Choose Your Battles Well

 

Sermon Matthew 15:21-28 August 15, 2020 Ordinary Time

Choose Your Battles Well

Relationships require an ability to communicate.

They also require an understanding of mutuality.

And relationships require some sort of ability for forgiveness.

How do I know this?

 

Well, it’s one of the essentials of our faith.

Whether we adhere to the faith of the Old Testament through the Torah, the ten commandments, and the shema from Deuteronomy 6:8 ‘love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul and with all your might’, or from the New testament where Jesus added to Deuteronomy 6:8, ‘your neighbor as yourself’; or Paul in Corinthians that we are ‘the body of Christ’.

 

All of these words from Scripture point to the mercy and love of God.

All of these verses point to the fact that relationships require mercy.

This can be the most challenging news for how we interact with each other as a parent, a spouse, a child, a neighbor, a friend, or a stranger.

 

When my first child came along, I was determined to make sure everything I did as a parent would be the correct way of parenting. I was worried about what people thought of me more than how my relationship with my child unfolded. By the time my third child came along I didn’t care what people thought and cared only about how we all got along. It became necessary for me to take the attitude, ‘choose your battles well’ if I wanted to get through seeing the kids into adulthood. So, when my children played in the playroom and didn’t clean up, I decided that was less important than making sure they ate well, or took a bath, or did their homework, or came with us to church. I’ll never forget being fussed  at by parents at church when my daughter decided she was going to dye her hair every color she could imagine. I remember saying to them, ‘I choose my battles and that’s not one of them.’ They were upset with me because I allowed her to demonstrate such a visible expression of herself. Yet, she is an amazing woman. All three of my children survived my style of parenting (at least I think they did). My children chose their battles well too. When they were determined (whether the choice was a good one or not); they stood up for themselves and challenged us to live up to what we professed about our love for them and their right to make choices for themselves. It was hard to watch them when they made choices that brought them sorrow. It was hard for us when we realized we missed crucial signs of anguish. It was hard to learn through one another as we sought to follow God’s word in our lives.

This Scripture passage is an important display of humanity.

It is an important display of Jesus’ humanity.

He is downright rude and crude.

He ignores.

He belittles.

He dismisses the very person who expects the divine to work through him.

 

What kind of example is he setting for his disciples?

What kind of humanity is this divine person showing others?

What point is Matthew, the gospel writer, trying to make by including this for the readers?

It is perhaps a most important set of verses for us to take some time to wrestle with.

It is important for us to recognize how a woman in Scripture chose her battle well.

And it begs the question for us when we should or could or would do the same.

Let’s consider her for a moment.

She is a Canaanite woman. Joshua has just entered her land at the end of the Exodus and claimed it as the Promised Land from God for the children of Israel. She is considered unclean. She is considered foreign. She is considered socially outcast. She is considered outside the boundaries of a true member of God’s household. She has no place among men and especially no place among the religious authorities. The theology and doctrine of her day forbid her from having any value.

She made a conscious choice to approach the One in authority to challenge her right to receive mercy and healing as others had received.

Nothing was going to stop her from appealing to the Son of David.

Nothing was going to stop her from shouting him down and making him honor his own words. Jesus himself had quoted Hosea 6:6 “I desire mercy over sacrifices.”

She was not intimidated by his position.

She knew who he was and expected him to break through the barriers of theology and doctrine and provide for her and heal her daughter.

She turns the tide on Jesus!

 

She initiates her encounter with Jesus.

And she does not do it with finesse,

nor with delicate charm,

nor with wit or fancy,

nor with body language or a dainty wardrobe.

 

She challenges Jesus’ mission through her prophetic shouts.

Her behavior is socially unacceptable.

She violates every norm of her day: she shouts, she speaks to a man, she speaks to a Jew, she demands, she is offensive, she is rude (and so is Jesus), she is in Jesus’ face!

She will not accept that her people are dogs.

Nor will she accept that her people are not children of God eligible for mercy as those Jesus claims to have come for.

 

She makes Jesus alter his actions.

 

In this story we witness Jesus act shockingly toward another.

Mercy is the very thing that Jesus is accusing the religious authorities of lacking.

Now he comes face to face with a challenge of his own.

Can Jesus live up to his claim of mercy in the face of one who is doctrinally marginal?

This Canaanite woman, who does not receive the honor of having her name recorded in biblical history, puts Jesus’ words of mercy to the test of action.

She revealed the length she would go for the salvation of her daughter.

Jesus acted on her behalf as he witnessed her unrelenting faith. His encounter with a foreign woman broke through the barriers and boundaries of theology and doctrine to allow the mercy of God to be fulfilled.

Tuesday August 18, 2020 marks the one hundredth anniversary of the ratification of the 19^th amendment to the constitution of the United States of America allowing women the right to vote.  

                                                                                                        
I wonder if the audacity of the Canaanite woman gave the women of the suffrage movement the same courage to break through boundaries and barriers to bring about the mutuality of all people in their rights including the vote.

Friends, the people who wrote and fought for this constitution went up against an authority to declare what they believed was right. The amendments that follow the Bill of Rights were brought about in the same manner. Alongside our Bibles this should also be an annual read for us as we treasure the rights we have in this nation. Sidebar-let’s consider reading through our Bibles together this year.

I can’t say that the encounters with Jesus will always turn out as we expect.

I can’t say that our encounters with each other will turn out as we expect.

But, as we kneel before our Lord and cry out the ancient phrase, “Lord, in your mercy” we are crying out the words of thousands of years of challenging God to act.

We too challenge God’s divine mercy to intercede on behalf of others.

 

The great faith of others have challenged norms and barriers.

They have shouted prophetic words to challenge doctrines to bring about the ways of mercy and love professed in God’s word.

May God’s people hang on to the power of the Canaanite woman’s ability to choose her battle well. May her ability to shout for mercy when mercy was required be the impetus for us.

Relationships are worth fighting for.

Learning how to choose battles well for mercy and love for the sake of others is key to who we are as people of faith.

It is up to us to seek God’s Kingdom.

It is up to us to hear God’s voice and follow as we are summoned.

It is up to us to challenge doctrines and theology in the light of mercy and love.

It is up to us to go onward, we are not divided, all one body we, one in hope and charity-yes, mercy.

May we be challenged on our assumptions of faith. May we live with such great faith that we can take the initiative to encounter Jesus and together turn the tide for mercy and love. Amen.

 

Resources: NIB Matthew, Eugene Boring; Feasting on the Word Year A, Jae Won Lee; Feasting on the Word Year A, Iwan Russell-Jones.

Sermon belongs to Monica Gould.