Church of the Good Shepherd

August 17, 2008
The Fourteenth Sunday after Pentecost (Year A)
Genesis 45:1-15; Psalm 133; Romans 11:1-2a, 29-32; Matthew 15:(10-20) 21-28

The readings for today are all about forgiveness, reconciliation, the mending of relationships, the breaking down of boundaries.  I ask you, in all honesty, isn’t that what we as Christians need to be about always, but especially right now, right here, at this point in time in the life of our parish?

But before I say any more about our lessons, I would like to address “why these readings?”  “Why these particular readings, today?”  It seems so serendipitous, almost contrived.  Maybe we should consider that God had something to do with it.  Would that be too much to expect?  I hope not but let me explain how it is that we are hearing these lessons, so appropriate to our situation on this day, and then – you decide whether God had a hand in it or not. 

Preachers in the Episcopal Church are bound to preach from a Lectionary, prescribed readings – with occasional but rare exceptions.  Since 1979, when the present Prayer Book became the standard for the church, until very recently, we have used a three year cyclical lectionary, which can be found in the back of the Prayer Book.  That lectionary, a revision of one adopted by the Roman Church after the Second Vatican Council, and subsequently refined both through trial use and on the basis of revisions in other Christian churches who also elected to adopt the Roman lectionary, provided for the reading of a substantial amount of the Old Testament and almost all of the New Testament in a three year cycle.  In the ‘80s and ‘90s more revisions by numerous churches culminated in the publishing of the Revised Common Lectionary.  Our National Church at its last General Convention in 2006 directed that the RCL be the “Lectionary of this Church” effective the First Sunday of Advent 2007 – last year! (Article A077) 

The major change between the first, the Prayer Book edition, and the revised lectionary seems to be in the selections from the OT.  They used to hop around, shall I say? a reading from this book this week, and a reading for that one next week, but now the selection often continues on from one week to the next from one book, not reading the whole book necessarily but enough of it to get across a theme or a continuing story, such as we have been hearing with regard Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and now Joseph. 

And one last detail I will mention before leaving this subject is that the readings during the Pentecost season are also date related; it matters not whether it is the Twelfth Sunday after Pentecost as it was in 1999 or the Fourteenth as it is this year.  These are the readings for the Sunday between August 14 and August 20 inclusive in the first year of the cycle, Year A which we began last Advent.  God works in mysterious ways! 

So, back to the continuing saga of Joseph!  I don’t think it needs much deep theological exegesis or interpretation to find a message in today’s segment.  To recap we left Joseph last week sold into slavery and heading to Egypt.  A few years have obviously past and now he is in a position of authority and power in Egypt, Pharaoh’s right hand man, and who should appear on the scene looking for help because of a famine at home but his brothers.  So after he played a few tricks on them – given his family history would you have expected otherwise (I suggest you read Gen. 42-44 if you want to know the specifics) – so after he had tested them and had made them bring their youngest brother down to Egypt, he saw and believed their concern and reluctance to cause further hurt for their father, his father.  He saw a compassion that had not been there before.  And he wept, and then he identified himself, “I am Joseph; I am your brother whom you sold into Egypt.”  They were speechless and afraid, justifiable emotions.  He, however, told them to go and bring their father down to Egypt so that he, Joseph, could provide for them all and they would no longer suffer from the famine. 

It was a terrible thing they had done to him but he forgives, although he does not forget – he reminded them, rather pointedly I would say, “You sold me into Egypt!”  What a terrible thing they did to him but other than playing a few mind games, he takes them into his arms and forgives them and loves them.  And you know, we didn’t even hear if they apologized, or if he even demanded an apology!  In fact he went out of his way to exonerate them by saying, “It was God who sent me here, not you.”  It was just, all is forgiven; let’s move on!  What grace!   Indubitably God was indeed at work at that moment!  

And what a fitting doxology to this event is the first verse of the psalm: “Oh, how good and pleasant it is when brethren – may I say rather “brothers and sisters?” – live together in unity!”  Now, unity does not necessarily mean harmony.  Joseph and his brothers and their wives and Jacob, their father, and their households were a family; we here at Good Shepherd are a family.  Families have differences of opinion, families sometimes do nasty things to each other but they have a common bond, in our case a love of Jesus and a belief in his love for us.

In a sense Paul also struggled with family issues, his family, the Israelites, and the Gentile family.  But he believed that God was working through their differences in such a way that they would complement each other and be one family.  His arguments bear witness to the importance of wrestling with the great entanglements of belief and experience.  Part of being family is working through our differences with each other with the ultimate goal of reconciliation.  Part of being faithful to God is being willing to struggle and to work through that which confounds us.

This is exactly what Jesus did when he met the Canaanite woman.  He had left a safe place, if you can call being among his own people safe, and he had crossed into Gentile territory.  There he is confronted by this woman pleading for help for her daughter.  A woman, a Gentile, and in this case the latter circumstance is the bigger problem for him.  So he ignored her.  That’s one approach, and it sometimes works, to ignore the problem and hope it goes away.  But even if it does, more often than not it will resurface one way or another, in one form or another, at some time or another. 

That reminds me of what Gale was addressing last week, the divisions that have occurred here at Good Shepherd over the fifty years of our existence.  The issues, the war in Vietnam, the ordaining of homosexuals, the liturgical and music styles exemplified in the traditional Service and the Folk Mass, were each in their own way resolved but not without conflict, anger, bad feelings, and I think sad feelings also, and not without people leaving.  But I think what has never been addressed and resolved is the issue of “Conflict” itself.  Why can we not have differences and agree to differ and carry on with our main mission as Christians, to love and to serve, ourselves as well as the wider community? 

And isn’t that really what Jesus did in this confrontation with the Canaanite woman?  Ignoring her didn’t work; he was forced to address her and her problem.  So he fixed her problem, that is, he healed her daughter, and he did so unconditionally, no strings attached.  He did not demand that she become a Jew or follow him or even explain herself to him.  You know, “Who told you about me?”  “Why did you think I could help you?”  No, he just praised her faith and went on his way and she hers.   

Now, of course, since the Anglican Communion can’t seem to find a way – yet – to behave in the way in which it has been accustomed, the way that has been its foundation, that is, find and follow a Middle Way!  Unity if not harmony.  Why should we?   Because Jesus calls us to!  Simple as that.  Jesus calls us to love one another, to forgive – we pray every Sunday, and I hope at other times too, “Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us.”  Note: that is a two way street.  We are asking God to forgive us as we forgive others.  That’s quite a responsibility when you think about it.  And who are we to judge those sins against us?

Jesus calls us to be reconciled with each other just as he and the Canaanite woman were reconciled in their recognition of each other’s gifts, her faith and his healing power. 

Jesus calls us to mend relationships, to forget who we are as individuals but rather to seek what we might become if we just look to him as did the Canaanite woman who cried out, “Lord, help me!”.  Jesus calls us to break down the boundaries, the barriers that limit our vision of his kingdom, to share his bread, whether we are at the table or under the table!

God gave us his only Son to be for us a sacrifice for sin, and also an example of godly life – those are the words of the Collect for today.  May God give us grace to recognize him in the faces of all we meet, “and to work together with mutual forbearance and respect.”(BCP Prayer #28 p.824)  May God give us grace to forgive that we may be forgiven, “to look beyond the box, to follow daily in the blessed steps of his most holy life.”

Amen.

Sonia F. G. Stevenson, M. Div.
Church of the Good Shepherd