My Nana used to like me to send her my sermons... I find myself right now after the congregation has gone home, wanting to email her. The day after she died I deleted her email account - part of me wishes I had left it open so I could just send these off into space... but instead I'll post it here.
God be in our eyes and in our seeing,
God be in our ears and in our hearing,
God be on our lips and in our speaking,
God be in our heart and in our loving,
in the name of God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Amen
A young couple was in a restaurant with their four year old son. They were being waited on by one of those experienced waitresses who never show contempt for a customer, but by their unhurried pace and level gaze make it evident they fear no mortal, not even parents. She jotted on her pad, deliberately and quietly, while the parents gave their selections, including substitutions and such. She turned to the boy and he began his order in a kind of fearful desperation.
“I want a hot dog,” he started. His parents barked in unison, “No hot dog!” The mother scowled at the boy who fell silent, and said, “bring him the vegetable and grilled chicken, milk and…”
The waitress ignored the parents and she looked directly at the boy. “What do you want on your hot dog?”
The amazed child said, “Lots of ketchup, and a pickle, too. And could you bring some milk?”
“Coming up,” she said and turned from the table, never even looking at the stunned parents. The boy watched her depart with astonished delight and then said to his dismayed parents, “you know what? She thinks I’m real! She thinks I’m real!”
That’s how you feel when someone listens to you: REAL
Today we have a very disturbing passage.
It feels like no one is listening to each other
A pleading cry pierces the scene:
“Have mercy on me, Lord, Son of David; my daughter is tormented by a demon.”
I picture her on her knees… pleading… begging… looking for anything that can save her child. She seems willing to do anything – to say anything… anything to save the life of her daughter – to release her from her torment.
So she goes to the man known for his healing ability. To the one who stories of healings and compassion follow him everywhere he goes. The one who feeds thousands of people, and not only are they fed but he gets them to sit down together – shoulder to shoulder, breaking bread with strangers… people of different backgrounds different heritages… possibly different languages, genders, ages, socio economic statuses… She goes to this Jesus to plead for his help.
and how does Jesus respond?
He says nothing.
NOTHING.
He ignores her pleadings, he ignores her cry.
Then it says that the disciples are getting frustrated… “send her away” they say. “she keeps shouting at us.”
So it wasn’t just this one request. It was not just a one time on her knees pleading for her daughters life. She’d been there for a bit – she’d made herself known to the disciples and in their eyes, made a nuisance of herself.
At first glance, the next line feels as if it’s directed to the pleading woman… it seems as though Jesus is saying to HER that he was “sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.”
It seems that she’s pleading with him and he changes his mind.
Like she caught him out… like he made a mistake…
But in fact, the wording is quite specific – He’s not addressing the woman, he’s addressing the disciples. He says to them. “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” A teacher once wondered if Jesus could have said this with the intonation of a Jewish mother… “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel?” But regardless… the woman hears this… in whatever context it was said and she continues her pleadings… she kneels down and says “Lord, help me.”
And here’s the line – the one that stings – the one that we just don’t know how to take. “It’s not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.”
How have you pictured “the dogs”? Are they controlled animals at the whim of their master? Yappy, barky, needy, greedy? That’s the way the disciples would most likely have seen it. It would be extremely rare for a Jewish family to have a pet dog… especially one that would have had the opportunity to come into the house… that’s why to Jewish ears, this was a HUGE insult.
But the Canaanite woman would have both been likely to have dogs as indoor pets. So Jesus used an analogy that this woman would have understood. Dogs would be beloved pets. Pets that curl up around your feet, that sleep at the foot of your bed… they are different, yes, but they are loved parts of the family.
Then Jesus commends the woman on her faith, and healed her daughter. Healed her… Instantly.
He didn’t ignore her. He in fact listened to her in a way that none of the disciples were prepared to do. He spoke to her in a context that she would have understood. He heard her cries and he healed her daughter.
This is the groundwork for the Gospel to be taught to everyone – Jew, Greek, slave, free, male, female… the love and care was taught to us all and open to us all…
This makes the Jesus story universal. No longer is this message to be understood only for the Jews – it is meant for all to hear, it is meant for all to listen to.
And we know the message, it is one of hospitality. About how we treat one another… about how we live our lives, how we interact with each other and how we listen to the pleas and cries of each other.
Part of my role as a hospital chaplain was to learn the skill of listening. To be, what they call an “active listener”. To not just absorb what I’m being told, but to reflect some of it back to make sure the person I’m speaking with, knows that I’m paying attention – that they know they are not only being listened to, but they are being truly heard.
Because there are times when we have a conversation with someone and in our minds we are writing our shopping list, or composing our ever lengthening to do list.
You might in fact be doing that right now!
But we might also be simply waiting for them to stop so we can tell our story, so we can talk about the things going on in our lives. Because it feels like a rare thing to be truly listened to. To be truly heard.
It’s been said that you can listen someone back into existence. And I believe that is true. And we are called by the promises that we made or were made on our behalf at our baptisms:
“Will you strive for justice and peace among all people and respect the dignity of every human being?”
How can we strive for justice and peace if we don’t listen to the suffering cries of people?
How are we respecting the dignity of every human being if we don’t listen to the pleadings of their hearts – to the desires to be heard, to the need to tell their story?
Our ability to make room for others, and the joy we do or do not find in such an activity, depends largely, I think, on our experience of being accepted or not, on our experience of being heard or not. We cry out into the world in hope that someone will hear that cry and reach out into the dark night of our lives and pick us up out of our abandoned and misunderstood exclusion.
We lose our focus on listening for the heartbeat of God in our lives and our relationships, and shift our attention to the heartbeat of our own concerns.
Yet God hears our cries.
Christ knows our sufferings.
The Holy Spirit strengthens us in our weakness helping us to makes space for each other.
For the past 5 years or so, I have carried this little piece of paper in my
wallet. It is a quote from 1 Samuel 3:10 and says “Speak, for your servant is listening”
So remember that waitress that I spoke about? Well she truly listened that little boy in to existence. She understood what the disciples needed to be explained and knew how important it was to be listened to, to be truly heard.
May we, like that waitress, follow Jesus’ example, and listen people into existence, listen people into life… and listen people into knowing they matter, that are important, that they are loved
….That they are in fact, REAL.
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