Genesis 45:1-15; Romans 11:1-2a, 29-32; Matthew 15:10-28
I’d like to begin with a little word association to get our brains charged up a bit because there is a lot going on in our readings today. Most of you have done this with me before, but just so we are clear, I’m going to throw out a word and I want you to shout out the first thing that comes to mind. Just remember that this is a family show.
Those who are online are also welcome to type your response in the comments. Here’s your first word: friend. (Pause for answers) Great! The next word is “welcome.” (Pause for answers) Great! Here’s your last one: need. (Pause for answers) Great!
Ok, here’s one I just want you to think about. Don’t say it out loud, just think about it. In fact, think of it as a prayer. It’s also more of a fill-in-the-blank. Are you ready? Alright. “What the world needs right now is _______.”
If this were a game show we would have some fun synth music in the back and everyone would be writing furiously on a large blue card with a black marker and hoping that their answer was worth $10,000. Fortunately, we are not on a game show, and I would argue that your answer is not something we could monetize.
I do not know what it is that God put on your heart to say what the world needs (or needs more of), but I believe the texts we have read speak of something that the world has needed and always will – and that is empathy. That word is not specifically used in the text, but the concept of caring for others, because we see their needs as our own, is clear.
Joseph can’t hold back his tears of joy and compassion as he sees his brothers and learns of his father. More than that, Joseph interprets all that has come before as the result of God’s compassion for all of them. Just in this brief portion of the story, their interactions move from disclosure to confession; from blame to providence; from separation to embrace; from speaking to an official to speaking with their brother.
In Romans 11, Paul is addressing questions of the church in Rome about their spiritual siblings. They wanted to know who was right; who was beloved; and how they were to manage this faith in Jesus. Admittedly, Paul uses some Dr. Suess-level double talk in this passage, but he’s kind of bad about that in Romans.
The lectionary text also cuts out a big chunk (v2-28) where Paul sets up a theology of grace where he reminds us that we can’t earn God’s love because grace is about God’s choice to love us. He also makes it clear that he is talking to non-Jewish followers of Jesus, and that God’s election to love them does not cancel out God’s choice to love those that God has chosen before. We are engrafted into the same family of faith regardless of our obedience to the law or even our rebellion against God.
That all sounds good, right? God loves us. God loves them. We are spiritual siblings through God’s grace and mercy. It’s all very kumbaya until Paul says (v32), “God has imprisoned all in disobedience so that he may be merciful to all.”
I don’t know about you, but to me, “Imprisoned in disobedience” sounds more like a metal band album than a dispensation of grace or a call to empathy. This is the kind of thing that – again, for me – I have to hold in tension with what I understand to be the mission of Jesus and the fact that even Paul was limited by his language and understanding of the divine. I don’t want to let him totally of the hook, though. We need to wrestle with this a bit first.
For one thing, Paul is saying that there is no difference in the eyes of God between former struggles and present struggles. Formerly the Gentiles did not know about the active and indwelling presence of God. The Hebrew people had known for generations, but their rejection of Jesus challenged their ability to live fully in the presence of God.
While Paul was trying to thread the needle between ancestry and inclusion, we need to be very careful here. We need to be very careful with ideas that inadvertently veer off into antisemitism. In fact, that is actually Paul’s point. He wanted the church to know that God has always been active and present in and through all of creation, and God remains active and present in those – both then and now – who are descendants of those God first claimed. Those who understand God and neighbor and self through Judaism and those who follow the way of Jesus are to see one another as God’s beloved.
Speaking of Jesus and empathy and mutuality – today’s text is…problematic. Partially it is, once again, because of the limitation of language, but also because it is a passage highlighting the humanity of Jesus which may be a little hard to take. I mentioned before the reading that it is preceded by a run-in with the Pharisees in which Jesus counts them as a plant not planted by God that will be pulled out by the roots and then told the crowd a parable about true righteousness.
Jesus does not seem to be very empathetic toward the Pharisees, and he seems even less so toward the Canaanite woman who has come to plead for mercy for her daughter. The terms he used are ethnically and racially charged, and Jesus used them intentionally and dismissively. Amy-Jill Levine, writing for the Women’s Bible Commentary, affirms the intentionality of the author of Matthew’s gospel, stating that her identification “recalls the original struggle between the Hebrews and the indigenous population of the land, and it also recollects the Canaanite woman of the genealogy [such as] Rahab and… Tamar.”
Great. What do we do with that? I think we have to recognize the humanity of Jesus in all of this. I don’t mean his brokenness. Jesus is still the one without sin, and not just because I need him to be in order to uphold a belief system that is actually a house of cards. Jesus is without sin because he is yet able to grow and be transformed into a better version of himself. He is able to see her faith. He is able to see her as more than a “dog begging for scraps.” He is able to see her as the agent of his own growth even as she is embraced as a child of God.
To be clear, he never calls her a child of God, but he says, “Woman, great is your faith! Let it be done for you as you wish.” It’s also worth noting that we never see her daughter – though we presume here to have been healed – because this story is not about healing. This story is about Jesus practicing what he is preaching.
He’s in a region that is as far north as he will ever go, and some say it was to get away from the Pharisees and perhaps the crowds and the fame that was beginning to follow him. He was in a region that was unlikely to be populated by the children of Israel. Who knows, maybe he was having some caregiver fatigue. Yet he is confronted here by the same message he used to condemn the Pharisees – devotion without compassion misses the mark.
What the world needed then, and now, and will need tomorrow is devotion realized through compassion, or as I like to think of it, empathy.
Empathy can be hard work, especially with those that we feel justified in not seeing their viewpoint. I think Jesus’s example with the Pharisees is still a good one. Sure, they were the keepers of law and culture in the face of repression, but they had become the monster in order to defeat another. We can still be compassionate for people like that. We just can’t allow them to do harm even as we seek to see and honor their humanity.
Honoring one another’s humanity as a reflection of God’s divinity is really what it all comes down to. While this is clearly something we do for others, according to The Public Relations Society of America, it benefits us as well. An article on their website cites research which finds that, “possessing empathy is crucial for good mental health[. Being] able to connect with others and share enough of yourself to feel connected in return adds immeasurably to relationship happiness.”
While the article is about productive work environments, they go on to say that, “Empathy enables us to give and receive grace, have honest conversations …about our human experience…, and encourage improvement and growth. Demonstrating empathy will have a lasting impact and help shape your relationships for years to come.”
I like how they sell empathy on its personal benefits, which are real and true, but our hope is always in something greater than ourselves that still involves us, corrects us, and nurtures us toward a greater end. Speaking of that. I want you to think about the thing that you think the world needs. Whatever it is, I want to encourage you to think about the way you can make even the smallest impact on that need through compassion and empathy and connecting with others as children of God.
This might be new to you, or it could be old hat, but I invite you to think about it either way as a gift from God for you today. At least I pray it may be so with me, and for you, and to God be the glory now and always. Amen!
I’d like to begin with a little word association to get our brains charged up a bit because there is a lot going on in our readings today. Most of you have done this with me before, but just so we are clear, I’m going to throw out a word and I want you to shout out the first thing that comes to mind. Just remember that this is a family show.
Those who are online are also welcome to type your response in the comments. Here’s your first word: friend. (Pause for answers) Great! The next word is “welcome.” (Pause for answers) Great! Here’s your last one: need. (Pause for answers) Great!
Ok, here’s one I just want you to think about. Don’t say it out loud, just think about it. In fact, think of it as a prayer. It’s also more of a fill-in-the-blank. Are you ready? Alright. “What the world needs right now is _______.”
If this were a game show we would have some fun synth music in the back and everyone would be writing furiously on a large blue card with a black marker and hoping that their answer was worth $10,000. Fortunately, we are not on a game show, and I would argue that your answer is not something we could monetize.
I do not know what it is that God put on your heart to say what the world needs (or needs more of), but I believe the texts we have read speak of something that the world has needed and always will – and that is empathy. That word is not specifically used in the text, but the concept of caring for others, because we see their needs as our own, is clear.
Joseph can’t hold back his tears of joy and compassion as he sees his brothers and learns of his father. More than that, Joseph interprets all that has come before as the result of God’s compassion for all of them. Just in this brief portion of the story, their interactions move from disclosure to confession; from blame to providence; from separation to embrace; from speaking to an official to speaking with their brother.
In Romans 11, Paul is addressing questions of the church in Rome about their spiritual siblings. They wanted to know who was right; who was beloved; and how they were to manage this faith in Jesus. Admittedly, Paul uses some Dr. Suess-level double talk in this passage, but he’s kind of bad about that in Romans.
The lectionary text also cuts out a big chunk (v2-28) where Paul sets up a theology of grace where he reminds us that we can’t earn God’s love because grace is about God’s choice to love us. He also makes it clear that he is talking to non-Jewish followers of Jesus, and that God’s election to love them does not cancel out God’s choice to love those that God has chosen before. We are engrafted into the same family of faith regardless of our obedience to the law or even our rebellion against God.
That all sounds good, right? God loves us. God loves them. We are spiritual siblings through God’s grace and mercy. It’s all very kumbaya until Paul says (v32), “God has imprisoned all in disobedience so that he may be merciful to all.”
I don’t know about you, but to me, “Imprisoned in disobedience” sounds more like a metal band album than a dispensation of grace or a call to empathy. This is the kind of thing that – again, for me – I have to hold in tension with what I understand to be the mission of Jesus and the fact that even Paul was limited by his language and understanding of the divine. I don’t want to let him totally of the hook, though. We need to wrestle with this a bit first.
For one thing, Paul is saying that there is no difference in the eyes of God between former struggles and present struggles. Formerly the Gentiles did not know about the active and indwelling presence of God. The Hebrew people had known for generations, but their rejection of Jesus challenged their ability to live fully in the presence of God.
While Paul was trying to thread the needle between ancestry and inclusion, we need to be very careful here. We need to be very careful with ideas that inadvertently veer off into antisemitism. In fact, that is actually Paul’s point. He wanted the church to know that God has always been active and present in and through all of creation, and God remains active and present in those – both then and now – who are descendants of those God first claimed. Those who understand God and neighbor and self through Judaism and those who follow the way of Jesus are to see one another as God’s beloved.
Speaking of Jesus and empathy and mutuality – today’s text is…problematic. Partially it is, once again, because of the limitation of language, but also because it is a passage highlighting the humanity of Jesus which may be a little hard to take. I mentioned before the reading that it is preceded by a run-in with the Pharisees in which Jesus counts them as a plant not planted by God that will be pulled out by the roots and then told the crowd a parable about true righteousness.
Jesus does not seem to be very empathetic toward the Pharisees, and he seems even less so toward the Canaanite woman who has come to plead for mercy for her daughter. The terms he used are ethnically and racially charged, and Jesus used them intentionally and dismissively. Amy-Jill Levine, writing for the Women’s Bible Commentary, affirms the intentionality of the author of Matthew’s gospel, stating that her identification “recalls the original struggle between the Hebrews and the indigenous population of the land, and it also recollects the Canaanite woman of the genealogy [such as] Rahab and… Tamar.”
Great. What do we do with that? I think we have to recognize the humanity of Jesus in all of this. I don’t mean his brokenness. Jesus is still the one without sin, and not just because I need him to be in order to uphold a belief system that is actually a house of cards. Jesus is without sin because he is yet able to grow and be transformed into a better version of himself. He is able to see her faith. He is able to see her as more than a “dog begging for scraps.” He is able to see her as the agent of his own growth even as she is embraced as a child of God.
To be clear, he never calls her a child of God, but he says, “Woman, great is your faith! Let it be done for you as you wish.” It’s also worth noting that we never see her daughter – though we presume here to have been healed – because this story is not about healing. This story is about Jesus practicing what he is preaching.
He’s in a region that is as far north as he will ever go, and some say it was to get away from the Pharisees and perhaps the crowds and the fame that was beginning to follow him. He was in a region that was unlikely to be populated by the children of Israel. Who knows, maybe he was having some caregiver fatigue. Yet he is confronted here by the same message he used to condemn the Pharisees – devotion without compassion misses the mark.
What the world needed then, and now, and will need tomorrow is devotion realized through compassion, or as I like to think of it, empathy.
Empathy can be hard work, especially with those that we feel justified in not seeing their viewpoint. I think Jesus’s example with the Pharisees is still a good one. Sure, they were the keepers of law and culture in the face of repression, but they had become the monster in order to defeat another. We can still be compassionate for people like that. We just can’t allow them to do harm even as we seek to see and honor their humanity.
Honoring one another’s humanity as a reflection of God’s divinity is really what it all comes down to. While this is clearly something we do for others, according to The Public Relations Society of America, it benefits us as well. An article on their website cites research which finds that, “possessing empathy is crucial for good mental health[. Being] able to connect with others and share enough of yourself to feel connected in return adds immeasurably to relationship happiness.”
While the article is about productive work environments, they go on to say that, “Empathy enables us to give and receive grace, have honest conversations …about our human experience…, and encourage improvement and growth. Demonstrating empathy will have a lasting impact and help shape your relationships for years to come.”
I like how they sell empathy on its personal benefits, which are real and true, but our hope is always in something greater than ourselves that still involves us, corrects us, and nurtures us toward a greater end. Speaking of that. I want you to think about the thing that you think the world needs. Whatever it is, I want to encourage you to think about the way you can make even the smallest impact on that need through compassion and empathy and connecting with others as children of God.
This might be new to you, or it could be old hat, but I invite you to think about it either way as a gift from God for you today. At least I pray it may be so with me, and for you, and to God be the glory now and always. Amen!
Comments