Sixteenth Sunday after Pentecost
September 9, 2018
Good Shepherd Lutheran Church
Decorah, Iowa
Rev. Amy Zalk Larson

Click here to read scripture passages for the day.

Beloved of God, grace to you and peace in the name of Jesus. Amen.

This is a really troubling story. It raises all sorts of questions. Why does Jesus, the very face of God’s compassion, refuse to heal this woman’s daughter? Why does he call her a dog, saying it isn’t fair to take what’s intended for the children of Israel and throw it to the dogs?

The children of Israel are indeed God’s chosen people, but shouldn’t Jesus help other people too? The Syro-phoenicians were ancient enemies of Israel, but doesn’t Jesus tell us to turn the other cheek? And why does to call her a dog? That seems a bit extreme.

The woman persists, saying, “Sir, even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs.” Jesus responds, “For saying that, you may go – the demon has left your daughter.”

So, Jesus relents and heals her daughter because she has a good comeback?

Many interpreters feel this encounter helped Jesus to see that his mission was for all people – even Israel’s enemies. And maybe that’s what happened. We don’t know; we can’t really know for sure.

One thing we can see in this story is the power of persistent faith.

• The Syrophoenician woman seeks Jesus out even when he’s trying to escape notice.
• She kneels at his feet and pleads with him.
• She doesn’t give up but stays engaged – giving a strong, thoughtful, humble response back to Jesus.
• Jesus is moved by her response and heals her daughter.

This story reveals a God who’s influenced by our persistence. What this woman did and said made a difference to Jesus. Our persistence, our willingness to engage matters to God; we see that throughout scripture. Our willingness to ask questions and struggle with faith and prayer are important.

Yet that kind of persistence doesn’t come easily. When we’ve prayed, worked, questioned, hoped and pleaded, yet don’t see any change, it’s so easy to give up and think that God doesn’t really hear, that God doesn’t really care.

Thankfully, God doesn’t just sit around hoping we will be persistent. God is much more persistent than we will ever be.

God persists in loving, challenging, forgiving and healing us again and again. And God cannot be stopped from doing this. Even when we put Jesus to death on a cross, he rose again. Nothing, not even death, can prevent God from loving us all and working to heal us all.

God’s persistent, dogged, determined love for us gives us strength to persist in praying and working for healing and change.

I give thanks for the ways that persistence has brought important change in our church, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. Our church is stronger, more inclusive, and more able to witness to our welcoming God now that we ordain women and lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer and gender non-conforming people with gifts for public ministry. This change happened as the Holy Spirit worked through the faithful persistence of women, LGBTQ folks and their advocates.

And now, kids: Listen up, I’m going to talk about you. Today I especially give thanks for children who have persisted in asking to be fed at Christ’s table.

When I was first a pastor in Northern Minnesota, the children of the congregation received communion when they were in fifth grade, after a First Communion class. I loved teaching that class. I loved the way First Communion was an important milestone for the kids.

But then one Sunday, a new family was in worship with their four-year old son. I preached about how Jesus meets us in the bread and wine at the table. Apparently, the little boy was taking it all in. When it came time for communion, he came to the rail with his parents and held out his hands expectantly. I gave him a really special blessing and a big smile but no bread – he was too young. He burst into tears. He started crying, “I want Jesus”, really loudly, over and over. His parents had to pry him away from the rail and drag him away. He continued to repeat, “I want Jesus”, as they carried him down the very long aisle and out the back of the church.

Similar things happened again and again in that congregation and have happened throughout the ELCA. The cries of children longing to be fed at Christ’s table have caused our church to reconsider our policies and practices around communion.

Our current guidelines now say that yes, we want children to learn about communion and what it means for them, but we don’t have to wait to start teaching them and sharing the meal with them. Infants and very young children can be given communion and can receive age appropriate teaching about communion as they develop. That is our practice now at Good Shepherd.

Having children at the table, having children serve us communion as they will today is helpful for the whole church. It shows us that these gifts are sheer grace, they aren’t given to us because we understand rightly or believe rightly or live rightly. They are gifts of grace. We can never fully understand what God has done for us in Christ Jesus and how Jesus meets us at the table. But we are welcomed into a community in which we grow and learn and receive together.

God persists in working through the church to provide a space of welcome, a space where encounters of healing and change and grace can happen.

We are welcomed here even when we struggle to believe, even we despair, even when we feel anything but persistent.

We are welcomed and healed around the table of God’s love and mercy. And then, we are sent out from the table to let others know that they too have a place of welcome in God’s heart. We are sent to make bigger tables where all people can be fed and healed. We can persist in this work because our persistent God is always at work at the healing of the world.

Thanks be to God.

Fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost
September 2, 2018
Good Shepherd Lutheran Church
Decorah, Iowa
Rev. Amy Zalk Larson

Click here to read scripture passages for the day.

Beloved of God, grace to you and peace in the name of Jesus.

Sometimes I wonder what Jesus would have to say about social media. Certainly, it can be a good tool. I should probably use it more for the sake of ministry and I know I often miss important things that people share there. (Which is to say: If you post something on Facebook and want your pastor to know about it, please tell me some other way, too!)

Social media can be very helpful. Yet, I join many in wondering whether it keeps us on the surface of our lives, too focused on how we appear to others. We show the world all the attractive, humorous, appealing highlights of our lives and not the vast messy remainder of how things really are. Then we compare our actual lives to other people’s highlight reels and our mental health suffers. Some people are able to be more honest on social media, and for that I’m grateful. Yet, we so often carefully curate our online presence to project a certain image about ourselves – the witty social critic, the happy parent, the righteous prophet, the gentle soul.

Concern for how we look to others is not new to social media. And our public persona is often very differ- ent from how we really live. I used to think it was funny how my mom would be yelling at me one second, and then answer the phone all sweetness and light. Now I do the same thing. My Christmas cards often make things appear much rosier than they really are. Congregations look so energized on Rally Day and New Member Sunday, less so in the middle of Lent with lots of soup suppers to organize. Luther College on first-year move-in day is very different than Luther in late February.

Of course, there are good reasons to try to put your best forward – to represent yourself, your family, your institution well. It isn’t all bad to consider how you look to others.

In fact, God often instructed the people of Israel to consider how they appeared to other nations in order to bear witness to God’s goodness and holiness. In our first reading today, Moses told the people,“You must observe [the commandments of the Lord] diligently, for this will show your wisdom and discernment to the peoples, who, when they hear all these statutes, will say, ‘Surely this great nation is a wise and discerning people!’  For what other great nation has a god so near to it as the Lord our God is whenever we call to him?^”

Many Israelites took this charge quite seriously; the Pharisees certainly did. They observed the law very carefully so that they could be a witness to other nations and give glory to God.

In Jesus’ time, when Israel was living under the occupation of the Roman Empire, the Pharisees felt strict adherence to the law and the traditions was even more essential – it was a way to show that they were resisting Rome’s oppression. So, when some scribes and Pharisees saw Jesus’ disciples not washing their hands, they worried that it would look like they were giving in to the power of Rome.

These religious leaders knew that appearances can really matter. They had some legitimate concerns.

Yet Jesus had a deeper concern. Jesus could see that these leaders had become so focused on the externals of faithfulness that they neglected to examine their own hearts. And while there can be good reasons to think about appearances, Jesus is more concerned about what is within us.

All the focus on the externals was leading the scribes and Pharisees to put up internal walls between themselves and others – between the quote, “clean” and the “unclean”. Their faith practices weren’t drawing them closer to God and their neighbors, weren’t reflecting the holiness of God, but were means of
excluding people they considered dirty or contaminated.

Though these leaders tried to present a squeaky-clean image, Jesus could see the evil in their own hearts.

Jesus can see the evil and ugliness and judgement within our hearts as well.

We also focus too much on externals and put up walls. We have different ways of judging and separating ourselves from others; we’re quite proficient in doing that, with lots of help from social media. We pay much more attention to what others are doing wrong than to the sin within us. We neglect to examine our own hearts. The good news is that Jesus sees all this and yet he does not turn away.

He sees right through our highly edited versions of ourselves, knows what lurks in our hearts, yet loves us still.

Jesus also shows us what truly matters through his own life. He crosses boundaries, eats with social outcasts, and touches those considered unclean. He loves, serves and gives his life for all people – tax collectors and sinners, lepers and demon-possessed people, scribes and Pharisees, you and me. There are no barriers that can stop Jesus from seeing you, loving you, forgiving you.

This good news exerts a claim on our lives, a call to follow his ways.

Following Jesus means that, like him, we cross boundaries to serve others, that we live out an inclusive love and welcome, that we care especially for those the world has cast aside. Following Jesus is not about outside appearances but about a heart cleansed and a life shaped by the radical, self-giving love of Jesus.

Today, at the table, Jesus meets you to give of his very self. Here Jesus promises that you are known, loved and forgiven, and calls you to follow.

Let’s join in silent prayer.