False Boundaries

Karoline Lewis, an assistant professor of biblical preaching at Luther Seminary in St. Paul, Minnesota, sums up the struggle many have with the gospel text (Matthew15:21-28) this morning (Christian Century, August 12, 2008, Vol. 125, No. 16, p. 18). "The problem with Matthew 25:21-28," she says, "lies in the portrait of Jesus as neither the Jesus we have come to know and love nor, if we are honest, a Jesus we particularly like."

I have personally struggled with this passage many times over the years. My most recent assumptions about it are that Jesus, himself, needed to be educated by the Canaanite woman about the larger possibilities of his ministry. If, in fact, Jesus was truly human, it should not be surprising to us that he may not completely "get" God's fuller plan. If, in fact, Jesus was perfect and understood everything perfectly from the start, it makes me wonder what value there is in calling him human.

But Lewis offers another way to understand what is happening here. She says that, in order to see what is going on, we must hold together both the previous setting, Gennesaret (where Jesus was challenged on issues of purity) and the current setting, the gentile territory of Tyre and Sidon.

In Gennesaret (Matthew 15:1ff.), the "Pharisees and scribes came to Jesus from Jerusalem and said, 'Why do your disciples break the tradition of the elders? For they do not wash their hands before they eat.'"

Jesus responded with a question of his own. The scribes and Pharisees, in order to make it easier for people to support them, allowed people to take the money they would have used to support their parents and give it as an offering to God. This, Jesus said, violates the commandment that we should honor our father and mother.

He concluded with words from Isaiah (29:13). "This people honors me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me; in vain do they worship me, teaching human precepts as doctrines."

He went on to say that it is not what enters the mouth that defiles a person, but it is what comes out of the mouth that defiles. What mattered to Jesus was what is in the heart, whether that be good or evil.

Lewis suggests that it is no accident that Jesus then immediately went into the gentile territory of Tyre and Sidon. The scribes and Pharisees would have suggested that just entering that territory violates purity and brings on defilement.

And as soon as they entered that territory, Jesus and his disciples were dogged by a Canaanite woman, a gentile. She was not at all reluctant to let her presence be known. She started shouting (Matthew 15:22), "Have mercy on me, Son of David; my daughter is tormented by a demon."

Now here is where we may be put off by the response of Jesus to this woman. His response was to ignore her completely. As she persisted in her shouting, his disciples urged him (15:23), "Send her away, for she keeps shouting after us."

His answer, which was apparently said loud enough for the woman to hear, was that he was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. In his Better Life Bible, Dan Sindlinger has Jesus telling the woman that his message and his ministry cannot be understood outside the context of Israel's faith and so it would be a poor use of his time to spend it on gentiles. In The Message, Eugene Peterson has Jesus saying, "I've got my hands full dealing with the lost sheep of Israel."

It certainly makes sense that Jesus would concentrate on the people of Israel. It is perhaps our own awareness of how the gentiles were ultimately included in the redemption Jesus came to offer that causes us concern when he ignores this woman.

Ultimately, however, as unsympathetic a picture of Jesus as this passage seems to draw, it makes a significant point. Jesus said to the woman that it is not fair to take the children's bread and feed it to the dogs. We are inclined to interpret this statement allegorically and to assume that Jesus was using a common slur of the Jews against the gentiles, calling her a dog.

His illustration makes the point in a clear and powerful manner, however. Even persons who deeply love their dogs would never feed their dogs at the expense of their children. It just wouldn't be fair.

But the woman had an answer. She understood about priorities and about the need for Jesus to focus on his primary purpose. But she also knew that even dogs get to eat the crumbs that fall from the table. Surely Jesus could afford a few crumbs for her sake.

Now we have come back to the matter of purity and defilement as a matter of what is in the heart. And what was in this woman's heart - what poured forth from her mouth - was a faith that was greater than that of many of the Jews that Jesus encountered in his ministry.

"Woman," he said (15:28), "great is your faith! Let it be done for you as you wish."

Sometimes I think that the most destructive thing the church ever does is setting up boundaries to define who is in and who is out. In the days of Jesus, one of those primary boundaries for Israel was purity. And the scribes and Pharisees had defined extensive rules by which someone must demonstrate their purity. Anyone who violated those rules was considered unclean and unworthy of God. Some, such as gentiles, were considered unclean just by their non-Jewish identity.

Throughout the ages, God's people have gone about the business of setting up such boundaries. And these boundaries have become so central to the life of the church that the church has been divided against the rest of society and even against itself for countless years and decades and centuries.

We need to understand something about boundaries. Boundaries are not inherently a bad thing. Boundaries can serve a valuable purpose.

I find it an odd thing, for instance, that even though the residents of the town homes in our area all own our own property, the lines - the boundaries - of that property were not marked by the developer. And all of the measurements for our own lot, for example, depend on the starting point of the development, so it would not be a simple or a reasonably priced option for us to have our own property lines identified.

It is difficult not knowing the precise boundaries of your property. When you want to plant something or place an out building, you have to be careful not to violate the property lines of your neighbors without knowing precisely where those property lines are.

Anyone who has ever raised children understands the importance of boundaries. Children are known for their desire to test the boundaries of their lives. Actually, adults do the same thing, though usually in a more subtle and sophisticated manner. Children who are given no boundaries do not flourish, and they typically struggle to become responsible adults.

On the other hand, children do not benefit from arbitrary boundaries. Although the fathers of many daughters often joke about not letting their daughters date until they are 25 years old, we know that such a boundary would be totally inappropriate.

We tell our youngest children not to cross the street without our assistance. As they grow in age and maturity, we teach them not to cross without looking both ways. As they grow older, we increase the number of blocks and the places they are allowed to go by themselves. The boundaries shift with the ability of our children to handle more responsibility for their own choices.

So boundaries are an important part of life. But there are many boundaries that are inappropriate and that are more destructive to life than they are constructive. Over time, as we have matured as individuals and as a society, we have eliminated many of the boundaries that were once imposed upon citizens of our nation.

"We hold these truths to be self-evident," says the Declaration of Independence, "that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness." The problem was that this declaration excluded women and slaves from its noble conclusions.

As we matured as a nation, we recognized, though not without great effort and great pain, that more than just white male landowners were endowed with those certain unalienable rights. And so we changed the boundaries.

The same kind of thing has happened in the church, although the church has a long way to go if it is to eliminate all of the inappropriate boundaries we have imposed. We have imposed those boundaries not only on people outside the church, but even on our fellow Christians. The StillSpeaking initiative in our own United Church of Christ is, in part, an effort just to educate our own members on the inappropriate kinds of boundaries we have imposed on people.

Israel had a strong tendency to believe that only they were God's chosen and that only they could benefit from the fruits of being God's chosen people. Yet there are multiple instances in the Hebrew scriptures that defy that false boundary. We heard one from Isaiah (56:1, 6-8) this morning.

"And the foreigners who join themselves to the Lord, to minister to [the Lord], to love the name of the Lord, and to be [the Lord's] servants, all who keep the sabbath, and do not profane it, and hold fast my covenant - these I will bring to my holy mountain, and make them joyful in my house of prayer; their burnt offerings and their sacrifices will be accepted on my altar; for my house shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples."

We have a strong tendency to do the same as Israel, excluding those who do not look like us, think like us, act like us, or believe like us - as if we have gotten it perfect! If we are all alike, and there is no disagreement and no difference, and all who do disagree are considered the enemy, how will we ever learn in what ways we have gotten it wrong so that we can change and become more faithful servants of God?

I've talked before about New Hope Ministries. There are certain churches in the area - Harmony Grove, for instance - which will not support New Hope because they fear that the staff at New Hope will bear false witness to their clients. We have talked for years at New Hope about how inappropriate a boundary that is.

But then New Hope turns around and requires a very particular statement of faith from its staff in order to be hired. So they draw the same false boundary against others that has been drawn against them!

It is true that we cannot be a church in which just anything goes. It is not possible to be the church without some minimum boundaries that define who we are. But, for the early church, the only boundary, or at least the primary boundary, was the acclamation of faith - Jesus is Lord.

That seemed sufficient until the state got involved. Then there were councils called and creeds written and later there were catechisms written to be sure that no one got the faith wrong and that no one could be part of the church without affirming the correct doctrine.

I can't imagine that God finds all this boundary drawing a worthy activity for those who seek to be God's servants. Jesus never preached a creed or drew such boundaries. Jesus offered a very simple form of faith - Love God and love each other even as we love ourselves. Everything else is optional.

The only boundary God places on us is the boundary of faith. And that is not finally a boundary of proof or of demand or of trial, but it simply suggests that, without faith, we cannot experience the presence and power and redemption of God in our lives.

Faith is not holding the correct doctrine. Faith is not doing the right things. Faith is not a prerequisite to be a member of the church.

Faith is simply responding to God's love and acceptance in kind. Faith is perceiving God's presence in the world and seeking to increase our participation in that presence. Faith is the desire to know and to do whatever it is that makes life good and to make life what God intends and allows it to be.

Let's work at getting beyond all the false boundaries that we try to set up in order to determine who is in and who is out. Then maybe we can truly respond to God in faithfulness and embrace all other people with the same gracious love with which God embraces them and us. And life will be good.

Thanks be to God. Amen.