Sermons from St Faith's
'Manners maketh man'
Rev Sue Lucas, Sunday,
September 6th, 2015
‘Manners maketh man.’ So they say – in fact,
so I’ve said, now and again, in my teaching career
to some loud teen or other! We perhaps like to
have an image of ourselves as well mannered,
appropriately behaved people.
But all is not as it seems. Jesus, in today’s
Gospel, is spectacularly, unbelievably rude; an
illustration, in fact of what he himself said in
last week’s Gospel – ‘it is what comes out of the
mouth that defiles’ – he is himself, today – a potty
mouth – he says to the Syro-Phoenician woman,
effectively, you’re a dog, and so is your daughter.
In the Greek, the words he uses to address her are
shockingly rude – offensive, even; in contemporary
terms, sexist, sexual and racist. And it is
shocking too, because Jesus seems to side with the
very purity laws he so summarily dismissed.
His view – offensive and rude as it is - is
that of a Jewish man of the time.
But the woman is made of strong stuff: she doesn’t
deny the insult – which so easily turns an argument
into a fruitless game of ‘he said she said’ – but
accepts it, holds her head up, and deflects it: she
uses Jesus’ own words against him – even the dogs
get to eat the scraps. And it is at this
point, she wins – Jesus capitulates; there is a
total turn around, and Jesus, who had initially
dismissed her treats her as an equal. There
are echoes of Elijah’s encounter with Ahab in 1
Kings 17, and his subsequently being offered
hospitality by a widow – like Elijah, Jesus heals
the woman’s child, restores her to her community;
but this child is a daughter, not a son. Moreover,
the woman is described as being ‘Syro-Phonecian,’
from the region of Tyre and Sidon, in other words, a
foreigner. Perhaps she is what we would now
call an asylum seeker or refugee, fleeing
persecution; or an economic migrant, seeking to
support her daughter and herself through where work
is available. And she is a woman without male
protection – which in that culture makes her very
vulnerable. She is, that is – well outside the
structures of what is proper, polite, respectable –
good mannered. She can’t afford to be; and
Jesus, who is never bested by the powerful, by the
rich, the respectable, the well mannered, the
educated - those in control of both resources, and
ideology –is bested by someone who is doubly
marginal – a woman and a foreigner; he heals her
daughter, gives her back her family, restores her to
her community. That is, it is her voice that
is heard – just as he gives the man with a speech
impediment the capacity to hear – and to be heard.
And Jesus, allows himself to be made vulnerable, and
in doing so, lives out Isaiah’s inclusive vision –
of maintaining justice, doing what is right.
God’s remaking of his people in Jesus means that to
be truly human is to live in a world in which race
and class and gender and sexuality and wealth are
abolished;
To join in with God’s work in Jesus is to allow
ourselves to be vulnerable, to be changed by hearing
the voices of those who are weak and powerless and
marginal, and to acknowledge our own collusion in
systems that divide and dehumanise; we are
called both to be vulnerable, and to take
responsibility for our vulnerability when we allow
ourselves truly to meet those we think of as ‘the
other.’
And in doing so, the contradictions of the present
become visible; the contradictions inherent in a
world in which a small child is washed up dead on a
beach; this calls for rage, and a willingness to
recognise our common humanity – not good manners;
and to take responsibility too for our fear of the
other that blinds us – all of us, at times – to
their humanity, makes us deaf to their cry; and
unable to speak out on behalf of justice and
humanity. We are called, that is, to be open
eyed realists, whilst being bearers of
hope; not turning away from the
consequences and contradictions of the present,
whilst living the hope that God’s reality is
different: of feeding the hungry, welcoming the
stranger and outcast and protecting the poor from
the violence of the rich.
As we witness the inhumanity and brutality in the
world’s economic systems, our calling has never been
more urgent. May we be faithful to it.
Amen.
The sermons
index page
