The Episcopal Church of the Incarnation
The Fourteenth Sunday after Pentecost [Proper 15](A)
Isaiah 56.1, 6-8 Psalm 67 Romans 11.1-2a, 29-32 Matt. 15.10-28
May the Lord be in my mind, on my lips, and in my heart, that
I may rightly and truly proclaim His holy Word. Amen.
Outline of a
Sermon Delivered Extemporaneously
1) “[M]y house shall be called
a house of prayer for all peoples.” (Isa. 56.7).
a) At first reading this
statement may surprise, for are we not accustomed to think of the Chosen People
as exclusive?
i) Doesn’t the very description
of the Jews as “chosen” indicate election and separation?
(1) It does. The descendants of Abraham are
the Lord’s own.
(a) And yet it is by Abraham
that “... all the families of the earth shall bless themselves” (Gen. 12.3).
b) Ah! Now we get a little clarity, for note that
Isaiah quotes the Lord as saying
“[M]y house shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples.”
i) “Peoples,” plural. Not “people,” singular.
(1) The Hebrew word here is not
referring to individuals but to nations, tribes, ethnic groups, races, indeed
to the “families of the earth.”
c) Which
leads us to the question which in a different context we struggle with as the
Church.
i) The question is one of
inclusion v. exclusivity, of the being the
“frozen chosen” v. being like our Lord when He ate with sinners and tax
collectors.
2) And at first reading even
the Gospel can confuse us, for what is it that Jesus says to the Canaanite
woman? “I was sent only to the lost
sheep of the house of
a) He appears here to be
exclusive, and to be saying that this pagan woman shouldn’t be asking Him for
help; that as a pagan she is to be accounted a “dog”.
b) Is that what Jesus is
doing? Is He being dismissive with her?
i) Or is He testing her?
ii) Right after He seems to
reject her plea, she humbles herself further, and makes clear who she considers
Jesus to be.
(1) “Yes, Lord, yet even
the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their master’s table”
(Matt. 15.27).
c) And then Jesus commends her
faith and grants her plea.
3) Which
brings us back to the question of exclusivity and inclusion. It’s really a question of whether the Church
is a society of the elect or a hospital for sinners.
a) And again and again in the
Gospel our Lord makes it clear that none of us, no person and no people, can
claim purity, no matter how much we may–like the Pharisees–seek purity.
i) Indeed, Jesus even alludes
to the status of this fellowship as a hospital, telling the Pharisees, “Those who are well
have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. Go and learn what this means, ‘I desire
mercy, and not sacrifice.’ For I came
not to call the righteous, but sinners” (Matt. 9.12-13, cf. Hos. 6.6).
4) There are those in the
Church who look at this message of love and conclude and argue that what we do
doesn’t matter, that God loves us anyway, and so as a Church we need to affirm
and celebrate people where they are, however they are.
a) In my mind this sentiment is
a selective reading of Scripture. I
think of the old Paul Simon line in his song The Boxer, “A man hears
what he wants to hear, and disregards the rest.”
i) Because to say that what we
do is all OK is to ignore what Jesus has just said before He meets the
Canaanite woman: “... out of the heart
come evil intentions, murder, adultery, fornication, theft, false witness,
slander.”
(1) The Gospel message may be a
message of love, but leaving aside murder and lying and slander, we can
understand that people who are adulterers may sometimes think
they are in love.
(a) And fornicators often think
so.
(b) And people can steal out of
need as well as out of greed.
5) So where does this leave us?
a) We have each promised to be
inclusive, to–in the words of our Baptismal Covenant–“seek and serve Christ in
all persons” and to “respect the dignity of all persons”.
b) We rejoice that the Church
is to be a house of prayer for all peoples and for all people.
i) That regardless of race,
ethnicity, gender, age, sexual orientation, disability or class all, all
are invited to share in the worship of our Lord, to be baptized into new life;
that all may confess Jesus as Lord with their lips and receive Jesus as Lord in
their hearts, and so be saved (Rom. 10.10).
c) But this invitation which we
extend in our Lord’s Name we proclaim by this Name to be an invitation to
change, to be transformed.
i) You don’t go to a hospital
to rejoice in your illness or injury.
(1) And in this hospital for
sinners we must rejoice not in how we are fallen but in how we are saved.
(a) For when we celebrate our
fallenness, when in the name of inclusion we affirm all and call for no change,
then we become like those who Jesus condemns in our Gospel lesson: “[I]f one blind person guides another, both
will fall into a pit” (Matt. 15.14).
6) Again and again Jesus call us to what? To
repentance, telling us both “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near”
(Matt. 3.2; 4.17) and proclaiming a woe to those who do not repent (Matt.
11.20).
a) Indeed, Jesus even tells us,
“... unless you repent you will all ... perish” (Luke 13.3, 5).
i) Perish, as in fall into the
pit.
7) We are called to invite all,
to include all, to love all.
a) To invite them into a
personal relationship with Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior, knowing that
true faith–faith such as that of the Canaanite woman–is met by the Lord who
says, “Let it be done for you as you wish” (Matt. 15.28).
b) We are called to include all
in the fellowship of our Lord’s Body, in the prayers and in the breaking of the
bread.
i) To love all as members of
this same Body, as people in whom we can seek and serve Christ, to serve.
8) But we are called also, and
have promised also, to “... persevere in resisting evil,
and, whenever [we] fall into sin, [to] repent and return to the Lord ...” (BCP
p. 304).
a) And it is in this repentance
that we seek to minister to each other both within and outside the Church.
i) It is in the humility of
repentance that we say, with the Canaanite woman, “Have mercy on me, Lord,” as
we pray both for ourselves and for others.
(1) That in this hospital for
sinners we may welcome the great Physician who heals our souls when we offer
our souls to Him.
9) We are called to include all
by recognizing that all are within the same human condition of fallenness.
a) Not by “recognizing” and
complaining that fallenness is not real.
i) No, we are called to
recognize that fallenness is all too real, and so we are called to include all
in how we turn to the Lord.
(1) Seeking transformation of our hearts and all hearts, that these hearts may, in the words of the Collect, “... receive thankfully the fruits of his redeeming work ..., ” to say
Thanks be to God!