Sunday, September 24 - LEVELLING UP
Carolyn Smith
Levelling Up
Thanks everyone - it’s good to see your orange today. We’re getting familiar with
the story of the orange shirt taken away from little Phyllis, in that old residential
school system that horrifies us now. As her story becomes more familiar, we are
experiencing steps of Reconciliation and we can hear differently this week’s tragic
news of 158 children’s graves found on Sto:lo nation residential school in BC. It
helps too, now that we’ve marked the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation
for a few years now, we’re getting familiar with the events and the opportunities
to learn more and more. Reconciliation integrates into our sense of faith in the
WAY of Jesus - not always clear or easy, but we’re on the right path.
It has always been a path - the people who took up with Jesus were called
“followers of the way,” following- moving forward, finding the path... we’re not called
“Those who have arrived, and figured it all out.” Last week Peter - the top disciple,
the rock of the church, was flailing about in the waves of life. We hold each other
and ourselves to such high standards of having life all figured out, but our Jesus-
stories are filled with smart folks struggling and getting it wrong and trying again.
That should be reassuring! Except today, it was Jesus who hit a wall - Jesus who
had to reconcile what he KNEW with what he was experiencing. If you’re waiting
for me to reassure you and say actually he was just fine, just kidding around, no- I
can’t do it. His initial comments to this woman are as divisive as they sound, and
it’s a turning point, Jesus himself, & his own sense of right and wrong stumbles face
to face in the challenge of a stranger and we need him to figure out - is the WAY of
Love big enough for her, or not? And If not, then what?
This story of the Canaanite Woman gets told with a few differences in Mark &
Matthew & Luke - -likely a sign that it happened at least kind of like this, recorded
by the people around. It came after a time where Jesus’ message had been
spreading - and story after story show a Way of compassion, forgiveness and
trying again, of abundance and right relations. Then last week, we discovered for
all the nice words and high ideals he’d preached, that it’s strong enough to handle
the even storms of life. Each challenge, each test of his message showed the Way
forward more clearly. He’s been working all the angles, and his people are calling
him Teacher, Lord, Master. Aha! There’s some confidence and relief in trusting that.
But in our story today, this encounter with a mother from ‘the other side’ shakes
him. We could be generous and guess that maybe he was tired - but he & his
disciples judge right away that she is Canaanite - a woman of the age-old enemy
side, and he refuses to answer her.
In her desperation - - the translation from Greek describes her sorrowful cry -
she has nothing to lose and begs again for mercy. And the best reason he comes
up with for shutting her down...
I was only sent to the chosen ones... my people...US.
Where he has preached, taught and torn down Barriers — suddenly he runs
headlong into the Wall. I was only sent to my people. ....
She begs again, Help me! and his biting response:
It’s not right to take the children’s food and feed it to the dogs...
Folks - he was from a small fishing village. He was from an ancient and resilient
group of faithful people called the Israelites in an area where there were lots of
other ancient groups including Canaanites, and the Greek Empire was spreading,
where people from Africa and Persia and Asia were mingling... and then you & I
know there was a whole wide world around - turtle island, and southern
hemisphere and more... .
He says: I was Only sent to the chosen ones:
That’s quite a wall around the power and the love and the abundance of a loving,
creating almighty God.
Sense the resounding silence of the next bitter moment where she chose to risk
shame, and dared to challenge this man, this ‘enemy, ‘ this teacher Jesus.
“Yes it is, Lord. Even the pets eat the crumbs that fall from their master’s table.”
Power and love and abundance of Spirit picked up as crumbs by those who can
see it’s value. Maybe that’s when Jesus realized just how powerful his message
really was... breaking through even the last barriers between enemies - how
compassionate and abundant - Of course something so powerful will find the
cracks and seep through, breaking up our tidy walls.
And that happens most when you’ve looked someone in the eyes, heard their
story, felt the emotions in them and had your certainty shaken.
How does that feel for you? When you’ve appreciated a sense of order and
confidence - and the way things are, and it’s suddenly challenged? This might have
been a job change or new boss, It could have been an illness or breakup - how
do we reconcile with new challenges that destabilize us?
Together, we the church, we Canadians face Truth and (literally) Reconciliation
that requires a reckoning with our faith & culture. **added comments about
vandalism and the uprising of hate right now against so much, including 2S & LGBTQIA
folks. How we have to reckon with facing this in a darker time, easier when it is fun and
rainbows, but this is new important territory. On other issues, we see policies one
after the other developed, challenged, thrown out, reworked...
It’s the messy and sometimes really hard way of a democratic world. And thank
goodness we have democracy!
And in our church, and other churches, change has been brewing too....
It’s often unnerving, necessarily so.
Life is hard enough without always being destabilized! We try really hard to feel
like we’ve got our head above water! And you get it right in lots of ways a lot of
the time, looking after each other, cutting each other some slack for hard days.
This longing for calm & familiar is not selfish - it’s actually a hope and a prayer
that we’ve got it right and everything will just get better and better. So the
calling - the trick - is remembering that we’re human, we’re wired to evolve and
grow. We’re created to be shaken out of rigidity by hope for something better.
How does it feel - emotion wise, in your body and mind... Unnerving... defensive
maybe? Indignation? I like it way better when I can keep things stable and
friendly, safe calm water, right, but I said that last week. And in truth, feeling
defensive can make me small and bitter: I don’t like that more than I am afraid of
change. And so I’ve learned that any sense of stability I’ve ever earned came from
the challenges before, especially in rising to the challenge - and then integrating
what I learn to a sense of accomplishment, relief and progress. We are pretty
clumsy about it most times but we can learn to do it better. We’re neurologically
designed for connection and created to grow and evolve towards reconciling to
one another.
The Way of Jesus in this encounter was either small and bitter, or he had reconcile
this woman’s faith in the power of God. He could hear it and see it in her. Jesus
in that moment faced all his feelings and paused -
- Catch your breath for a moment and sense the indignation or unnerving sense
of being challenged - I’m sure a situation has already been on your mind - , the
alarm bells go off, the shoulders rise...good- that’s a built-in indication to be
wary...
- - Now, pause - take a breath. Feel your self in your seat, in your space and
breath. Maybe you retreat to familiar patterns of breathing, old favourite
mantras or prayers - Hallowed be your name. On earth as in heaven - Yeah
though I walk through the valley... You’ve learned what can work, you are created
for finding the right way forward... in this calmer space, the spirit was waiting,
and we’re on hallowed ground.
Jesus paused, and heard her cry and saw the courageous faith in her eyes... at that
moment he knew without a doubt that the Way of Love, the arc of the universe
was big enough for her too. Nothing would ever be beyond the reach and
reconciling power of the Spirit.
We’re kind of clumsy about faith and the challenges of life together, except here
we are, hoping for something today that levels us up, and maybe even the world.
It isn’t always like we guessed it would be, or as we would have planned but isn’t
that just how it is? The Way of the Spirit of love seeps through the Walls, it
reconciles us eye to eye with one another and even to ourselves. This way of
the Spirit lives in the murky space between cultures, faiths, and a diversity of life
experiences; and it still finds a way to flourish all this time. It changed Jesus. It is
big enough even for that.
Thanks be to God.
Amen.