The Most Jesus-Like Person Isn’t Always Jesus
Hi! I'm Rev. Sam LaDue, Advisor to the Gay Jesus Group, and pastor of University Lutheran Church (UniLu) in Palo Alto (a small, queer-affirming, Stanford-adjacent congregation that takes the Gospel seriously and itself not so seriously). This Sunday I came in with a fill-in-the-blank question, a bit of accumulated rage about the ways women are treated, and a strong conviction that we've been pointing the camera in the wrong direction. The Canaanite woman didn't need my outrage on her behalf. She just needed us to finally notice her which, it turns out, is practically the whole sermon.
based on Matthew 15:21-28 for Proper 15, Year A
In the beginning of Matthew 15, just before our passage today, Jesus challenges the prevailing norms around purity among community leaders. What defiles, he says, isn't what enters our bodies and then heads into the sewer, it's what comes from our hearts, through our lips.
Hold that thought.
Because if I asked you right now to fill in this blank:
"Jesus' initial response to the woman in this story is ___" what word would you choose? Mine is offensive.
His behavior is offensive. He ignores her. And then he calls her a dog.
Those are some significant revelations from someone who literally just told people that what comes through the lips is coming straight from the heart — and is, in fact, what defiles.
When Even God Disappoints
This is a story that, among many possibilities, forces us to confront the fact that even revered figures (even God incarnate) can sometimes disappoint us. Can sometimes fail to be who we need them to be.
And I hate that. I hate it when someone I love disappoints me. I hate it when someone I look to for guidance turns out to be just as human as I am, just as imperfect, just as impossibly full of contradictions. Being human is complex, and painful. And even now, looking around at the complexities of being human especially at our current social and political moment I find myself fully ready to say:
Hi. Help. Are there any adults who can help us with (waves hand at entirety of the globe)... all of this?
No? No adults in the house? Well. I guess we're all going to have to put our big kid pants on, then.
You know what else bugs me about this story? How often people remain focused on Jesus (I know how odd that sounds coming from a pastor, but hear me out). Specifically, focus on Jesus to justify his behavior. It's such a classic move to center the identified male presence in the story, making their behavior completely okay one way or another, and in so doing, reify a whole set of dynamics we could all stand to live without. Rather than just saying he did a crappy thing to another person.
On to This Woman
This sermon isn't necessarily going to center the identified male presence known as Jesus. So — on to this woman who won’t quit.
She gives us a remarkable display of humility and persistence. She shouts. She shouts more. She eventually places her body physically in Jesus' path, AND she gets her sass on and talks right back to him when he insults her.
Her behavior brings to mind something from Howard Thurman's Jesus and the Disinherited. Thurman was reflecting on how in Jesus' time, Rome and the Romans were the ruling class. Israelites were very much in the mix of things. But they were no majority, and had lost their own national independence. Thurman wrote:
"Jesus had to resent deeply the loss of Jewish national independence and the aggression of Rome... resentment, anger, humiliation would all be natural feelings. Humiliation was hurting and burning, every single day. The balm for that burning humiliation was — humility. For humility cannot be humiliated."
This woman is that balm. Through a combination of persistence and a humility that cannot and will not be humiliated. Not that she wasn't wounded by oppression, mind you. Clearly she was. These things are not mutually exclusive. And yet she doesn't turn humility into a self-improvement exercise. Instead, she exposes prejudice and insists it not be allowed to become limitation, which is precisely what you'd miss if you kept centering Jesus.
And I’ve got to admit that right about here is where all my own wounds begin to fester. I am mad on her behalf when I read this text, because I am so tired of the ways women are treated and understood in society at large. And I am so tired of excuses being made for Jesus' poor behavior. Because those excuses aren't just excuses for Jesus. They're excuses for all kinds of people who are identified as male, and behave as though the world revolves around them. They're building blocks for the manosphere, and I dare say, this is precisely not what Jesus nor our author Matthew hoped we'd get from this story.
What I do think Jesus and Matthew hoped we might notice is this:
she — the Canaanite woman no one suspects — is the most Jesus-like person in this story
Through her, we encounter another one of those great surprises God always seems to have up God's sleeve: the one on the outside, who physically plants herself in Jesus' path with so much humility that both prostrate herself and she'll keep shouting until she is heard and seen exactly as she is, is also the one showing up, insisting that the reign of God is more accessible than even Jesus seemed to have initially thought.
The Woman Crying Out Now
And I can see why it's easier to focus on Jesus and make excuses for his behavior. Because by doing so, we also make it easier to miss the very same woman crying out to us now.
You know who I’m referring to, right?
The women who are talking about the inherent racism that needs continuous unpacking and repair. The ones who are shouting about how entire communities are losing their land and the natural resources they need to live, due to the climate crisis. The ones who, while crying out, pack their few belongings and take huge chances trying to cross oceans and land masses on whatever vehicle might have a chance of getting them to the other side, a chance at life less violent for their children. The numerous trans women of color who have told churches, legislators, doctors, and journalists what makes their lives dangerous and what they need to live equally with everyone else, only to be discussed as an issue rather than recognized as neighbors whose voice and presence we need in our lives.
There are so, so many women who, with dignity and humility, are crying out just like this woman does in this story. And, much like Jesus' own behavior, it is so easy for many of us (especially us fair-skinned types) to sigh, acknowledge, and then shrug it off with a "not my monkeys, not my circus."
It's bizarrely easy to shirk our own body-of-Christ role while thinking we're doing exactly what we're supposed to be doing. And we need someone to hold the mirror up so we can see what it is we're actually doing.
The Violence of Looking Away
I worked for San Francisco Night Ministry for some time. Night Ministry provides community chaplaincy to folks who are struggling and need support on the streets of San Francisco during the nighttime hours. When we talk to people about what we do on the streets, we often use Lisa Gray-Garcia's term to describe one of the major problems experienced by many we encounter: the Violence of Looking Away. People will act as though the folks on the street are not there. They'll walk by like the unhoused or underserved person doesn't even exist, no eye contact, nothing. It's hugely dehumanizing. It brutally damages people's sense of self and being when they are treated this way.
And I wonder whether Jesus knew he was committing the Violence of Looking Away? We've got no way to know for sure. But we can know that this woman was not going to allow the looking away to determine what happens next.
Jesus, despite his initial attempt to ignore and avoid this woman, eventually cannot look away any longer. Because he is met with her physically placing her body in his path, forcing him to, at minimum, slow down while his companions suggest sending her away.
What the Text Actually Says
And while many a commentator likes to say it was her extraordinary faith in Jesus that healed her daughter, I keep coming back to what the text actually says:
"Woman! You have great faith!"
"As you desire, so let it happen to you."
I do wonder, in that moment, whether Jesus also thought to himself: ooops.
In the end, we don't know. What he said, after finally acknowledging her, was simply: "As you desire, so let it happen to you." Which is strikingly resonant when, in chapter 18, he goes on to say "whatever you loose on earth, you loose in heaven; whatever you bind on earth, you bind in heaven."
It seems there is more agency here among us, and within us than we are typically inclined to acknowledge. And today, we get some clarity on that from one Canaanite woman who is way more Jesus-like than anyone else in the story.
The Good News
So where's the good news? Now that we've turned this whole thing upside down?
The reign of God is already pressing against the boundaries erected around it. That is the nature of the reign of God.
The Reign of God arrives not intellectually, but in body, voice, desire, and persistence of the person we have been taught to overlook or deem an exception. The Reign of God, based on this story, even pushes God Incarnate to reckon with that constant presence and demand, pressing us to draw the circle wider.
Meanwhile, we are caught up in encounters where divine and human agency meet, interrupt, resist, and reshape one another.
Our call and responsibility is not merely to receive grace and then hopefully behave better. Jesus said it outright: as you desire, so let it happen to you. Our call is to recognize where the reign of God is already insisting upon itself in each of us and to join it, and move it outward, so that the whole of creation might benefit.
So I pray that what our hearts desire brings us faithfully to the humility Thurman speaks of — humility that can't be humiliated — where actions and intentions and impacts reflect the divine love that walks beside us in joys and sorrows. I pray that the incarnation of God we find thriving in the Canaanite woman today helps us to embody the divine presence that continually widens the circle, and co-creates the reign of God right now, with less human-imposed limitation.
Amen.
with joy,
Rev Sam
A few thinkers whose work shaped this sermon: Howard Thurman's Jesus and the Disinherited is essential reading. If you haven't picked it up, now is the time. The framing of "the Violence of Looking Away" comes from Lisa Gray-Garcia, whose writing about unhoused communities and the harm of erasure has stayed with me for years. And San Francisco Night Ministry — you can learn more about their work by going to their website.
These sermons come from a living community. Everyone is welcome Sunday mornings at 10am at University Lutheran Church in Palo Alto. Students, skeptics, teachers, believers, people who haven't set foot in a church in years and aren't sure why they're reading this. Students also gather Wednesday evenings at 6pm. Come find out what happens when people who are curious about God (or not sure they believe in God) show up in the same room together. Learn more about campus ministry here, or go here for additional sermons written by Rev. Sam.
