But with an outdoor worship in mind I planned a few things differently than normal and decided not to switch them just because of the weather. The biggest change was that I decided to base the confession on the sermon. The sermon, which is below, talks about how we often feel unworthy to Jesus, and we,as Christians, often make others feel unwelcomed and unworthy. Therefore after the hymn of the day I had people write on two different color slips of paper ways they have felt unworthy and unwelcomed and ways they have made others feel unworthy of God's grace and unwelcomed. We then used what people wrote as a prayer of confession and asked for forgiveness and guidance as we struggle to change.
The second thing that I planned differently because it was suppose to be an outdoor worship was I was a little more brash in my sermon than normal. Now most people who know me, know that I don't have the cleanest language and I'm not afraid to make an off-colored joke or talk about a topic that some people find impolite to talk about in public. And it is hard to just ignore that fact that Jesus refers to poop in the gospel text (Matthew 15:1-28 BTW I used the Message translation and a longer text than the assigned text for the day which was just verses 10-28). However most people find hearing such things from a pastor while in the sanctuary a little off putting, but being outside and not in the traditional worship space can open people to hearing things that might seem a little impolite otherwise. But I liked how my sermon turned out and based on what the message is I wasn't going to not refer to poop or ignore such topics as rape, sex, divorce, homosexuality and murder just because we ended up in the sanctuary due to weather. So be forewarned - the word poop and vomit is coming. Multiple times in fact. And so is words like rape and incest. But if you can get past that, which I hope you aren't that easily offended, I think you will enjoy the sermon and get a bit out of the message.
Excuse me but was Jesus talking about poop and vomit?!
This isn’t a text that we like to hear. In fact it is one that we often want to ignore. First we get this fairly graphic, at least by biblical standards, depiction about the digestion process, but also because we then hear about Jesus being out-right rude to this poor Canaanite woman.
This doesn't mesh with our picture perfect Jesus. The Jesus who welcomed the little children and carried cute little cotton ball sheep. The Jesus who’s picture hung in our Sunday School classroom, with a well groomed beard and mustache who looks freshly bathed. The Jesus who we worship, the Jesus who we learned about as children didn’t talk about poop and was intentionally rude to someone.
I hate to break it to you but this is the same Jesus. Jesus who healed the sick and multiplied loaves and fishes and walked on water is also the same Jesus who talked about poop. Jesus of Nazareth, who died on a cross to save us from our sins is also the same Jesus who was intentionally rude to a woman who came to him begging for mercy.
We often want to sugar coat the Bible. Many pastors today will be ignoring the first part of this text today when Jesus talked about what defiles a person and focusing on only Jesus’ interaction with the Canaanite woman, and then they will say things like Jesus was just testing the woman or explain that he really wasn’t being rude. Others will ignore this text completely and instead focus on a more Sunday School appropriate text. But I think that is a shame.
It is a shame to ignore the parts of the bible that we find to uncouth, too crude, or brash or vulgar for our taste. It is a shame to do this because when we do we are subtlety and not so subtlety making a statement about who we want to be part of our worshipping community. If you really dig into certain parts of the bible there is a lot that would not be accepted actions in our modern society, incest, rape, genocide, adultery, pre-meditated murder, stealing and the list goes on. Joseph's brothers sold him into slavery and then told their father that he was mauled by a wild animal and died. Abraham passed his wife Sarah off as his sister not once but twice in order to save his own sink, but as a result she was probably raped, not that it is ever referred to as rape in the Bible. The people in the Bible are not always upstanding moral, role-models.
And yet when we try to make them to be perfect people, or when we ignore those parts of the bible things that we find too vulgar, we are telling people that they are not allowed to be people in this community, this congregation, this church. Instead in church, in worship, you need to be part of some 1950’s idealized perfect nuclear family, where the husband is the head of the household, the wife balances housework, child rearing and even a job and the children always obey their parents and never say an unkind word other than gee will-i-cers and golly gee. But that is not who we are and that is not who we should pretend to be. We become no worse than those people Isaiah prophesied about "They worship me with their lips but their heart is not it in, they act like they are worshiping me, but they don't really mean it." When we put on a facade to worship God, we are not truly worshiping God.
We should not feel the need to put on a false façade in order to come to church, in order to worship God. God knows who we are, and what is in our hearts when we are worshipping, working, driving a car, or drinking a beer at the bar. But we as Christians as a whole do this, and make a statement, often unspoken, but occasionally spoken, that if you are divorced, gay, sexually active before you are married or outside of your marriage, drink, smoke, a drug user, have tattoos, swear or any other modern taboo that you are not welcomed here and Jesus did not come to save you. And not only do others feel unwelcomed, they also feel unworthy of God’s grace.
And yet that is exactly the opposite of what our gospel message says today. First Jesus gets questioned about why his disciples eat with unclean hands, a taboo in first century Palestine
And then Jesus goes and obeys the laws of the land and as a results treats a Canaanite woman, an outsider, one of those people who would be unwelcomed throughout Israel, as if she is the scum of the earth even though she is begging for mercy. Jesus calls her a dog and says that he came only for Israel; that their sins are keeping him busy enough as it is. Now I don’t know if Jesus was intentionally treating her badly in order to make a point or if Jesus was having just a very human moment, but either way the woman, in her great come back “even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters’ table” remind Jesus that there is always plenty and that she too is worthy of God’s mercy. And in doing do Jesus gives her more than she asked and heals her daughter.
See all are welcomed to partake in the Kingdom of God. All are invited to worship Jesus. And all should be welcomed here, in this place, in our worshipping space, both out here and inside. And we are invited to come as we are, to come as who we are, whether we fit in better as an extra in a 1950’s sitcom, at a Harley rally clad in leather, or waving rainbow flags in Greenwich Village. We are invited to be who God created us to be, and we are all worthy of God’s grace, God’s amazing mercy that is pour out upon all of us, even if we feel unworthy, even if we feel at times like poop or vomit or a dog. Because we are worthy of God's grace and we are welcomed by God and hopefully we are also able to welcome all of God's children as well.
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