"...he became incarnate from the Virgin Mary, and was made man..."

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?