Union Church

August 17, 2008
Matthew 15:1,2, 10-20

The first thing we need to recognize about this reading is that the faith 2,000 years ago was under construction. The roadbed of life needed to be rebuilt in the wake of the New Roman Order.
The roadbed of religion was under construction in Gennesaret, in northern Galilee.

Jesus is engineering a new expression of the faith for his new times. The Pharisees come up from Jerusalem to inspect and see what is being built.

The first thing they do is latch onto the purity code.
The disciples are not washing their hands before eating lunch.
Now, we are not talking about just using a little soap and water. The purity code lays out the proper way of washing your hands. And it is a practice that cannot be followed in the common walk of life. It requires a pitcher, a basin and water.

Who would have these things when travelling on foot, in the countryside, in a desert climate?

Jesus gives the Pharisees an ear full. They are just filling old pot holes when a new roadbed is called for. He then begins to teach the people abou the new roadbed of faith.

Jesus tells the people, “We are not defiled,
we are not separated from God over hand washing.
It is not what goes in. It is not the external that affects our relationship with God.
It is what is within.
It is what comes out of us that affects our relationship with God and one another.
The new road being built on the religious right-of- way is not about pavement, not about the surface but about the quality of the road bed.”

We know all about this here in Montreal.
It is not the pavement and the patches.
It is the roadbed that counts.
Highway 40 in the west island has had to be completely rebuilt from scratch over the last 4 or 5 years. The same can be said about the Galipeault Bridge in Ste. Annes right now.

So what does this mean for us today?

Our faith is again under construction.
Our faith is under construction as we seek to build the progressive church in the 21st Century.
We can get caught up in comparing and repairing the past.
Or we can build a new roadbed along the religious right-of-way for our changing times.

The material of this new roadbed is not made up of the clay of personal sin and the sand of individual salvation.
The new roadbed is not just about Jesus and me.

The new roadbed is built for all kinds of traffic, in all weather conditions.

The new roadbed is layered with inclusion, openness and understanding.

It is compacted into a supporting structure, a body, a community.

A community that reaches out to one another, a community that connects.

A community that connects from the heart.

Matthew 15: 21-28

We now have come full circle with this second reading. What began as an issue of hand washing, ends with a healing beyond all expectation.

The things that defile us, that separate us from God in our first reading, have now been taken to their logical conclusions in our second reading.

According to Matthew’s Jesus, nothing in our external circumstances defiles us, or separates us from God.
No one’s tribe or creed or gender or ritual defiles them and places them outside of God’s concern.

To make this point, Matthew has Jesus take his new road construction out of town, and out of Province even.

This new construction is almost immediately put to the test in a new and unfamiliar terrain.
A Gentile, an unclean female, an outsider in every way demands to travel on this new religious road.

How will Jesus’ roadbed hold up under the weight of centuries and centuries of alienation and gender bias?

Scholars have different interpretations about how and why Jesus responds to the woman.
I’m not going to go into this today. But, let me point out that all the old superficial, external stuff that separates us gets quickly pushed to the side through their verbal exchange.

In the end, it is what comes out of the woman’s heart that makes the difference.

It is from her heart that she connects to Jesus and the roadbed that Jesus is building.
And in that connection, her daughter is fully healed.

What is the application for today?

Like the Canaanite woman who comes to Jesus knowing exactly what she wants and what she needs, so people who are not connected to the church have a sense of what the Christian faith should be about today.

People outside the church hold many misconceptions about us, but they also expect the church to be a place of the heart, a place of feeding, healing and safety, without a lot of roadblocks.

People outside the church expect us to connect to the mystery of compassion in ways they do not, and expect us to share it even if they cannot.
This is what today’s story is telling us.

Bruce Sanguin, in his new book The Emerging Church: A Model for Change and a Map for Renewal, states,
“When a congregation gets it, that it is not about them - not about meeting the budget or providing programs for members or
making sure the minister visits everyone... its chance for survival increases exponentially.”

In other words, it is not about coming to Christ.

It is about bringing Christ to the hearts of others.

It is not about repairing the religious roadbed.

It is about rebuilding it and extending it for the traffic needs of
today.

David Giuliano, our moderator of the United Church expresses it well.
“ I am praying that our preoccupation with getting people into the church is transformed by a passion for getting the church into the world.”

We are constructing the new religious roadbed when it accommodates all kinds of vehicles.