All Things Held Together: A Sermon for August 20

All Things Held Together

Stuart Higginbotham

August 20, 2023

Lately I have been reading a good bit about the Oracle at Delphi, the seer at the Temple of Apollo in ancient Greece. For 1,800 years, a continuous stream of people came from around the ancient world to ask questions of the oracle and seek advice. Plutarch, who served at the temple in the first century CE, described how the priestess would sit on a metal tripod over a crack in the stone floor through which vapors rose. She would go into a trance and would respond to the questions–most often in what seemed like riddles and images. It was parabolic in its own way. The people themselves would need to reflect and discern on the meaning of what she said, and that was not an easy task because people are often blind to their own motivations and prejudices. Hence the words “Know Thyself” were carved in the stone above the entrance to the temple.  

On one occasion, a man came to visit. I don’t know what prompted the question, but he ended up asking the oracle if a boat is the same boat after most of the original wooden planks and fittings have been replaced. Is it a different boat if most or all of the parts that make up the boat are different?

A reductionist view might argue that the constituent parts are what make up a thing, so, if those parts are all different, the thing itself must be different. But the oracle said otherwise. The image the oracle offered to the man was that what makes a boat is not only the parts and materials; rather, what makes a boat is the combination those pieces along with the spirit of the boat, the intention of the sailors, the skill of the craftspeople, the history and story that make up the boat, and even the hopes that go into what the boat can accomplish. I think we know this is true, because why else would we name boats if there weren’t something deeper at work? We speak about boats as if they are beings–because they are in their own way.

It is a powerful thing that someone traveled to see the oracle and ended up talking about what makes a boat. You may wonder what this has to do with anything, but I think it points to a key, if not the key, question that we are facing now as a people: how do we understand our deeper identity and what makes up the whole? Do we see ourselves as persons making up a whole community, sharing an interconnected life, or do we see ourselves as strict individuals pitted against one another in a zero-sum game where the focus is only on how one can win against another? Can we become more aware of the spirit of the whole and live into that awareness, or will we allow ourselves to be ripped apart by forces driven only by narcissism and fear? Do we understand ourselves in terms of the union of our true nature, or will we give in to self-obsession?

This is the question we face today, and it is a question that has challenged society for all time. The prophets themselves faced this question head-on, as we see in this morning’s challenging reading from Isaiah:

Thus says the Lord:
Maintain justice, and do what is right,

for soon my salvation will come,
and my deliverance be revealed.

And the foreigners who join themselves to the Lord,
to minister to him, to love the name of the Lord,
and to be his servants,

all who keep the sabbath, and do not profane it,
and hold fast my covenant–

these I will bring to my holy mountain,
and make them joyful in my house of prayer;

their burnt offerings and their sacrifices
will be accepted on my altar;

for my house shall be called a house of prayer
for all peoples.

Thus says the Lord God,
who gathers the outcasts of Israel,

I will gather others to them
besides those already gathered. (Isaiah 56: 1, 6-8)

We see here that God’s vision of an interconnected reality challenges any xenophobic, racist, or prejudiced notion of “who gets the blessing.” Yes, there are the children of Israel whom God has chosen, and Isaiah names here that the “foreigners” who listen to this call for justice and compassion are embraced as well. For my house shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples, God says. I will gather others…I will bring them to my holy mountain.

What formerly were seen as separate parts are now seen as part of the whole, what they have always been, though unrecognized. Isaiah speaks his prophecy from a place of exile himself, so he feels in his bones what it is like to be seen as being outside the pale of blessing. He yearns for wholeness, and the image he has of God’s movement in the world is one of embrace.

On this note, we come now to Jesus and today’s Gospel reading–a troubling story that should make us uncomfortable if not outright angry.

Jesus meets a Canaanite woman who tells him that her daughter is ill. The disciples urge Jesus to send her away because of who she is–not one of them. Jesus is, at first, silent to her cry. Then Jesus tells her “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” Then she kneels before him and asks for help, and he tells her “It is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.” And we cringe. What is Jesus doing?

The woman apparently doesn’t miss a beat before she responds “Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters’ table.” And Jesus then opens up and recognizes the woman’s faith and her daughter is healed.

This is one of those texts that really makes us squirm, one of those texts that makes us want to somehow rationalize or explain away what we clearly see as Jesus’s own rude and even inexcusable actions. Some scholars have said that it was mistakenly left in the canon, in the collection of stories. I don’t think it was a mistake at all; I think it is emblematic of how we struggle accepting that Jesus was actually human. 

We have a certain image in our mind of how God should work and how Jesus, as God Incarnate, should behave, and we like our images clean and coherent. Maybe we don’t like our image of God or ourselves challenged, but the Spirit has a pesky habit of doing just that. 

Maybe in this particular story, Jesus says what we all would have said, so that we can all hear what we need to hear. Being fully human, Jesus somehow embodies the xenophobic and prejudiced tendencies of humans, laying them bare and we can see ourselves in him–even in this way. It’s painful, and in this moment of Jesus speaking like this to the woman, we are so focused that we can hear what we need to hear–namely that all are welcome.

This brave woman reminds Jesus and the disciples–and us–that there is a reality of interconnection and union beneath the categories we impose on one another. My house shall be a house of prayer for all people. All shall be welcome on my holy mountain, the Lord God says. Somehow, all the planks and fittings come together to make a boat whose spirit somehow embraces and holds the union of all those parts. It is a deep spiritual lesson that echoes through the millennia and convicts us in our day and time.

So, we ask how we understand ourselves today. What are the descriptors, the words, the categories we use? What are the primary markers of our identity? What words or images come to you when you reflect on “who am I?” The other day I heard someone describe themselves with pride as “right wing,” and I have heard others describe themselves as “progressive.” Others as “conservative.” I have told you all about my secret monarchist tendencies. But if political categories and party loyalty are the primary means by which we understand ourselves, how shallow is that! And how does that fail to meet the Gospel’s call that demands that our whole lives are meant to be transformed by the Spirit’s presence. 

Pope Francis, a while back, gave an interview where he reminded those gathered that we don’t love adjectives; we can only love people. But we struggle to have our worthiness recognized sometimes, and for those who have experienced oppression and racism and discrimination, there is rightfully a space where we shine a light on a facet of our identity to say that, yes, I am worthy of blessing as well. I matter in a world that I feel tells me I don’t.

We were talking last week at a clergy meeting about how so many lessons in life really are first learned in kindergarten, in the sandbox. Take turns. Be kind. Don’t throw sand–or eat it. Share. And also remember that there are always bullies who like to feel that they are the most important people around. And sometimes we are caught up in their illusion and think that we have to blindly follow and defer to them so that we feel we have some worth–through their illusion of grandeur. Yet it is an illusion, because what is always underneath the strong language and bravado of bullies is a deep hole that needs to be filled–a hollowness that craves for something that will give a feeling of importance. And this hollowness can feed a narcissism and pride that sets up a scheme where some are “in” and others are “out” of the circle of worthiness, of purity. And then people are pitted against each other and manipulated as a means to a bully’s end. It is a tale as old as time playing out in real time in front of our eyes today.

The part of the story of Jesus and the Canaanite woman that convicts me this time around is the moment between the woman’s response and the change in Jesus’ own awareness and willingness to recognize her faith–her worth. A lot happened there in that space between the words. 

This space is the space of conversion, a space where we all find ourselves today. We are faced with a tense time as a people, as a society. Are we going to ground our lives in an awareness of the union that is the true heart of our identity, or are we going to allow ourselves to be pitted against one another and used? Are we going to be ripped apart by these storms, or can we imagine ourselves as a boat with enough space for all people that can steer more steadily through the rough seas we face? This is the question we bring.