Seeing the big picture (Sunday, Aug 27, 2023)

 Matthew 16:13-20

The reading today is a pivotal passage in the Gospel.  Up until now, Jesus has been teaching, healing, feeding and gathering an inclusive community of followers in Galilee.  Opposition has started to form against him, and now the opposition is getting stronger and more organized.

 

In this reading, Jesus asks his closest disciples a point-blank question about how they see him, and what they understand him to be for their lives and the life of the world.  And after this, he leads them step by step closer to Jerusalem, and to his arrest, execution, and resurrection.

 

When Jesus came to the region of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, “Who do people say the Son of Man is?”

 

They replied, “Some say John the Baptist; others say Elijah; and still others, Jeremiah or one of the prophets.”

 

“But what about you?” he asked. “Who do you say I am?”

 

Simon Peter answered, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.”

 

Jesus replied, “Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah, for this was not revealed to you by flesh and blood, but by my Father in heaven. And I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven; whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.” Then he ordered his disciples not to tell anyone that he was the Messiah.

 

From that time on Jesus began to explain to his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things at the hands of the elders, the chief priests and the teachers of the law, and that he must be killed and on the third day be raised to life.

 

Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. “Never, Lord!” he said. “This shall never happen to you!”

 

Jesus turned and said to Peter, “Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to me; you do not have in mind the concerns of God, but merely human concerns.”

 

Reflections (of one of the disciples there that day)

Oh yes, I remember that day well.

 

I can’t think of a more overwhelmingly discouraging and despairing place to be – at least, for anyone who really longs for the kingdom of God to come on Earrth, and for the world to be set right the way it’s supposed to be for the good and well-being of all – than Caesarea Philippi.

 

Caesarea Philippi was a blatant, offensive, overwhelming religious and political shrine to all that was wrong in our time – and wrong maybe in most times of the world.  To put it in terms you might understand, it was like having to bow to a TV-evangelist-turned-low-class-celebrity-turned-techie-guru-turned-millionaire-power-politician-and-all-his-cronies at its worst.

 

At Caesarea Philippi there was an ancient spring coming up from the mouth of a cave in the face of a mountain  – a cave that went so deep into the earth that it was said to be an opening to the underworld of all the dark spirits, and was called “The Gates of Hades.”  At its opening was built a shrine to the god Pan, the orgiastic god of material, physical, and carnal excess.  All around it, in other niches on the rock face of the mountain were shrines built to a whole array – a whole dark army of other gods as well – gods and powers and pathways that people could follow, serve, sacrifice to, and even become addicted to primarily for the sake of personal fulfilment, security and happiness.  And alongside all this – Rome was quite tolerant of any gods there were as long as they keep people privately happy and good citizens of the empire – alongside all this were great, ornate buildings and complexes erected by King Herod, and other members of his family to showcase Rome’s power and wealth, and drive home the point that Rome was the ruler of the world.

 

To people like us – and like you, who care about the kingdom of God coming on Earth, and about Earth finally becoming the place of well-being for all it’s meant to be, Caesarea Philippi was a display of what was wrong about the world and what always stands in the way – religions of personal self-centredness that allowed the injustice and oppression of Rome and other empires like it to survive and thrive instead. 

 

Could there be a more discouraging place to be? 

 

 

And yet – we should have expected it, it was exactly there that Jesus drew us into, and drew out of us the deepest, clearest and most energizing affirmation of faith that we had yet realized.  It was like he almost needed the travesty of that place in front of us, to breathe a whole new life into us.  To raise us up to a clarity of perception and purpose greater and more intoxicating than any we had known so far.

 

He did it by reminding us of our spiritual heritage.  Not OUR heritage.  But the heritage of GOD at work among us, through us, and in us as a people, and community, and tradition. 

 

And reminding us – or maybe opening our eyes more clearly to than before, of his own presence with us, and what on Earth that meant.

 

First – he got us thinking about the Son of Man, with a simple question. “Who do people say the Son of Man is?”

 

Now, the Son of Man is a figure from ancient prophecy in the Book of Daniel.  The Son of Man is a holy figure raised up by God at the end of a particularly evil age, who by God’s Spirit at work in him has power to help people see the truth of the situation, to challenge disorder and injustice, overthrow self-centredness and oppression of others, set things right, and raise up the ways of love for all that are the real kingdom of God.  Jesus’s question in that place was a good reminder that even in the worst of times – maybe especially in the worst of times, God does not abandon the world nor his people in it, but acts through prophets and people who call them to follow the true way. 

 

So, we said, “Some say John the Baptist was one of those figures.”  They see that God – praise be his name – has raised up in our time for us, as God did in previous times for the faithful of old, a Son of man figure.  Then we mentioned how others still hold up and revere  Elijah; and still others, Jeremiah or one of the prophets. 

 

In other words, there’s a whole history of people like that, right up to the present day, who help us see God’s presence and purpose.  And there are also more people than just us few disciples here who are open to this.  There are all kinds of other people who remember those prophets and try to live by what they have shown us of God’s will and God’s way in the world.  Not everyone has bowed down and bent the knee to what Caesarea Philippi showcases.

 

And then, the even bigger, more life-changing, discipleship-affirming question.  “And what about you, then?” he asks. “Who you are, and where you are – who do you say I am?” 

 

How could we not at that moment say without a doubt that for us he was – still is, always will be the messiah of life, Son of God, the One anointed by God as the incarnation of God’s Word, God’s will wholly lived out in human life, the True Human Being showing us and helping us to be what all human being has been meant to be all along.

 

Peter was the one to say – he always is, there’s always one who’s quick with the words.  But we all felt it, and knew it.  And we all felt so … so holy, when Jesus said – through Peter, to all of us, “Blessed are you, for this was not revealed to you by flesh and blood, but by my Father in heaven … “

 

There really was nothing about Jesus that made him the kind of hero human being the world teaches us to aspire to and to follow.  There was not a hint of worldly success, or of power, prestige, possessions, or privilege about him.  He was the opposite of all that.

 

But in the way he lived for the good of others, lifted up the poor and strengthened the weak, healed the broken and comforted the suffering, welcomed the outsider and gave himself for the well-being of others, he really was in himself the kingdom-come.  W         e just knew it deep in our hearts when we saw it … that you, Jesus, show us the way of real life on Earth that’s good for God, good for others, and ultimately good for ourselves as well.  You are the one who makes the world right.

 

 

And that’s when the mind-blowing words came – words that changed us forever.  Looking us straight in the eye, just him and us face to face, a small circle gathered in grateful openness to the presence of the kingdom of God in the very face of Caesarea Philippi, he said, “And as you follow me, you do too.  As you follow me … and do as I show you to do …  and love and care for others as you see me do … and give yourselves – even sacrifice yourself when called upon for the well-being of others, you too make the world right, bring the kingdom of God to be on Earth in ways that the Gates of Hades cannot undo or overcome or resist.”

 

Through Peter (yeah, the Rock!) to all of us he said that with the smallest pebble of faith in God and the kingdom of God within us, we are and we gather and will always gather a community of God’s love for all that not even the powers of death can overcome. 

 

And isn’t that true?  I mean, just look at yourselves the way Jesus looks at you.  I mean this week of all weeks – your Peach Festival week, how can you doubt the commitment you have deep inside you through your communion with Jesus, to give yourselves in whatever way you can for the good of the world, and the good of others around you?  All the different things this week that so many different members and friends have done, and are still doing today, to help make a difference for good and for God in the whole of the community around you.

 

And that’s only one week of the year.  Just think of all the other things you and others do the other 51 weeks of the year as well.  What a building of faith you have here!  What a community of faithfulness to God and to Jesus and to the coming of the kingdom of God whenever and wherever and however you are!

 

 

And yes, (I know you want me to say something about this) there is that bit in the story about Peter (and all of us, really) falling in one fell swoop from building block to stumbling block, and Jesus having to say to Peter (and all of us) in the heat of the moment, “Get thee behind me, Satan!”  We all have those moments when we start to feel how big the challenge is, when we start to worry about survival rather than service, when our own weakness overwhelms us, and we fall short of being really all-in disciples, giving all we can in sacrificial service for the well-being of all.

 

And it’s easy to be discouraged when we get that way.  Feel the wind taken out of our sails,  Wonder if maybe our time of good service is over.  Or if it even ever was.

 

But I want to show you something.  I want to show you the big picture.  Literally a big picture – this painting in an illuminated manuscript of the late 14^th century, a depiction of Christ giving the keys of the kingdom to Peter, by Lorenzo Monaco.

 

 

In vivid colour and beauty, it shows Peter in close communion with Jesus – looking deeply and lovingly at his Saviour and Lord, the messiah of God, and yes … down there in the corner is Satan – a little blue devil painted into the corner of the picture.  So, yes, Satan and the tendency to fall short of perfectly full following of Jesus – and even of going astray from it, is there. 

 

But look where it is.  In the corner.  The bottom corner.  Behind and below Peter’s feet.  

 

 

Yes, it’s a reality to live with.  Part of the big picture.  Always a part of who we are that we have to learn to accept and deal with.  But it’s not its central theme, nor the central and dominating image. 

 

And even with that slip into something less than full discipleship, Jesus never once gave up on us, or said we were no good to him.  We carried on—we with him, and he with us, and we learned from the slip.  Kept growing, and kept going as his disciples, as a people of God, as a community of faith, as servants of the well-being of all in the world.

 

Even with that little blue devil still and always in the picture, the big picture is still about the lasting relationship of adoration and discipleship between Peter (the symbol of all of us) and Jesus; the commitment of one to other; the communion of disciples and master; and the power that comes from this communion to live out God’s love for all, in ways that all the unjust powers and self-centred religions of any age are powerless against.

 

Thanks be to God, for the big picture we all are part of. 

The day that a foreign woman saved Jesus (from Sunday, August 20, 2023)

Reading:  Matthew 15:21-31

Today’s reading is set in a time of increased tension and increasingly open conflict between Jesus and his followers, and the powers of the day – King Herod, the local Pharisees, and the religious and civil authorities in Jerusalem.  When Herod has John the Baptist violently beheaded during a palace party, and suffers no consequences for it from either the authorities above him or the people below him, the forces against Jesus see that it as a good time to step up their opposition to him.

 

Jesus and his disciples retreat for a while to the region across the lake, which leads only to more wondrous acts of the kingdom of God – including the feeding of more than 5,000 people with a few loaves and fishes, and Jesus walking on the water through a storm to be with the disciples on their way back across the lake.

 

Now, back in Herod’s territory, they find that religious leaders from the Temple in Jerusalem have made the trip north, to intensify the attack on Jesus.  They are in a battle with Jesus for the allegiance of the people of Israel, and they start challenging Jesus publicly on matters of faith and spiritual practice, trying to trip him up and undermine his credibility among the people.

 

Jesus answers them well, and actually puts them on the defensive.  But after one encounter, Jesus again withdraws for a while from the battle – this this time retreating even further away, to the land of Tyre and Sidon, more Gentile than Jewish in character.

 

Leaving that place, Jesus withdrew to the region of Tyre and Sidon. A Canaanite woman from that vicinity came to him, crying out, “Lord, Son of David, have mercy on me! My daughter is demon-possessed and suffering terribly.”

 

 

Jesus did not answer a word. So, his disciples came to him and urged him, “Send her away, for she keeps crying out after us.”

 

He answered, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of Israel.”

 

The woman came and knelt before him. “Lord, help me!” she said.

 

He replied, “It is not right to take the children’s bread and toss it to the dogs.”

 

“Yes it is, Lord,” she said. “Even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their master’s table.”

Then Jesus said to her, “Woman, you have great faith! Your request is granted.” And her daughter was healed at that moment.

 

Jesus left there and went along the Sea of Galilee.   Then he went up on a mountainside and sat down. Great crowds came to him, bringing the lame, the blind, the crippled, the mute and many others, and laid them at his feet; and he healed them. The people were amazed when they saw the mute speaking, the crippled made well, the lame walking and the blind seeing.  And they praised the God of Israel.

 

Reflection

 

I don’t remember which intersection – which cross-road, it was.  There are so many now in the city, where sad-looking people with cardboard signs stand quietly waiting for people to share some of their money with them.

 

The light had just turned red, so I was first in line to have to stop.  I was in the far-left lane up against the median divider where one of those persons – maybe a middle-aged man, it’s sometimes hard to tell, quietly squatted with his sign held up in front of him. 

 

I could have ignored him.  He didn’t look up and make eye contact, so it was up to me to decide if I would include him in my world that day or not.  My windows were rolled up to keep in the air-conditioned coolness and keep out the humid early-afternoon swelter, so there was strong disincentive against opening up contact between us.

 

But it was hot out there.  I knew how much I would not want to be sitting in the heat, under the blazing sun, early in the afternoon in the middle of the traffic.

 

So I looked in my wallet.  Pulled out a 5.  Rolled down the window.  When he looked up at the sound and stood to walk over to my opened window, I placed the 5 in the ball cap held out to me.  I said, “It’s hot to be out there.”  I was trying to be sympathetic, but realizing it sounded like I needed to justify my charity.  Without judgement, she said (yes, it turns out it was a middle-aged woman), “Thank you. God bless you,” and then squatted back down on her spot as I rolled my window back up.

 

I felt good and bad, charitable and uncharitable all at the same time.
 

And I know I would not have done that – any of the little I did, if anyone else had been in the car with me.  I would have felt a need to explain.  To justify.  To defend my actions.

 

Because I know all the arguments.  That really most of them are not all that poor.  Or they’re just sponging off society.  his is not the answer to the problem.  One-off charity is ultimately not what either they or I need.  My little act of charity will not accomplish much.  Really, I’m just doing it to make myself feel good, not really because of sympathetic or transformative solidarity and identification with those who are poor and / or homeless.

 

But I was alone in the car that day.  I did not have to fear any fall-out from sharing some of my money with a random person at an intersection on my way through the city I call my home.

 

And I realized how often it is fear – fear of all kinds of things, that keeps us from reaching out in love and care to others beyond, from freely sharing God’s love for all when “the all” that’s in front of us, is someone really other than who we and our family and friends are, or want to be part of.

 

 

The reading today is a strange one.  In it, Jesus is acting very oddly.  He starts out trying to ignore a desperate plea for help from a woman wanting healing for her daughter.  Then, when pressed, he tries to come up with reasons – some of them quite derogatory, for not doing anything to help her.  So uncharacteristic of Jesus.  Not at all like him.

 

And I wonder if at this point in his journey into his mission, he is feeling overwhelmed.  Unsure.  A little afraid.

 

Right from the start – and he’s got used to it, there was tension and conflict between him and others like him, and the religious and civic establishment, the powers of the day.  His concern is to help the people of Israel be reformed, renewed, reborn as people of God in the world.  And with that always comes friction and conflict with people in power and people with power, whose agenda is something other than the well-being of all.

 

But now things have suddenly been ramped up. The other side has upped the ante.

 

King Herod has had John the Baptist – another leading reformer, and Jesus’ cousin, beheaded as part of a palace party, and has suffered no consequences.  Who will be next?  Is it now going to be open season on the reformers and the rabble-rousers?  Suddenly it really has become a life-and-death affair to be living and working towards the kingdom of God.

 

Also, the big guns – some of the religious and civil leaders in Jerusalem, have now come up to Galilee, to ramp up the campaign against Jesus.  They’re starting to engage him in public debate about faith, God and spiritual practice – things the ordinary people care about, and are trying to trip him up.  Make him say things that will discredit him in the eyes of the people.  Undermine his support.  Maybe catch him out in something they can nail him for.

 

So, Jesus retreats.  The second time in just a few days, the way Matthew tells the story.  And this time, further away.  To mostly Gentile territory. 

 

To pray, probably.  To catch his breath?  To get direction from God about what to do now?  And how to do it, now that the landscape has been changed?  To see the next step more clearly?

 

And suddenly from out of the crowd there appears this Syro-Phoenician woman calling out for him to help her by healing her daughter of demons.  A foreigner to the covenant community of Isarel.  An unclean person, who has demons in her household.  And a woman.  Three strikes. 

 

At this point in the way things are going, this woman is a risk for Jesus to be associating with.  She is not the kind of person anyone wanting to be seen and followed as a holy man in Israel should be making part of his circle.  This could really cause him trouble back home.

 

So is Jesus a little overwhelmed at this point?  A little unsure of what to do?  Maybe a little unnerved by what the consequences might be if he reaches out to her?  Is this why his first choice is not to respond?  To try to ignore her, turn a deaf ear to her cries, a blind eye to her troubles?

 

Is he suddenly like Peter when Peter was out of the safety of the boat and walking on the water in the storm?  He started out okay.  Was doing well.  Going well in a good direction, across the waves and through the wind.  Until something made him notice the wind.  How strong it was.  And how much it was against him.  And he started to stumble and sink.

 

Like Peter needed to, Jesus also reaches out for a lifeline to help him get through.  Forced by the woman’s persistence to say something, he says, “Sorry.  I can’t. I’m here for the people of Israel.  They are my mission.”

 

We know the line well.  Sorry, I have to take care of my own; they are God’s calling on me.  I think we need to get our own house in order, before we start reaching out to others.  Why are we sending so much aid to other countries when we can’t feed our own people?  Why are we taking in so many immigrants, and taking care of them, when our own people are suffering?

 

But the woman persists.  She doesn’t accept the limitations on God’s love that Jesus is proposing as a way out of this encounter.  Her desperate need expresses itself in a giant faith that somehow there is some goodness of God, some goodness in the world, some love of God’s people for her and her daughter.

 

To which Jesus says, “But the food for the children is not to be given to the dogs.” 

 

What!!??   

 

I can only think this was a saying common among Jews of Jesus’ day.  That he heard more than once on the lips of others.  And that it comes to his own lips now under the pressure of the situation.

 

But the woman is not deterred in her need and her faith.  “But even the dogs get crumbs that fall from the children’s table.”

 

At which point Jesus stops.  Is stopped in the tracks of his retreat.  And says, “Woman, what faith you have.  What a great faith.  Thank you.  Go home, your daughter is healed.”

 

And, the story says, from that point on, Jesus returned to his mission and his journey into the kingdom of God as it is on Earth.  He began once again to teach wherever he was, heal whoever came to him, and lived towards the renewing and rebirthing of the people of Israel by living out God’s love for all.

 

Is it too much to say that maybe the Syro-Phoenician woman, and the way she would not let Jesus go, and the way the big question of whether or not to reach out to include an unclean foreigner got boiled down to an up-close, personal, face-to-face encounter – whether or not to reach out in inclusive love to this one person in need in front of him, was God’s clear answer to Jesus’ prayer about what to do now, and how to do it?  Is it too much to say that that day, that particular foreign woman in her need, saved Jesus from the temptation to be less than he is, and was called to be?

 

 

We suffer all kinds of fears that hold us back from being what we are, and are called to be and to do.

 

Like if someone had been with me in the car that day, the fear of what the other would say and think of me.  Fear of having to defend a foolish, charitable act.  Fear of having to justify goofy support of lost causes.  Fear of appearing foolish or naïve in the eyes of others when we follow what our deepest hearts impel us to do.

 

Sometimes we’re afraid of our weaknesses, emptiness and powerlessness.  We doubt that anything we say or do, or offer or give will make any real difference.  So we don’t.  We don’t send in a donation.  Don’t reach out to a neighbour who could use a friend.  Don’t volunteer for a few hours a week at the GBF, the good bank, CityKidz or the hospital.  Don’t go to be part of a rally.  Don’t sign a petition.  Don’t include the needs of others and of the world in our daily prayers.  Don’t vote.

 

Sometimes we’re afraid what it might cost.  Like twelve or fifteen years ago when I thought seriously that our congregation was at a point – I don’t remember the circumstances, but I really thought we were at a point when it was maybe time for us to work through the United Church study and discernment program about whether to become an officially Affirming congregation – to be a congregation intentionally open to, and affirming of persons of all sexual orientations and identities.

 

But I was unsure of how it would be received.  I was overwhelmed by how much work would be needed to do it honestly and well.  I was afraid of how it might affect us, and what tensions it might bring to the surface among us – how it would stir up the water. 

 

So I didn’t do it.  I came up with all the usual reasons we give, not to do it.

 

 

The thing that saved Jesus was the face-to-face encounter with the woman in need.  And that she would not go away.  And that she would not let him go away, without getting involved and doing something to help her.

 

Sometimes we think our salvation and the will of God for our lives is in insulating ourselves from the scary, hard, overwhelming, risky things of life.  To create a space of safety, retreat and withdrawal for ourselves.  To let the problems and needs of the day to remain abstract and one step removed.

 

But maybe our salvation – what helps us keep becoming who we really are and are called to be as children of God, followers of Jesus, and part of the body of Christ in the world today, is to let ourselves not be so insulated and withdrawn.  And to let ourselves see, hear, be confronted by, be and let ourselves be called and brought to new life by particular needs of the world around us.

 

If even Jesus had to be saved by an unlikely, unclean, unwanted woman in great need, who are we to think we also don’t need that kind of difficult encounter and God-induced opportunity in our life as well?