Posted by Brian August 30, 2005
I ran across some more thoughts about this Gospel passage recently, from another Anglican/Episcopal priest, Preston. Here is Preston’s post:
Proper 15, Year A: St. Augustine on the Canaanite Woman
He seems to take issue with the interpretation which Alma and Jen preached about, and which I wrote about earlier. If you’ve got time, I encourage you to read those links. Well, you can skip what I wrote if you want, but read the others. 
Augustine saw the Canaanite woman as a figure of the Church. Christ is teaching the church the value of humility. While I agree that the Church needs to learn humility, I’m a little skeptical that this is what’s going on in this story.
Anyway, Preston’s post is interesting, and the comments he and others left are even more interesting. I also put in my two cents over there at his blog.
Posted by Brian August 30, 2005
David and I will be in Washington, DC, September 1-6.
We are excited! We want to see everything, though I know we can’t. I keep telling David that he needs to prioritize.
Stuff we want to see (not prioritized):
- National Cathedral
- Capitol
- White House
- Washington Monument
- Lincoln Memorial
- Jefferson Memorial
- Vietnam Veterans Memorial
- WWII memorial
- American History Museum
- Natural History Museum
- Air and Space Museum
And much more.
My friends from high school, Matt and Stephanie Hemm, have invited us to stay with them. They are so great!
Since we won’t need a hotel, and since I used frequent-flyer miles for the plane tickets, it will be a fairly cheap trip, which is good.
Posted by Brian August 25, 2005
May God grant you many years.
Posted by Brian August 18, 2005
Alma’s sermon this Sunday made me nervous. I’ll confess, I was already nervous, because my parents were at church with me. Don’t misunderstand - I’m always glad when they get to worship at church with me. However, ever since I began attending MCC and Episcopal churches, I’ve had a sort of irrational fear that the preacher would choose the Sunday on which Mom and Dad were present to say something crazy.
But I think I would have been nervous (or at least stirred into thought) anyway.
You can read the Scripture portions we read last Sunday (especially the Gospel) by clicking here (scroll down past the initial commentary, if you want).
In her sermon, Alma began by talking about a fairly common human trait: tribal thinking. By tribal thinking, she meant the way in which we divide the world into “us” and “them”. The way we assume that resources are scarce, and so must be kept for our “tribe”, and not shared with outsiders.
Then Alma began talking about how we sometimes forget that Jesus was fully human. And I began to get nervous. Not because I disagree that Jesus was fully human. After all, the two natures of Christ (divine and human) is a fundamental part of Christian belief. As Alma pointed out, we affirm that Christ “became incarnate … and was made man” every Sunday when we recite the Nicene Creed. And she made some other good points (which didn’t make it online) about why it’s important, and a good thing, that we have a fully human Savior.
But the Incarnation is such a mystery. How can one person be both infinite (divine) and finite (human)? It’s beyond me. Anyway, I began to get nervous, because our Gospel reading seems to imply (and Alma flatly stated) that Jesus was also engaging in “tribal thinking.”
In the Gospel reading, a Canaanite woman begs Jesus for help - her daughter needs healing. At first, he just ignores her. When she persists, he says, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel” and “It is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.”
In our culture, we love dogs, and some people even let their dogs sleep with them. But for a Jewish person in Jesus’ day to call someone a dog was a pretty severe insult.
A Canaanite woman would definitely be considered an outsider by a Jewish man. Alma pointed out that when God began a sentence in the Hebrew Scriptures with, “Do not be like…”, he often finished it with “the Canaanites.”
“Yes,” the Canaanite woman responds, “but even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters’ table.” Here is Alma’s take on the scene:
Understand the disparity here: this is not Cindy Sheehan addressing President Bush. It’s more like a young high school drop-out drug addict arguing with the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. Jesus has every reason to dismiss her. And yet something happens deep inside him at her words.
“Even the dogs eat the crumbs…” I wonder if all this talk about bread and crumbs reminds Jesus about the loaves and fishes, about the abundance of “crumbs” that were collected after all had eaten their fill: twelve baskets full.
She kneels at his feet, calling him “Son of David”, her words and her posture naming him as her savior. I wonder if her claim of him doesn’t remind Jesus of scripture passages, passages such as, “I will send you as a light unto the nations, that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth.” To the end of the earth, not just to the tribe of Israel.
Jesus, fully human and fully divine, looks at the Canaanite woman, now through his divine eyes, and sees her as a member of God’s tribe, his tribe. He looks at her with his divine eyes and realizes that he holds in his hands, not a scarce resource that must be saved lest there not be enough to go around, but the limitless healing power of God. And he tells her what she is longing to hear, “Woman, great is your faith! Let it be done for you as you wish.”
Her daughter, we are told, is instantly healed.
OK, so here is why this makes me nervous. When I first began to think about this idea of “tribal thinking”, I assumed it was a sinful attitude. But if it’s sinful, then Jesus can’t be engaging in it, can he? But Matthew sure makes it sound like Jesus is thinking this way.
Maybe this was all an elaborate plan by Jesus, to test the woman’s faith, and to teach his disciples a lesson. Maybe Jesus really intended to help her all along. But that interpretation seems to require reading a lot into the text that isn’t there. The text seems to indicate a real human interaction between this woman and Jesus. Jesus seems to change his mind. There are lots of examples in the OT of people arguing with God until God changes God’s mind…
Maybe this kind of “tribal thinking” is only a temptation. (Jesus was “tempted in every way, just as we are.”) Maybe the sin would have been to not move beyond the temptation to keep thinking this way. To refuse to overcome the human desire to keep the “other” at arm’s length.
Anyway, Alma says that this story is not just Jesus’ story, but also our story: We also need to view people through God’s eyes, and expand our notion of “our tribe” until it includes everyone whom God loves: the whole world.
What do you think? Was the divine Christ just testing the faith of this woman and teaching his disciples? Or did the human Jesus actually learn something from this Canaanite woman?
Posted by Brian August 17, 2005
When my family arrived at my house on Saturday, they were all coughing and sniffing. Evidently, they gave me whatever germs they were carrying, since I cannot breathe, have a headache, and must take Benadryl to avoid constant sneezing. I went home early from work yesterday.
Still, it was good to see them.
Posted by Brian August 11, 2005
I recently got an email from a friend I haven’t been in contact with for 3 years. It was good to hear from her (hi, Amy!). She had this to say about her efforts to reach me by phone:
Did you know that I called the last number that I had for you and asked if Brian was there and he said “This is Brian.” (It was in a very deep voice) and I said “This can’t be Brian. It doesn’t sound like you” Come to find out that person that has your old phone number is named Brian as well. It was funny he said, “I don’t know where he is, but I get phone calls for him all the time!”
I’m sorry this random person named Brian keeps getting phone calls for me. I can relate to his problem. There used to be an employee at my company whose name was “Brian Harman” (with a silly “a” in the last syllable of his name, instead of an “o”, which would be decent and proper). I would get emails intended for this guy all the time - sometimes 3-4 per day! It got tiresome after a while.
Posted by Brian August 08, 2005
If you can, I recommend that you make your own ice cream. I just finished off some homemade vanilla ice cream which may have been the best ice cream I ever ate.
Just don’t eat the whole batch all at once.
Posted by Brian August 08, 2005
I don’t think I’ll ever finish the post I mentioned before about where I went to church the Sunday before last.
Instead, I think I’ll just say that I sometimes wish I could join an Orthodox Church (I can’t, because I’m not really welcome) for at least two reasons:
- I love their liturgy - the way they worship.
- I suspect that I would feel more comfortable with their atonement theology than I do with most Western atonement theories. Maybe I’ll write more about this later, but for now, I’ll just say that the second half of this article has some interesting things to say about that topic.
Posted by Brian August 03, 2005
St. Michael’s has been meeting in our current building for about 10 years now. We’ve been worshipping in a big room which was originally meant to be temporary until the church could build a proper nave, at which time the big room would turn into the fellowship hall, or something like that.
But now, the church has realized that our financial situation and priorities mean that we will probably be worshipping in that room for several more years, at least. So, we’re beginning to think about how the space can be made more permanent, and how to best arrange it for the liturgy.
How a liturgical space is arranged is important, and can say a lot about how the worshipping community sees itself and the community’s relationship to God. Brent Bates wrote a good essay about this a while ago on his blog. You should read it.
So, for the next few months, St. Michael’s is going to be experimenting with various arrangements of our main space. To begin the process, there was a program last night in which we discussed our past experiences of worship within different spaces. The questions/issues we were asked to consider were:
- Describe an experience when you were profoundly/keenly/strongly aware of God’s presence. What, if anything, about the environment may have contributed to your awareness?
- Describe a space that for you has evoked wonder, awe, and/or praise. What were the physical characteristics of that space that evoked your feelings?
- Describe the first time you remember worshipping at St. Michael’s new building on Cantrell Road. What stands out to you about that experience?
- At what point(s) in the Eucharist do you feel that God is present to you, and you to God? If this has changed over the years, what were the other points which have been significant to you?
- Relative to other places you have worshipped, what about our current worship space enhances or distracts from your experience of God?
Any thoughts?
Posted by Brian August 03, 2005
Last night someone at church asked me if I would be willing to be a catechist for the 4th- and 5th-grade boys. I’m not really sure if she really meant to be asking me, or if she thought I was David*, or if she is just desperate and asking every able-bodied male in the church.
My first internal reaction was “no way.” But I told her I’d think about it, so I’m trying to keep an open mind about it for a while…
*People at church love David, partly because he is a therapist who works with children. When people ask me what I do, and I tell them, I usually get a polite, “Oh, that’s nice,” or something like that. But when people ask David, and learn that he is a therapist, and that he does “play therapy”, then they all want to have a 20-minute conversation with him about it. And it still seems that a few people at church can’t remember which of us is which.
