Year A
 Isaiah 56:1,6-8
 Psalm 67
 Romans 11:1-2a, 29-32
 Matthew 15:10-28

May the words of my mouth O God…  speak your truth…

Almost all of you know…  that I grew up Jewish…  and I was keenly aware of being in a minority…  televangelists told me that if I didn’t believe…  I’d burn in hell…  a classmate in second grade blamed me for killing Jesus…  and sometimes… we really did go out for Chinese food and a movie on Christmas…  and when Christmas fell on a weekday…  there’d be no school…  but some kind of special arrangements needed to be made so my family could go to synagogue when holidays like Yom Kippur fell on a weekday…   and when I was in tenth grade…  and we went to visit my grandfather in Miami…  while waiting for the hotel elevator…  one of the two men waiting there said to the other…  in an exasperated tone of voice…  I can’t believe how many Jews there are here…  and I felt so uncomfortable…  I pretended that I remembered something in my room just so I could get out of there…

In the 1996 movie Jerry Maguire…   Jerry comes to the home where the Divorced Women’s Group is meeting…  his former wife Dorothy is there…  and he enters the living room somewhat sheepishly…  and to get their attention…  he says Hello…  twice…  his eyes meet Dorothy’s…  and he bares his soul…   acknowledges his arrogance…   and shares that on what was supposed to be the happiest night of his career…  he felt incomplete…  he couldn’t share it and laugh about it with his wife…  and looking at her…   he says “I love you. You complete me.” to which Dorothy replied “Shut up. You had me at hello.”

And when I was baptized at thirty-seven…  it wasn’t because I now thought Judaism was somehow wrong…   and Christianity was somehow right…  it was because God had me at incarnation…  at God wanting to be in relationship with us so much that God came to be one of us…  it was because Jesus came to affirm that God’s inner circle was boundless…  and there could no longer be anyone…  for any reason…  on the outside of it…  but there are those…   who firmly believe…   that Christianity replaced Judaism…  there’s a Christian theology called supersessionism…  which claims that the Christian Church has replaced the nation of Israel as God’s covenanted people…  a theology which maintains that the New Covenant through Jesus has replaced the Mosaic covenant which God made with the Jewish people…  that the Christian Church has replaced ancient Israel as God’s True Israel…   and that Christians have replaced the ancient Israelites…   as the People of God…

The Episcopal Church’s former Presiding Bishop…  the Most Rev. Katharine Jefferts Schori…  said…  For us Christians, Jesus is our doorway to God; but for us to think that God couldn’t possibly act in some other way, is for us humans to put God in a very small box… ] and let’s remember that boxes don’t exist in nature…  they’re our short-sighted human attempt to contain and control…  and Natalie Wigg-Stevenson writes…  that today’s reading from Romans…   tackles supersessionism head-on…  after Paul’s opening remark…  Did God reject his people? By no means! …  he affirms that…  God’s gifts and call are irrevocable…  but today’s reading jumps from verse 2a…  to verse 29…  and far too many Christians have weaponized many of these missing verses against Jews…  for example…  in v. 6…  the false dichotomy of God’s covenant with Israel being of law…  is pitted against the covenant with Christians being by grace…  in v. 7…  the terminology of the elect is set against the hardened…  and when in v. 14…  God uses Gentiles to make Israel  jealous …  it’s too often presumed that all Jews have stomped off in a huff…  but only a supersessionist reading of this verse would require Jews who want to be included in God’s new covenant…  to exit and reenter through Jesus… ]  but Paul…  however…  names no such requirement…  and vv. 17 – 21…  which imply that God might prune Israel’s tree in order to graft on Gentiles…  which Christians have used to condemn Jews…  are also the verses which put Christians in our rightful place… even warning in v. 21 that we too could be pruned…

Just a little bit earlier in Matthew’s Gospel…  after hearing about the death of his cousin John the Baptist…  Jesus needed some down time…  he tried to get away by himself…  but when he saw the crowds…  he had compassion on them…  and cured the sick…  and fed the more than 5,000 men…  women…  and children…  and now he tries to get away again…  and just when he thinks he may get some down time…  just when he thinks he may go unnoticed…  just when he thinks he may be able to pull the covers over his head and leave the world behind…  we can imagine his patience being pulled really thin…  when a Canaanite woman comes and starts shouting at him…  the disciples say…  Send her away…  for she keeps shouting after us…  and it may be easy to think…  it was for me… that when Jesus says…   I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel… that he’s speaking to this woman…  but the flow of the text indicates that he’s actually answering the disciples…  but either way…  Jesus is not being compassionate…  he may be having a bad day…  or else he’s just really tired from not getting the rest he’s been trying to get…  and I dare say…  that with these words…  Jesus is being as exclusive about Judaism…  as supersessionists are about Christianity…  but this sassy woman overhears…  something is wrong with her daughter…  and she is confident that Jesus can help…  but she needs Jesus to act NOW…  she is desperate…  and desperate people have nothing to lose…    and so she challenges Jesus’ understanding of his call…  Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters’ table…  and somehow…  in a way that is shrouded in the pages of mystery…  Jesus comes to himself…  and affirms her faith…  and heals her daughter… 

Cait and Becky…  baptism is an outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace…  as he is baptized…  Sutton will be grafted onto the body of Christ…  and you two…  and Ellery…  and the tribes and the communities of which you’re a part…  will do all you can to raise him up with a love of God…  a desire to follow Jesus on The Way…  and an eagerness to listen to the Holy Spirit so that what proceeds from his heart will be sweetness in his mouth…  and you will remind him…  as we remind each other…  that the boundless inner circle which Jesus came to affirm…  includes each and every one of us…  no matter what kind of day we’re having…  or how tired we are…  or how we seek the Mystery from which we come…  ]  and that we…  like this gutsy Canaanite woman…  whose words of desperation arose out of the love for her child…  even we…  like the prophets of old…  may occasionally seek to hold God accountable for the promises God has made to us…  even as we hold ourselves accountable to doing all that is needed…  to help those promises take shape…  and be realized…  and come to fruition…  Holy God…  make it so…