Matthew 15.21-28                                                                                         10 August 2008

“JUST BEYOND THE BOUNDARIES”

I was lying on my bunk trying to calm back spasms before doing anything next.  No, this wasn’t last week. It was 16 years ago. I was on my second Habitat work team to the mountains of Nicaragua.  The green hilly landscape rolled out like the Sound of Music. Of course, you can’t eat the gorgeous view.  It is grindingly poor.

So we had worked hard carving foundations out of the rocky hillside.  Habitat was building 45 homes on acreage given to them outside of Esquipulas.  I had spent most of the day driving a 30 lb. spud bar into the mountain.  Up and down, prying in and out, to crack and remove solid rock to pour the foundations. I was beat.
I could barely move from the soreness and exhaustion. A small horde of young Nicaraguans gathered outside our front door. I could hear their gentle murmuring.  They had worked equally hard.  But they wanted more exercise.  Let me explain.

Before the trip, we had asked the Columbus Clippers, the AAA farm team of the New York Yankees, to donate any worn baseball equipment.  Nicaraguans are baseball crazy.  To our surprise, they gave us gloves, balls, bases, bats, batting helmets, and a full catcher’s gear.  (So if the Yankees are the evil empire, they aren’t completely evil!)  Anyway, these Nicaraguans wanted to play baseball after an exhausting workday. I mean, real baseball: an umpire calling balls and strikes, base coaches, signs, stolen bases, curve balls and sliders, the whole nine yards.

I couldn’t swing it.  No way that I could move. I had reached my limit. I was done.  Never mind that I had ventured so far afield just to get to that remote place. Or I would be hopelessly behind when I got home to my church in Columbus.  We were already donating and building homes, befriending them, giving them the baseball gear and medicine.  They had heard a rumor that we had baseball stuff.

So I was moaning on my bunk. Mark sidled up to my bed.  “Have you seen them out there?” They were quiet, wordless, just waiting. “I hate to say it, Dale, but we’ve gotta play ball with these guys.”  I quietly fumed.  C’mon, God, how far must I venture? How much more must I do?  When is it enough?  Are you utterly insatiable? But I went and played infield. I even tried to revive my dormant screw-ball as a relief pitcher.  Not only did I survive.  It was fun and deeply memorable.  And I was reminded.  A lot of our best work awaits us and happens just beyond the boundaries of how far we think we should have to go to do the Lord’s bidding.

This story occurred to me as I studied our Gospel lesson.  It was my way of getting inside of how Jesus must have felt venturing to the geographic extreme of Tyre and Sidon, along the Mediterranean coast.  It was there a Gentile woman screamed at Jesus.   He was doing his usual thing of taking back the world to save it. Doubtless the hordes clamored after him. She pushed her way to Jesus.  Normally, pushy people are my least favorite.  I could even go so far as to say I’m prejudiced against pushy people. (Every year we have auction/bazaar stories about this, don’t we?) But remember, this woman was pushy because her daugh-ter was troubled, even tormented.  In Jesus she saw hope for her child. I would push any or all of you if I thought it would help heal a tormented child of mine.  

What’s the reaction? Jesus ignored her. Had he not made it clear that his mission was to the people of Israel?  Could he be expected to meet all the needs of the goyim as well? It was too much.  The disciples urged Jesus to send her away. Her shouting made them nutso.  They were like the Secret Service protecting the candidate from any sudden dangerous or even draining and difficult incursions.

Matthew writes, “But she came and knelt before (Jesus), saying, ‘Lord, help me.’” Pause that frame in your mind, will you?  Poignant is too mild a word to describe it.  After a brief theological exchange on the parameters of Jesus’ mission and the expansiveness of God’s grace, he looked at this Nicaraguan woman, I mean, Canaanite woman.  He exclaimed, “Woman, great is your faith. Let it be done for you as you wish.”  And whatever torments afflicted that daughter were banished.

It is a powerful, riveting moment in the story of the Son of God walking this earth. What would you give to have Jesus say to you—in this life or the next—“Woman, Mister, great is your faith!” I for one couldn’t conceive of anything better than that.
Jesus has shown us.  A lot of our best work awaits us and happens just beyond the limits of how far we think we should have to go to do what is pleasing to God.

Our auction/bazaar organizers and workers could teach us about that. “Oh sure,” you said. “I can donate a couple hours a week to do that.” Then a couple hours became more like a couple hundred.  “Oh sure,” Kent Whitcomb said when he agreed to take on the leadership of this event for the first time, not knowing that it would come to utterly dominate every inflection of his and his daughters’ lives. This signature event of Dennis Union Church takes on a life of its own. It pulls us along with it, and takes us to places of commitment we hadn’t planned on. “I’d no idea I would end up doing all this!” you said.  But you did it all. And we thank you.

But now it has come and gone.  Never mind the way the auction supports the ministry and mission of DUC. Never mind the esprit d’ corps it creates among us, as we all pull in the same direction.  Never mind the positive identity and fun visibility it gives us locally.  The auction creates a favorable impression with far-flung friends and family who come here to work every year, to visit every year, to be part of the energy it creates.  Frankly, it touches all kinds of people who other-wise would have nothing to do with the church of Jesus Christ.  Why, there were probably even some Nicaraguans and Canaanites here yesterday. I believe it. And we are reminded.  A lot of our best work awaits us and happens just beyond the limits of how far we think we should have to go to do what is pleasing to God. 

I’m going to tell one more story and then let you go.  You’ve earned early recess. Yevtushenko, the great Russian poet, writes in his autobiography of a moment in 1944 when 20,000 German prisoners of war were marched through the streets of Moscow.  They hobbled on crutches.  They showed blood-stained bandages.  They leaned upon one another just to keep up.  At one point, an elderly Russian woman, herself ill-clad, pushed through a police line, like the Canaanite woman through the phalanx of Jesus twelve attempting to protect him from the extremes.

What was she doing?  She went up to a column of ragged German soldiers and pushed a crust of bread into the hand of a soldier so exhausted he was tottering. After her lead, suddenly from all sides, women ran to these enemy soldiers, put-ting bread, cigarettes, whatever they had to give into pockets, into their hands. How many Russians died at the hands of Nazi soldiers like that ragged column? How high do the estimates run, some in excess of 20 million Russian casualties?

Why they shouldn’t have to minister to invaders who had blighted their land. They shouldn’t have to reach out to vanquished foreigners who had come to conquer them.  C’mon, God, how far must we venture? How much more must we do?  When is enough enough?  Are your expectations of us so completely insatiable?

And we are reminded.  A lot of our best work awaits us and happens just beyond the boundaries of how far we think we should have to go to do the Lord’s bidding. Just as we go the places Jesus has today showed, we find ourselves at our best. It seems the blessings stream out in all directions. And heaven and earth smile. Amen.

Lord Jesus, you come to us as the Messiah, the anointed one of God, the power and love of God unto us.  Lord Jesus, you have come to us as the Son of God, the presence of God with us. Help us to greet you in the unlikely places, often as we are stretched too far, when you are present to us. Enable us to lay aside our preconceived notions of you and your mission to us to meet you as you are wherever we find you at whatever hour in our lives, rather than as who we would have you be, only when we are well rested, in a recognizable appearance.  Above all, help us to follow you, to walk with you where you lead, to love you as you are, to love others as you love, and to be the disciples you would have us be.