The Ninth Sunday After Pentecost (Proper 15 A)
August 14, 2011
The Reverend Robert W. Cowperthwaite
Thank God we don’t always get what we deserve! Joseph’s brothers had not recognized him, but had come to Egypt to try to buy food. Joseph had a gift for interpreting dreams. Pharaoh had a dream, and Joseph’s interpretation was that there was going to be 7 years of plentiful harvests, followed by 7 years of famine. He suggested that the Egyptians store-up grain for the next seven years, so that they would be able to survive the 7 years of famine. Also affected by the famine, Jacob sent Joseph’s 10 brothers to Egypt to buy grain. He had no clue that was where his son was, nor did the brothers.
Today’s reading is when Joseph finally shares with his brothers who he really is. They are terrified with guilt and cannot even talk. Joseph’s take on all that had happened redeemed their shame, redeemed their faithlessness, redeemed their lies, redeemed everything. Instead of getting what they deserved, they heard Joseph say, “And now, do not be distressed, or angry with yourselves, because you sold me here; for God sent me before you to preserve life.” As bad as what they had done was, God turned it upside down.
If Joseph had not been there to interpret Pharaoh’s dream, had not set the plan of storing grain into action immediately, they would all be starving. Instead, he learned he had a brother, he was reunited with his father, and the whole family moved together to Egypt. Today’s psalm begins, How good and pleasant it is, when brethren live together in unity. For the first time since Jacobs’ betrayal of his brother Esau, his family was living in unity.
Instead of pulling something back together, today’s Gospel story is about expanding a vision of God’s love. This story of Jesus’ encounter with the Canaanite woman shows that even Jesus struggled with the tension between exclusiveness and inclusiveness. It is a good thing that we do not get what we deserve.
There were clear customs, rules and expectations about Israelites and Canaanites. Jesus was sticking to those rules when he at first did not even answer the woman. She knew well enough that should not expect anything from Jesus, much less deserve his attention. We seem to have a tendency to see things as we have always seen them, as we have taught to expect to see them. I think the scientific term is “operational blindness.”
St. Augustine, Florida – Susan’s home town, horse-drawn carriages take tourists up and down the bayfront and through the narrow streets. Because they share the road with cars, motorcycles and bikes, they often wear blinders to keep them from looking anywhere but straight ahead so they won’t be spooked. Sometimes we find ourselves wearing blinders as well. We see straight ahead, we see what we expect to see. Perhaps that keeps us from being distracted sometimes, but it also blinds to other options, other opportunities that may be just out the range of our operational blindness.
When Jesus’ disciples urged him to send the woman away, he blindly tells them that indeed the woman should have no expectation of help from him, for, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. It was as if she was not even there. But she got in his way and confronted him, whereupon he said it would not be fair to give food meant for children to dogs instead, still holding onto his notion of who he was sent to serve.
Finally, she turned his own self-justifying example upside down, and said even dogs get tablescraps. The blinders fell off, Jesus saw a new opportunity to be a healing presence in the world, and the woman’s daughter was healed not what she may have deserved according to the rules of the day.
It can be scary to take off our blinders. We may see things that spook us, that are way beyond what we think we should be comfortable with. At the same time, we may just find opportunities to expand our comfort zone, to seek and serve Jesus Christ in people and places and ways we would never have thought God might call us. What we might find is that as vision widens, our relationships strengthen and the more we learn about and appreciate others, the more we learn about and appreciate ourselves. And the words of the psalmist will resonate anew, “Oh how good and pleasant it is when we live together in unity.”
