Haven't I told you a million times not to feed the dog?

This is a sermon that was preached on Sunday, August 20, 2017 at United Presbyterian Church in Sterling, KS based on Matthew 15:10-28, Isaiah 56:1-8.  Read scriptures here.

--

Outsiders and Insiders. Which one are you?

It depends, maybe, on the criteria.

We’re having a special lunch today after church, but we don’t have enough for everybody, so we’re only inviting the people sitting on the north side of the sanctuary.  All of you sitting over here can come, but all of you sitting over here aren’t invited. Those of you who aren’t invited, if you want, can come by tomorrow to see if we had any leftovers.  If we do, we’ll give you the scraps.

Now, are you an insider or an outsider?  Is my criteria too loose?  All that made the difference was where you sat in church this morning. 

In the story we read from Matthew 15 today, the Pharisees consider themselves the insiders, and the Canaanite woman is the outsider.

The Jewish leaders come to question Jesus about why his disciples aren’t washing their hands before they eat.  We need to remember that this wasn’t about germs.  They didn’t know that germs existed.  The Pharisees weren’t talking about physical cleanliness, they were talking about religious purity and following the established rules and traditions.  They believed that If they touched their food with unclean hands, then they would make themselves spiritually unclean.  Jesus points out to them that they have let their rules and traditions take precedence over the word of God.  They’re missing the point.  In further explaining this to the disciples, he says, “It’s not what goes into the mouth that defiles a person, but it is what comes out of the mouth that defiles.” (v11)  What we say reflects what’s in our hearts.

Jesus’s words make sense to me.  Apparently they also made a lot of sense to our son Tristan.  Our rule at dinner time was that the kids had to wash their hands before sitting down at the table.  As five-year-olds often do, our son would skip this step.  We would have to ask, “Did you wash your hands?”  Frequently the answer was “no” and we would send him off to wash them.  But one evening, instead of saying, “no,” he said, “But mom, it’s not what goes into the mouth that defiles a person, but what comes out of the mouth.”  Our chins hit the floor.  We applauded his command of scripture and then sent him off to wash his hands anyway.

Are you part of the in-crowd?  Or outside the circle?

The people of Israel were God’s chosen people – the in-crowd.  The Pharisees felt it was their job to maintain the purity and integrity of the nation of Israel.  But they got so caught up in drawing lines and making sure that no one crossed them that they missed the point.  They lost sight of God’s mercy and grace.

Mercy is what the Canaanite woman comes to Jesus for.  She’s an outsider because she’s on the other side of a very old family feud.  Way back in Genesis, Noah had three sons:  Shem, Ham and Japheth.  After the flood, Noah planted a vineyard and made wine, and one day he got drunk on his wine and passed out in his tent naked.  Ham found his father naked and went and told his brothers about it.  The brothers Shem and Japheth went and covered up Noah so he wouldn’t be naked anymore. When Noah woke up and heard about what happened, he was mad at Ham for leaving him naked and telling about it.  So he cursed Ham and his descendants.[1] 

The nation of Israel is descended from Shem, and that’s why they’re called Shemites or Semites.  Shem is the great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great grandfather of Abraham, who is called the Father of Israel. The nation of Canaan is descended from Ham’s son Canaan, and that’s why they’re called Canaanites.  Descendants of Shem – insiders, descendants of Canaan – outsiders, all because of a very, very, very old family feud.

The Canaanite woman isn’t complaining about being an outsider.  She knows where the lines are drawn, and she probably wouldn’t even try to cross them, but she is desperate to get help for her daughter who is tormented by a demon.  So she comes to Jesus.  She could have come saying, “I’m as good as the next person.  You should help me because I deserve this.”  But she doesn’t.  She doesn’t challenge the idea that the Israelites are the children and the Canaanites are the dogs.  She simply points out that the dogs can at least have the crumbs.  The leftovers. Jesus commends her for her faith, and heals her daughter.

We could sum up these scenes from Matthew 15 with two words:  

Mercy & Humility

Mercy is what Jesus points out that the Pharisees lack.

Mercy is what the Canaanite woman asks for.

Mercy is what Jesus came to offer.

Humility is what it would take for the Pharisees to change their rules.

Humility is what the woman showed in approaching Jesus.

Humility is what Jesus demonstrated for us on the cross.

Mercy is what God freely offers us, and what we are to offer to others.

Humility is what it takes for us to admit that we are all in need of God’s mercy.

Are we insiders or outsiders?

It depends on the criteria.  We have so many different criteria.

Whether or not we have tattoos or piercing.  In some circles, not having those makes you an outsider.

Whether or not we have funky colors in our hair, or have a particular haircut.

Whether we have a college degree, or a post-graduate degree.

Whether we attend a particular school, or speak a certain way, or come from a certain family.

Whether we are a particular gender, or behave in certain ways.

Whether we attended church today. 

Whether we attended a particular kind of church today.

Where do we draw lines?  Which side of those lines are we on?

We all draw lines in some way.  Even when we don’t mean to, we form groups and make categories.  We say things we don’t even realize we’re saying.  We apply what may seem to be harmless labels that draw boundaries.

Those old people.  Those young people. 

Those southerners.  Those northerners. 

Those people from California. 

Those rich people. Those poor people.

Are you sitting at the table or waiting for the leftovers and crumbs?

We’ve probably all been in either situation at different times and places.  Whenever we’re the ones at the table, it’s our job to make room for those who aren’t.

A group of people were standing around talking after church about general topics – the worship service, the weather, things like that.  Then two of the people start talking to each other about where they’re going for lunch.  The other people in the group weren’t invited to that lunch.  They’re suddenly no longer part of the conversation.  Inadvertently a line has been drawn.  Insiders and outsiders.  Nobody intended to shut anyone out, but it’s happened. We all do it.  We all need to work on not doing it.

There are no boundaries to God’s love.  Proverbs 2:22 says, “Rich and poor have this in common: The LORD is the Maker of them all.”  All are included.  All who seek to know God are welcome. Isaiah, in the section we read today from chapter 56, talks about this.  Foreigners and eunuchs were traditionally shunned, but Isaiah 56:5 says that “they shall not be cut off…these I will bring to my holy mountain, and make them joyful in my house of prayer…for my house shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples.”

From the beginning, the call was to bless all people. 

• In Genesis, Abraham was promised that through him all the nations of the earth would be blessed. 
• In Deuteronomy and Leviticus, Israel was told to welcome foreigners because they were once foreigners in Egypt.

But we keep finding ways to shut each other out.  It’s human nature.

• It was happening all the way back in the story of Noah. 
• It was happening during the time of Isaiah.
• It was happening in Jesus’ time. 

It was happening some more when Paul writes his letter to the Romans.  The book of Romans is Paul’s argument for inclusion of both Jewish and Gentile Christians in their fellowships.  By Paul’s time, the gentile Christians were shutting out the Jews, and were claiming to be superior because the Jews had rejected the gospel.  The Jewish Christians claimed superiority because they came first and were circumcised.  Paul makes the point that neither was superior.  All were equally sinful in the eyes of God and equally in need of salvation through faith in Jesus. (Rom. 3)

Let me tell you a story you may have heard before from Dr. Suess about the

Sneetches.  There are two kinds – those who have stars on their bellies and those who have none.

Those stars weren’t so big.  They were really so small

You might think such a thing wouldn’t matter at all.

But, because they had stars, all the Star-Belly Sneetches

Would brag, “We’re the best kind of Sneetch on the beaches.”

With their snoots in the air, they would sniff and they’d snort

“We’ll have nothing to do with the Plain-Belly sort!”

So, of course, those without stars felt bad and left out, and wished they had stars.  Then one day Sylvester McMonkey McBean comes along with a machine, and says

                “You want stars like a Star-Belly Sneetch?

                My friends, you can have them for three dollars each!”

But then everyone has stars, and those who had been declaring themselves superior are upset.  Sylvester McMonkey McBean fixes this for them, too.  His machine takes the stars OFF their bellies.

Then, with snoots in the air, they paraded about

And they opened their beaks and they let out a shout,

“We know who is who!  Now there isn’t a doubt.

The best kind of Sneetches are Sneetches without!”

Then things went crazy and the Sneetches were changing their stars every few minutes, and no one knew who was who, and then when they had spent all their money, the man with the machine packed up and went.

And he laughed as he drove in his car up the beach,

“They never will learn, No. You can’t teach a Sneetch!”

But McBean was quite wrong, I’m quite happy to say

That the Sneetches got really quite smart on that day,

The day they decided that Sneetches are Sneetches

And no kind of Sneetch is the best on the beaches.

That day, all the Sneetches forgot about stars

And whether they had one, or not, upon thars.[2]

Sneetches are Sneetches and people are people.  We’re all guilty of drawing lines and shutting people out at different times and in different ways, even if we don’t realize it. 

That special lunch I said we were having after church?  We aren’t really.  But Jesus has prepared a special banquet for us all.  It’s a feast of love and forgiveness.  A heavenly banquet. Everyone is invited.  

It doesn’t matter how old you are or where you were born or what family you’re from or what credentials you have, or where you sat today.

All that’s required is faith…

…Faith in the one who though he was God didn’t consider equality with God as something to cling to, but instead emptied himself…becoming human… taking the form of a slave, and humbled himself…being obedience even to the point of death on a cross. (Phil. 2:6-8)

Therefore God also highly exalted him
    and gave him the name
    that is above every name,
 so that at the name of Jesus
    every knee should bend,
    in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
 and every tongue should confess
    that Jesus Christ is Lord,
    to the glory of God the Father.

(Phillippians 2:9-11)

God sent his Son because He loves us all.  Let us be thankful that we know Jesus, and share his love with everyone we meet, so they can know the joy of knowing him, too.

Everyone is welcome!

---

[1] Genesis 9:18-28

[2] Dr. Suess, The Sneetches and Other Stories (Random House, 1953)


P.S. Sometimes energy and resources can only go so far, so there have to be guidelines and boundaries.  Being the one behind the counter was challenging and very often heart-wrenching. At the food bank in Galveston, we had to follow guidelines.  When people came asking for food, the first question was always, “Do you live in this county?  If not, I’m sorry but we can’t help you."  On the one hand that is a reasonable requirement.  There are food banks in every county.  It makes the most sense that people would go to the one closest to them....but what if we were the closest?  And what if they had no transportation? The next step was to see something that showed their address – a driver’s license, a utility bill.  Again, this seems reasonable.  But sometimes this was the insurmountable challenge.  What if they were homeless? What if they had lost their ID?  Getting a new ID costs money, and if you have to get copies of a birth certificate, social security card, and/or marriage license, even more money.  In Texas, if you’ve been in jail, you come out of jail with no ID because you don’t get it back.  So often we made exceptions to the rule.  The first time, you still get food, even without ID.  I was so thankful for this exception.

Welcome Home

This sermon was preached at United Presbyterian Church, Sterling KS on June 18, 2017 – Genesis 18:1-15, 21:1-7  
Read text here.  
Listen to the sermon here.

-----

Today is Father’s Day. I’ll bet a lot of dads are hoping their children are thinking fondly of them and remembering the wise things they’ve said.  I spent a few moments trying to remember some wise things my dad said.  My dad is a very wise guy – and sometimes a wise guy - who has said and done a lot of wonderful things, but what I came up with in that moment were the words dad used whenever we were getting out of hand and needed to stop.  He’d say, “Let’s not and say we did.”  We, of course, had a wise reply.  “But dad, that’d be lying!”

Another dad – or at least I assume he was a dad; I don’t actually know if he had any children – who said something you’ll probably recognize was a man who lived way back in the first century in Rome named Pliny the Elder.  He’s the one who first said, “Home is where the heart is.”[1]

Home is where the heart is . . . which could be a problem if you’re the one singing that song, “I left my heart in San Francisco…”

Home is where the heart is.  In our story for today from Genesis 18, we see Abraham working very hard to make three travelers feel at home.  He offers them extraordinary hospitality. 

1.    He runs to greet them and bows down to the ground before them.

2.    He begs them to come into his camp and let him serve them.

3.    He offers them foot-washing and rest and food.

4.    He hurries to get the food preparation going.

5.    He has Sarah use the best flour, and chooses a good and tender calf to roast.

6.    After he serves the food, he stands by waiting in case they need anything.

This is a description of excellent hospitality.  Treat people with respect, give them your best, do things promptly, be attentive.

I don’t think many of us would argue about this.  It’s good to treat people well and be hospitable, and Abraham does a marvelous job of it.  For the rest of the Bible, and even outside the Bible, Abraham is held up as the ultimate example of excellent hospitality.[2]

As I was pondering these verses about Abraham’s exemplary hospitality, I got to wondering, What makes us feel at home?  What make us feel welcome somewhere?

So I posted those questions on Facebook. You may have seen this.  Some of you posted answers.

Some of the responses are what we might expect – friendliness, smiles, food.  One that came up several times that surprised me a bit was humor.  Laughter is welcoming.

There is laughter in our story from Genesis.  Sarah laughs when one of Abraham’s guests says that he will return in about a year and by that time Sarah will have a son.  She laughs because it sounds like a joke. 

To get the joke, it helps to know their history.

In Genesis 12 we read about God calling Abraham and Sarah to leave the land where they’d been living up in Haran, in modern day Turkey, and go to a new place that God would show them, which is how they end up where we find them in Genesis 18, in Canaan, what we now know as Israel. They were nomads, only staying in one place as long as their herds had grass there to eat.  The life of a nomad was hard.  It was in tents.  …They lived in tents.

When God called Abraham to go to Canaan, God made Abraham a promise.  God said, “I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing…and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.” (Gen. 12:2,3)  It’s a beautiful promise, but there’s a problem.  Abraham and Sarah have no children.  Sarah is barren, and she’s 90 years old.  I love how it’s put in our reading for today, “…it had ceased to be with Sarah after the manner of women.” (Gen. 18:11)

In Genesis 16, we find that Abraham and Sarah have gotten impatient about waiting for God to give them children, and so Sarah has Abraham spend time with her slave Hagar.  Hagar conceives and has a baby named Ishmael.[3]  But God says that although he will bless Ishmael and give him many descendants, God will still keep his promise to give Sarah a child.

Which brings us to the part we read today.  It’s been 25 years since God first promised Abraham that he would make him a great nation, and now here is the promise again.  “When I come back to visit you next year, Sarah will have a son.”

Sarah laughs.  Surely the man is joking.  But he isn’t….and apparently he heard her laughter, even though she was only laughing quietly to herself.

I love the next line of the story.  “Then God said, “Why did Sarah laugh? . . . Is anything too difficult for God?”   …Good question.

Sarah, realizing she’s gotten herself into hot water, denies laughing.  “I didn’t laugh.”  And God, who of course would know, says, “Oh yes you did laugh.”

That’s some good comedy there. Sarah gets caught being real.  And that’s why I like Sarah’s part of the story the best.  She’s authentic.

In my informal research on Facebook, sincerity and authenticity were some words that showed up in several of the responses to my question about what makes us feel welcome. One person said, “people seeming genuinely interested in me, as opposed to being politely interested.”^[4]

That makes hospitality more challenging.  We can know the right things to do to show hospitality, but to do them with a sincerely welcoming spirit is harder.

For some of us, this is not hard.  Some people are just naturally good at hospitality.  I’ve seen this from many of you already.

I saw this in action the first year that we lived in Seneca, SC.  Rob’s aunt and uncle invited us to their house for Thanksgiving.  We didn’t know them very well because we had lived most of our lives on the opposite side of the country, in California.  We discovered that we had very different expectations of the kinds of food that should be at a thanksgiving dinner, so we brought what we were used to, and they prepared what they were used to.   We lined it all up on the counter, filled our plates, and sat down to dinner.  And then the doorbell rang. In the few months that we had lived in Seneca, we had met several other families that were relatively new to the area who had also come from California, and we developed a camaraderie with them.  I don’t remember how this happened, but someone got the idea that they should all join us for Thanksgiving dinner.  Rob’s aunt answered the door.  She didn’t know these people, and she didn’t know they were coming, but she welcomed them like they were old friends.  I was so impressed with her amazing hospitality.

That’s what we probably most often think of when we think of hospitality – welcoming people into our homes and serving them food.  According to the responses on my Facebook question, food is a big factor.  There was even a whole conversation that came up about bacon.  It seems that bacon is good for hospitality.

Writer Henri Nouwen suggests another way to think about hospitality.  He says that hospitality is about offering space.[5]  That could mean inviting someone to share your space, but sometimes it might mean being sensitive enough to someone’s situation to know when to give them their own space.

There was a women who needed space after her mother died.  She got through the funeral and then went home and fell apart.  After a couple of days her refrigerator was getting empty, but she was too sad to get to the store or ask for help. A friend who knew her well sent her a text that said,

“I’m going to the store to buy groceries for you. I’m going to deliver them to your kitchen door, and once I’ve done that I’m going to get back in my car, and when I’m in my car I’m going to text you and let you know that they are there. Text me the things that you need.”[6]

The friend gave the woman space to be alone until she was ready to face people again.

Hospitality, making people feel welcome, doesn’t always look the way we expect it to look. Sometimes it’s more about helping people feel accepted and safe.  On Facebook, one of the responses was, “Being able to relax and be myself without fear of failing to meet expectations or being judged.”

I met a man at a homeless shelter in Galveston that had recently come from San Antonio.  The shelter director asked him what it had been like in San Antonio.  The man said that it was very hard to be homeless there, and he told us with tears in his eyes that he had asked someone on the street if they could tell him what time it was.  Instead of answering, the person cringed, looked disgusted and hurried past him.  Not only was he made to feel unwelcome, he felt subhuman.

Home is where the heart is, but there was no heart for that man that day.  The heart of making people feel sincerely welcome is love, and our capacity for that love comes from God. The Bible says in Romans 5:  God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.

The last few weeks we’ve been talking about the Holy Spirit.  Last week we talked about how the Spirit helps us to be creative.  This week in our email newsletter we invited you to think about how creativity plays a part in being welcoming.  In other words, how does the Holy Spirit play a part in hospitality?

Through the Holy Spirit we can love people with God’s love which goes further than what we can do on our own.  The Holy Spirit helps us to reach beyond our hesitations, to approach people we might not otherwise approach, and to reach out in new and different ways.  The Holy Spirit enables us to respond to people with God’s love which is for all people, rather than with our own which tends to be more partial and prejudicial.

One way the Holy Spirit helps us with this is through prayer…talking to God about everything.  This is one reason the apostle Paul tells us in 1 Thessalonians 5:17 to pray continually.

Home is where the heart is.  We find our home in the heart of God, and from there we find the strength, courage, compassion and love that enables us to be genuinely welcoming of others, to welcome one another with the same welcome we have received from Jesus Christ (Romans 15:7).

Remember Abraham? God promised to make him a great nation, but he was old and his wife was barren. On top of that, God had first made that promise 25 years before that visit from the three men that we read about. But in that visit the promise was renewed. One of the men said, “When we return this time next year, your wife Sarah will have a child.” It was so inconceivable that Sarah laughed when she heard it. But God kept his promise.  We read in Genesis 21 that Sarah DID have a son, and they named him Isaac.  Isaac was the father of Jacob, also known as Israel, who was the father of Judah, and so on, down to Joseph who was the father of Jesus.  Through Abraham and his descendants, all the nations of the earth were blessed.  Through Abraham and his descendants, we are blessed to have the grace and forgiveness and welcome into the family of God through Jesus Christ.

God challenged Abraham and Sarah with a question. “Is anything too hard for God?” (Gen 18:14) Loving and welcoming people can be hard.  God has promised us that he will never leave us.  Through Jesus, God’s love lives in our hearts, and the Holy Spirit helps us to find ways to show people that they matter to us and to God.

Nothing can separate from the love of God that is in Jesus Christ our Lord. (Rom. 8:39).  Home is where the heart is.  When we trust God with our hearts, God says, welcome home.

---

[1] https://goodmenproject.com/families/the-good-life-home-is-where-the-heart-is/

[2] Arterbury, Andrew E. "The ancient custom of hospitality: the Greek novels, and Acts 10:1-11:18." Perspectives In Religious Studies 29, no. 1 (2002 2002): 53-72. ATLA Religion Database with ATLASerials, EBSCOhost (accessed June 16, 2017).

[3] Abraham was 75 when God called him to leave Haran (Gen. 12:4) and 86 when Ishmael was born (Gen. 16:16).  Covenant restated in Genesis 17 and Abraham is 99 (17:1) and Sarah is 90 (17:17)

[4] https://www.facebook.com/melissa.krabbe.1/posts/10154885441067872

[5] Henri J.M. Nouwen, Reaching Out: The Three Movements of the Spiritual Life https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/239822-reaching-out-the-three-movements-of-the-spiritual-life

[6] Lauralee Farrer in Story Table: Hospitality by Fuller Studio https://fullerstudio.fuller.edu/story-table-hospitality/

Sabaoth

They were calling out to each other, "Holy, holy, holy is the LORD of Heaven's Armies! The whole earth is filled with his glory!"  --Isaiah 6:3 NLT

The Lord of Heaven’s Armies.  Other translations call God the Lord Almighty or the Lord of Hosts.  The Hebrew says Yahweh Sabaoth.

There are times when knowing God as faithfully compassionate, deeply loving and constantly present gives me comfort.  My favorite perspective of God, though, is this one from Isaiah, Yahweh Sabaoth, God Almighty. I like it best because it reminds me that God is in charge, that God truly reigns over all of heaven and earth, and that God is powerful enough to handle whatever needs handling.   If I have to walk through the shadows of death or a dark alley in a sketchy part of town, this is the God I want holding my hand and watching over me.

Sabaoth is a word that I recognize from choir music.  It separates the casual choir singer from the serious veteran who knows how to pronounce it without having to be coached.  Seeing it in Hebrew helps me remember that it sounds like this:  tsa-bah-oat.  In English the T is silent, I suppose.  I never really knew what it meant until today.  It sounds like some kind of healthy breakfast cereal…saba-oat.

In the older Bible translations, Yahweh Sabaoth is the Lord of Hosts.  I never really knew what “hosts” meant until today, either.  The dictionary says a host is someone who receives guests, but also notes that the archaic meaning is a multitude or a large army.  If you put those two together, it means you’d better have a really big house or a good relationship with the nearest hotel to house a multitude of guests!  I suppose that fits God, too.  Jesus tells the disciples that his father’s house has many rooms and he’s gone to prepare a place for us there (John 14:2).  So heaven is a really big place, with lots of room to host a multitude of guests, which is good since there’s already a whole army of angels there, and all the people who have already died and gone to heaven, and many more to come.

The translation of Sabaoth to “Heaven’s Armies” surprised me the first time I saw it, but the Hebrew root tsaba is a word whose meaning is firmly war-related.  I think this just broadens our picture of God.  Even though Sabaoth is a word that speaks of power, there’s also a sense of God as the perfect host, always welcoming, always prepared to meet a guest’s needs, always with room enough for everyone.  An all-powerful host is the best kind of host, because he can not only house us, but can also keep us safe.

That’s a really big God.  No wonder the angels said that the whole earth is filled with his glory.  The whole earth is big, but God is bigger.  Sabaoth is the heavenly host, referring not just to angels but also to the stars in the sky:


Lift up your eyes and look to the heavens:
    Who created all these?
He who brings out the starry host one by one and calls forth each of them by name.
Because of his great power and mighty strength, not one of them is missing. --Isaiah 40:26

He is Lord of the heavens and Lord of the earth, ruling over the entire universe, and yet he knows me so well that he knows how many hairs are on my head (Luke 12:7, Matthew 10:30).

Amazing.
Astounding.
Yahweh Sabaoth.