The Dog Days of August

The Dog Days of August 

• Psalm 67, Matthew 15: 10 - 28 

It is late August. The kids are headed back to school, and we are happy about that, except that it “feels” too early. Part of our brains are more comfortable with school starting in September, even after Labor Day. 

The reality is based on simple logic and not on our collective feelings. High School football cannot start practice or have games except within so many days of the start of school. Football teams have regular season and conference games, then the best of them enter the playoffs. Many school districts start school to accommodate the state football championships on Thanksgiving weekend. 

We can know all of that, and still wish that school started in September. It is kind of hard for human beings to let loose of their usual patterns. Feeling the need to change can make us “cranky.” The psalmist says let God bless us all, and may all the earth praise God. In our heart of hearts, we visualize a world that is all Christian, knowing, loving, and serving God - with the same understanding that we have. 

The reality is different. God loved the Creation long before Jesus the Christ made his historical appearance. There are several traditions of knowing and loving the God of Creation with roots different from our tradition. God has used those traditions to bless creation, and continues to do that. It still may not “feel” right, but we know the reality is sometimes different from our feelings. 

You and I share a faith in a good and loving God, and embrace an understanding of the nature of God as revealed in the life and teaching of Jesus of Nazareth. While a piece of my heart embraces the platitudes about the faith that I was raised with, I recognize that the reality may be different from those old “feelings.” Once in a while I need to remind myself to actively trust in God’s blessings, and check my feelings against reality. 

My personal faith evolves over time. As a person who is a second career pastor, I was relatively settled in my ways when I went to seminary. I began seminary when I was still working full-time. The usual three year program took me four years. I graduated when I was 52 years-old. In wrestling with church history, and theology, I emerged changed. 

One of the biggest changes I had to make was to accept my own feelings, and learn to evaluate how those feelings matched up against reality. I have tried to check my automatic emotional reactivity, and see if my emotions are rooted in a healthy love of justice, or rooted in the sentimentality of my childish faith in a narrowly defined God and country. Seminary put me in situations where I dealt with the faith of Christians from Africa, and the Far East, and marginalized communities in the USA, and forced me to see the limitations of my white, middle-class, suburban upbringing. 

Now, my feelings are valid. My upbringing was rooted in the love of God and nurtured by good, generous, well-meaning family and friends -  whose lives carry the evidence of faithfulness. But a mature faith, needs to leave room for growth. God is still speaking, and if I really intend to listen, then I need to expect that my more mature self, might be ready for more of God’s truth. 

I think we have an example of this in today’s gospel lesson. The evangelist Matthew makes an on-going case for Jesus as the new Moses. He is careful to present Jesus of Nazareth as a gift from God to elevate our understanding of God in contrast with the codified and law bound understanding of the Temple-lead Jews of his day. 

Here Jesus allows the immediate request of the Canaanite woman to challenge our claim to an exclusive access to God’s blessings. “It would be a shame to waste God’s blessings on the dogs” Jesus tells her. Talk about racism! Talk about lacking in cultural sensitivity! Talk about insensitive name calling! Talk about Jesus acting like a person of privilege to a person on the margins! 

Clearly we have heard the woman praised in sermons for holding her ground. “Still she persisted” in making a claim for her sick child to the renowned Holy Man. She is lifted up as a model of persistence in prayer. And Jesus shares the love of God with her. 

We could debate whether the human Jesus changed his mind, or if the divine Jesus staged an example of changing his mind for the benefit of the faithful. Lets just lay claim to the example Jesus sets for us. 

We can change our minds. The world does not stop when we see things in a new way. We can extend God’s blessings to others, even if they do not promise to repent, they do not promise to come to church, they do not promise to read the “Christian” Bible. We can and should, be a blessing to the whole world. 

Many of us were raised to think that the Bible stories are supposed to make us feel good about ourselves and our church. It is not quite true. The gospel stories, especially the life and teaching of Jesus of Nazareth - are supposed to encourage us TO DO good in the world, sharing the blessings of God with the creation that God loves. The shorthand for this is the expression; “the gospel should comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.” 

Our feelings are a valid indicator of where our emotional lives are, but honestly, they might not be rooted in what is true. For an extended part of my life, I held all of my feelings suspect. I over-reacted to the crass sentimentality that comprised much of my religious up-bringing. But when I do not acknowledge my feelings, they may be silently driving my behaviors in ways that can be damaging to myself, my family and my community. Behaviors rooted in an unexamined desire to feed pure ego needs have the potential for grave consequences. 

Today I try to recognize and appreciate my feelings, but also look for the real and deeper truths about the God I love and who loves me. Knowing that God loves me - and each person in all of creation - permits me to celebrate the Canaanite woman who was rejected, and still she persisted. Jesus shows me an example that I might change my mind, and then act to bless others, without consideration of whether they are worthy, and that challenges my sense of living out my faith. 

I stand among you today in Morton Illinois, and declare that Jesus loves every man, woman, and child in Morton, and the dogs, and probably the cats, too. It is our dogged duty to represent that good love, everywhere we go, even under the conditions that tend to make us cranky. God help us, we certainly need it. Amen.