived for 2,000 years knowing that all the blessed saints continue to be our fellow travelers on our journey.  The crowd of witnesses surrounds us, walks with us: those near to our lives and those, like Mary, further away.  In the mystery of the Body of Christ, we know they celebrate Eucharist with us, but we don’t know how.  They are with us.

Like those whom we knew ourselves, these great saints of the Church are as important as teachers, as fellow travelers, as guides.  Not because they were more special than we, but because, like we, they walked the great journey of faith in the Triune God, blessed by the resurrection life of the Son of God, our Lord Christ.  They, like we, stumbled.  They, like we, were faithful.

What, then, might we learn from our sister Mary when we realize she still walks with us on our journey of faith?

Perhaps she can gently remind us that we can also answer “yes.”

God asked something of her, and she agreed.  She didn’t bargain.  She didn’t say, “I’m not qualified.”  Mary simply pointed out the biological difficulty: she was a virgin, so how she could bear a child?

Father Richard Rohr says this:

“[Mary’s] kind of yes does not come easily to us. It always requires that we let down some of our boundaries, and none of us like to do that. Mary somehow is able to calmly, wonderfully trust that Someone Else is in charge. All she asks is one simple clarifying question. Not if but how, and then she trusts the how even though it would seem quite unlikely.” [1]

Whatever we might speculate about why God chose Mary, this openness is the truly remarkable thing about her.  We know the many difficulties she would face with her yes, possible death, almost certain ostracism by her family, her betrothed.  But she said yes.

What might happen if we let Mary teach us such openness and trust?

We are called to bring the Good News of God’s love in Jesus into the world.  To let our lives be turned upside down by the Holy Spirit, changed utterly, that we become bearers of God’s love into the world.  That in our bodies, in our hands, in our voices, in our hearts, God’s incarnate Love might continue to be in the world.

Our sister Mary, walking alongside us, hears our Lord ask us her question: will you do this?  And she gently says, “say yes, without bargain, without argument”.  She says to us that it will be all right, because we can trust that Someone Else is in charge, and all will be well.  In our fear, our selfishness, our anxiety, our reluctance, this fellow companion calmly opens up the possibility that we could also be a part of God’s saving the world.

Perhaps Mary can also encourage us to see that God did bring life to the world through her.

She said “yes,” and God did what Mary was promised.  From the beginning, she knew and sang, in her beautiful song, that it would be “the Mighty One who does great things” for her.  Even in her yes, she claimed that strength: “Here am I, the servant of the Lord.”  She knew she wouldn’t be doing this, God would.

And with God’s gracious strength, we, too, will see God do wondrous things in us.  Our sister Mary’s life alongside us reminds us that even saying “yes” with confidence doesn’t stop the path from being difficult.  Mary’s path certainly wasn’t easy, nor should we expect ours to be.  Once we face the reality of what it might mean to be changed into Christ, our desire can weaken.  There will be times we are tempted to falter and believe God cannot do anything through us.

Mary speaks to us graciously, encouraging us to trust that God is charge, not us.  That this Spirit-changed life is lived in Christ, not in ourselves.  She reminds us that, as she stayed with her Son and Lord, that is where we need to be for our strength and life, to live out our “yes”.  To live the Word, to come to this great Meal of life and forgiveness, to seek out this body of Christ in which we are blessed to live, our fellow travelers in God’s community of love here.

This is how the Triune God will shape us to bear Christ in the world in our own flesh and blood.  To give us power and help to do what we say “yes” to, to forgive and bless us in our failure, that we might start bearing Christ into the world anew.

We rejoice in the mystery that our sister Mary is among those saints who surround us, pray for us, and support us.

The goodness and mercy of the Triune God is almost more than we can comprehend, that we are not left to walk alone, we are surrounded even by those who have passed through death into eternal life.

It is that Triune God whose call to us to be the same to others on their journey, to be Christ-bearers, love-bearers, that our sister encourages us to answer with a “yes”.  May the Holy Spirit likewise give us her courage and grace, for the sake of the world.

In the name of Jesus.  Amen

[1] Fr. Richard Rohr, Daily Meditation for August 3, 2014, https://cac.org/