Discerning God's Messages

 

1 Samuel 3:1-21

John 20:21-23

Mark 10:35-45

               We have a hard time understanding the messages we receive from God.  We really do.  We have a hard time understanding scripture, for example.  Here in today’s passages we hear something in each one that is hard to understand.  In the Samuel passage we hear God promising to harm an entire family of people “forever” for something that the sons of Eli said.  In the John passage it sounds like Jesus is saying that if his disciples don’t forgive someone, neither will God forgive them.  And the passage from Mark might be read as saying that God chose from the beginning who would be included or put next to Jesus and that there is no influence from the choices people make in this lifetime: how people act or what they believe or anything that has to do with what a person is or does themself.  These are all hard to understand, at least for me.  And you will get many different responses or understandings when you read about them. 

               Starting with the Samuel passage, some commentators talk about God’s judgment and wrath, seeming to accept this declaration of Eli’s family’s destruction at face value.  Other commentators talk about how easy it is for Samuel to misunderstand God and what God might be trying to communicate here.  And still others say that the point of this story is just that the prophetic torch has passed from Eli to Samuel.  And from this perspective, Eli is amazing in that he doesn’t fight this, doesn’t deny it, but just accepts that this is God’s will and God’s will is what is paramount in every situation.  

               Even the biblical scholars, then, disagree about what is being communicated here.  And the same is true of the other passages.   For example, this passage from John that declares that if a disciple doesn’t forgive someone they won’t be forgiven.  Some say this means that God has given them the ability to decide who is ultimately forgivable.  Some have pointed out that this passage has been abused by pastors and priests to claim that they have the right of absolution from sins (and equally the right of withholding that absolution).  But others say that this was spoken not just to the disciples but to all those following Jesus.  And that John’s understanding of sin was not moral or behavioral transgression but “being blind to the revelation of God in Jesus”.  According to this understanding then, it is the community that has failed if people are still blind to this understanding.  In other words, this story is simply meant to communicate that they still have work to do.

The point here is that even those who study scripture for a living, spend all of their time doing nothing but reading, praying, discerning – they still disagree with one another, which means they are still struggling to really understand the message that God is sending.  Similarly with the disciples to Jesus’ words.  Some want to sit next to him, others think this is an unfair request.  They all misunderstand him by even having this debate.  They also misunderstand him when he talks about his upcoming death: they try to reason him out of that prediction and try to dissuade him from acting.  We know that Judas in particular disagreed with the way Jesus was doing things and what Jesus was saying.  He betrayed Jesus as a way to spur Jesus into action: into rising up against the tyranny of the Roman empire and when Jesus instead was killed, this was so devastating to him that his response was to commit suicide.  They didn’t understand.  Not one of them understood.  This is a consistent theme throughout the gospels: the lack of understanding of those closest to Jesus.  If those closest to Jesus did not understand, how are we supposed to understand?  How are we supposed to read the messages from God with accuracy?  How are we to understand scripture?  But even beyond that, how are we to understand God, human relationships to God, human relationships to each other and even our very selves?

               I think about the story we read about a month ago about Abraham believing he was called by God to sacrifice Isaac.  While God stopped him, there is an Islamic midrash on that story that says that Abraham was just crazy: was hearing voices that he decided were God’s.  According to this midrash Sarah saw what was happening and she is the one who brought the ram out for Abraham to find, saving HER only son from being sacrificed.  According to this midrash then, God was working through Sarah to stop crazy behavior.  We read these stories in different ways.  We understand them in different ways, and as a result we also hear God’s voice in different ways and we interpret what is God’s voice is VERY different ways. 

               I saw something recently that said in effect, “Fundamentalists understand Love through the laws of scripture.  Other Christians understand scripture through the eyes of Love.”  Or, as Arun Gandhi said it, “People of the book risk putting the book above people.”  But this too, mirrors my understanding.  As Jesus said it, “Sabbath was made for humans, not humans for the Sabbath.”  When we put the law above real people, their needs, their souls, we miss the whole point of all of this.

               For me, in the end, I believe everything must be measured against the great commandments.  The great commandments are two: Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul and mind.  And, Love your neighbor as yourself.  Jesus told us that it is on these two laws that all the prophets and all the writings stand.  That this is a summary of all that is in scripture.  So for me, personally, if I don’t understand it, I go back to these two rules.  How, in light of these two laws, does this passage make sense?  What does it mean in light of these two great commandments?  Love.  It is the guidepost by which I weigh and understand everything else. 

               But what about when it comes to understanding God?  Well, if those are the laws of God, they reflect God.  So for me, they, too, describe God: wholeness, fullness, holiness.  Love.  That’s the bottom line of who God is, just as it was the bottom line of what we are called to do and be. 

               But am I right?  All these Christians understanding God differently.  The disciples all understanding Jesus differently.  And none of the disciples had it right.  But they were all on the journey.  They all sought to be with Jesus, they all wanted to be his disciples, they all chose to follow in the way.  And they did this, despite the fact that Jesus kept telling them “you don’t understand!” And kept correcting them and kept challenging them. 

               As I sat with this, I found myself thinking about the Kansas song, song “Carry On My Wayward Son” line: “And if I claim to be a wise man, well it surely means that I don't know.”  In the end, we are called to have humility in our understandings.  Those I fear the most are those who claim with absolute conviction that God told them to do something, or that God put them in charge of something, or that they know without a doubt – anything, really. 

               We are all on this journey.  All of us.  I come here and I tell you what I learned, and what I think and what I believe.  But that is my journey.  And I recognize that yours is different.  Your needs and your experiences, your lessons and your mentors, your relationships: both with others and with God.  They are your own. 

               There is a reason that one of the key phrases for me in the Presbyterian Book of Order is “God alone is Lord of the Conscience.”  We recognize that discernment is a challenge and NOT ONE PERSON in this whole world and in this whole life will always be right about anything, and that includes about faith issues.  Discernment is hard.

               So why is that? Why would God create a world in which discernment is not easy?  Why would God create a world with so many, many different ways of understanding the exact same book, the exact same words, the exact same scenario?  I love what God in Joan of Arcadia said to Joan in one episode when she asks God why there are so many religions, “It's because various people need various ways of relating to the divine.” I think that there are deep reasons why Jesus spoke mostly in parables.  Parables all have multiple interpretations, multiple points, multiple understandings.  And in that, they are gifts to different people in different ways.   No two of us will ever agree on everything.  It isn’t realistic.  It isn’t honest.  And that’s a beautiful part of our world and our life.  That diversity of thought is a gift to us if we can choose to be open to it, listen through our differences, learn from them.

               How, then, do we relate this back to our faith?  A final quote from Joan of Arcadia that I want to share with you: “People manage to believe in me, even though they have no idea what I am; they trust me even in the silence.”

               God’s presence is there as a gift to us.  God’s love is there to hold us, sustain us, carry us through.  We don’t have to understand everything.  We don’t have to agree with one another.  We are invited to learn from one another, but we don’t in the end have to come to the same understanding.  Still, we are invited to trust, to rest in the love of the God who creates us, carries us, holds us, and graces us into being. 

               Some of these biblical passages, such as the one we read today, are hard for us to understand.  And sometimes the world and nature and people’s behaviors are a challenge for us to understand.  But there is more to this world than understanding.  And there is much that is beautiful that goes far beyond our ability to understand.  Resting in God’s presence is more important, more needed, more reviving and restoring that knowing.  So, as Isaiah said it so profoundly, “Be still and know that God is God.”  That is all the knowing, ultimately that we need.  The rest is relationship: the rest is listening, caring, talking, and being with God.  More important than anything else we can do.

               And so, I want to end this shorter sermon with a moment of silence.  But rather than reflection, I invite you to rest in the loving, caring arms of God.  Rest, be, accept the love and grace that is offered you in this moment.  Amen.

Everything is Harder Now

          I've been thinking about how hard everything is right now.  But more, why we are taking everything in such a hard way.  The small things seem to get blown up into gigantic proportions, big things threaten to tear apart or end relationships, communal problems are escalating into violence and destruction.  Everything is, truly, hard right now.  But even things that a person would normally allow to just roll off one's back are sticking and threatening and overwhelming.
         I think about this at a personal level.  My family has lived through so much hard stuff, and yet we did live through it.  As I've said in other posts, we had support, coping skills and strategies that made it possible to survive and we chose not only survival but took the opportunities to grow, learn and deepen in our commitments to loving God, each other and life to the fullest.  We survived and chose to thrive through much worse, personally, that what we are experiencing now.  Yes, there is chaos in the community - but there always has been.  Yes, the church is struggling, but again, we've gone through worse.  Yes, it's affecting my personal life, but it is not throwing our lives completely up in the air like dice tossed into the wind as had happened before.  I'm not trying to care for everyone on my own: I have a husband and my family locally all around to help now as well as a community of friends.
         And yet, the truth is that now feels harder.  On the outside it isn't.  But it sure feels harder.  What I mean is that I struggle to breathe through these challenges. I struggle to see where God is leading us, and me, in this.  I struggle to discern how to proceed, and frankly, I struggle with whether or not I am still called to this work because it feels overwhelming right now.  I am sick and not improving, and I'm certain that much of that is the stress of these times.  And so I have to ask myself the very basic question, "Why?"  Why now?  Why is this different?  Why is this harder?  And of course, the bigger question - And then what?
         Perhaps for today I will leave this here.  I ran this by my family, asking them, informing them, that I didn't know where to go from here, in the writing or in my thinking.  Their unanimous response was "leave it there."  So, maybe, for today, I will.
         There is power in staying with the questions.  There is power in sitting with the truth of our experience.  So for today, my experience of this being hard, of having no answers, and of struggling to BE is what I am offering to you.  And if you are experiencing some of this as well, you can rest in the knowledge that you are not alone...

Connecting with God

1 Sam. 3:1-10

1 Cor. 6:12-20

John 1:43-51

Today we have three passages that all talk about recognizing or hearing God in different ways.  In the 1^st Samuel passage, Samuel is learning to recognize the voice of God when it calls him.  It takes him time and the words of his mentor/teacher to realize that the voice that is calling him is coming from God, but he does eventually learn to hear and recognize God’s voice.  In the John passage Nathanael is challenged to recognize Jesus as the Messiah or Emmanuel, God with us.  Nathanael recognizes Jesus because Jesus can tell Nathanael what he was doing when Jesus wasn’t there.  The Corinthians’ passage is perhaps the hardest to understand.  But even there the Corinthians are being challenged to recognize where God is in our actions, in our behavior: what is Godly behavior.  The Corinthians had been arguing over the necessity of obeying Jewish law, Biblical law: whether or not they needed to be circumcised, whether or not they needed to follow the food laws that are outlined in books such as Deuteronomy.  And Paul basically told them that no, they did not need to follow these laws.  Their faith in Christ gave them freedom from Law for the sake of law.  But, he added, out of their love for God, they were stilled called to do what was right – or in other words what showed love to God, neighbor and self.  And while we might argue about how to do that, as obviously the early Christians were, hence the argument between Paul and the Corinthians, the message is important.  We are called to discern what is most loving to God, self and other, and we are called to do our best to behave in ways that express that care for all three.

These three passages, then, represent three challenges that are really part of the same.  The challenge to recognize what is Godly behavior, the challenge to recognize the Godly person and the challenge to recognize the voice of God when it speaks.  In today’s world some might say that these challenges are easy – we know that Jesus is the Godly person, we hear the voice of God in scripture, and the Biblical instructions help us to know what is Godly behavior.  But in other ways, I think that all three of these remain very challenging.  How do we hear God’s voice in the world around us?  How do we discern it from the voices of so many others around us?  How do we see who is leading us in God’s path and who might be pushing us into a path that may not be what God calls us to?  And there are times when it is not clear what is the most loving path to take.  Also, and what is harder, there are times when we have to choose between what is most loving to one person over another person or even what is most loving to others vs ourselves.  Those challenges confront us regularly, and can make living a Godly life very difficult.

Sr. Joan Chittister told this story: once, the ancients say, a seeker asked a group of disciples: "Does your God work miracles?" And they replied, "It depends on what you call a miracle. Some people say that a miracle is when God does the will of people. We say that a miracle is when people do the will of God."  If discerning the will of God were easy, this parable would not make sense.  But it does.  It rings true to us because living the life that God calls us to live is a miracle, and part of the reason it is so hard is that discerning the voice, the will, and the presence of God can be a real challenge.

I have heard it said that life can be understood by looking backwards but must be lived going forward.  How do we do that, how do we live life going forward when we can really only see where God’s hand guides us by looking back on our lives?

A while ago for Film and Faith night we watched the movie, “The Help”.   In it, an African American maid named Abileen in Jackson Mississippi in 1962 is asked by a white woman to help her write a book about the experiences of black maids working for white women in the South.  Abileen knows how dangerous it would be to tell her story – that she would be risking everything, including her very life, to share her experiences.  She refuses, therefore, to do so.  But then she goes to church, as she always does, one Sunday when the preacher is talking about the call to be brave.  And he says, “Courage isn’t just about being brave.  It’s about overcoming fear and daring to do what is right for your fellow humans.  It’s about being willing to speak the truth.” As Abileen sits there and listens, she hears God’s voice calling her to do what she knows to be risky, but what she hopes will begin to make some changes as people come to understand her experience and the experiences of other African Americans in the South during the 60s.

In early 2013 the Pope resigned.  The last time that had happened had been in 1415.  He read from a statement that said, “Both strength of mind and body are necessary, strength which in the last few months has deteriorated in me to the extent that I have had to recognize my incapacity to adequately fulfill the ministry entrusted to me.  For this reason and well aware of the seriousness of this act, with full freedom I declare that I renounce the ministry of Bishop of Rome, Successor of St. Peter, entrusted to me by the cardinals on 19 April 2005.”  It takes a strong person to give up power, to acknowledge ones limits.  It took incredible strength to recognize his time was over.  It took courage.

I found myself reflecting on a poem written by Ken Untener, later bishop of Saginaw, called, “Prophets of a Future that is not our own.”  Sometimes attributed to Archbishop Romero.

It helps, now and then, to step back and take the long view. 

The Kingdom is not only beyond our efforts,

it is even beyond our vision.

We accomplish in our lifetime only a tiny fraction

of the magnificent enterprise that is God’s work.

Nothing we do is complete:

            which is another way of saying

            that the Kingdom always lies beyond us.

No statement says all that should be said.

No prayer fully expresses our faith.

No confession brings perfection.

No pastoral visit brings wholeness.

No program accomplishes the church’s mission.

 No set of goals or objectives includes everything.

This is what we are about:

We plant seeds that one day will grow.

We water the seeds already planted,

            knowing that they hold future promise.

We lay foundations that will need further development.

We provide yeast that produces effects

            far beyond our capabilities.

We cannot do everything

            and there is a sense of liberation in realizing that.

This enables us to do something, and to do it very well.

It may be incomplete, but it is a beginning,

            a step along the way, an opportunity for

            God’s grace to enter and do the rest.

We may never see the end results,

            but that is the difference between the master builder

            and the worker.

We are workers, not master builders,

            ministers, not messiahs.

We are prophets of a future that is not our own.

Once again I believe that through prayer, through gathering together in worship, through time with God, through building our relationships with God, but also by weighing everything against the central call and message of Christ – to love God and to love our neighbors as ourselves  – that is how we learn to hear God’s voice when it speaks to us.  In that relationship to God, we learn to recognize God’s presence and God’s call for us.  Samuel was just a boy at the time that God first called him.  But through his mentor and teacher, Eli, Samuel began to learn to discern when it was God’s voice calling him.  Nathanael began as a doubter, but when confronted by the Jesus who looked into his eyes and knew him, he believed.  The Corinthians came to know the will of God through conversations, and sometimes arguments, with other Christians.  We come to hear, to see, to recognize God’s voice, God in our midst, God’s call for our lives by spending time with God.  When our hearts are open, God does come in. When our minds are open, sometimes we are given the grace to hear the call, to recognize the voice, and to see God in our midst. 

When the Fairy Tale is Destroyed

We, all people I believe, have a deep desire to be loved completely and unconditionally for exactly who we are. The mirror of this is loving another with complete abandon and dedication as well. From a faith perspective, we know and can count on that love coming from God. But as Richard Rohr says, "We can't seem to know the good news that we are God's beloveds on our own. It has to be mirrored to us." For people who did not have secure childhood attachments (or "normal" attachments to a primary parent that babies in healthy families experience), that feeling of being loved unconditionally is especially hard to find, maintain or trust. I think the fairy tale is seductive in those cases - that there is someone out there whom fate will throw our way who will be the one to love us and be loved by us in this way. We hope and believe that if only we find the right person, we will experience what it is to truly love another unconditionally and to be loved unconditionally. We have the fall back myth, that only one per generation actually find their "soul mate" but we pray and hope that it will be us.

There are so many obvious problems with this, however.  First of all, if it is so rare, what are the rest of us to do?  Secondly if we are counting on another human to save us with their love, we will be disappointed.

But there is one other problem with this that I would like to focus on for this post.  When we went to the Storytelling Festival, one of the keynoters was a married pair who acted out the story of  an engaged couple.  The man said he loved her so much that he would do anything for her.  And then the woman put that to the test...she asked him to do more and more outrageous things.  When he hesitated, she broke down in tears, saying it was obvious he did not really love her.  So he did what she asked, not only hurting himself, but hurting other people around him (since the requests involved injury to other people).  In the end, the woman had her "proof" of the man's love, but the obtaining of that proof damaged their relationship. The man discovered that to be tested is an act of selfishness on the part of the tester, it is a failure to love with full depth in itself.  Frederick Buechner put it this way, "If I tried to put his friendship to the test somehow, the test itself would queer the friendship I was testing." (Wishful Thinking, New York, Harper and Row, 1969. p 26).

But the reality is that tests in every relationship do come because none of us are perfect. In every friendship, in every marriage, in every intimacy, the challenges come. What are we willing to put up with? Where is that limit to what we will tolerate?  What can we live with? What can't we live with? This isn't about forgiveness, which we are called to always offer.  It is about the nature of how you will move forward after damage has been done (and even after damage has been forgiven). Sometimes you can continue as you were. For happily married couples, for long term friendships, for many families those tests are small and don't really challenge the commitment.  But sometimes something comes that simply can't be overlooked, can't be "accepted", can't be incorporated into the relationship as it is.

From a personal perspective I've come to realize that when we decide we can't live with something, when we realize that our commitment to someone else is NOT unconditional, when we come to a point of "this is not acceptable" and we make the decision to leave, that can be as devastating to our belief in unconditional human love as would be the experience of being left. What does it mean that we choose to go our separate ways?  What does it mean that we cannot maintain the "I will love you no matter what" illusion?  Does it mean that our love was not deep?  Was somehow not real?  Was not as full or committed or strong as we had believed it to be?  How do we accept in ourselves that we have limits and are not capable of that kind of unconditional love that we all dream of?  How do we accept then the love of anyone else, knowing that humans are imperfect and that all of us have conditions on our care to varying degrees?

If I am honest, I have to admit that it is at least in small part these thoughts and beliefs that keep me taking "care of" my ex despite the change in our relationship.  I could not stay married to him, and many have said that I have not gone far enough. I have been encouraged, even by people of faith, who follow the God who commands us to love our enemies, to reject him completely. I cannot do that. I know that all of us have fallen short, that there isn't some scale that says, "well, your sins are so much worse than the rest of us that you no longer qualify as a human being worthy of care."  I see and experience repentance from him, I have forgiven him, but beyond all of that, I see that he is more than the issues which have led him to where he is. All of us are more than our worst selves.  And he is no exception. So I continue to offer care, even while the relationship cannot stay the same.  I made a commitment to care, and that commitment continues.

Still, the relationship is different.  I have not been able to keep my commitment of marriage to him. More to the point, I am incapable of loving him in the way that I did before. I care for him now more as a person like any person who has needs, not as a partner or even a friend. And while some would say that the care I offer him is a form of unconditional love, it is not what I would hope for - from myself, or for myself.

These realities have called me to face once again the truth that the unconditional and completely committed love we seek we can only find from something beyond us, beyond human, beyond our finite abilities and lives.  But if it is true that we need that acceptance and love mirrored for us in our human relationships, perhaps that explains why so many of us are still hurting, still hunting, still seeking for that which can not be found.  I'm reminded of U2's lyrics, "But I still haven't found what I'm looking for."

The answer?  On this one, I think I am still called to live in the question.  I don't have an answer for this yet.  I do know that the more I learn to love with fullness, the more whole I feel.  The more I learn to forgive and to care, the more love I experience from others that is also forgiving and caring. I haven't gotten it right yet.  I'm on the journey.  And while I still find myself searching to have that unconditional love mirrored to me from humans, I know that ultimately it will not be found here.  So I work harder to surrender and live in the love of the Divine that surrounds me.

Sunday's Sermon - Acting with Faith

Acting with Faith

9/6/15

Prov. 22:1-2, 8-9, 22-23

James 2:1-10, 14-17

Mark 7:24-37

Dwight Nelson told this story about the pastor of his church. Apparently the pastor had a kitten that climbed up a tree in his backyard and then was afraid to come down. The pastor coaxed, offered warm milk, etc, but the kitty would not come down. The tree was not sturdy enough to climb, so the pastor decided that if he tied a rope to his car and pulled it until the tree bent down, he could then reach up and get the kitten.  So that's exactly what he did, all the while checking his progress in the car. At one point in this process, he figured if he went just a little bit further, the tree would be bent sufficiently for him to reach the kitten. But as he moved the car a little further forward, the rope broke.

The tree went 'boing!' and the kitten instantly sailed through the air – and out of sight.

The pastor felt terrible. He walked all over the neighborhood asking people if they'd seen a little kitten. No. Nobody had seen a stray kitten.

So he prayed, 'God, I commit this kitten to your keeping,' and went on about his business.

A few days later he was at the grocery store, and met one of his church members. He happened to look into her shopping cart and was amazed to see cat food. This woman was a cat hater and everyone knew it, so he asked her, 'Why are you buying cat food when you hate cats so much?' She replied, 'You won't believe this,' and then told him how her little girl had been begging her for a cat, but she kept refusing.  Then a few days ago, the child had begged again, so the Mom finally told her little girl, 'Well, if God gives you a cat, I'll let you keep it.'

She told the pastor, 'I watched my child go out in the yard, get on her knees, and ask God for a cat. And really, Pastor, you won't believe this, but I saw it with my own eyes. A kitten suddenly came flying out of the blue sky, with its paws outspread, and landed right in front of her!'

Most of the time, God’s messages to us are not quite so clear.  At least for me, most of the time my prayers are not answered so quickly, so clearly, or with such an enthusiastic “yes!”  Most of the time we have to listen, in each situation, for the direction God is calling us to.

I hear in today’s scriptures the command to love your neighbor as yourself, again, always, consistently THE message from Jesus.  I hear in the James passage and in the Proverbs verses that faith is active, that being a person of faith means loving our neighbor in the concrete ways of caring for the poor, in particular.  I hear in the passage from Mark that Jesus included many whom we might not include in his care, that he reached across lines to bring healing and comfort and that we are called to do the same.  So it isn’t that God doesn’t direct us or tell us what to do.  But I also recognize that when it comes to every day behavior, every minute action, it can still be hard to hear God, to get a clear message about what we are supposed to do, how and why.  I love stories like the kitten story in part because I wish that God was that clear with me.

           

So how do we discern?  Well, again, we start with scripture.  We start with the message, loud and clear that we are to love our neighbors as ourselves.  We start there.  That means we don’t start the conversation, or any conversation, with “what is best for me in this situation” but instead with “what is best for you.”  And by best I don’t mean what is most comfortable or even what seems most profitable at the moment.  I mean what is really, ultimately best for the other.  I don’t believe that is something that we can discern on our own.  We simply can’t figure out what is best for another alone…that would be patronizing and condescending.  We figure this out with our neighbors, with the community of faith, with one another and in prayer with God.

            That cliché question, “what would Jesus do?” is frankly the most important question we could ask in our everyday behaviors and interactions.  A friend of mine told me this story…a pastor went to a tribe in Africa that was mostly made up of warriors, fighters.  And after teaching them Jesus’ message, the pastor took them down to the river to be baptized.  But as he baptized the men in this tribe, he saw that each of them kept their right hands out of the water.  They would go all the way in, except for their right hands.  Confused, the pastor finally asked one of them what was going on.  Their answer was that they needed to be able to fight with their right hands.  They had read the gospels, they knew that Jesus would not approve of killing another, even their enemies, so they left their right hands out of the water so that they could still do their jobs of fighting, keeping that part of them separate and unbaptized.

            We do this, too.  What parts of us do we keep out of the water of our baptism?  Is it our wallets, during stewardship time or when someone is in need?  And again, I don’t mean that we should just give anybody who asks us whatever they ask for…we need to do what is BEST for people, which is not always giving them whatever they ask for.  We know this as we care for our children and others.  But what is best for the other is never going to be our judgments when we are angry and feel vengeful rather than seeking out forgiveness, grace and reconciliation.  It will never be our sense of who should be included and who shouldn’t in our hearts, in our lives.  If Jesus is our model, our actions need to be consistently in favor of the poor, the needy, the outcast – and that needs to be every day, not just Sundays.  What parts of ourselves do we keep above the water?  We all have these parts, these areas that are uncomfortable for us to really commit to loving the other.  And our call, as people of faith, is to see them, to remember these passages that call us to act in faith and love, and to be willing to put all of ourselves, even our hands, into the water of our baptism, to ask, “what would Jesus do?” and to do it, too.

Henry David Thoreau said, “Could a greater miracle take place than to look through each other’s eyes for an instant?”

Today in the story of the Syrophoenician woman, we see Jesus doing exactly that, looking through her eyes and understanding.  Understanding her desperation to help her daughter.  Understanding her willingness to do anything in order to make that happen.  Understanding her faith, her absolute trust that he could help her.  And through that vision, seeing through her eyes, that understanding led to compassion for her and choosing to do what was best for her.  It is through her story that Jesus’ whole ministry changed.  Before her, his service was strictly to and for the Jews.  After her, his ministry expanded to any and all who asked for his help.  His seeing her was a miracle that changed history for all of us.  His seeing her was a miracle that all of us are called to repeat as we look through the eyes of those with whom we are uncomfortable, those who challenge our ideas of what an “equal” human being looks like, those who need us to have compassion and understanding, those whom God calls us to love as we love ourselves.

            We may not be given as clear a message as the little girl in the kitten story, but the message is still pretty clear.  We are called to live out our faith by loving everyone as we love ourselves.  It’s all that easy, and it’s all that hard.