YOUNGER SAINTS
Book You Should, You Should! read here.
It can be hard saying no to friends and family! It was hard for Jesus too. Let’s ask for strength together.
God, when everyone says to do something I know is wrong, help me to resist the pressure. Help me go the other way and do good. Help me love you, love myself, and love others. Amen.
ANNOUNCEMENTS
- Services continue to be physically distant and spiritually connected. The same for next week.
- Please communicate prayer requests, news, and updates to me or to our private Facebook page and the message will be passed along to everyone online and offline.
CENTERING
Blessing for Mixed Feelings, by Molly Baskette, from Emerge.
God, they say feelings are a package deal. The yuck and the yum bundled.
God, they say that all feelings are from you – it’s what we do with them that matters.
But what do we do when our feelings come not tidily trussed but messily tangled, like a fine silver chain that won’t be undone no matter how long we labor over it? It sits in a box waiting for a miracle-worker.
I take them out again, the pile of feelings. And this time, I ask you to bless them before I begin the work:
Bless the anger and the irritation. Bless the gratitude and the joy-sparks. Bless the compassion and the selfishness, the fear and the courage, the gloom and the hope, the listlessness and the purposeful action. Bless the love in my life, and bless the distance – emotional and physical – between those I would reune with. Bless the stress, and bless the serenity.
Bless it all, the whole mess, and remind me that having a rainbow of feelings is your light, prismed into spectrum.
I feel a little more ease now. I can see where to begin, to gently untangle, pull there, push there, rest there… and find how it all fits together in one unbroken, beautiful strand.
Amen.
SCRIPTURE
Isaiah gives encouragement to those who long for good and do good, even when it seems like no good deed goes unpunished.
Our next reading is Matthew 15:10-28.
The religious have come to Jesus and complained that he lets his followers eat without washing their hands – something that was a tradition passed down from elders. Jesus counters with the religious that God says honor your parents, but tradition says a child doesn’t have to care for their elderly parents if they give the money they would have used for their parents to the church instead. Jesus says, “So, for the sake of your tradition, you make void the word of God. You hypocrites! Isaiah prophesied rightly about you when he said:
‘This people honors me with their lips,
but their hearts are far from me;
in vain do they worship me,
teaching human precepts as doctrines.’”
Our reading begins after Jesus has said this to the religious folk.
SERMON: The Peer Pressure of Jesus
Through a lot of school we’re told things from our parents about peer pressure. If all your friends were leaping off a cliff, would you do so too? Are you a lemming? We’re told to “Just say no” to drugs. We’re told to uphold our family names, to not follow the crowd, to do what’s right even when its not popular. We teach this to our kids and we hear it when we’re kids!
But as adults?
As adults… who tells adults to take the route less traveled? Much more often we hear things like… don’t make a scene. Don’t rock the boat. Stop being a special snowflake. Why do you have to be difficult? Here in the Midwest, we REALLY value being uniform. So much so, “interesting…” is an insult.
As adults we get just as much peer pressure as when we were kids… but we call is society’s pressure. That pressure to have THE BEST HOLIDAY EVER! Or else… Christmas is RUINED! That pressure from friends to take just one bite of cake on your diet. What’s a bite going to hurt?
All of us want our family and friends to think well of us. Conforming to a group gives us group protection. Gives us a place to belong. An identity. Sometimes that’s a good thing – I conformed to 4-H’s values and it gives me a place and identity. I conform to Christian values and get a group, a family. … And sometimes, that pressure is a bad thing because something in the group needs to change.
When something in our group needs to change, when something our friends and family are saying or thinking or doing must change… can we resist the pressure?
Jesus was about done in by his peer’s pressure. We hear about the Temptation of Jesus and read how Satan tempted Jesus with wealth and power and so forth. But this reading today is the temptation of Jesus to… conform. It’s peer pressure. And really, he seems to be way, way more tempted by peers than by Satan.
I relate. I have a pretty easy time saying no to outright evil. I have… a much harder time saying no to my friends.
Jesus has just shamed the religious folk – pointing out their own hypocrisy. He’s shown them how they honor tradition over the Word of God. And God will uproot, destroy, our traditions. But God’s word is eternal.
Tradition is washing your hands, says Jesus. But what we put in our bodies doesn’t make us good or bad people. God’s word is about doing good by one another. Dirt, drugs, cat meat, pig meat, alcohol… just consuming these doesn’t make you good or bad, moral or immoral. What comes out of you reflects what is in your heart. Evil intentions, murders, cheating on lovers, abusing sexuality, taking what isn’t ours, lying about others, and ruining other’s names… these sorts of things come out of hearts are what defile, what spread evil. And these evil things come out of people who live lives eating only organic, or only scraps, or full of wine, or never even tasted caffeine. Doing good to one another has nothing to do with what you eat or drink, wash or don’t wash. It has everything to do with how you treat each other.
In the very next scene, Jesus meets a Canaanite woman. Someone from people who Jesus’ own people hate and loathe. Think… Samaritan. Think… United States citizens’ stance on Russians in the Cold War. Germans in WWII. Someone we all love to hate, and fear to a degree. Someone just like us but in a few ways which inspire great dislike.
Our rival in high school. The weirdo in middle school. The coworker who just doesn’t fit in. That liberal neighbor. That conservative cousin. That person not born in the USA… we all have someone who we prefer to be the butt of our jokes.
And they come saying, “Kyrie eleison (KI-ree-ay ay-LAY-ee-zonn)” Lord, have mercy.
Our very best friends stand around us teasing that outsider with a rhyme to her own plea. They tell us, “Apolyson!” (ah-POL-ee-zonn) Dismiss her! Get lost!
Back and forth the two sides call and Jesus is in the middle… what will he do? Traditionally, the Canaanites have been a thorn in the side of Israel. Traditionally, they don’t worship God.
Jesus picks up on his friends words to make her get lost… “I’m here for the LOST sheep of Israel…”
But this doesn’t stop her. She repeats, “Kyrie eleison!” My daughter! Save my daughter! Lord have mercy!
Traditionally, this woman’s people are scavengers, mongrels, curs, dogs from the Israelite perspective. And Jesus calls her “puppy,” or “little dog.” He says, “I won’t starve the little children of Israel for the little dogs of Canaan.” Scat, little doggie. Get a move on. Get lost! Jesus is siding with his friends, and with tradition.
Is all lost? Has our great messiah fallen to tradition over the living Word of God? Has he succumbed to peer pressure?
The mother affirms Jesus’ words, “Yes, but even little doggies eat what falls from their lord’s table.” Yes, Jesus, you’re healing the children of God and call me a dog, but God cares for even dogs. And if I’m a dog, at least I’m a dog in the house of God and so there is still scraps left over for me. God is this generous. God feeds God’s household this well. I’m not asking you to starve anyone, I’m asking for a simple crumb of mercy.
And here… here the story flips. Jesus sees. Jesus hears. Jesus successfully resists the temptations of his friends and peer pressure. He overthrows hundreds of years of tradition and embraces the living, present, word of God. The Word that is ever challenging us to make our “insider” status larger and larger. To make our welcome larger and larger. To realize the table of God is open to all of us, and more than all of us, but all people in all places and all times. So overflowing with love and goodness and inclusion that even those we’d consider dogs and inferior have a place set for them.
The Word of Love triumphs all of our traditions.
It is what comes out of us that defiles — words of pain and hurt. Words of exclusions. Insults like cur and dog and mongrel.
As Isaiah said, maintain justice and do what is right and salvation will come. Happy are those who keep doing good. Don’t fret, foreigners who worship God, you will not be abandoned. Your prayers are heard. You don’t have to be born into the religion. You are the family of God. Don’t fret, those who cannot have heirs and a household, your family with God is larger than you can imagine. My house is a house of prayer for all peoples.
We see with Jesus today these verses lived out. The outcast and the cool kids are brought together. God’s people, God’s family, is larger than one faith or one tradition or one people. God is our creator – our parent- our sustainer – of all of humanity. All of creation.
Just as Jesus told Satan to be gone and triumphed over Satan’s temptations… he triumphs over his best friends’ peer pressure. He goes against his own recent culture and tradition for its more ancient tradition of radical hospitality. He resists hypocrisy and pride. What he preached to the religious leaders he now lives out… Mercy, love, and justice for all. Know a person’s heart. Not their outsides. Not their culture and tradition. Not their food and drink. Know their heart.
This woman today has the heart of a loving mother. A humble heart pleading with the Son of David, the Messiah, the Lord. A heart of deep love and determination.
And seeing her heart, resisting his temptation, Jesus proclaims, “Woman, great is your faith!” And heals her daughter.
What a challenge to us… a challenge to call even our Lord, our superiors, to their better selves. A challenge to resist peer pressure when it wants us to conform to seeing another as a bother or less than a beloved Child of God.
It means we’re to resist digital peer pressure to like and share. Resisting laughing and tolerating racist jokes. To resist sharing the fear-based propaganda. It is our challenge to resist cultural and traditional peer pressure to conform calling others as outsiders, illegals, dangerous, or enemies. It is our challenge to know people’s hearts. To see what comes out of them. To understand their motivations. It is our challenge to tell our friends, even our best friends, no. To tell our family, our own spouses, no.
No more sexist jokes, racist phrases, or bigoted images. No more hate and vile, fear and anger from our mouths or clicks. Now – now we resist peer pressure and we know one another heart to heart.
Heart to heart… most humans all want the same things. We want our children well. We want security. We want a place to belong. We want food and housing. We want friends and family. We want community. Heart to heart, we are made of the same image: the image of God.
On our outsides we look different, speak differently. We have different solutions to problems and we have different ways of being in the world.
But the divine image is stamped on every one of us. And it is blasphemous to do damage to the image of God.
God’s house is a house of prayer for all peoples. God’s table is set for all peoples. And we are called to love all peoples. This we can do for God’s generous love pours over us, overflows out of us, and enables us to love all people.
Will we make mistakes? Oh absolutely! We get tempted and fall short of who God calls us to be. But God doesn’t stop calling. And nor should we stop getting back up and trying again. Love each other. Call out the best in each other. Let the best of your heart be called out of you.
May each be the good kind of pressure on our peers – the kind that says, I believe in you. You can do good. You are the Beloved Child of God. And you are my dearly loved sibling in Christ.
Amen.
Pastor Whitney Bruno Sermons 