The Canaanite Woman and Sojourner Truth

A Sermon preached at Faith Episcopal on August 14, 2005.

When I first read the readings selected for a Sunday, I like to start with the questions that come to mind when I hear them. Questions help me find the way into a text. This morning there is a question that I have to blurt right out before I can even get started. “What was going on with Jesus?” Do I believe that he would say something like that - calling that woman a dog? No, I don’t. This is not the Jesus who four chapters earlier in the Gospel of Matthew said “Come to me, all you that are weary and carry heavy burdens and I will give you rest.” Or who answers “Who is my neighbor?” with the parable of the Good Samaritan. This is not the same Jesus who challenged the scribes and Pharisees and charged them with locking people out of the kingdom of heaven.

This is the kind of story that biblical scholars interpret in many ways, they come with all kinds of justification for the exclusivity of the attitude and why Jesus would have called this woman a dog. While I don’t believe that Jesus needs me to make excuses or defend him we have to find a way to be with these words. I think we have a few choices, we can either decide that Jesus did say it and that we just don’t understand it; we can dismiss it or we can engage the text for what it will teach us knowing that the author of the Gospel may have had a particular point to make.

I am prepared to think that Jesus may have been having a bad day, but the Canaanite woman was at the top of her game. She provides a model for all people who are excluded and dismissed. It is her willingness to take a risk and challenge Jesus, one whom she has already acknowledged in fairly exalted terms. She did not allow Jesus to deny her worth as someone created in the image of God and therefore deserving of God’s attention and blessing.

The witness of the Canaanite woman mirrors the words to the eunuch in Isaiah. It is clear that even those who are culturally unwelcome and ritually impure find welcome in God’s embrace if they seek it. This radical hospitality of God is often a challenge for us. It helps me a bit that even Jesus stumbled over it. This gutsy woman refused to accept that she and her daughter were not worthy. She refused to fall into the sin of sloth – one of the seven deadlies.

Sloth is a misunderstood sin. We tend to associate it with laziness, inactivity, like the animal that bears its name. This definition is only part of the understanding of why sloth is a sin. It is spiritual laziness, not being responsible for the image of God we hold within us. It can be a rejection of that gift. I often quote Clark Williamson, my theology professor and today he comes to my rescue once again because he has a broader definition of sloth that is pertinent today. He claims that sloth is accepting your own oppression or being complicit in your own marginalization. I love the Canaanite woman because she would not be slothful.

Over the centuries between Jesus’ time and modern times, plenty of people have meekly accepted being labeled and dehumanized. There are also extraordinary examples of those who have raised their voices in objection to having their inherent worth ignored. It the true spirit of the Canaanite woman, Sojourner Truth’s voice rings proudly more than 150 years after her speech to a women’s rights convention in 1851. Marcia Riggs has edited a volume called Can I get a witness; Prophetic Religious Voices of African American Women and she says this about Sojourner Truth. “The passage of time has not eroded the relevance of her speech because her words emanated from the heart of an oppressed people. She challenged the definition of womanhood that excluded black women as she modeled the strength and resilience of black femininity.” This is a small bit from her famous speech, “Ain’t I a woman?”

“That man over there says women need to be helped into carriages and lifted over ditches, and to have the best place everywhere. Nobody ever helps me into carriages, or over mud-puddles, or gives me any best place! And ain’t I a woman? Look at me! Look at my arm! I have ploughed and planted, and gathered into barns, and no could head me! And ain’t I a woman? I could work as much and eat as much as a man – when I could get it – and bear the lash as well! And ain’t I a woman? I have borne thirteen children, and seen the most all sold off to slavery, and when I cried out with my mother’s grief, none but Jesus heard me! And ain’t I a woman?”

What a woman! I would like to have been able to meet her. Actually, I think she’s alive and well and fighting the good fight in Afghanistan teaching girls who lost years of learning to oppressors who said that they were unworthy of education and unfit to be seen in public. Sojourner Truth’s spirit speaks through women in Iraq who are working hard to keep from being denied their role in society. They are resisting being hidden behind the burkahs and walls of Islamic sharia law.

Religion, race and gender have usually been the reasons for marginalization. The Canaanite woman was considered outside of God’s grace because she was a part of a pagan culture. She was labeled and was not an individual. That is how stereotyping and prejudice works. It is uncommonly easy to accept the things that are said about us. How many children accept that they are incapable or unintelligent because they believed someone who dismissed them or told them they were stupid. How often has our youth obsessed culture claimed that human usefulness diminishes with age. Vibrant communities like the Covington are witness to the treasure trove of wisdom and experience that people over the age of 55 represent. The political and economic power of America’s older population rings with Sojourner Truth’s reasoning – “Ain’t I somebody you should listen to?”

It took people a long time to listen to Sojourner Truth. Black women were told to wait during the Civil Rights movement. The men in charge were afraid that the “women’s issue” would interfere with the greater work at hand. Somehow in the midst of great social change – the same old patterns cropped up. Women were told that it just wasn’t their time yet. Someone decided that they weren’t as important. Another group was in greater need of freedom and that was a statement of comparative worth. To determine that one group is worth more than another is to engage in the sin of arrogance or pride – to accept such judgment is sloth. The Canaanite woman and Sojourner Truth both said, “Don’t say I’m not important!”

Who’s important today? What decides importance? Is it what you do or the powerful friends you have? Is it that you are a fellow human on this mortal journey or the quantity of natural resources within your nation’s borders? Is it the color of your skin or your age or your level of education? The message of Jesus is that none of that matters. His encounter with the Canaanite woman proclaims the importance of the image of God within. He saw it when she stood in front of him with her hands on her hips proclaiming. “Ain’t I a woman-child of God?”