August 21, 2011, Proper 16A, Romans 12:1-8, Confessions of a Reformed Non-Conformist

Proper 16A
Romans 12:1-8
August 21, 2011

Confessions of a Reformed Non-Conformist

Rev. John M. Caldwell, PhD
First United Methodist Church
Decorah, Iowa

When I was eighth grade, or perhaps ninth, I was rummaging through the boxes in our basement, boxes still not unpacked from our move four or five years before, when I discovered my father's stash of science fiction books. Among them was Fahrenheit 451, by Ray Bradbury. Bradbury began the book with this epigraph from the poet Juan Ramón Jiménez: "If they give you ruled paper, write the other way."¹

Henry David Thoreau couldn't have agreed more: "If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away."

This was the middle of the 1960's. It would have been hard to find a more fitting description of my generation's relationship to the status quo, the authority of our elders or the traditions that we had received from previous generations. We were the members of that generation of children born after World War II in the giddy years of a rising economic tide which, thanks to strong unions and a progressive income tax, did indeed lift all boats.We set out to chart our own course, to step to the music which we heard, keeping time to the beat of a different drummer.

We set out to change the world. The first thing to do was to get rid of war. For only the second time in the history of our nation, large numbers of young people refused to fight the war that their elders had decided they should fight.

My generation is a generation of idealists, raised in a time of economic expansion and increasing freedoms. In our bones we believed that things should get better and better, world without end, Amen. Idealists make lousy soldiers.

The story of my generation is littered with ironies. We rejected the wars of our elders and then, when it came our turn to lead, we cheerfully sent our nation's sons and daughters to fight our wars. We wore tie-dyed t-shirts with slogans that proclaimed our rejection of "the system," while "the system" geared up to supply us with those t-shirts and the other necessary equipment of non-conformity. We rejected tradition and cited as the authority for our rebellion writers like Thoreau and poets like Jiménez who were very much a part of the very tradition we were rejecting.

It's not that we didn't have a good idea or two. It's not that we did not cherish values that were and are deserving of our full devotion. As ideals go, seeking a world that is free of war is pretty good. Seeking a society that is open to all its members, regardless of race, is pretty good one, too. Seeking a world in which the wealth that we enjoy is more fairly shared among all its people isn't bad either.

Seeking that world is a good thing. Getting there is something else.It is easy enough to say, if I may paraphrase Paul, that we should not be "conformed to 'the system'". But rejecting "the system" was not particularly helpful in moving toward an inclusive, peaceful and just world. Jiménez failed to notice that writing "the other way" when given lined paper makes non-conformity pretty safe for the status quo. Thoreau did not grasp that the beat of a different drummer could be copyrighted and mass-marketed. This particular system, the one that we live in and with, has some special problems for us to work through.

We live in a consumer society. We value freedom and choice. As consumers we expect that, if we have the money, we should be able to have what we want. When we go to the grocery store we expect to find an array of choices in the frozen foods, another array of choices in the beverage aisle, yet another array in the cereal aisle and so on. I'm not sure that I find this terribly freeing. Many times I have confronted a shelf with hundreds of breakfast cereals and been paralyzed. And I know what I want. It's there. Somewhere. I just can't find it.

The food industry—to stick to the food aisle—has discovered that there isn't much money to be made in supplying me with what I need. The real money is in processing, turning corn into corn syrup and adding it to processed wheat that has been shaped into miniature superheroes of different colors. Ever more combinations of ever more processed stuff.

Now as a consumer I might, as I do, go for something simple: shredded wheat. It is processed, but it's made of wheat. No corn syrup. No sugar. No food coloring. No salt. No ingredients that can't be pronounced. Nothing my grandparents wouldn't have recognized as food. Yes, it has some preservative added to the packaging. But other than that, it's wheat. Not much money in that. I'm a food industry nightmare.

Enter advertizing. Food manufacturers discovered a long time ago that, if they waited for us to want what they have to sell, they wouldn't make much money. So, after World War I, they hired out-of-work war propagandists to figure out how to make us want stuff we don't need and to think we want stuff we don't really want, so we'll buy something more profitable for them than shredded wheat. Consumer society was born.

Of course, a consumer society needs consumers. It needs, not just people who buy the stuff they need, but people who are defined as consumers. It needs people who believe that all these different kinds of cereal are about their choices and their freedom, rather than about profits for the food industry. In our culture that's what it means to be "conformed to the system."

I have come to believe that this system presents some real problems for us and the world that we call home. It presents special problems when we approach our relationships with each other and with God as consumers.

For lots of folks a church is a retailer of religious goods and services. When people find themselves in need of religious goods or services, they go looking for a retailer who can supply them. They go "church shopping." They are looking for "a good fit." I understand. It is possible to find yourself in a church that just feels all wrong, one that would never work. I've been there. I've even been the pastor of one like that. But I tell people that while they are exercising their freedom to choose—a cherished right in this country—to be careful how they choose. If "a good fit" means a church that's comfortable, then "a good fit" is a bad thing. We're not here for our comfort. If finding a church that "meets our needs" means a church that's gives me what I want, then meeting our needs is a bad thing. We're not here to get what we want.

What we need in a church is a community that will help us to grow and change, that will help us to be "transformed by the renewing of our minds" in Paul's phrase. To be that a congregation needs to provide two things. The first is safety. If we are not safe we cannot risk change. The second thing is a challenge. If we are not challenged we will not change. A good fit is a congregation that doesn't quite fit.

To choose a church well we have to chose for reasons other than what a consumer culture values. And for a congregation to do its work on us, we have to move even further away from consumer values. A congregation is a spiritual rock tumbler. We start out as dull stones with sharp edges and rough all over. We get tossed into the church with a bunch of other rocks and we bump up against each other. We rub each other the wrong way sometimes. But if we hang in there long enough, some of our sharp edges get blunted. In a few places here and there we lose some of our surface roughness and we start to shine. A good congregation will do this if we resist the consumerist temptation to bail when we become uncomfortable or bored or dissatisfied.

To avoid being conformed to the system, we have to be transformed. God has a number of strategies for doing this. We call them "means of grace." There is the sacrament of our shared meal. There is baptism, which we will celebrate in a few minutes. There is the collection of sometimes awesome, sometimes awful writings we call the Bible. There are the many practices of prayer. There is that least-used discipline in our consumer culture: fasting. But the most vital of God's strategies for our transformation is the flesh and blood reality of our congregation. We are just ordinary people, prone to all sorts of faults. I don't really have to number them. We know. We're just ordinary people and yet we are bigger than the sum of our parts. Our congregation, quite aside from our very real failings, can also be good and wise and holy. If we hang in there for the long haul, there is a very real possibility that we will become good and wise and holy as well. Or, as Paul puts it, we will prove what is good and pleasing and mature.

©2011, John M. Caldwell. Permission is given by the author to reproduce and distribute the unaltered text of this sermon provided this notice is reproduced in full and provided that this sermon shall not be offered for sale, nor included in any collection or publication that is offered for sale, without the express written permission of the author.

1Bradbury attributed the saying to Juan Ramón Jiménez. The Yale Book of Quotations, p396, agrees, citing the Spanish original, "Si te dan papel rayado, escribe de través" (from España, November 20, 1920).

August 13, 2011, Proper 15A, Matthew 15:21-28, Wider Yet

Proper 15A
Matthew 15:21-28
August 13, 2011

Wider Yet: The Limits of Human Imagination

Rev. John M. Caldwell, PhD
First United Methodist Church
Decorah, Iowa

It's going to be a long fifteen months until the elections of 2012. For some time I have found our national political conversation wearisome. Perhaps because it has ceased to be conversation in any real sense of the word. We no longer actually listen to those with whom we disagree. Instead we make up some distorted version of their position and tear that apart. The give and take that used to happen in spite of ideological differences so that things could get done is now so rare as to become a heroic achievement. There are, I guess, a lot of reasons for this.

What concerns me this morning is that the way that public debate takes place fails to check a very natural human tendency, that, left unchecked, destroys our sense of community and a shared life. Like everyone else I tend to view the world from where I stand. I see and understand the world and the people, places and things in it from a particular place.

I know that each of you does the same. Mostly this works okay without disturbing me too much because, after all, we are mostly more alike than different. The proof of that is that you get most of my jokes, or at least you are very politely pretending to and laughing at the right places and that's nearly as good.

When we disturb each other it's because of a tendency that I have (and perhaps you have it, too): I tend to normalize my perspective. That is, because I stand in a certain place and see the world in a certain way and because from where I stand that way looks natural and right, I assume that my way of looking at things is normal. It's not just a geographical place I'm talking about. I take my place in the world as a white, middle-aged, middle-class, over-educated, ordained and appointed, straight man who occupies a place of power and privilege. My view of the world seems normal and right. When I bump into others who don't share that view, I tend to see their view as abnormal, unnatural and wrong.

In short I am the product of my experiences, the product of my times and of the culture that nurtured me. I can, of course, choose some of other experiences, but those choices themselves are shaped and limited by my experiences, my times and my culture. This doesn't sound very hopeful, does it?

Before we give up on our chances for real change, though, let's take a look at the story from Matthew and see if it has anything to add.

It's not an easy story, mostly because in it Jesus is not very nice. He says some rather nasty things to a woman who—from our point of view at least—doesn't seem to deserve it. Many readers of the Bible have been scandalized by this story and have tried in various ways to make it sound nicer than it is. Unlike these readers who try to get around a problem text, I'm just stubborn enough to plot a course through it and inconsiderate enough of your feelings to drag you with me. So let's see.

As Matthew's gospel has laid it out, Jesus has been working without any time off for some time. This isn't good. There is a rhythm to human life of work and rest. We are supposed to work hard. We are also supposed to rest not just when we get our daily sleep. We are supposed to take a day off now and then. For some reason—though I can't quite put my finger on where I might have heard this—a ratio of six days of work to one day of rest comes to mind.

Jesus had not been getting his days of rest. Every time we tried to slip away someone would see him and the word would spread and the first thing you know a quiet retreat had turned into a mob scene with multitudes asking him to fix their problems. We aren't told, but I'm imagining that Jesus realized that a preacher cannot take a vacation and stay at home. He needed to get out of town and turn off his cell phone.

So he left his parish—Galilee and Judea—and went to their version of the Jersey Shore, the neighborhood of the Phoenician cities of Tyre and Sidon. There he would be away from the Jewish population centers and hoped, if he wore sunglasses, to avoid having to meet any needs other than his need for rest.

It didn't work out that way. Perhaps Jesus hadn't reckoned with his spreading fame. Perhaps Jesus hadn't realized that the Jewish hope for a messiah was known and even shared outside of his people. In any event, even at the Jersey Shore and even when he was wearing sunglasses, there was at least one Canaanite woman who not only recognized him on sight but was able to address him by title: Son of David. "Have mercy on me, Lord, Son of David," she cried.

She was desperate in the way that only a parent with a sick child can be. She was desperate in a way that drove her to a Jewish messiah to ask for help for her daughter, even if he was on vacation.

Now we come to the difficult part. Like us, Jesus grew up in a particular place and time and within a particular culture. His way of looking at the world was shaped by time and place and culture. There were things that he knew because of this shaping. He knew, for example, that the earth was flat and that the sun journeyed across the sky during the day and returned under the earth to the east at night. He knew that disease was caused by the actions of evil spirits. He knew that his people, the Jewish people, had been chosen by God to live in covenant with God. They had obligations under this covenant. Jesus understood that his mission was to help his people to see these obligations clearly, to take up these obligations and make the fulfilling of them a part of their ordinary lives, and to enjoy as a result the power of God to heal and make whole. Jesus' work was to be done among Jews. This woman had no claim on him. He ignored her.

But the woman did not take the hint. Instead she kept on crying for him to help her daughter. Jesus kept ignoring her. The disciples started pestering him to send her away. The woman kept crying out. Some vacation.

So Jesus stopped and faced her. He had acknowledged her existence. He would have to deal with her. So he began by sharing his mission statement: "I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel." Mission statements are good. They give clarity about what we're supposed to do. More importantly they give clarity about what we're not supposed to do. Jesus' attempt to clarify things, however, failed to impress the desperate mother of a disturbed and troubled child. "Have mercy on me," she continued to cry.

Finally, his patience gone, he addressed her in a way that, if it was brutal, should have been effective in getting rid of her: "It is not fair to take the children's food and throw it to the dogs." He called her a dog. There is to this day no worse insult in the Middle East than to call someone a dog. Jesus called her a dog. Some readers have tried to soften the insult by pointing out, correctly, that the word that is translated "dogs" is the diminutive form of the word for dog. It could mean puppy or it could mean household dog, so that's not so bad.... No, he called her a dog.

This is perfectly in line with how his culture regarded outsiders. It's perfectly in line with how any culture regards outsiders: beneath notice, not quite human, Other.

Now, if this Canaanite woman had been a little less courageous, if she'd been a little less desperate, if she had had a little less of that quintessentially Jewish character trait known in Yiddish as chutzpah, the story would have ended there.

But it didn't. She had finally gotten Jesus' attention. That was a victory in itself. He had put her down verbally, but could only do that by talking to her. All she had to do then was to win the verbal exchange. Verbal jousting was very popular in those days. Thrusting and parrying with words or watching others do it was what people did in place of watching ESPN. Those who were really good at it were taken as wise, even as God-favored. It was expected of philosophers and messiahs. But anyone could play. Even this Canaanite woman.

But she would only get one chance. So she took her best shot. "Yes, Lord, but even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from the master's table." Taking and accepting for the moment the terms that Jesus had used to define her and their relationship, she turned them inside out. She showed that even within those abusive terms, she had a claim that Jesus could not deny. All she was asking for was crumbs. He had to grant them to her.

She had won and Jesus knew it. In his encounter with this woman, Jesus heard clearly the inhumanity of his culture's view of things, a view that had seemed natural until that moment. It was awkward. Jesus wasn't used to losing these verbal jousts. I can count on the fingers of one finger the total number of times that Jesus lost. So he must have been uncomfortable. And how embarrassing to have it happen in front of his disciples! But there it was. The text doesn't say so, but I imagine that Jesus laughed. Sometimes you just have to laugh at yourself and surely this was one of those times. "Okay, you win! Go in peace, your daughter is made whole." And so she was.

Jesus' encounter with the Canaanite woman was surely a revelation to him. It didn't change his mission. He was right about that, at least as far as Matthew is concerned. He didn't suddenly revise his itinerary to tour the Roman Empire. He sought the lost sheep of the house of Israel. But he learned something about the heart of God that he had not known before: it encompasses everyone. Yes, Jesus learned a tough lesson that day. He who already knew God's heart so deeply and so well learned that he still more to learn. He received this lesson from a woman he had been taught to despise.

And this gives me hope. If Jesus needs this lesson, then how much more do I? And if Jesus can learn this lesson at this stage of his career and life, it's still possible for you and me. And that's about all the good news I can handle for today.

©2011, John M. Caldwell. Permission is given by the author to reproduce and distribute the unaltered text of this sermon provided this notice is reproduced in full and provided that this sermon shall not be offered for sale, nor included in any collection or publication that is offered for sale, without the express written permission of the author.