17 August -- XIV Pentecost
In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. AMEN.
I believe that the saying goes -- "Youth is wasted on the young." And then there is the sentiment -- "If I had known then what I know now..." Life is an interesting adventure. For all of us as Christians, what life is all about is living in Christ, coming to a greater understanding of what it means to say that Jesus is Lord of our lives, and coming to understand ourselves as reflections of Jesus.
That certainly sounds like a tall order, doesn’t it? Let me repeat what I just said -- For all of us as Christians, what life is all about is living in Christ, coming to a greater understanding of what it means to say that Jesus is Lord of our lives, and coming to understand ourselves as reflections of Jesus.
This is all done through living life. This is not unique to us, though. Jesus was fully human and fully divine. This is what we believe. And seen through this truth, I think that the story presented to us in the gospel lesson for today may pose an interesting question.
In the lesson that I read just a moment ago, we find that Jesus is in the district of Tyre and Sidon, and is asked by a Canaanite woman to heal her daughter of a demonic possession. Jesus had performed other miracles, and it would seem that His reputation must have proceeded Him -- not only among the Jews, but the Gentiles as well.
Let me speak a minute about the Jewish understanding of the world in the time of Jesus. I spoke about this a few months ago when I talked about St. Paul’s understanding of the world, but let me take a moment to review.
The Jewish people, the chosen people of God, had been set apart by God beginning with His special relationship with Abraham and Sarah. God promised them that they would become the mother and father of a great nation -- and so they did. Their descendents became God’s chosen people.
Throughout the history of the chosen people of God, they would get in trouble if they intermingled with people of other nations. If they married them, and if they began to worship other gods. This would cause God to send prophets to tell them to repent. And, eventually, they would be thrown into exile.
They got tired of this happening, so they decided that they should live by the law and keep to themselves. This is important in understanding the Jewish culture in which Jesus was raised and grew up in and lived in His daily life as a human being. He lived in a world in which there were two kinds of people -- Jews (God’s chosen people) and Gentiles (that is, literally, everyone else who was not a Jew).
Jesus grew up in a culture in which He may have been surrounded with Gentiles such as Romans and Canaanites, but He had been taught to not mingle with them. And so, we have one of these people coming to Jesus to ask for Him to heal her daughter. What is Jesus to do?
This is how I read this story and Jesus’ first reaction to the woman’s request. He says to her, "I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel." and "It is not fair to take the children’s bread and throw it to the dogs." It is only after the woman’s retort, "Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their master’s table." that Jesus heals the woman’s daughter.
The question that I pose is this -- If we believe that Jesus is fully human and fully divine, and that Jesus knew that He was the Messiah, and that He grew up in a culture in which Messiah was defined as the Saviour of God’s chosen people -- then is it possible that -- just as every other human being has to come to understand who they are through living life, perhaps is this the case with Jesus coming to understand what it meant for Him to be the Messiah?
In other words -- Is it possible that Jesus knew He was the Messiah, but had to discover through living His fully human life a more complete understanding of what that meant? Perhaps until this encounter, Jesus believed that He was the Messiah only for the Chosen people of God, and through this encounter He came to understand that He was indeed the Messiah for the entire world -- not just the Jews, but the Gentiles as well.
We know through other stories in the Bible that Jesus healed other people who where not Jews. We see, through the various lists of women who are said to have come to the tomb on Easter morning, that Jesus touched the lives of all different types of people -- rich and poor, Jew and Gentile.
Here is why I think that it is important for us to consider this as a possible understanding of this story. Because Jesus experienced life in the same way in which we experience it. Scripture tells us that He lived as one of us, yet without sin.
Think about it. Are you the same person that you were as a child? Most likely you are not exactly the same and it is because of what you have learned through living life. If you knew what you know now, would you have made all of the same decisions in life? Perhaps not, because through living life we gain a greater understanding to make decisions.
I take comfort in the thought that Jesus may have come to a greater understanding of who He was as Messiah by living His human life and having encounters with people like the woman in today’s gospel lesson. It is comforting to me because I believe that as we live a life in Christ, we come to a greater understanding of what it means to say that Jesus is Lord of our lives, and we come to a greater understanding ourselves as reflections of Jesus.
Let me take a moment to make something clear. The truth is that Jesus was always the Messiah. It was through living His human life that Jesus came to a greater understanding of that truth.
This is the same for us. The truth is that we have been saved by Jesus Christ, and baptized into His life, death, and resurrection. The truth is that Jesus Christ is Lord of our lives. My contention is that as we strive to live our lives in Christ, we come to a greater understanding of what this truth means.
Let us live in the truth as Jesus lived in the truth. And in our living, let us seek to understand the truth. After all, Jesus tells us that, "The truth shall set you free." AMEN.
10 August -- XIII Pentecost
In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. AMEN.
The town of Berlin has recently been remembering the tenth anniversary of the filming of the movie "The Runaway Bride". This morning’s first lesson is from the Book of Jonah. The story of Jonah is one of a reluctant servant of God. We might call him "The Runaway Prophet".
God calls Jonah to go to Nineveh and tell them to repent. And Jonah just doesn’t want to do that. So he tries to run away from God and his calling.
He gets on a boat. And then a great storm comes. In the midst of the panic of those on board the ship, Jonah admits that he is most likely the reason why they are having such a tumultuous journey. So, with Jonah’s suggestion, the people on the boat throw him overboard.
This is when Jonah ends up in the belly of the whale -- or, more correctly, a "big fish". As I have said a past sermons, the modern parenting technique of "time out" was originated by God. During this time out in the belly of the fish, Jonah was given a chance to re-think his reticence to respond to the Lord’s call.
As with many people who are given time to think about their decisions, Jonah decided that he would go to Nineveh and prophesy as the Lord had asked him to. But (Jonah being a bit stubborn) hoped that the people of Nineveh would not respond to his prophesy and would therefore be destroyed by the Lord.
Much to Jonah’s dismay, the people of Nineveh do respond to his prophesy. They do repent and they are spared from the Lord’s wrath. This upsets Jonah, who pouts to the Lord for being merciful to the people of Nineveh.
Jonah goes outside the city and makes a booth for himself to sit in and the Lord brings forth a plant to shade Jonah. But the next day, the Lord appoints a worm to attack the plant. The book of Jonah ends with a very disgruntled prophet sitting in the sun and complaining to the Lord.
What does the story of Jonah tell us? First of all, it tells us that if the Lord has a calling for our lives then that calling will follow us wherever we go. We cannot hide from the Lord.
Have you ever played peek-a-boo with a young child? They think that when they cover their eyes -- because they cannot see you -- that you cannot see them. Sometimes, we think that we can play peek-a-boo with the Lord. No matter how hard we try to ignore Him, He is still there. And with Him comes His desires for our lives.
We also learn from Jonah that during the times in our lives in which we might feel that we have been abandoned -- like being all alone in the belly of a giant fish -- that the Lord has not abandoned us, but is perhaps giving us time to reflect on our relationship with Him.
These "time outs" in our lives are not easy. At times we may think of them as punishments. But, in reality, they are times in which the Lord is allowing us the space to think -- to reflect. During one of those times in my life, I said to a dear friend of mine that the Lord felt so far away. Her response to me was -- "Who moved?"
Another thing that we learn from the story of Jonah is to accept, with gladness, the mercy the Lord has on others. The Lord is much more quick to forgive than we are. I know in my own life that there are times in which I will catch myself returning in my mind to old grudges, which means that I have not fully forgiven.
If there is a person or situation we do not like, we may take secret pleasure in the misfortunes of others. We might even find ourselves pouting like Jonah when the Lord shows mercy to another. We must resist the urge to make a booth and sit and bemoan God’s mercy for another.
Instead, we need to sit in that booth and reflect on how often the Lord has shown us mercy -- times of which we are aware, and (more importantly) times in which we may have received His mercy without awareness.
Finally, there is one last thing that we learn from Jonah. This is not found in the Book of Jonah, but instead in the gospels. Let me read from the gospel according to St. Matthew:
"Then some of the scribes and Pharisees said to (Jesus), "Teacher, we wish to see a sign from you." But he answered them, "An evil and adulterous generation asks for a sign, but no sign will be given to it except the sign of the prophet Jonah. For just as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the sea monster, so for three days and three nights the Son of Man will be in the heart of the earth. The people of Nineveh will rise up at the judgment with this generation and condemn it, because they repented at the proclamation of Jonah, and see, something greater than Jonah is here!"
The final thing that we learn from Jonah is that all things can be used by Jesus to spread His saving gospel to the world. Jonah, "the runaway prophet" who reluctantly chose to fulfil God’s calling for his life, even to his own sadness when he accomplished that calling -- this most reluctant prophet becomes a foreshadowing of Jesus’ decent to the dead and his rising on the third day.
This morning, may we learn from Jonah:
That if the Lord has a calling for our lives then that calling will follow us wherever we go and we cannot hide from the Lord. That during the times in our lives in which we might feel that we have been abandoned -- like being all alone in the belly of a giant fish -- that the Lord has not abandoned us, but is perhaps giving us time to reflect on our relationship with Him.
That we need to accept, with gladness, the mercy the Lord has on others And finally, that all things can be used by Jesus to spread His saving gospel to the world. AMEN.
