Twelfth Sunday after Pentecost August 16, 2026 with The Rev. Javier Almendárez-Bautista

https://www.lectionarypage.net/YearA_RCL/Pentecost/AProp15_RCL.html

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:51

May the words of my mouth and the meditation of all our hearts be holy and pleasing in your sight, O Lord, O Rock and Redeemer. Amen. If you or someone you love have ever walked the road to sobriety and recovery, you may be familiar with the gift of desperation. Sometimes it takes hitting rock bottom to find our way out of destructive patterns and habits. When that dark night arrives, when we can no longer hide from our pain and our shame, when every single one of our coping mechanisms fails us, then and only then do we feel compelled to turn outward for help. Desperation gives way to grace and second chances. And grace would not be grace at all if it was reserved for those who deserved it. The writer Anne Lamotte once said that sometimes grace simply means that you've run out of good ideas of your own. Desperation will do that to you. Only once the door closes to what is possible do we open ourselves up to what we once considered impossible. Only when we are out of options do we consider the possibility of the miraculous. She is a mother, the kind of mother that will do anything for her child. I wonder if she had already sought out expert advice from the healers of her time. I wonder if she was by chance ostracized by her own people, if they gossiped behind her back, attributing her daughter's ill fortune to what they perceived to be her parenting failures. The gospel does not tell us her backstory. All we see, all we hear, is a woman making a scene on a wilderness road. My daughter is tormented by a demon. Crying, shouting, no opportunity to call ahead and make an appointment, no day like today to ask for the help that you need. Among Jesus' disciples, this Canaanite woman is an outsider twice over. She is a woman in this time unaccompanied by a husband or male relative seeking out the counsel of a male stranger, and she is a Canaanite on the border of Jewish territory, an ancient rival of the people of Israel pleading with the son of David for help. This woman is the textbook definition of desperate. But if her world has already fallen apart, if her daughter cannot be healed, what then does she have to lose? Now, it may go without saying, but Jesus' initial response leaves something to be desired. It is not fair to take the children's food and throw it to the dogs. Oof. Not what we have come to expect from a man like Jesus. This exchange is all the more ironic given the advice he has just given to the crowds gathered about him. It is not what goes into the mouth that defiles a person, but it is what comes out of the mouth that defiles. For someone who just advised his disciples to think twice before they speak, you would think Jesus would have done the same. The juxtaposition between these two scenes is stark, and Jesus does not come out looking like the Lord and Savior we have come to know and love. Now, before I continue, let me just say that there are several ways to interpret Jesus' response. Some say Jesus acted this way as a lesson to his followers, a lesson where he is both protagonist and foil, teaching his disciples by acting out the wrong way, the worst way to go about God's business. A lesson on how not to welcome people into the kingdom of God. Still others say that Jesus was testing the Canaanite woman, giving her a chance to prove her faith in earnest. After all, plenty of people sought out Jesus for his miracles. Few people stuck around for his message afterward. It could be that the object lesson was for her as well. Still, others say that maybe this is just a vestige of Jesus' humanity, that Jesus, the divine and the human living within him, still had the limitations of his day and age, the prejudices of his people, place, and kin. These folks would also point out that these prejudices fit the social, religious, and geopolitical context of today. It would have been a rare sight to see a well-respected rabbi turn to the woman and say otherwise. Jesus, in this last interpretation, learns something here, shows us that in his body he has joined God's self so closely with ours that he is limited and fallible sometimes, just as we are, vulnerable even to our own worst instincts, the things that divide us from them, whoever the them might be. Now, you might be wondering which one of these is the right interpretation. To tell you the truth, I don't know. After all, I wasn't there. I don't know if any of us would really know, even if we had been there. Sometimes, you see, it is tempting to explain away difficult passages in scripture. We want to smooth over the frayed edges of the narrative, downplay miracles because that simply couldn't have happened, assign simple motives to complex characters. I prefer not to do that, my friends. I think Scripture is here not to provide us with easy answers, but to teach us how to ask better questions. And in this story, Jesus, whether on purpose or not, shows us how difficult it is to break the mold when it comes to our daily decisions about who is worth our time and who is not. He shows us that our long-treasured traditions may need to change occasionally. He invites us to consider how we can change too. Shows us that the true testing ground of our character isn't how we treat people when we are dressed in our Sunday best, but how we treat them when they look their worst. And this Canaanite woman shows us in living color what love looks like when you are willing to bear ridicule and shame for the sake of another. When you are willing to persist in the face of resistance, when you are willing to do everything in your power to make life better for those entrusted to your care. The truth is, my friends, that living and walking the way of Jesus isn't about having the right answers. It's about being willing to grow and to learn. The true saints throughout history were never perfect. They were fallible and yet they remained curious. They were vulnerable and yet they never accepted defeat. They allowed their lives to be broken open time and time again by the witness of siblings in the faith they didn't know they had, as new people were added to their number day by day. And this Canaanite woman, whose name we do not know, shows us the way. In the face of our despair, she holds out hope. She surrendered herself to the God of mercy. She put her trust in the God of second chances. And we, her witnesses, a couple of thousand years removed, still remember her story. Our prayer book remembers her as well. In our Rite One liturgy, the rite we celebrate at the 8 o'clock service, not at this 10:31, right before receiving communion, we have the option of using what we call the prayer of humble access. It goes something like this We do not presume to come to this thy table for merciful Lord, trusting in our own righteousness, but in thy manifold and great mercies. We are not worthy so much as to gather up the crumbs under thy table. But thou art the same Lord whose property is always to have mercy. Grant us, therefore, gracious Lord, so to eat the flesh of thy dear Son Jesus Christ, and to drink his blood, that we may evermore dwell in him and he in us. Amen. Let us give thanks to the same Lord whose property is always, always to have mercy. And may we go out today to go and do likewise. Amen.