The Fourteenth Sunday after Pentecost

August 17, 2008, Proper 15A

St. Peter’s Church in the Great Valley

The Rev. Nancy Webb Stroud

Genesis 45:1-15; Romans 11:1-2a, 29-31; Matthew 15:10-28

This summer, my vacation time was spent with my family, as it most often is. In fact, one of my children once said something I barely understood, “You know Mom, some families go on vacation and don’t stay with their grandparents!” Actually, the kids seem to like it when the family gets together, because that is when they hear the best stories. My husband and his brother love to tell the story of how they used to make their sister burst into tears at family dinner so that she would run crying from the table. His sister doesn’t love that one very much, but she has a couple stories of her own that put her brothers to disadvantage, much to the delight of the youngsters. Of course, the Stroud siblings are not the only ones with stories. My own brothers could do a pretty good job making me cry. And to hear their stories, I had some game, myself. Of course, we have all grown out of it, and our children are all perfect angels . . . .

Joseph said to his brothers, "Come closer to me." And they came closer. He said, "I am your brother, Joseph, whom you sold into Egypt.” I guess that my family is not the only family that puts the “fun” in dysfunctional. In fact, all of today’s lessons from Holy Scripture are about dysfunctional families of one sort or another.

You will recall that Joseph was the youngest of a big family—twelve sons and unnumbered daughters of four different mothers and one father. And they all lived happily together. The father, Jacob, was the son of Isaac and the grandson of Abraham. God promised Abraham that he would become a great nation—and by just the third generation there were twelve sons to carry on the family line.

Except that Joseph, the baby, really irritated his brothers. He was his father’s pet, and he spent a lot of time explaining to his brothers how his dreams foretold his greatness. The brothers finally had enough, and they sold him into slavery. They told their father that his favorite son was dead—and then they continued with their own lives—marrying and raising children and going about doing what they could do to make God’s promise to Abraham come true. Meanwhile, their father lived with the grief of one who lost a child—and Joseph, against all odds, rose from slave to the Pharaoh’s chief assistant.

Then famine came to the land. Now Joseph had helped the Pharaoh predict that there would be a famine, and so Egypt was prepared—but back at home, Jacob and his sons were not. So Jacob sent his sons to Egypt to see if they could get some help—otherwise, they would all die and God’s promise would be broken. Joseph recognized his brothers, but they did not recognize him. They had nearly forgotten that old family story—what with the strain of starving and their human ability to suppress the memory of their bad behavior.

Then, Joseph said to his brothers, "I am Joseph. Is my father still alive?" But his brothers could not answer him, so dismayed were they at his presence. The rest of the story unfolds like the end of a sentimental movie: Jacob is reunited with his favorite son, and Joseph saves his family from starving.

By the time Jesus came along, the promise that God made to Abraham, that he would make him a great nation, had certainly come true. A few weeks ago, we heard the story of how God gave Jacob a new name. Jacob became Israel. The sons of Jacob became the founders of the twelve tribes of Israel, and by Jesus’ time all of the Jews claimed Abraham as their father. And they were quite proud of their often-dysfunctional family. They were proud of their knowledge of God. They were proud that God had chosen the children of Israel to show salvation to the world.

Of course, by the time Jesus came along, there was some fairly wide disagreement among the Jews about just how God would save the people. Some thought it would be a strictly political victory, and some thought is would be a strictly spiritual victory—and some thought the ultimate salvation mattered less than the carefully ritualized day-to-day living. But whether you were a Pharisee or a Sadducee, a scribe, or a fisherman, if you were a Jew, you knew you were part of one family. It was a family marked by the knowledge that God who made that promise to Abraham would always be faithful to the children of Israel.

The children of Israel fought about these things, of course. They chose sides and had cut-offs between family members. Some groups wouldn’t speak to other groups. Some folks were clean and some were unclean. And scripture tells us many more ways to avoid becoming unclean than it tells us how to get clean. That was the conversation that Jesus was having with some scribes and Pharisees just before the lesson we have from today’s Gospel. Matthew tells us that some Pharisees and scribes came to Jesus from Jerusalem and said, “Why do your disciples break the tradition of the elders? For they do not wash their hands before they eat” (Matthew 15:1,2). Doesn’t it sound like a dinner table conversation? Any minute now, some little sister is going to break into tears of shame because she is not honoring her parents enough. And so Jesus calls the whole crowd together to explain to them about tradition, about clean and unclean. And it sounds a lot like the parent at a dinner table, trying to get the kids to simmer down and just eat their food, for goodness’ sake.

And then, into this typical, if not very happy, domestic scene, comes a character from another family altogether. A woman from Canaan is disturbing the disciples. Now the Canaanites were not Jews. So along comes this Canaanite woman, and whatever fighting there was amongst the Jews themselves, they could unite against an outsider. And they certainly could unite against an outsider who was ill-mannered enough not to know that a woman didn’t speak to a man in public. And his disciples came and urged him, saying, "Send her away, for she keeps shouting after us."

Now this woman was not just an ill-mannered outsider, she was a mother. And more, she was a mother with a sick kid. And it was going to take a lot more than dismissive fishermen-turned disciples to get her to turn away. Actually, Jesus tried to dismiss her, too. In what is one of the most troubling quotations of the Gospels, he said, "I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel." But she came and knelt before him, saying, "Lord, help me." He answered, "It is not fair to take the children's food and throw it to the dogs." It is very troubling to us, who live in a multi-cultural society, to hear our Lord say something so demeaning to a person who is suffering. What are we to make of it?

All those centuries before, back in Egypt, Joseph turned to eleven starving men: "I am your brother, Joseph, whom you sold into Egypt. And now do not be distressed, or angry with yourselves, because you sold me here; for God sent me before you to preserve life. And with that one phrase, for God sent me before you to preserve life, Joseph forgave his brothers for the crime they had committed against him. He forgave the torture of his years of slavery and imprisonment; the years of torment, not knowing whether his father lived or died: for God sent me before you to preserve life.

How could he do it? It was nothing less than the faithfulness of God that allowed Joseph to forgive, to see his life and his brothers’ lives in the context of the whole sweep of God’s creation. Joseph had the faith to believe the faithfulness of God. When Joseph went to Egypt and saved the people from famine—he saved all the people—God’s chosen children of Israel, as well as those Egyptians, outsiders who did not know the one, true God.

Seventeen centuries later, Jesus, Son of God, was also one of the children of Israel. Seventeen hundred years after Joseph, the Jews were used to living together. They were used to their family squabbles about their religion. And though they had disagreements, they were thoroughly convinced that God would be faithful to the promise. They were convinced that God’s salvation would come through the children of Israel. And after Jesus’ death and resurrection, those who believed in him saw God’s salvation in Jesus himself.

And so Matthew wrote his Gospel to Jews who believed in Jesus, but also to the outsiders—those who were coming to believe in Jesus without all of those traditions of the elders. Many in Matthew’s community saw themselves as children of Israel, faithful Jews who saw God’s promise in the victory of Jesus. What were they to make of those who came to faith in Jesus from the outside?

Jesus looked at the Canaanite woman kneeling before him and said, "It is not fair to take the children's food and throw it to the dogs." She said, "Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters' table."

The Canaanite woman would do anything to save her daughter—but she couldn’t do what she did not know. She didn’t know the family story of Jacob and Joseph. She wasn’t a child of Israel—but she knew that God would preserve the life of her child. And so she knelt before Jesus. And with bad manners, and lack of respect for a tradition that she did not know, she reminded Jesus of the faithfulness of God. “Food is not for people only. Dogs eat, too.” She didn’t know the story, but she knew the truth of God. God sent Joseph to preserve all life—not just the life of some. And kneeling before Jesus, the Canaanite woman held God to that promise. And her daughter was healed instantly.

And so Matthew told this dysfunctional family story of the desperate mother and the impatient children of Israel to the newest Christians—to encourage the church to see the promise of God in the victory of Jesus, and to know that God’s promise is finally available to all the children of God.

Two thousand years after Jesus and nearly four thousand years after Joseph, we still tell our family stories. We tell them to make our children laugh, and to keep them from making our mistakes, and to encourage them when they are sad. Mostly we tell our stories so that our children will know whose children they are. And so, along with the stories of the dinner table and the family vacation, we tell our stories of Joseph who saved the people from starving and the Canaanite woman and her daughter who lived.

We tell our stories and we remember the faithfulness of God and the victory of Jesus, and we know Whose children we all are.