Everybody called to share in the life of heaven

Preached at 9.15am Eucharist at St Alphege, Solihull on Sunday 17th August 2008
Trinity 13, Proper 15, Year A.

Readings Isaiah 56:1,6-8 Romans 11: 1-2a, 29-32 Matthew 15: 21-28


Years ago the Church Times published a letter. It said something like this: “Sermons – what is the point of them? Our Vicar’s preached hundreds of sermons over the years and I can’t remember any of them.” The next week the Church Times published a letter in response. It said, “Over the years, my wife’s cooked me thousands of dinners. I can’t remember many of them, but I am ever so grateful.”
I think it is a very, very helpful letter. It reminds us that, just as we need to keep feeding our bodies with food, so we need to keep feeding our souls with the presence of God. Coming to the Eucharist is a good way of doing this, because we encounter God in his Word proclaimed in scripture and when we receive Jesus present in the bread and wine of Holy Communion.
So, just as we don’t worry that we can’t remember all the good meals that we have eaten, so we should not worry that we can’t remember all the good sermons we’ve heard. And this is a good job, because I know that I have listened to hundreds and hundreds of sermons and I can hardly remember any of them!
But here is the funny thing, although it feels like I can hardly remember any sermons, I can remember two sermons about the particular gospel reading that we heard today! They were completely different sermons, by different preachers given years apart, and yet I can remember them both! And the reason I remember them is that they both surprised me, shocked me! So, I’ll tell you what the two preachers said, and let’s see if I can surprise you!
The first preacher said something like, “Well, of course, the big thing about this gospel reading is that Jesus is so rude to the Canaanite woman. She comes to him, wanting him to heal her daughter. To start with Jesus ignores her. When she won’t go away, he explains that he is sent to the people of Israel, not to the Canaanites. Then she comes and kneels in front of him. He can’t ignore her then, and so he says to her, ‘It is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.’ Well you can’t get much ruder than that, can you? Basically he is calling the Canaanites, dogs. Nowadays we might call that racist.”
I found this a deeply shocking viewpoint. I was very surprised. I was not ready to think about Jesus being either “rude” or “racist”, even if the woman was being completely unreasonable. Fortunately Jesus’ tone does change dramatically at this point in the story. The woman answers him very graciously and with great faith. She says, “Yes Lord, but even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters table.” She means that Jesus may have been sent to the people of Israel, but the goodness of Jesus spills over beyond the people of Israel. Like crumbs falling from a table it spills over. Perhaps it spills over because it is so abundant. Perhaps it spills over because the people of Israel don’t value it properly, don’t take it seriously enough. Either way, it spills over and the Canaanites get to share in the goodness of Jesus. Jesus is deeply impressed with this answer. He say’s to her, “Woman, great is your faith! Let it be done for you as you wish.” And the woman’s daughter was heeled at that moment.
So that was the surprise from the first preacher. The second preacher to surprise me when discussing this story said something like this: “This was a crucial moment of Jesus. This was the moment when Jesus realised that his mission was for everybody, not just for the people of Israel. This was the moment when he realised that he had come to save, not just the Jews, but the whole world.” Again, this was a big surprise for me. Since Sunday school I have been taught that Jesus came to save the whole world. I thought everybody knew that! It had never occurred to me that Jesus himself must have learned that at some point. Because Jesus has a divine nature and is God we sometimes forget how humble and ordinary his human nature was. Just like us he had to start as baby and grow up. He had to lean things. We sometimes thing of Jesus as being like some great superhero, but in fact in so many ways he was just like us.
Now I have to say that I am not altogether sure that either of the two preachers was entirely correct. There are certainly other considerations here, but the point is that both sermons helped me to move forward in my journey of faith, and remarkably I remembered them both.
So as we leave church today let’s remember that Jesus came to save everybody. That means he came to save each one of you, and he came to save me. And we might think, “I’m not the religious type”, or “I’m a terrible sinner” or “I’m not worth it” but the fact remains that Jesus came for each one of us. God calls each one of us to our place in heaven. Now we all have a journey to walk. Even Jesus had to walk a journey as he grew up and grew in understanding. We all have to grow in love. We all have to grow in repentance. We all have to become good citizens of heaven. Some of us are starting from places a long way from God, places of great sin and darkness and we have a long, long journey ahead of us, but we are still called. God still wants to share the life of heaven with us. Jesus will still give us the grace we need to walk the journey.
And if we are already on the journey, if we are already growing in love, already growing in repentance then let’s work with God on all these other people, who he also calls to heaven. Let’s love them as God loves them. Let’s have hope for them, as God has hope for them. Let’s want to share the life of heaven with them as God does. And this can be quite a challenge. Do I really want to share heaven with that nasty man at the bus top? We need to grow in love. We need to help the man at the bus stop to grow in love. We will be ready for heaven ourselves when our love is like Jesus’ love; when we truly want to share heaven with everybody.