William H. Willimon - "Jesus beyond the Boundary" (August 15, 1999)

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-	Is from the book of Matthew, the 15th chapter.	0:04
	Jesus left that place and went away	0:10
	to the district of Tyre and Sidon.	0:13
	Just then a Canaanite woman from that region	0:17
	came out and started shouting,	0:20
	"Have mercy on me, Lord, Son of David.	0:22
	"My daughter is tormented by a demon."	0:26
	But he did not answer her at all.	0:30
	And his disciples came and urged him, saying,	0:35
	"Send her away, for she keeps shouting after us."	0:39
	He answered, "I was sent only to the lost sheep	0:45
	"of the house of Israel."	0:48
	But she came and knelt before him, saying,	0:51
	"Lord, help me."	0:55
	He answered, "It is not fair	0:59
	to take the children's food	1:01
	and throw it to the dogs."	1:03
	She said, "Yes, Lord.	1:07
	"Yet even the dogs eat the crumbs	1:09
	"that fall from their master's table."	1:11
	Then Jesus answered her, "Woman, great is your faith.	1:16
	"Let it be done for you as you wish."	1:22
	And her daughter was healed instantly.	1:25
	This is the word of the Lord.	1:30
-	Jesus has been teaching,	1:42
	and if you've ever heard Jesus teach,	1:45
	you know that a primary way for his teaching	1:49
	was with these parables.	1:54
	These parables, these pithy little stories	1:58
	that reveal some deep truth.	2:03
	The kingdom of Heaven,	2:08
	Jesus has said,	2:10
	in the section just before today's gospel,	2:12
	the kingdom of Heaven,	2:16
	it's like, it's like a field	2:17
	in which was sown good seed.	2:21
	But when the seed germinated and grew	2:24
	there were these weeds in the middle of the wheat.	2:26
	Some of the hired hands came to the master	2:31
	and said, "Master, do you want us	2:33
	"to pull out these weeds?"	2:34
	And the master said, "I'll sort it all out	2:39
	"when it's time for harvest."	2:44
	Jesus tries another.	2:50
	The kingdom of Heaven is like the mustard seed.	2:52
	The mustard seed is the smallest of all the seeds	2:58
	but when it is planted and it grows,	3:01
	it grows and grows up into a weed	3:04
	about maybe three feet high.	3:08
	So large that birds could nest in its branches.	3:13
	Small birds.	3:17
	One of the disciples said, "Jesus,	3:20
	"are you comparing us to a bunch of weeds?"	3:22
	The kingdom of Heaven, Jesus says,	3:28
	is like a net.	3:31
	The net is cast into the sea.	3:32
	And when you pull the net in,	3:35
	it is full of fish.	3:36
	Good fish.	3:39
	But it's also got a lot of bad fish.	3:41
	The slimy, creepy, crawly kinds	3:43
	of inedible kinds of things.	3:47
	Jesus says, "God's kingdom is like that."	3:51
	"Explain some of this stuff to us," said Peter.	3:56
	Jesus said, "If you've got ears to hear, hear."	4:00
	And it's right at that point that our gospel today kicks in.	4:05
	Jesus and his disciples take a trip to the northwest.	4:11
	They go up to Tyre and Sidon.	4:15
	The northwest.	4:19
	It was a hostile, irreligious sort of place,	4:22
	way out on the boundary.	4:26
	A place where the Gentiles lived.	4:27
	So, like Oregon.	4:32
	It's the northwest.	4:33
	Tyre and Sidon.	4:36
	And, um,	4:39
	as one might expect in a place like that,	4:43
	this Gentile woman comes pushing in	4:46
	where Jesus is trying to instruct the inner twelve.	4:51
	She pushes into the gathered believers,	4:56
	this woman, whooping up at the top of her voice	4:58
	about how Jesus ought to come out and heal her daughter.	5:02
	Now the disciples who appear to have decided	5:09
	that their function is to be like the Secret Service,	5:11
	to protect Jesus from these pushy,	5:16
	these kind of crazy people who show up.	5:19
	They say to Jesus, "Send her away."	5:23
	Anything to stop all this shouting.	5:26
	"Look, lady," Jesus says,	5:31
	"Get your own HMO.	5:34
	"I haven't come for people like you.	5:37
	"Gentile dog, you.	5:40
	"I got my hands full with the lost sheep	5:42
	"of the house of Israel.	5:45
	"That's why I'm here.	5:47
	"I can't get tangled up with strays like you."	5:48
	Now I'll admit that this was not	5:53
	one of Jesus' better moments.	5:55
	Maybe he was tired.	5:58
	You call me at 10 o'clock on a Saturday night	6:00
	telling me you can't sleep, you need to talk to a pastor,	6:03
	I won't call you a Gentile dog.	6:07
	I may want to call you that.	6:10
	But maybe he was just tired.	6:15
	That was about the worst thing you could call somebody	6:18
	in the first century.	6:20
	You Gentile dog, you.	6:21
	And throughout the gospel of Matthew,	6:25
	has not Jesus made it crystal clear	6:28
	that he has come, not for dogs, these Gentile dogs.	6:31
	He's come for sheep.	6:36
	He's come for the lost sheep of the house of Israel.	6:37
	He's come to reconstitute, to regather	6:40
	God's scattered family.	6:43
	That's why he's here.	6:45
	This woman is a Gentile.	6:50
	She's not only a Gentile, she's a Canaanite.	6:52
	And I don't have time to go into the specifics	6:56
	of Canaanite fertility worship.	6:59
	There are children here.	7:02
	But if I did, you could see why	7:03
	when Jesus calls her a dog,	7:05
	he is speaking more than metaphorically.	7:07
	She isn't part of Israel.	7:11
	We're out in Gentile country.	7:14
	The northwest.	7:17
	She's a Gentile.	7:19
	What is more, how dare this woman	7:20
	push in there and attempt to have	7:23
	a theological conversation with a male religious leader.	7:25
	So, the disciples urged Jesus,	7:32
	"Tell this woman where she can get off."	7:37
	It turns out, this is one of those woman	7:42
	who is not easily sent away.	7:43
	She's got a problem.	7:46
	Her life is in crisis.	7:48
	She needs help.	7:50
	She engages Jesus in debate.	7:53
	"Okay," she says, "dog I may be,	7:57
	"but don't even the dogs get to gather up	7:59
	"some of the crumbs that the children drop off the table?"	8:03
	She really gets to Jesus.	8:09
	He exclaims in great amazement,	8:11
	"How great is your faith."	8:15
	How great is her faith.	8:21
	How great is her faith that Jesus can heal her daughter.	8:23
	And he does.	8:26
	But maybe even more so, how great is her faith	8:29
	that Jesus	8:33
	has a blessing	8:36
	for somebody like her.	8:39
	Jesus	8:42
	has compassion on her.	8:44
	This story, I remind you, follows a whole series	8:48
	of perplexing, hard to understand parables	8:51
	about the kingdom of God.	8:54
	And most of them, you will note,	8:57
	appear to be parables about messy the kingdom of God is.	8:59
	In the kingdom of God, you don't have nice,	9:04
	pure fields of wheat.	9:06
	You've got these weeds growing in the middle	9:08
	of the wheat.	9:10
	In the kingdom of God, you pull in the net	9:12
	and you've got some good fish in the net, yeah.	9:15
	But you've got some bad fish	9:17
	caught in the dragnet as well.	9:19
	That's the kingdom of God.	9:22
	The kingdom of God is like,	9:23
	it's like a weed.	9:26
	It's like crabgrass that just messes up	9:29
	the well manicured lawn.	9:32
	The kingdom of God is like that.	9:35
	And I'm wondering if maybe this woman	9:40
	is also a parable.	9:42
	Sometimes Jesus told parables in which he reveals	9:45
	something, something that we had not seen	9:50
	about him.	9:53
	Or maybe something we don't want to see.	9:56
	But sometimes Jesus does parables,	10:00
	in which we see something about him	10:04
	that maybe we didn't want to see.	10:08
	Sometimes we see some things about ourselves	10:11
	we didn't want to see.	10:16
	Here is Jesus,	10:19
	and he's out beyond the boundaries.	10:21
	He's out in that shadowy northwest kind of	10:24
	Tyre and Sidon kind of place.	10:28
	We're not gathered here with a men's Bible class.	10:32
	We're not gathered here with the elect,	10:35
	just the insiders.	10:37
	We're being intruded upon by this pushy woman	10:38
	that just pushes in here,	10:41
	who badly needs a miracle for her sick daughter.	10:43
	And she refuses to be put off or pushed away	10:48
	by Jesus' disciples.	10:52
	Or even by Jesus.	10:55
	We wish she would go away.	10:59
	Hasn't Jesus' teaching been crystal clear?	11:03
	He's come for the lost sheep	11:06
	of the house of Israel.	11:09
	He's come for us.	11:11
	He's come for the sort of people	11:12
	who would get up on an August Sunday	11:14
	and come to church.	11:15
	That sort of people.	11:17
	And we tell Jesus, "Send her away	11:18
	"so we can get on with our kingdom."	11:21
	Our kingdom?	11:25
	Whose kingdom is being parable-ized anyway?	11:27
	Whose kingdom?	11:31
	Whose walls are being erected around whose kingdom?	11:33
	It's quite a picture we get of ourselves	11:40
	in this parable.	11:42
	Because whenever you see the disciples	11:44
	crop up in these stories,	11:46
	we're supposed to read us, church.	11:47
	Maybe this parable says	11:53
	the church consists of a bunch of people	11:56
	gathered around Jesus, trying to protect Jesus	11:59
	from other people.	12:03
	How do you like that picture of the church?	12:07
	You know, I've noted in churches	12:12
	that take great pride and that they'll tell you,	12:15
	"We are a very friendly church.	12:18
	"We are the friendliest church in town.	12:21
	"Everyone here is so warm and open and friendly."	12:22
	But a lot of times, if you visit that church,	12:27
	it impresses you as just the very opposite.	12:30
	The very qualities that make that church wonderful	12:33
	and warm and friendly on the inside	12:36
	feel like a means of exclusion	12:38
	of people who are on the outside.	12:42
	Take my last congregation.	12:47
	We hired a consultant	12:49
	to help us grow as a church,	12:52
	help us get back in touch with our neighborhood.	12:54
	So we met with the consultant.	12:57
	And the consultant, the first thing	13:00
	the consultant said is,	13:02
	"Where's the front door of this church?	13:04
	"How do you get in?"	13:07
	And we looked around and said,	13:11
	"There's the front door over there."	13:12
	Then the consultant said,	13:16
	"How come it's always locked?"	13:17
	And we said, "Because everybody knows	13:20
	"you come in through the side door."	13:23
	Then the consultant said,	13:27
	"How can you find the minister's office?"	13:30
	And we said, "You go down that hall,	13:33
	"you take a left,	13:36
	"then you take your second left	13:37
	"and you come around there	13:39
	"and then you're at the minister's office."	13:40
	The consultant said,	13:44
	"Well, how are we supposed to know that?"	13:45
	And we said, "Everybody knows that.	13:47
	"If you don't know that,	13:49
	"you've got no business going to the minister's office."	13:50
	(people laugh)	13:53
	And the consultant said,	13:56
	"And I wonder why y'all have not been growing."	13:58
	We, we just, we wish this,	14:05
	this pushy woman would just go away.	14:09
	If maybe she could find her salvation somewhere else.	14:13
	A few weeks ago, we had a guest preacher here	14:19
	from this pulpit.	14:21
	A preacher whom I had seen on TV.	14:23
	And he is pastor of one	14:27
	of the fastest growing churches in America.	14:28
	Maybe you heard him preach when he was here.	14:32
	I wasn't here when he preached,	14:34
	but I heard his sermon later on the web.	14:36
	And it was a very kind of Methodist,	14:38
	kind of pietistic, kind of feel-good kind of sermon.	14:40
	Well, it turns out a number of people	14:45
	are upset because he preached in this pulpit.	14:48
	I said, "Why are you upset?	14:51
	"He's on TV.	14:53
	"He's got a fast growing church."	14:54
	And they say they don't like his sexual orientation.	14:58
	And I said, "Look, I don't think Reverend Nelson	15:02
	"asked him about that when he invited him to preach."	15:05
	Not because Reverend Nelson was thinking	15:09
	about this story, which he could have.	15:11
	But Reverend Nelson is from South Carolina,	15:13
	and his mother told him not to talk	15:16
	about stuff like that in church.	15:17
	(people laugh)	15:19
	Sorry.	15:21
	I take it they are folk whom the church has condemned	15:25
	and rebuffed and walled out.	15:28
	Still,	15:31
	they just keep showing up.	15:33
	They keep coming back.	15:36
	They keep pushing in.	15:37
	They're just dying to get some blessing from Jesus.	15:39
	How great is their faith.	15:44
	Some of us	15:47
	lose our desire to be with Jesus	15:49
	when we find we can't get our favorite parking place	15:51
	on a Sunday.	15:53
	And we're getting ready to come to the Lord's table.	15:57
	And a lot of times, we wish it were our table	16:02
	and not his table.	16:05
	And here we try to have standards.	16:09
	We try to have enough words in the worship	16:12
	that are hard to understand.	16:15
	We try always to sing at least a couple of hymns	16:18
	that you don't know.	16:20
	And you can tell by looking at this place	16:22
	that we've been around Jesus a lot longer	16:25
	than you have.	16:28
	Still, a lot of times	16:31
	when we open the scriptures,	16:36
	and we're willing to be taught by Jesus,	16:38
	whenever we gather at the Lord's table,	16:42
	we know enough to know that	16:47
	there's gonna be some outsider.	16:51
	There's gonna always be somebody on the margin	16:55
	who's got it through her head	16:58
	that when Jesus says,	17:01
	"I've come to invite everybody to dinner.	17:04
	"I've come to gather everybody into the kingdom."	17:08
	She's got in her head that maybe he means her.	17:15
	As Jesus said, if you've got ears to hear, hear.	17:20

Item Info

Title:

William H. Willimon - "Jesus beyond the Boundary" (August 15, 1999)

Description:

Sermon start time: 01:42. Sermon end time: 17:25.
The preacher argues that maybe the Greek woman whom Jesus referred to as “dog” is also a parable too. She is a parable of the marginalized people who are usually excluded by the church, but with great faith, keep coming back. Jesus goes out beyond the normal cultural boundaries to receive the marginalized and so the church should do likewise. (Abstract created by Duke Divinity School staff.)
Key quotation: "There are folk whom the church has condemned, rebuffed, walled out. Still, some of them keep showing up, keep coming back, keep pushing in, just dying to talk to Jesus. How great is their faith!"

Permalink:

https://idn.duke.edu/ark:/87924/r41c1tw3k

Date:

August 15, 1999

Speaker:

Willimon, William H.

Liturgical Calendar:

Ordinary Time

Biblical Book:

Matthew

Chapter and Verse:

Matthew 15:21-28

Subject:

Contributor:

Duke University. Chapel

Identifier:

UA.17.01.0003 CS-0972
ref10101_7pm
uachapelsermaud
duke:320775
dcrau001616
ark:/87924/r41c1tw3k
f492a3df-fa1a-41d9-a518-84edb3d24a97

Digital Collection:

Duke Chapel Recordings

Source Collection:

Duke University Chapel recordings, 1954-2005

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Language:

English

Location:

United States
North Carolina
Durham (N.C.)

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Provenance:

The Duke University Chapel Recordings were transferred to the Duke University Archives beginning in 1970.

Rights:

Limited Re-Use

CC BY-NC 4.0

Rights Note:

This recording may contain 3rd party materials, such as music or readings that are therefore not covered by the Creative Commons license indicated here. For more information see https://library.duke.edu/rubenstein/research/citations-and-permissions.

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William H. Willimon - "Jesus beyond the Boundary" (August 15, 1999)

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1. William H. Willimon - "Jesus Beyond the Boundary" (August 15, 1999)

Duke University Archives

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William H. Willimon - "Jesus beyond the Boundary" (August 15, 1999)

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Duke University Archives

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