God of Love and God of Reason

Homilies, Lectures, and Essays on God and Religion

Mason

• Publisher: Wipf and Stock
• Year: 2016
• eBook ISBN: 9781498229739
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

These homilies, lectures, and essays vigorously champion the author's conviction that it is reasonable to believe in a God of "pure unbounded love" and, also, that the best religion is a reasonable religion. That is, "the God of Love" is "the God of Reason" and, as a seventeenth-century Cambridge preacher put it, "If you would be religious, be rational in your religion." Thus, these essays challenge both the New Atheists and Fundamentalists, who are twins like Tweedledum and Tweedledee. And they aim, positively, to unpack the meaning and implications of Jesus' dictum: "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the greatest and first commandment. And the second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets."

1

JESUS’ ENCOUNTER WITH THE CANAANITE WOMAN

David R. Mason

St. Paul’s Episcopal Church

Cleveland Heights, Ohio

August 18, 2002

Matt 15:21–28:

Jesus left that place and went to the district of Tyre and Sidon. Just then a Canaanite woman from that region started shouting, “Have mercy on me, Lord, Son of David; my daughter is tormented by a demon.” But he did not answer her at all. And his disciples came and urged him, saying, “Send her away, for she keeps shouting after us.” He answered, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” But she came and knelt before him, saying, “Lord, help me.” He answered, “It is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.” She said, “Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters’ table.” Then Jesus answered her, “Woman, great is your faith! Let it be done for you as you wish.” And her daughter was healed instantly.

The story of Jesus and the Canaanite woman, as reported by both Matthew and Mark, is highly instructive at several levels. At the very human level we witness a woman who is desperate for the well-being of her daughter, and who discerned some sort of divine power in Jesus to help, and who persisted in pleading her case, and who, frankly, was very clever in turning a rebuff to her own advantage. Also, at the very human level we see a young itinerant Jewish teacher and healer who, just before he had come to the district of Tyre and Sidon, had been engaged with the scribes and Pharisees over the strict observance of purity laws versus the weightier matters of the Law. And one might have expected that Jesus would be here to extend the graciousness of the Jewish God and religion to the Gentiles—to make available to all sorts and conditions, irrespective of their tribal or ethnic roots, the power and salvation that he knew to be available from the personal God of the whole universe, the One whom the Jews worshiped as Yahweh and whom Jesus knew intimately as Father. As John Miller wrote: “Jesus never intended to establish a separate religion known as Christianity. Instead, He meant to extend Judaism to the whole world to welcome all Gentiles into a saving knowledge of the grace and love of Yahweh whom he frequently called Father.”1

But, surprisingly, in this foray into Gentile territory this is not what Jesus initially endeavors to do. In fact, when he had the opportunity to witness to God’s salvific and caring love for everyone by responding to the woman’s cry for mercy he turned a deaf ear: “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” Evidently all discussion of God, worship, doctrines of God and the precepts of human beings, about things planted by the heavenly Father and things planted by mere humans—discussions Jesus had just had with some Pharisees—was all intramural. At this point Jesus did not seem to think that any of this concerned this pushy Gentile woman.

Moreover, when she continued to persist and knelt before him, groveled, and pleaded, “Lord, help me,” Jesus finally acknowledged her, only to rebuke her with what has to be one of the most insulting putdowns in Jesus’ interactions with ordinary people: “It is not fair to take the children’s bread and throw it to the dogs.” He likened this woman to an inferior breed; he remarked contemptuously that she was a dog! I often wonder how those folks who unctuously ask, “What would Jesus do?” deal with this snide comment. It’s not, of course, that I’ve never belittled others or said nasty or malicious things. But one hopes for better from the One we call Lord, the Messiah of God.

Fortunately, this wasn’t the final word. The insult could not pierce the armor of the Canaanite woman’s faith, and her riposte is a classic: “Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their master’s table.” She was not to be put off because she did not belong to the right group. Her faith was in God whom she divined to be present in Jesus and that was her salvation. I don’t know whether it was her humility, or her pluck, or her verbal quickness, but whatever it was it brought about a radical change in Jesus’ attitude and in his response to her: “O woman, great is your faith! Be it done as you desire.” And her daughter was healed instantly.

Here, I really think we have moved to the divine level. And I do not mean simply that a miracle of healing was performed. I mean that, faced, with the woman’s faith, her persistent sense of worth, her clever and agile wit in the face of an insult, Jesus changed his attitude and his understanding of who is to be included in God’s salvation.

As the great American psychologist and philosopher, William James, was finishing his first book The Principles of Psychology he wrote to his brother, Henry, that he had to forge every sentence “in the teeth of irreducible and stubborn facts.”2 It seems to me that Jesus changed his entire outlook in “the teeth of irreducible and stubborn facts,” and this is nothing short of miraculous.

Do you realize how set in our ways most of us are, and how a closed mind keeps us from dealing with irreducible and stubborn facts and expanding our horizons, from seeing new and different possibilities? One can only hope, for instance, that at the present time an administration bent upon a fixed idea that Saddam Hussein must be eliminated, taken out by what it imagines would be a quick war, will listen to the irreducible and stubborn voices from our allies in Europe and the Middle East, from Republicans in the House and Senate, from advisors such as Henry Kissinger and Brent Scowcroft, and change and take a fresh look.

I have it on a certain authority—I do not know how certain—that in the seventeenth century Oliver Cromwell, the Lord Protector, addressed the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland and said: “I beseech you in the bowels of Christ think it possible that you may be mistaken.”3 In a sense this is what the quick-witted Canaanite woman was saying to Jesus: “Think it possible that you may be mistaken.”

So, Jesus responded. He had been mistaken that the good news of God’s salvation was only for the lost sheep of the house of Israel. It was, of course, for the lost sheep of Israel and, indeed, for the found sheep. But it was also for everyone else as well. When Jesus returned to Galilee from this encounter with a Gentile woman his mission was changed. And, as is often said, “the rest is history.”

To be sure, the history of the Christian response to Jesus has been a checkered one in which the non-Jewish beneficiaries of Christ’s redemptive life have often thought that they alone were the possessors of salvation, those alone whom God loves and saves. And they frequently have asserted that they alone were the arbiters of what is true. But these people have been fighting against a changed Jesus. To speak of exclusive possession of salvation is to misread the irreducible and stubborn facts and to misrepresent Christ.

As Paul says, “There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus” (Gal 3:28); and again, “In that renewal there is no longer Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave and free; but Christ is all and in all” (Col 3:11). Or, as the great African-American spiritual has it: “In Christ there is no east or west, in him no south or north; but one great fellowship of love throughout the whole wide earth.”

And I want to add: “irrespective of whether or not they are Christians.”

1. Miller, The Irony of Christianity, 184.

2. See Perry, The Thought and Character of William James, 40.

3. Cromwell, www.cromwell.argonet.co.uk.

1a

Letter from a Parishioner in response to my Aug. 18, 2002 Sermon on the Canaanite Woman Together with my letter in response to the parishioner

(The parishioner’s letter was originally addressed to the interim rector who replied and sent the letter to me. I have reproduced her letter as if it were written directly to me, but my letter in response makes it clear that there was an intermediary.)

September 5, 2002

Dear Reverend Mason,

I have had the privilege of hearing two others of your sermons at St. Paul’s and was impressed by your message. However, I am writing this letter to express my concern over your sermon of August 18, 2002. Several of your points disturbed me and I would like to bring them to your attention.

First was your portrayal of Jesus as possessing less than godly characteristics and secondly your utilization of the gospel to politicize your own agenda by twisting God’s word.

What I heard you say was that in Matt 15:32, Jesus Christ responded in a rude and insulting manner to the Canaanite woman. You remarked that we would have hoped for better from Jesus. Nowhere did the homily refer to other occasions when Jesus challenged those seeking his healing by testing their faith. Additionally, your intonation in your voice, when quoting Jesus’ response to the woman, conveyed a derogatory translation for the word dog. The actual Greek translation for the word used, kunarion, means “little dog,” as in a household pet, not the cur on the street you implied.

Although the Scripture passage clea...

Table of contents

• Preface
• HOMILIES
• Chapter 1: JESUS’ ENCOUNTER WITH THE CANAANITE WOMAN
• Chapter 1a: Letter from a Parishioner in response to my Aug. 18, 2002 Sermon on the Canaanite Woman Together with my letter in response to the parishioner
• Chapter 2: PAUL’S SPEECH AT THE AREOPAGUS
• Chapter 3: WISDOM IS JUSTIFIED BY HER DEEDS
• Chapter 4: FUNDAMENTALISM
• Chpater 5: EVOLUTION, CREATIONISM, AND INTELLIGENT DESIGN
• Chpater 6: “GOD” AS DEPICTED IN KINGSLEY’S “WATER BABIES”
• Chapter 7: THE ETERNITY AND TEMPORALITY OF GOD
• Chapter 8: JESUS’ SUMMARY OF THE LAW REVISITED
• Chpater 9: GOD: THE WORLD-SOUL
• Chpater 10: THE EVOLUTION OF GOD
• Chapter 11: REASON IN RELIGION
• Chpater 12: MORAL IMAGINATION
• LECTURES AND ESSAYS
• Chpater 1: THE NEW ATHEISM
• Chapter 2: FAITH IN GOD IS NOT UNREASONABLE
• Chapter 3: REMARKS ON THE ATHEISTS’ ATTACK ON RELIGION
• Chapter 4: RELIGION THROUGH MY EYES
• Chapter 5: THE ROOTS OF ANTISEMITISM IN THE GOSPELS
• Chapter 6: THE STATUS OF GOD-TALK
• Chapter 7: THREE RECENT TREATMENTS OF THE ONTOLOGICAL ARGUMENT
• Chapter 8: IDEAS AND IMAGES OF GOD
• Chapter 9: THE LAST THINGS
• WORKS CITED