11 Pentecost/Proper 15/Ordinary 20 Year A August 20, 2017
Luther Memorial Church Seattle, WA
The Rev. Julie Hutson
Genesis 45: 1-15 + Psalm 133 + Romans 11: 1-2a, 29-32
Matthew 15: 21-28
May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our rock and our redeemer. Amen.
We are shaped by the places, the events, and the people around us. Sociologists have long known this to be true. In these, days, then, it is more urgent than ever that we consider this about ourselves and determine how the places, events, and people of our formative years shaped who we are today. And then we must determine what public witness the Church will bear upon future generations.
I spent my elementary school years in central Illinois, where both sides of my family made their home after being immigrants from Germany. Pekin was a place where the tenderloin sandwiches were legendary. It’s the marigold capitol of the whole world. Senator Everett Dirkson is from Pekin. When I was growing up, the high school mascot was the Chink. Thankfully that was changed, but not until 1980 and to this day alumni groups still push back and use the racial slur as the mascot name.
I knew so many beloved people in Pekin….Mrs. Mayberry, my piano teacher and Mrs. Hobson the kindest kindergarten teacher ever. There was my friend’s mom, Arda, who drove a turquoise thunderbird and smoked and drank Tab and I thought she was really mysterious.
But there were no people of color in Pekin. No one had brown or black skin. And I learned, from the place and the time and the people that people of color were to be feared and mistrusted. I’ve been in recovery every day since.
How is it that we have come to this place as a nation? How has our full humanity, our entire identity, become dependent on the color of our skin? How has the church allowed this to become the marker when the Gospel tells us everyone’s entire worth is in their identity as God’s children?
Make no mistake, what we are experiencing today…made so very evident in Charlottesville last weekend….is not just about people of color. In fact, it’s not about our dark skinned siblings at all. It is about our unwillingness to see Christ in the other and to affirm the cry that has echoed through the history of this nation, from the cotton fields of the south to Civil war battlefields to the marches of the sixties to places like Centralia today…Black. Lives. Matter.
Beloved community…friends in Christ….if it wasn’t the time before, it is absolutely the time now for the Church to say this without hesitation. As Pastor Jeremy McNeill noted, many of those who marched in Charlottesville last weekend, carrying torches and Confederate and Nazi flags and chanting hate filled slogans, returned to their usual church pew on Sunday morning.
The Church is going to have to stand up and loudly denounce this sin. This Church, the Lutheran Church, was born out of protest….we PUT the protest in Protestant. We put the reform in reformation. And yet, we raised up Dylan Roof, who killed those nine beloveds in Charleston as they read Scripture and prayed, simply because they had dark skin. He belongs to us. Somehow, the Church failed to offer enough of a public witness of the love of Christ to him.
And somehow the Church did not offer enough of a public witness to prevent people from marching and chanting racist slogans last weekend.
And so, our cry as the Church joins the cry of the black community: How long, O Lord?
It is so tempting, so easy, to remain silent. But we do not have that option any longer. The only time we should be silent is when the black community is speaking. We yield the floor to them because we’ve had it for long enough. We listen. We learn. And we do not have the luxury to say that this doesn’t have anything to do with us. That we aren’t racist because we “have black friends.” That is such cowardly language.
For the literal love of God, we must begin by confessing and understanding that we sit and speak and act out of our own privilege. And the love of God demands something from us…that we do more than talk a good game.
Our readings today offer two examples of what it means to live in the grace of God. The reading from Genesis is the end of the story of Joseph. Joseph had been sold into slavery and yet, because God’s hand was on him, he went on to lead a nation and eventually forgive his brothers who had sold him. And he doesn’t just forgive them, he provides for them in the midst of a great famine. And he finds a way for them to save face. At the end of the reading, we are told that Joseph kissed all his brothers, and wept upon them; and after that his brothers talked with him.
The healing that is so desperately needed in this nation is going to begin in dialogue. In conversation. In knowing one another. The protests are necessary because we have failed miserably to listen to our dark skinned siblings. We have not heard their struggle. We have not received the story of those who live a reality that is different from ours. And we need to learn from those stories. Just as Jesus did in our Gospel reading today.
Jesus was in the district of Tyre and Sidon, where he had been many times before and where he had often noted that the people did not respond well to his miracles and teaching. And he is confronted by a Canaanite woman, who shouts him down. Because a terrible thing has happened in her family…her daughter is possessed by a demon. And she believes Jesus can help her.
No one else in this story seems that confident….not the disciples who ask Jesus to send her away….not even Jesus himself, who deflects her requests with insulting language that surprises us still. But this Canaanite woman….she persists. She not only identifies Jesus as Lord and son of David…she not only kneels before him …..but she argues her point. Jesus flings an insult and calls her a dog and she reminds him that even dogs deserve the crumbs from their master’s table.
This woman wasn’t even supposed to be talking to Jesus by the regulations of the day. She was an outsider in every possible way…a Canaanite and a woman. But she is the one….she is the one who persistently and courageously insists that Jesus heal what has possessed her daughter.
The Truth of the Gospel does not come from Jesus in this story. Jesus has to be brought there. The Truth of the Gospel doesn’t come from the mouths of Jesus’ followers. The Truth of the Gospel comes from the outsider. From the persistent woman.
Beloved community….it is time for us to persistently carry the love of Christ into the world. It is time for us to listen to those we have pushed aside and oppressed. {We have shut ourselves off into the safety of a place where everyone look alike and we say that what makes us Lutheran is jello salad and lutefisk. And when we do that, we exclude an entire group of God’s people who’ve never had either. No wonder the Lutheran church is so very white.}
It is time for us to lean into what makes us Lutheran, namely that we understand and believe that God’s grace is for all people. red and yellow, black and white they are precious…precious in God’s sight….
When I was eleven we moved to Alabama, where I met and came to know and love dark skinned siblings. I didn’t always love them well, at least not as they deserved. But I keep trying. Recently, one of them, who still lives in Alabama, sent me a Facebook message: You are the only white person I know who respects President Obama. Let that sink in. In her place and time and people….I am the only white person she has encountered who has shown respect to the first black president of this country. But at least I’m one.
That doesn’t make up for every time I’ve been silent. For every time I’ve not pushed back against the divisive rhetoric that is too freely shared. But it’s a start.
Dear Ones, how do we raise up people in a time when only a few lives matter?
What does the church have to say, publicly, today?
What do we have to say?
Amen.