August 17, 2014:  May God’s words alone be spoken, may God’s words alone be heard.  Amen.
“Oh, how good and pleasant it is, when [we] live together in unity!
This verse from today’s Psalm, links our scripture readings beautifully, I think (well with a change to inclusive language anyway):
“Oh, how good and pleasant it is, when [we] live together in unity!
I can imagine that it would be, can’t you?  But we have so far to go in this world of haves and have nots, opportunities and obstacles, joy and pain to sing this Psalm from experience, don’t we?  And so often our own faith communities are the places of the deepest discord.
I want to tell you about a woman I met a few summers ago while on retreat at the Stella Maris Convent in Long Branch.  At dinner, she sat down at my table, and we started to talk about who we were, and why we were there.  After she learned I was a Candidate for Holy Orders, she leaned over and told me as quietly as she could that she was a priest – a Roman Catholic priest. No, the vatican hasn’t had a liberal awakening on the ordination of women – she is one of a growing movement of women around the world answering the call of God to ordained ministry defiant in the face of the church’s teaching.  In fact, one group, Roman Catholic Women Priests have ordained 120 women as priests and 10 as bishops in the last few years” to the annoyance of the Vatican that regards the ceremonies as illicit and invalid. I am sure many in the Episcopal church remember similar times in our not so distant past.  In fact, we just celebrated on July 29th, the 40th anniversary of the Philly 11 – the brave women (and men who ordained them) that stood for truth and justice over church law and unity.  Around the same time of that retreat, the Rev. Roy Bourgeois was kicked out of his Maryknoll order, and faced charges from the Roman Catholic church for participating and supporting the ordinations of these Roman Catholic women.  For his part, he was quoted as saying, “They want two words: I recant, and they can’t get that out of me.  For me, the real scandal is the message we are sending to women: you’re not equal, you cannot be priests, you’re not worthy.”
I later got to attend a service run by another Roman Catholic woman priest, the Rev. Mary Ann Schoettly, a member of the Roman Catholic Women Priests.  I found out about her, because, following my ordination, one of my neighbors told me that she and her family left their Roman Catholic church to attend hers.   They were so moved by seeing a woman ordained in the church, they wanted to be a part of that type of faith community.  I later had lunch with Mother Mary Ann, who just happened to live in Fredon, my hometown.  I mean, here was this amazing individual, a woman of deep faith willing to step boldly forward to claim her call, living just a few miles from me, and I didn’t even know it.  I got to know her and her journey, and I was saddened to have learned just a few weeks ago of her sudden death from a rare and devastating disease.
But, back to the retreat and the woman priest I met there, Gabriella.  As we left dinner, and went to sit in the chapel for introductions, my heart ached as she stayed in the closet about her ordained priesthood in this room of mostly Catholics.  Later in the week, I had been out and was returning to the convent.  It was early evening, and when I pulled in, there was Gabriella and two other Catholic retreatants in the parking lot talking.  As I walked over, one of them said, in her deep Irish accent, “Oh, we were just talkin’ about ya.”  This trio of women were talking about Gabriella, her ordination, my future ordination, and the role of women in the church.  It was a small revolution brewing in that convent parking lot.  This defiant little band was filled with such a strong faith, and their Spirit filled calls for justice left me with great hope for the Roman Catholic church, because, as we see in the Gospel today – NEVER, never get in the way of a woman of great faith with a cause!
In our Gospel passage, it strikes me from the start that the woman isn’t even given a name!  Like so many women in the bible, she is without that most basic form of identification – she is “the Canaanite woman.”  Why is it that they can name all the apostles, the entire genealogy of nations, but they can’t give this woman a name, not here, or in the Mark version of the story, where she is known simply as the Syro-Phonecian woman.  Well, let’s give her one.  Let’s call her…Phonecia.
Phonecia comes to Jesus and his disciples shouting (I can imagine her waving her arms, and crying out as she came running toward them).  She was pleading for mercy, not for herself mind you, but for her daughter.  To the disciples she was a bit of a pest, and they wanted her sent away.  Jesus, well… we expect him to grant mercy, do a miracle, and be on his way, but that is not what we get in this story.  Jesus, our Christ, not only initially refuses to help, but insults her people in the process, calling them dogs.  He tells her that his food, his grace, is for the children of Israel – outsiders are not welcome at the table.
Not welcome at the table.  Canaanites need not enter –  Israelite seating only.   Really?
But, like others who have stood ground against those who seek to marginalize them, Phonecia was not about to be cast aside, not even by the Messiah, who in this moment would initially appear to be showing much more of his fully human, rather than his fully divine, nature.  No – she was not about to be sent away with her Canaanite tail between her legs.  Defiantly she answered Jesus that even dogs get the crumbs that fall from the table, and her faith and persistence is met with God’s grace.
I like this woman!
She was pesky, faithful, and strong.  Her heart grieved for her daughter’s pain, and she was not to be so easily dismissed from the grace that would heal her child, because she believed that Jesus could heal her.
Now when those in power encounter women like Phonecia, strong women, women who refuse to acquiesce, who wave their arms and shout, who are defiant in the face of power, who have the audacity to believe in their dreams, who have the faith to move mountains – they call them agitators, extremists, angry feminists, uppity women.  Well you know what?  The world needs more people like her!  Let’s hear it for uppity women!
Thankfully, we have been blessed with a few uppity women of our own age, and I don’t have to make up names for them – they made sure that history knew who they were: Sojourner Truth, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Dorothy Day, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, Shirin Ebadi, and so many more.  These women fought against the boundaries that were meant to keep them, and others, out.
And in this Gospel we are reminded that we must be ever mindful, ever watchful, of ourselves and our tendency as humans to want to define boundaries.  We like them.  They feel safe…comfortable.
When we are young, they are important.  Our play pens do keep us from harm, and our parents rules – no matter how much we don’t like them, help us grow into responsible adults.  But there are insidious boundaries.  Lines drawn that say who’s in, and who’s out.  Who’s worthy, and who is not.  Who is welcome at the table, and who must go away hungry and thirsty.
We create walls to divide by race, class, gender, sexuality, and we teach our children that these walls are natural, essential, and worse – ordained by God.  It is shameful that the bible, the sacred text of our faith, has been used through the centuries to justify slavery, gender bias, and homophobia.
In the verses just before Phonecia enters the picture, Jesus warns that it is not what goes in our mouths that defiles us, but what comes out of our mouth from a heart filled with darkness.  And, there is no greater defilement than to marginalize or abuse any part of God’s creation.
And so the Gospel story does not end with the denial of Phonecia’s plea.  Jesus, who in the very next passage feeds over four thousand from seven loaves and a few fishes allows his fully divine self to shine through, blessing her daughter with the grace that he knows is unending and abundant.
“Oh, how good and pleasant it is, when [we] live together in unity!
This is the dream of those who seek to break down the walls that divide us, who struggle for the freedoms that others enjoy.  It is the good news of Christ – that everyone is a beloved child of God, equal in the Creator’s heart.   And we have made great progress.
A few years ago, I heard a story of an elementary school teacher, who was teaching her charges about the US Government – it’s structures and roles, President, Speaker of the House, Senator, Chief Justice and so on.  The children were asked to draw a picture of themselves in a role they would like to be.  One little boy was fervently drawing – there were jets and a globe and him right there in the middle of it, when the girl next to him said “What is all that?”  He said, quite proudly, “I’m gonna be Secretary of State and go all over the world!”  She put her hands on her hips, stared at him in disbelief and exclaimed “That’s ridiculous.  Everybody knows that boys can’t be Secretary of State – only girls!”
It dawned on the teacher that in that girl’s lifetime there had been only females in that position – Condoleeza Rice and Hillary Clinton.  My how the times have changed.  The pendulum has swung – from one barrier to another, and there is much left to do.
“Oh, how good and pleasant it is, when [we] live together in unity!
It would be good and pleasant, wouldn’t it?  It would be a good and a pleasant thing for all the world’s peoples to be healthy, live in safety, have access to food, clean water, and an education, and be able to practice their faith without fear.  But the Phonecia’s of the world are still fighting, and we need to stand beside them.
So who are the Canaanites today?
The Christians and Yazidis, hiding in the mountains in Sinjar in Iraq, people in Africa dying in isolation – unable to get access to medicines to treat Ebola, the children of the world who are not be able to learn in safe environments, women who live in fear of being sold into slavery or sexually mutilated, our neighbors to the South who die crossing the border into a desert in the hope for the ability to care for their family, gay couples denied the right to love as God intends all around the world, and people of all races, ages, religions, physical and mental abilities, and gender identities that are systematically denied what is accorded others.  These are the Canaanites of today.
Yet, as a land of immigrants, descendants of slaves, and oppressed native peoples we have forgotten who we are.  While one would expect, given that history, we would stand by any of our brothers and sisters on the margins, and some do, many of us too often try to silence them, send them away, like the disciples in our Gospel lesson.  We certainly see this played out in the streets of Ferguson Missouri, where people protesting the shooting of an unarmed young man were met by local authorities that looked more like a unit going to war than a police department.  And the looting of stores didn’t help matters much.
It is as though we see the other as a threat to our own daily bread, not even wanting to share the crumbs from our tables.  It is as if we fear that there is not enough to go around, that “their” quest for freedom, justice and the dignity of self-sufficiency will somehow diminish our own.   We respond as Jesus did initially – attempting to hoard grace for our own people, and forget the rest of the story – that there is more than enough grace for all of God’s creation.
And isn’t that amazing that when it comes to God’s love, there is a never ending supply?  Isn’t it a wonder how God’s grace is without limits?  But, more than that, when we feed another, we are fed.  When we serve another, we are blessed.  [Emphasis] When we fight against the injustice done to our brothers and sisters, we are freed from bondage!
Chief Seattle, of the Duwamish Nation was attributed as saying this about the interconnectedness of all of God’s creation:  “We are not the web of life.  We are but a thread of it.  What we do to the web, we do to ourselves.  All things are bound together.  All things connect.”
When we open our hearts to the infinite embrace of God’s love, we are blessed with unending grace to do God’s work in the world, and all that we do affects all others in the web of God’s creation.  We are strengthened to do this whenever we come to the table and are fed with the spiritual food of the body and blood of our savior, Jesus Christ.  And, we are commanded to go into the world to love God, ourselves, and our neighborss.
If we live into this call, really live into it, we will never turn our backs on injustice.  We will fight tirelessly for those in the margins (and not solely those who look, think or act as we do).  We will be the uppity people we need to be to stand defiant in the face of power and speak truth with calls for peace and justice for all!  We will be Phonecia – the Canaanite woman!
And, when we do, we may someday live in a world where we can sing from experience:
“Oh, how good and pleasant it is, when [we] live together in unity!  Amen.

Note:  The sermon as written may not be as delivered on any given Sunday.

The Rev. Diana Wilcox
Christ Church in Bloomfield & Glen Ridge
August 17, 2014
Pent 10, Proper 15 – Year A – Track 1
1st Reading – Genesis 45:1-15
Psalm 133
2nd Reading – Romans 11:1-2a, 29-32
Gospel – Matthew 15: (10-20), 21-28