Sermon Title: "Sitting on the Sidewalk; Sleeping on the Porch"
Date: August 24, 2008
Minister: Rev. Charles E. Ensley, Jr.

Lesson:  Matthew 15:21-28

Three weeks ago, Peggy and I were taking an afternoon walk down the main street of Ashland, Oregon, between shows of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival.  As we approached a corner, I could see a middle-aged woman sitting on a planter adjacent to the sidewalk.  She was holding a cigarette and a paper coffee-cup.  I noticed she had a little cardboard box in her lap, and as I passed her, she asked, “Do you have a dollar or spare change?”  I replied, “Sorry, no.”  I proceeded five or six steps past her, when I heard her voice from behind me say, “Pastor?”

Now, I need you to know I was not dressed as I am this morning.  I had on a T-shirt, shorts, tennis shoes, and sunglasses.  Sometimes church members don’t even recognize me if I’m dressed like that down on Second Street.  Peggy tells me it was my voice that gave me away.

I turned back around toward the woman, and she asked, “Don’t I know you from San Diego?”  “No, actually it’s Long Beach,” I replied.  “How did you get up here?”  She answered, “I live in Mount Shasta, but my boyfriend’s from Ashland.”

Nearly two thousand years ago, Jesus traveled from the Sea of Galilee directly west to the Mediterranean sea coast.  If Jesus continued in that direction, he would enter the territory of the Gentiles.  This would contradict his instructions to his disciples to avoid Gentiles and Samaritans, and minister only to fellow Jews.

A Canaanite woman—a name Jews gave to pagan Semites—approached Jesus.  Whether Jesus had entered into her land, she entered his, or they met on the border, the text is too vague to tell.  Encounter, not location—Long Beach or Ashland—remained the important consideration.

The woman addressed Jesus with two titles:  “Lord” and “Son of David.”  The latter presupposes his ethnic and religious background.  But calling him “Lord” presupposes her faith in Jesus.  She called him this because she trusted him and his power.  In one of the most compelling pleas in all the Gospels—one any of us parents could understand—she shouted to Jesus for mercy for her tormented daughter.  Matthew reports:  “But [Jesus] did not answer her at all.”

On that surprising July afternoon in Ashland, it was Debby I encountered sitting on that sidewalk, pleading for my spare change.  You’ve seen Debby.  She spent last December sleeping on the front porch of the church over by the office.  Most mornings when I arrived, she would be rolling up her sleeping bag.  She would come into the church and wash up in the women’s room.  Our secretary made coffee, and I asked Debby once or twice if she wanted a cup, but she always declined.  During the day, you’d see her sitting on top of her gear down in front of the post office on Second Street.  She would ask for spare change, in her effort to get back to Northern California.

One Sunday morning last December, our former secretary Maureen encountered her sitting on the sidewalk outside St. Bartholomew’s, soliciting for change over there.  Maureen, overcome by Catholic-schoolgirl-guilt, gave her twenty dollars.  When Maureen told me about it, I said I hoped she told her she worked at Bay Shore Church, and the gift should be credited toward her moving off our porch and out of the area.  You know how a week stretches into two weeks, then a month.  Debby was always going to leave in just “a few more days”.

Meanwhile, back in the district of Tyre and Sidon, the disciples were agitated by this foreign woman approaching Jesus.  “Send her away,” they pleaded, “for she keeps shouting after us.”  Jesus appeared not ready to do anything for this outsider, for he acknowledged that he “was sent only to lost sheep of the house of Israel.”

Jesus’ words, spoken to the disciples, but certainly directed to the woman as well, sound cold and callous, back then and to us today—yet they are theologically correct.  The disciples were interested only in expediency:  do whatever for this woman but just get her out of the way, off of the porch.  They were not thinking of how their mission to Israel was the first step in God’s plan for Jesus’ messianic mission.  God’s design for human salvation included Gentiles, but not at this moment.  Jesus was not going to redefine his divine mission simply to quiet a single, disruptive Canaanite woman.

Perhaps the woman was encouraged that Jesus at least acknowledged her presence.  She continues in a model of correct faithfulness when she approaches Jesus, kneels before him, and asks, “Lord, help me.”

If commentators and ordinary students of the Bible over the centuries have been puzzled by Jesus not even answering the woman when first she shouted at him, they are doubly aghast at his harsh response to her:  “It is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.”  Now I’ve read this passage enough to know he meant it was not fair to share the message intended for the Jews with Gentiles.  One commentator has even noted that the Aramaic word he used for dog wasn’t the word for a wild pack of dogs, but rather household pets.  That doesn’t help me.  Calling a person a dog is calling a person a dog, no matter what your language.

However, this was a woman of faith, and seeming wisdom as well.  Not to be deterred, she used Jesus’ analogy to her advantage.  She affirmed her trust in Jesus.  She was loyal, like a beloved family pet.  She would wear the insult (if there was one) proudly.  “Yes, Lord,”—third time she called him Lord—“yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their master’s table.”

In a clever appeal, she again recognizes Jesus as her master and says that even those to whom the message is not now intended deserve to receive a bit of it.  The Jesus we recognize and love exclaims, “Woman, great is your faith!  Let it be done for you as you wish.”  And her daughter was healed instantly.

There is a question here for all of us as we sit in relative comfort in a place where we feel we belong.  None of us sat on the sidewalk begging for change yesterday, or slept on the porch last night.  When was the last time you reached out to others different from you?  When did you serve the poor, or the sick, or the needy?  And if you did, perhaps most importantly, how did that experience change you?

Even in our neighborhood we get folks traveling through who don’t belong here.  They could never afford to live here.  I frequently doubt some of the stories they tell me.  Sometimes they want money . . . busfare . . . gasoline . . . motels . . . clothing . . . food.  Sometimes they simply want to use the restroom.  Sometimes they have basic needs we take for granted.  I have taken people to the drug store to buy diapers, feminine hygiene products, toilet paper, even colostomy bags.  I once paid for a man to get a haircut.

Prejudice, injustice and social separation sometimes cause us to brand others outsiders.  God made us all in his image.  Sometimes these “outsiders” are folk like us who are down on their luck, haven’t had the advantages we’ve had, need better mental health care, have done damage to their bodies or minds with past abuses.  But they too are God’s children, with just as much right to be here as we have.

If the Canaanite woman could cause Jesus himself to readjust his thinking about her worth, what value are you and I to give to the Debbys of this world, sitting on the sidewalk, sleeping on the porch?