20th Sunday in Ordinary Time
August 16-17, 2008   "Moving Forward"

Most of our kids started back to school this week. It had me reminiscing all week long about when I was a kid and would get to go back to school. The start of school when I was young was always a time of excitement. A new start. New clothes, new teachers, new shoes, new pencils, a new locker, new books, and, of course, new crayons. Of course, we had it rough when I was a kid. I got the 16 box. I always envied those kids who got the 64 with the sharpener. They got gold and silver colors.

The start of school was great, because there was a kind of idealism, a kind of purity, at the beginning of a new school year. It sort of made the end of the summer vacation tolerable. The start of school was great...for a couple of weeks. Then it would start to lose its shine. Disillusionment would settle in. My new tennis shoes got scuffed. The pencils got short. The crayons broke. After awhile I would find myself wondering, while I was listening to the teacher go on and on and on why was I so excited to get back to school? How many more days to summer vacation?

I've come to see this pattern a lot in my life. Couples get married, and everything is white dresses and dancing. Then comes the bills; dirty laundry left on the floor; and fights over whose turn it is to take out the trash. Parents have babies and everything is "gaga googoo." Then comes rebellion, loud music you don't understand and nose rings. It even happens to priests. Seminarians get ordained and everything is just glorious in the beginning. Nice dinners in people's homes. First masses. Then comes your first letter. I remember mine. I was at St. Barnabas and had just celebrated baptism at a mass for the first time for me in the Sunday mass. I was great! I poured water everywhere! People were smiling and laughing. Monday morning on my desk was a single-spaced, typed letter, 10 font, basically one long complaint about how "joyfully" I celebrated that baptism. Idealism and the purity of new starts always give way to disillusionment.

My friends, this is not necessarily a bad thing. The inevitable disillusionments of life are not a failure. It's not like something is broken. Rather it's a natural crossroads. On the one side is the path of despair, which leads to the dead end of resentment and bitterness. On the other side is the path of hope, which if taken leads to deep soul shaping, intimacy and new horizons. The thing that makes all the difference of the choice of the path - faith. Faith makes all the difference in the world.

Today the apostle Matthew is trying to inspire us to take the path of faith by putting before us a stellar example in the person of the Canaanite woman. Now most of the time we expect Jesus to be the one that we're supposed to keep our eyes on. But today's gospel is different. Today our eyes are supposed to be set on the "Mom." You see, Matthew is doing more than just relating another interesting story from the journeys of Jesus. Matthew is painting a picture of faith. He is creating a mirror into which he wants us to see our best selves. Matthew wants us to see that this encounter between Jesus and the Canaanite woman is alive enfleshment of a lament psalm, one of the most popular forms of psalms in the scripture. A psalm of lament is a prayer to God, as are all psalms, but a lament psalm is a prayer to God that starts with an appeal to God in time of trial. Then moves to a demand that God be God and remain true to God's self. And then ends with some affirmation of trust or celebration of faithfulness.

The gospel of Mark puts on Jesus' lips during the crucifixion the words "Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani." My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Far from being a moment of despair on Jesus' part, Jesus is reciting the beginning of a lament psalm from memory. Through the lament psalm, Jesus is expressing his ultimate trust in his heavenly Father in the midst of this, his greatest trial. That's the power of lament psalm.

Our Canaanite woman enfleshes the lament psalm pattern in her actions today. First, she appeals to Jesus to heal her daughter. "Have pity on me Lord, son of David." Secondly, she demands that Jesus be Jesus and remain true to himself. "Please Lord, even the dogs eat the scraps that fall from their master's table." And then thirdly, Jesus affirms her faithfulness. "Oh woman, great is your faith. Let it be done for you as you say."

Lament psalms express a robust faith that will not die despite all odds against it. Our Canaanite woman, the hero of our story today, is infused with this same spirit of defiant resistance to despair and a bold faith in God's promises. The odds are against her. She's an outsider. Her daughter is possessed by a demon. And no one will listen to her. She could choose the path of despair that leads to the dead end of bitterness and resentment, resigning herself to the status of a victim. But she rather chooses the path of hope, holding Jesus to who he is and to what he has promised - God's saving presence.

This puts her in faith shoulder to shoulder with all the great leaders of our salvation history, such as Abraham and Moses, who likewise were unafraid to challenge God and bargain with God. If this were all there was to this story, it would be a great lesson to us to follow in the footsteps of this Canaanite Mom in our choosing hope over despair when the disillusionment of life's trials come our way. But as Gail O'Day points out in her article, "Surprised By Faith: Jesus and the Canaanite Woman," the source of my speculations today, there is an even greater lesson for us as we look to the rest of the story - the big picture. You see, in insisting that Jesus be Jesus, the Canaanite woman not only gets what she wants for her daughter, she also frees Jesus to be fully who he is. Immediately after this encounter with the Canaanite woman, Jesus moves back out of seclusion to the mountaintop to heal the sick that have gathered and to multiply the loaves to feed the thousands. The Canaanite woman's faith reminds Jesus of the fullness and vitality of God's promise that he incarnates, and he moves then forward to fulfill that promise - to the mountaintop where he multiplied the loaves, to the mountaintop on which he offered his life. This unclean person pushes Jesus to new possibilities. Whereas the disciples, who wanted Jesus to just dismiss her, did not want to open up themselves to new possibilities. The dismissal of the Canaanite woman would have kept things just the way they had always been - often a very comfortable place to be in.

She, however, will not settle for this. She lives a faith filled with new hope and possibilities for a vibrant future. And in a most amazing way, her refusal to give up on God's promise in Jesus enables her to partner with God in moving forward the mission of realizing God's kingdom on earth. In her clinging to God's promise, indeed, her holding God to God's promise, she partners with God. So it was with her back thousands of years ago, so it can be with us today. We face disillusionment as have ALL people who have come before us.

But how are we going to handle this? Which path will we choose at the crossroads? I know, for instance, that as we now begin implementing our liturgical changes, after a summer of behind the scene work with multiple parishioners, many will feel anew the sting of disillusionment with the realization that the mass is not solely ours to shape as we would have it. Will we choose to take the path of despair, giving up on our faith community? Settling into resentments and bitterness? Or will we choose to take the path of hope, holding God to the promise that in any trial God can partner with us to birth forth the kingdom in new and unexpected ways. Will we choose to be like the Canaanite hero? Only our faith and time will tell.

But let me tell you, I see great faith in this community. Just this week I met with Greg Tichenor, the head of our Undoing Racism Committee. Greg shared with me the great work his committee has accomplished over the last several months in preparing to lead our parish to an exploration of racism in our midst. Greg's team has planned two potato supper round table discussions and a half-day seminar on the issues of modern day racism - right here in our own city, right here in our own neighborhood. I must admit, as Greg informed me of the reality and the repercussions of racism, right here, right now, on our street, it sort of wanted to leave me tossing my hands up and saying, "Well, what can I do with that? What can I do with something whose roots are so deep and stretch back so far?" It made me want to just throw up my hands. But this team of our fellow parishioners choose instead, like the Canaanite woman, to hold God to God's promises and trust that their acts of informing and empowering our faith community will bring about change - first in our hearts, and then in our streets. Their faith and faithfulness energize me.

I pray our parish community will reward their trust in God's promise with the gift of our attentive support, for after all, isn't this not what Jesus did for the Canaanite woman? And are we not called to be Christ now to one another?