Where to Locate Hope

Today’s readings have a common theme: the rich and the poor, the powerful and the marginalized. This is often true in the Bible. In the Bible, ethical questions about poverty and power are far more central than many of the so-called “Biblical morals” we hear about today. How we handle wealth and power, how we treat the poor, is a far more central theme. I’ve heard it said that “Biblical Literalist” is a misnomer for many of the Christians alive today. Across the history of Christianity, probably only Francis of Assisi took the Bible literally. His choice to become poor, to care for the hungry, the lepers, those on the margins, that is what true Biblical literalism looks like, if you look at the whole Bible.

Among our readings today we have perhaps the messiest of all the Gospel stories. Jesus has escaped to Tyre. He’s hiding out, on the margins of society, out among the Gentiles, and yet even here someone seeks him out for healing. This encounter is tough, and it centers on a deeply uncomfortable question: “Did Jesus call that woman a dog?”

Biblical commentators in the late 19th and into the 20th century often pointed to this story looking to make points about Jesus’ humanity. If Jesus used a racial epithet toward this Syrophoenician woman, if he repeated what he had heard time and again about the uncleanness of the Gentiles, perhaps this incident can serve as a key for deconstructing the mythology around him, the commentators said. Is this the story that proves Jesus was nothing more than a well meaning bf, but flawed, human being, a person of his own time?

I point out the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries because it corresponds to a particular philosophical approach to the Bible, namely Modernism. The modernist approach to much of the church could be simply stated as “tear it down.” Deconstruction. Look for the holes in the argument. Take apart all that can’t be proved empirically. Don’t put stock in any teaching which can’t be verified. Yes, this perspective was born in the early twentieth century, but it is alive today. All over Tik Tok, people are talking about their “deconstruction journey” with Christianity. The stance is one of basic suspicion about all that the institution of the church has taught. And If you’re looking for a text that raises questions about our teachings around Jesus, this is a pretty key story.

I’ve got to tell you, there is a backlash to Modernist Deconstruction in theological circles today. There is a response to any attempt to cast Jesus as simply human that leans back on 2000 years of tradition. This response is often called Post-Modern Neo-Orthodoxy. Theologians of this ilk would say, “Jesus here is clearly play-acting.” Jesus is testing the woman. “He isn’t calling her a dog, not really, it’s all a rhetorical game,” they’d say. Because to admit otherwise would force questions about whether Jesus could sin, could miss the mark.

Well, you may ask, “where is your rector on these questions?” Honestly, I find neither position compelling. The binary is boring. Neither the modernist approach that seeks to deconstruct everything about the Christian Tradition, nor the Post-Modern Neo-Orthodox theology does much for me.

Yet these two seem to be the only approaches our society knows when it comes to faith. We love a binary. We love a dualism. If you go back through the newspaper articles you’ve read about Christianity in recent years, think how many times you read about some new discovery that undoes all the church’s teaching about Jesus. Think about how many profiles of political candidates you’ve read that laud their traditionalist approaches to faith in a world that opposes those traditions. One prominent candidate today apparently even prefers Catholic churches where women are required to cover their heads. I find both of these positions played out. I’m bored with stories of deconstruction, and I’m bored with stories filled with Christians waxing nostalgic about “simpler times.”

Also I don’t want to fully disímiles either of these two positions entirely. God knows, the Church still needs to continue to go through some deconstruction. We always need to tear down our unjust relationships to power. But if your only tool is deconstruction, I don’t know that you’ll arrive at the hope of Jesus. Likewise, I love all the history and tradition that comes with the Episcopal way of doing church. But I believe all the incense and lace in the world won’t add up to the Kingdom of God. Deconstruction and tradition can both be helpful tools, but if they are your only tool, or the center of your position, I think you risk missing the point.

Which is why I think both approaches common in our world today offer a significant misreading of this particular Gospel. Both miss the point of the story. Frankly both positions often miss the whole point of Christianity. Christianity has so much more to offer than the cultural depictions of Christianity readily available.

You will miss the point of this story if you make it about Jesus. The focus of this story isn’t really Jesus. I’ve said to you before, Jon Sobrino, the Salvadoran libration theologian, has said that we often misunderstand Jesus because the church is so busy preaching about Jesus. Jesus didn’t preach about Jesus, Jesus taught about the Kingdom of God. Jesus used story after story to describe a subversive reign, a reign of justice, of love, of fairness and equity. The point of the faith wasn’t Jesus, for Jesus. Jesus was planting an alternative set of values in his new movement.

If we let go of the debate about Jesus’ humanity, we can see this story has a hero. And we don’t even learn her name. The main actor in this story is the Syrophoenician woman, crying out for the life of her daughter. This is the story of a woman who does not back down. This is the story of a woman who stands up for herself and her kids. This is a story of a woman with deep, meaningful, world-changing faith, cosmos-changing faith.

There’s a scene in the new Star Wars trilogy that always gives me goosebumps. It comes at the very end of Episode VIII, the Last Jedi. The scene focuses on a little boy, who earlier in the movie has been shown suffering under the abuse of his employer. Yes, this is a part of the fictional galaxy where child labor is allowed, perhaps even enslavement. The little boy has heard the stories of the Jedi. He plays pretend Jedi games with his friends, and in the heart of the movie he even gets to help some of the rebels escape his planet with a new ally.

By the end of the film it appears the Resistance has been defeated. The evil First Order is all but triumphant. Just a few stragglers escape with Princess Leia in the Millennium Falcon. But the surprise ending comes because the last scene of The Last Jedi doesn’t focus on anyone with the last name Skywalker. Instead the camera pans out to the little boy, who is looking up toward the stars. Suddenly, he lifts up his hand, and a broom flies to him. The little boy on the edge of the empire has the power of the force. Hope is alive. I get goosebumps every time.

I think today’s Gospel is a bit like that scene in the Last Jedi. Jesus is out on the margins. He’s beyond the outer rim. The miracle in this story isn’t really the healing. The miracle is hope itself. This woman’s persistent hope is the point, not some question about what Jesus’ divinity. It’s her sense that healing is coming, justice is due. The miracle of the story is that the news of the rule-breaking Reign of God has spread even out to Tyre of Sidon. The hope of God’s Kingdom has made it even to the borderlands, even to the marginalized. In truth, that is where the hope of Jesus can always be found, with those who are left out, with those who the world has called dogs. It is to those on the edges that Christ’s hope truly belongs.

That’s why I’m not really interested in the so-called central debate our society presents about Christianity. I am tired of hearing about Traditionalism vs. Deconstruction. It all strikes me as over-academic and disconnected from the people for whom Jesus was most concerned.

If our faith isn’t about bringing hope to those who have been left out, what good is it? If our religion doesn’t teach us to listen to, and stand with, the women who persistently cry for justice, how can we call it Christian? If our faith isn’t about bringing liberation, for all God’s people, what are we even doing?

I think Francis of Assisi, like Jesus before him, would tell us to be a little more literalist when it comes to the Bible’s invitation to care for the lost, the least, and the left out. If you want an answer to the big questions of Christianity, befriend the people who are poor. If you’re looking for Jesus, go be a neighbor to someone who is suffering. If you want to understand the Gospel, go stand alongside someone fighting to have their rights recognized. Because that is the point. Out on the margins, that is where the hope of Jesus is always, always, found.