"A House of Prayer for All People"

Preached Sunday, July 8, 2012 at Rennie Memorial Presbyterian Church in Amelia, VA 

Texts: Isaiah 56:1-8 
          Matthew 15:21-28 

In our reading this morning, from the prophet Isaiah, God tells us he's going to bring people, new people, to his holy mountain, and make them joyful in his house of prayer, for, Isaiah says, God's house shall be called a house of prayer for all people.

A house of prayer for all people. Well that sounds nice, doesn't it? That's what we as the church are called to be, after all. A place where all people come to join together and worship God. If only the church really looked like that.

If only the church was truly a manifestation of the radical inclusiveness of God's Kingdom. It's a problem we've been struggling with for ages, a problem as old as the day is long. For you see, while we like the idea of God's house, of the church, as a "House of Prayer for All People," while we pray for the day when "every knee shall bow, and every tongue shall confess" faith in the God that we know loves and liberates us, the thought of a community that includes everyone scares us. We are human, and try as we might to love our neighbors as ourselves, our love and grace for one another is still a far cry from the love and grace of the God we worship.

The good news I bring you, brothers and sisters in Christ, is that we are not alone in our fear, in our reluctance, to embrace the church as a house of prayer for all people. Our mothers and fathers in the faith have struggled for thousands and thousands of years with this very same problem. Both of our texts this morning tell us of earlier times when God's people struggled to come to terms with God's radical inclusiveness. But they also remind us that in order to truly be God's people, we too must strive toward this very inclusiveness, and open our doors so that our churches and our houses may be houses of prayer for all people.

It's always been hard, following God's commands to be a truly inclusive people. We think we've got it down, we think we've done it, and then God does something radically gracious and unsettles all our ideas about who's in and who's out.

I think that's exactly what happens in our reading from Isaiah, this morning. It begins with good news: "Maintain justice and do what is right, for soon my salvation will come, and my deliverance be revealed." This is good news, yes, because the people Isaiah is addressing have just returned home from the Babylonian exile. They've had hard times - they've been conquered by another nation and shipped off to a land they don't know. And now they're back home, in the Promised Land, but they're getting worried because things aren't quite the same as when they left. You see, not all the Jews went into exile - some got to stay in the Promised Land - and the way they worship God is a little different than it was before. They're coming back home only to have to learn how to get along with different types of people. This is difficult for them. It hasn't been the glorious homecoming they were expecting. A reassurance that God's salvation is, in fact, coming? Good news indeed!

But that's just the beginning, see, because then comes some groundbreaking news, the part that knocks the Jewish people off their feet. As it turns out, in this prophesy, God is not just talking to the Jews! In fact, God includes two more groups of people to the list of those who will receive salvation and deliverance. God invites into his holy covenant, a covenant that was once only with the people of Israel, foreigners - those men and women who are not from the nation of Israel, and eunuchs - men who's genitals had been cut off so that they could serve as officers in the Persian army.

The foreigners and the eunuchs. These two names don't mean too much to us today, but for ancient Israel, they were about the last people anyone thought God would invite into his covenant. I imagine the Israelites felt betrayed - this was their God, their covenant; they were the children of Abraham, the chosen people. And they had been worshipping God faithfully in a foreign land, maintaining justice, doing what is right, keeping all of God's commandments.... And these commandments included prohibitions, laws that said that people like these foreigners and eunuchs were not allowed in the assembly of God! Deuteronomy chapter 23, verse 3: "No Ammonite or Moabite shall be admitted to the assembly of the Lord." No foreigners. And Deuteronomy chapter 23, verse 1: "No one whose testicles are crushed or whose penis is cut off shall be admitted to the assembly of the Lord." No eunuchs. This is God's word, God's law, the commandments that have been keeping the people of Israel alive through the years. And yet in Isaiah, God promises, to those foreigners and eunuchs who hold fast to God's commandments, a place in his house of prayer for all people.

It is important to mention, of course, that God doesn't extend this invitation to just anyone. It's not all foreigners, it's not all eunuchs - it's only to those who will maintain justice and do what is right. This new community that God is building is not one where "anything goes." All people in God's covenant - Israelite, foreigner, or eunuch - must obey God's commandments. But it's starting to get confusing for the Israelites. They thought they understood God's commandments, but those commandments said no foreigners or eunuchs would be invited into the assembly of God, and here God is inviting them in! Is God breaking his own commandments? Did Moses and their forefathers and foremothers in the faith get it wrong? How can they be God's holy, covenant community if they're now inviting in people who are considered unclean, considered abominations in the sight of the Lord?

The Israelites were upset by this prophesy, were angry about the radical inclusiveness of God's Kingdom. I imagine we today can understand why. It might feel like undeserving outsiders are being invited into the Kingdom. How are we supposed to keep God's covenant if God the lawgiver breaks his own laws? And I think it's ok that we're confused, that we have these objections, because, we're not alone in them. In fact, our Gospel lesson this morning points to a story when Jesus himself found himself struggling with the radical inclusiveness of God's Kingdom.

This story of Jesus and the Canaanite woman is often troubling for Christians, for the church, because what Jesus says and does is, quite frankly, not very nice. He refuses to help a woman who is suffering, and before he finally does grant her request, he calls her a dog! I can almost hear his mother Mary saying, "Now Jesus, what has gotten into you? You apologize and give that nice lady what she's asking for. You're the Messiah, after all, and she's just to save her daughter!" It's troubling, for us as Christians, who call Jesus Christ our Lord and Savior, to see Jesus acting like this.

I think it's troubling for us because while we spend plenty of time talking about Jesus' divinity, how Jesus is the Son of God, we often tend to forget about Jesus' humanity - how the Word became flesh and dwelt among us. But as Christians, we affirm that Jesus is both, fully human, and fully God. So I don't think we need to be afraid, or defensive, when we read stories from the Gospel like this one. In this story, Jesus shares with us in our humanity. And because Jesus, the very Son of God, is human just like us, God, through Jesus, teaches us something incredible in this story.

Jesus and this Canaanite woman get in a debate about whether or not he will heal her daughter. She's a Gentile, not a Jew, and so not a member of the covenant community of Israel that Jesus came to save. I find it strange that they even have this debate; after all, earlier in the Gospel, in Matthew chapter 8, Jesus healed the daughter of a Roman soldier - that's about as Gentile as you get! Why won't he do the same now? Is it because she's not only a Gentile, but also a woman? You see, women in this time weren't supposed to speak to men in public, let alone cry out repeatedly after Jesus and his disciples as they try to go on their way.

But, whatever the reason, Jesus and the Canaanite woman get into this debate. She asks for help, he ignores her. She continues to cry out, and the disciples say "Jesus, why don't you do something about her?" and he says, "I was only sent to the lost sheep of Israel." But she keeps crying out for help, and when that doesn't work, she catches up and kneels down at his feet so he can't ignore her anymore and says, "Lord, help me." And that's when Jesus responds, "It is not fair to take the children's food and throw it to the dogs."

Jesus gets in many debates like this over the course of his ministry, debates with the scribes, the Pharisees, with his disciples or members of the crowd... Satan tempts Jesus in the wilderness with bread, but Jesus says "One does not live by bread alone, but from every word that comes from the mouth of God." The Pharisees try to trick Jesus, asking if they should pay taxes to the emperor, but he says "Give to Caesar what is Caesar's, and give to God what is God's. In every other instance except this one, Jesus gets the punch line. He's the one who teaches, and everyone else learns. But in this story of the Canaanite woman, she gets the punch line, she is the teacher. She responds, "Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters' table." And Jesus is moved by her faith and heals her daughter.

You see, in her faith, this Canaanite woman doesn't just move Jesus, she changes Jesus, she teaches Jesus. That may sound radical, it may sound absurd, but Jesus recognizes that this woman speaks words of truth about the radical inclusiveness of the Kingdom of God. She wants Jesus to minister to her, to heal her daughter, but before that can happen, she has to minister to him, to teach our very Lord and Savior a lesson about God's inclusive community. She is the most unexpected of teachers, yet she is the one to remind Jesus just how big God's Kingdom really is. We see how much she has changed his heart as we continue in Matthew's Gospel, for the very next thing Jesus does is go up onto a mountain where he heals great crowds of Gentiles, of those outside of the covenant, and then feeds four thousand of them, just as he fed five thousand of his Jewish brothers and sisters just a couple chapters earlier.

If our Lord Jesus Christ can humble himself to learn about God's Kingdom from someone he had considered outside of his ministry, outside of the Kingdom, shouldn't we do the same? Perhaps we too need to be changed and taught by the Spirit of God working through the people we least expect, the last people we would imagine as part of God's covenant community.

Who are those people for us today? Who are the ones that we may exclude from our own church community yet whom God has already called to his table? It's different for everyone. For some of us, it's those who look and speak differently than we do, sometimes in a language we cannot understand. Immigrants who have come to our country to find work, but we don't know whether or not they are here "legally," as we like to say, and some of us may resent the way their presence has changed our communities.

For some of us, it's those in prison or those who have served their time and are back living among us in society. Maybe they make us feel uncomfortable, maybe they make us feel unsafe -- it's hard for us to welcome into the Kingdom those who have broken the laws, if only the laws of our country. In some way we don't think they "deserve it," that second, or third, or fourth chance that comes with grace.

In the last week that I spent at the Presbyterian Church (USA) General Assembly, I became increasingly aware than for many of us, it is those among us who are gay and lesbian. We see texts in our Bibles, like Leviticus chapter 18 verse 22, or Romans chapter 1 verses 26 through 27, that seem to condemn these brothers and sisters of ours, and we find ourselves struggling with the same question that plagued the ancient Israelites -- how could any of these people be part of the covenant community, be those invited to the house of God?

But our God is a gathering God, that's what Isaiah tells us. Just as God gathered the outcasts of Israel, just as God gathered the Church in Jesus Christ, and just as God has individually gathered each of us from wherever we are in life to be God's children - God is still gathering others to the Kingdom so that God's house may truly be a house of prayer for all people.

But, we protest, what about maintaining justice, and doing what is right? How can we as the church invite someone into our covenant community if they are breaking God's law, or the law of the land? But here, brothers and sisters, I offer a word of caution - many times our ancestors and ourselves have misinterpreted the will of God. The Israelites read the laws against eunuchs, and against foreigners, but then they heard the voice of God, inviting those people into the covenant. We, in the United States, read in the book of Ephesians "Slaves, obey your masters," but then we heard the voice of God, reminding us that we are all created equal, and that we are brothers and sisters in Christ. We read in First Timothy that no woman is to speak or teach in church, but then we heard the voice of God telling us that both men and women have spiritual gifts to offer in worship. And then as now, the lines of the rules we thought we knew started to blur, and we found ourselves unable to comprehend a God that would include even these outsiders into God's house of prayer for all people.

We may not like it that these new people are being gathered to God's Kingdom - it may make us uncomfortable. It may feel to us just like it did to those ancient Israelites who could comprehend how God was inviting into the Kingdom foreigners and eunuchs - people that it specifically said in God's holy law are outside of the covenant! It may feel to us just like it did to Jesus and his disciples when a foreign woman had to teach them a lesson about who God is and how God works. It's never been easy - opening our doors and our hearts the way that God opens his doors and his heart. And yet God continues to call us, the church, God's own people, to do just that.

In fact, as we learn from the story of Jesus and the Canaanite woman, these men and women may be the very people, the unexpected people, from whom we will learn and through whom we may experience the grace of God.

In every age, this has been a hard call for the church to live into. When faced with those who are different from us, we tend to close our doors rather than open them. We hide ourselves from outcasts and outsiders, forgetting that we too were once outsiders that God graciously gathered into the covenant. Often we fight among ourselves over how to deal with new kinds of people, over what they will do to the current community in which we've grown so comfortable. The new and unexpected grace of God can be quite difficult, quite frightening.

But in the face of this newness, God has told us what to do. "Maintain justice, and do what is right, for my salvation is coming soon." When we hold fast to God's promises, when we live in God's covenant and welcome people the way God welcomes them and welcomes us, we can trust in the Holy Spirit to stir our hearts and guide us, too, into this new covenant community. We can trust in the God who says to us in Isaiah chapter 43, "Do not remember the former things, or consider the things of old; I am about to do a new thing - now it springs forth! Do you not perceive it?"

Thanks be to God. Amen.