There are no insiders or outsiders in God’s love, and through God’s grace, your heart, like Jesus’ heart, can be changed to bear the fruit of such love in your own life.
Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
The Twelfth Sunday after Pentecost, Lect. 20 A
Texts: Matthew 15:10-28 (adding in vv. 1-9); Isaiah 56:1, 6-8
Beloved in Christ, grace to you, and peace in the name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen
“No outsiders!” We heard our brother Bruce powerfully proclaim that here in July.
In God’s love and welcome no one is an outsider. And then today’s readings are all about insiders and outsiders again. The Pharisees criticize the disciples for omitting a ritual handwashing before eating. This isn’t your mother’s admonition to wash up. This is a ritual washing again of clean hands right before the meal. The disciples didn’t do it, making them outsiders.
Jesus then accuses the Pharisees of breaking the fourth commandment by vowing an offering to God and so refusing to support their parents financially because that vow is binding. The Pharisees are acting outside the covenant, Jesus implies.
And then Jesus uses a terrible racial epithet toward a foreign woman asking for help and says he came only for the insiders, the covenant people of Israel.
All of these insider-outsider convictions come from rules that someone has or has made, rules that are important to the one upholding them. Less so to others.
But before we glibly criticize the Pharisees for their obsession with silly rules, let me take a moment to defend rules.
Rules help us keep good order and make wise decisions. Good rules can create a healthy, flourishing society, rules can guide when confusions come. Orthodox Jews I know don’t regard this ritual handwashing as ridiculous or onerous. It’s a sign of their covenant with God, their belonging, washing in thanks for God’s goodness.
Over the years I’ve developed 38 rules for being a faithful pastor and another 20 more for my leading of worship, rules that are embedded in my heart and life. These rules help shape my heart to be like Christ’s. They are life-giving and have guided me all these years. I teach them to each vicar and encourage them to find their own.
Here at Mount Olive, we’ve got many patterns, practices, that we cherish and that give us life in our worship, from gestures and postures to how we sing (including why we always sing all stanzas). Without them our worship would not be the life-giving blessing it is. We would be diminished in our ability to meet the Triune God here together. And yet, some of our fellow Lutherans might say that a lot of things we do are nonsensical, overly complicated, and completely unnecessary. When they’re not your rules, you often misunderstand and criticize unfairly.
So we’re not against rules. But Jesus says today that what is more important is the heart behind those rules. The heart those rules are supposed to shape. And if the rules take over the decision-making to the detriment of the heart, that’s when you have problems. That’s when insiders and outsiders start to appear.
So, Jesus’ harsh words are jarring because Jesus seems to contradict himself.
The last two times I’ve preached on these texts here I’ve taken a lot of time dealing with Jesus’ words and why they’re so hard to hear. We don’t need to go through all that here again today. But the important thing is that we can’t whitewash his racial slur in hopes of defending Jesus. The very heart Jesus gave you and me, the love he calls us to, recoils at these words.
But today let’s look at how it all ends, and what changes in Jesus. Because by the end, Jesus is fully on the “no outsiders” bandwagon and never leaves. We should understand why.
But notice: signs of God’s open arms were there before this moment.
We just heard from Isaiah that foreigners would be welcome to God’s holy mountain, that God would make them joyful in God’s house of prayer. No outsiders even in the Temple. And Jesus knew Isaiah well.
And while both Matthew and Mark’s gospels make this moment with the Canaanite woman a turning point for Jesus, in Matthew’s Gospel the doors are cracking open before this.
Magi, foreign astrologers, came to the infant Jesus and worshipped. By this point, Jesus has already driven a legion of demons out of two foreigners into a herd of pigs in Gentile territory and healed the slave of a Roman centurion, a symbol of the hated oppressors. So it’s hard to understand his reluctance here.
What is absolutely easy to understand, however, is that the bravery of this unnamed woman changes Jesus. The disciples wanted to drive her out, Jesus says he’s not for her, only for Israel. Then Matthew says, “but she came.” She persisted. She plowed through the crowd and came right up to Jesus. She asked what she needed from him, from God.
And she changed Jesus.
Or, perhaps more accurately, she reminded Jesus of his own words about the Pharisees and the heart. That he said his ministry isn’t about the rules, about who’s insider and who’s outsider. That what matters comes from the heart, not what goes into the body. Not the external things. That we are truly known by what our hearts produce in us.
And in this woman’s powerful trust in Jesus to have a good heart, Jesus’ heart changes. Whatever he meant by saying he was only for Jewish people, that’s gone. He praises her faith, her trust, heals her daughter, and from here on out there are no insiders or outsiders for this Messiah, only beloved children.
And, astonishingly, that means our hearts don’t have to be permanently one way, either.
Your heart can be changed.
If your heart carries implicit biases, prejudices, if you hold tightly to your opinions and to being right, if you value rules over people, doctrine over love, getting it right over lifting up your neighbor, all is not lost. Even if your heart generates the things Jesus warns about – evil intentions, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false witness, slander – even then, your heart can be changed.
Your heart can be changed by the Holy Spirit to produce a whole different set of fruits, the ones Paul proclaims to the Galatians: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. If the Son of God needed to learn things, to have his heart changed, there’s hope for you and me.
So let that be your prayer.
That the God whose love, whose heart, broke at the cross for the whole universe but who, as one of us, had that heart shaped and changed at times, might so do the same to you.
It might be through persistent people like this woman, who don’t back down from your exclusion, who love you enough to challenge you. Jesus would advise you to listen, take them seriously. They mightuse your own words of love and faith to call you to change your words and actions inconsistent with your love.
But be of good cheer. There are no insiders or outsiders, so you also are beloved and in God’s embrace. And as the Triune God changes your heart through the Spirit you will be witnesses to that same love by the fruits that come from your new heart. And as with this woman’s love, yours will change everything.
In the name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen
