Emmanuel Episcopal Church
September 5, 2021
Proper 18, B
Mark 7:24-37
Casting Down Our sIeDlOvLeSs
There have often been times when I’ve been in a large group of people and found that I had a great fondness for a good many of the people there, and at the same time, I’ve found a great antipathy for another large part of the group. I’m referring to times when I’ve been to a sporting event like an Astros game. Folks wearing the Astros shirts and hats, well they’re my people. There is this connection, this bond, this belonging we feel for each other. We don’t know anything at all about each other, but we’re wearing the same color t-shirt. We belong together for that night in the tribe of the Astros.
Now the fans in the Yankees shirts, for example, well we just don’t belong together. I may have much more in common with them, may like them immensely more outside of that stadium and in different t-shirts, but for that night, at the game, we are two different groups who do not belong together. I’m overstating things a bit of course, but forming exclusive groups is something we humans tend to be pretty good at doing.
“No girls allowed.” “No boys allowed.” Little kids making their own often temporary exclusive groups. It seems innocent enough; it usually is, and children’s “No Boys Allowed” and “No Girls Allowed” clubs also show us how, even early in our lives, we tend toward forming like groups that exclude those who are not alike.
This forming of like groups makes some sense. Sometimes people want to be with folks who are most obviously like them. Sadly, these like groups or exclusive groups can end up hurting those who are excluded. Even kids’ “boys only” or “girls only” clubs can unintentionally hurt those who are excluded. Some kids grow up not quite sure where they fit, not sure where they belong: with the girls or with the boys. I think of Steve, as I knew her years ago, now Beth, who had this experience growing up. There was no intention of excluding her, and yet there wasn’t really a place for her on the playground when the gym teacher said, “Boys over here, girls over there.”
Oftentimes we don’t mean to exclude, we’re just trying to have a group gathered around a particular similarity. Other times, we very much mean to exclude, to exclude those who are deemed as unworthy, undesirable, or not belonging.
“Whites only.” “No Jews.” “No Irish.” “Women need not apply.” There are countless ways our society and all societies have excluded others, and the Church, much as it tries to love, has often been a willing part of such exclusion.
In the past, our churches have been intentionally racially segregated. We have kept women out of ministry even though Jesus and the early Church did not. We’ve allowed members of the LGBTQ+ community to be a part of the church, so long as they were quiet about and hid who they were. That’s just a partial list of how the institution itself has excluded groups from the church. Even more are the ways individuals have removed people they felt were undesirable. They disapproving look given, the audible whispers of disdain, the snubbing of some, and the outright statement that “you would be happier somewhere else” to others.
Excluding others in the church has a long history, probably as long as the church has been around. Even the earliest members of the church were human and full of the same challenges that we all have, wanting to feel comfortable, wanting to belong, and sometimes excluding others to make sure we felt comfortable in our own belonging.
Even in Jesus’ day, before he had established his church, Jesus was a part of this human tendency toward exclusion. When a woman who was a Gentile begged Jesus to cast a demon out of her daughter, he initially refused. He called her a dog. He saw her as unworthy, as undesirable, as not belonging. Jesus was acting as he had been taught. We don’t associate with those Gentile dogs.
Then, the woman didn’t fight Jesus or refute his claim of her beastliness. “Sir, even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs,” she said. Supporting Jesus’ claim, she revealed it for what it was: cruelty and exclusion. It seems that she brought Jesus up short. It seems that his eyes were opened in that moment, that what he had been taught about Gentiles as less than human dogs wasn’t really the case. Here was not an unworthy dog, but a woman and a child. These also were beloved children of God, and Jesus healed the daughter immediately.
Jesus, who was God, yes, but also fully human with human limitations and frailties had been taught one thing about humanity, that there were undesirable less than humans, and then when he saw one of these undesirable less thans up close, he realized that he had been given a false teaching. This woman, and by extension these Gentiles, were not less than humans, but full humans, beloved of God, who were deserving of love and belonging.
Now, you could say when we exclude others that we’re only human, also following what we’ve been taught. That’s true enough. Even so, when we exclude others from the church, we don’t do so by acting as humans. When we exclude others from the church, we become idolaters, acting as though we were God. It’s God’s church, not ours, so when we start to proclaim who can be a part of God’s church and who cannot, we are moving God out of our way so that we can make God’s church what we want it to be. Putting ourself in God’s place, we end up becoming our own idols, ultimately worshipping ourselves, rather than God.
Who is in, and who is out? Who is worthy, and who is unworthy? By the teaching of various days, the out and unworthy were black people, women, homosexual people, children who made noise or moved, folks without enough money, or folks with the wrong clothes. All of these people have been excluded from the church at various times and places, following accepted norms of the majority at the time, only to have those norms cast out, those idols thrown down, and the people seen no longer as dogs, but as beloved children of God.
What norms, against what people, do we still hold, putting them down as dogs and raising ourselves as idols in God’s place? Who would make any of us personally uncomfortable sitting next to us, or preaching to us, or celebrating at this table? Realizing who those people are, remember that they are not dogs, but God’s beloved children, and we are not God to exclude them or anyone from God’s church.
No longer in charge as gatekeeper, we simply get to enjoy the rich diversity of who God’s children are. Astros and Yankees fans. Rich and poor. LGBTQ+. Cis-gender. Heterosexual. Any and all races and skin colors. American. Immigrant. Children. Adults. Felons. Men and women and all those in between. There is such a rich and beautiful diversity of God’s children, and God’s intention for God’s church and God’s kingdom is for us to enjoy all of each other. We are each others’ family, God’s family. No one of us welcomes another, but we meet each other together, for we all belong here, in God’s church as God’s family.
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