Satan

Bloomsbury Central Baptist Church

31^st August 2014, 11.00am

You can listen to this sermon here:

https://soundcloud.com/bloomsbury-1/bloomsbury-morning-service-31-august-2014#t=24:16

Matthew 16.21-28  From that time on, Jesus began to show his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and undergo great suffering at the hands of the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised.  ²² And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him, saying, "God forbid it, Lord! This must never happen to you."  ²³ But he turned and said to Peter, "Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to me; for you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things."  ²⁴ Then Jesus told his disciples, "If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.  ²⁵ For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.  ²⁶ For what will it profit them if they gain the whole world but forfeit their life? Or what will they give in return for their life?  ²⁷ "For the Son of Man is to come with his angels in the glory of his Father, and then he will repay everyone for what has been done.  ²⁸ Truly I tell you, there are some standing here who will not taste death before they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom." 

Romans 12.9-21  Let love be genuine; hate what is evil, hold fast to what is good;  ¹⁰ love one another with mutual affection; outdo one another in showing honor.  ¹¹ Do not lag in zeal, be ardent in spirit, serve the Lord.  ¹² Rejoice in hope, be patient in suffering, persevere in prayer.  ¹³ Contribute to the needs of the saints; extend hospitality to strangers.  ¹⁴ ¶ Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them.  ¹⁵ Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep.  ¹⁶ Live in harmony with one another; do not be haughty, but associate with the lowly; do not claim to be wiser than you are.  ¹⁷ Do not repay anyone evil for evil, but take thought for what is noble in the sight of all.  ¹⁸ If it is possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all.  ¹⁹ Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave room for the wrath of God; for it is written, "Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord."  ²⁰ No, "if your enemies are hungry, feed them; if they are thirsty, give them something to drink; for by doing this you will heap burning coals on their heads."  ²¹ Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.

Have you ever noticed that good people

            can do terrible things with the best of intentions?

Not everybody who does an evil deed is an evil person,

            and sometimes the worst of deeds

            emerge from a heart heavy with good intentions.

We have a proverb to this effect, don’t we?

            ‘The road to hell is paved with good intentions’, we sometimes say,

                        unconsciously quoting the twelfth century Cistercian monk

                        Bernard of Clairvaux (1090-1153), who said it first.

I can honestly say that most of the people I’ve ever met

            have seemed to me to be good people.

Sometimes they might have been very damaged due to past trauma, yes;

            and sometimes they might struggle with mental illnesses

                        that impair their judgment;

but on the whole, I think it is true

            that most of the people we encounter in this world

                        are normal, everyday people,

            trying to live relatively good and moral lives,

                        not seeking to cause harm or hurt to others.

And yet, there is so much evil in the world,

            as twenty minutes in front of the evening news will easily demonstrate.

It seems that the capacity for human beings

            to harm and hurt others is almost without end.

The abuse of power,

            the recourse to violence,

                        and the dehumanising of the other,

dominate the interactions between individuals

            in ways that shock and dismay us.

So where does this evil come from?

There is a strong tradition within Christianity

            to assign the existence of such evil to an external agency,

                        to some kind of supernatural entity that acts upon humans

                        and causes them to behave in ways that are contrary to their true nature.

Sometimes this entity is given a name,

            such as the Hebrew word satan which means ‘adversary’,

            or the Greek word daibolos which we usually translate as ‘devil’.

Perhaps it is the case, we tell ourselves,

            that the origin of evil lies beyond the human heart,

                        coming to us from somewhere else, from someone or something else.

Maybe this is why good people can do such terrible things,

            even with the best of intentions?

Maybe this is why some people seem to end up

            so consumed by the darkness of dark deeds

                        that it can be hard to discern the flickering embers

                        of the humanity they share with the rest of us.

Maybe it’s all Satan’s fault,

            maybe the devil made them do it?

In some ways this can be a comforting theology,

            as it removes the ultimate responsibility for evil from humanity.

Evil is just out there, seeking its moment to strike.

            All we need to do to avoid it is to be vigilant, to resist temptation,

            to observe whatever practices we have come to believe will ward off the evil one.

So from prayer and holiness, to superstition and sorcery,

            many people, both within and beyond the Christian faith,

            take such daily actions to keep Satan at bay from their lives.

But of course this can also be a terrifying place to live.

            Because what if we get it wrong? What if we let our guard down?

            What if Satan gets in? Would we even know?

I have met people who have spent many years

            petrified that they have let the Devil into their lives;

whether through some misguided action,

            or simply through a profound lack of self worth,

            there are many whose daily routine is paralysed by fear of the evil one.

And here, in today’s reading from Matthew’s gospel,

            we meet Jesus using the word Satan to describe his close friend Peter.

Only a few moments earlier,

            Peter has declared Jesus to be the Messiah, the Son of the Living God (16.16),

                        and Jesus has responded by declaring Peter to be the rock

                                    on which the church will be built,

                        which not even the gates of Hades will overcome.

So it is something of a shock to find Jesus calling Peter ‘Satan’.

Particularly so if our understanding of what is meant by ‘Satan’

            is determined by the Christian tradition I’ve just been describing,

                        in terms of an external, personified, spiritual being

            that seeks to take over the lives of the unwary

                        and lead them into deeds of terrible darkness.

So let’s spend a few moments now unpacking something of the history of satan,

            before returning to our passage from Matthew

            and considering why it might be that Jesus uses this term of Peter.[1]

I’ve already said that satan is the Hebrew word for ‘adversary’;

            and the Old Testament speaks in three places of a personified adversary, or satan.

In Job (chs 1-2) and Zechariah (ch. 3)

            we find visionary descriptions of the heavenly throne room,

            which is pictured in terms similar to the throne room

                        of an ancient near eastern ruler

            – with God sat in the place of the king, surrounded by his advisors.

One of these advisors takes the role of ‘the satan’, or ‘the accuser’,

            and seem to have a function similar to a prosecuting counsel

                        in a contemporary courtroom

            – his job is to put the other side,

                        to test the integrity and righteousness of the person on trial.

Here, the satan is not a personal name,

            but a role that one of the members of the divine court fulfils.

The third reference to satan in the Old Testament is found in 1 Chronicles (21.1),

            and it refers to a human being who provokes David

            to take a census of Israel, against the will of God.

In the New Testament, the word ‘satan’ appears rather more often,

            with 36 references in total, all of them to a character referred to as ‘the satan’.

And again, as in the Old Testament,

            the job of ‘the satan’ is to test human piety

                        – to put the opposing view.

The word is still not a proper name

                        – our pew Bibles get it wrong when they capitalise it.

            It’s a description of a role, rather than the name of a person.

It is always ‘the satan’

            in the same way as one might say ‘the prosecutor’ or ‘the adversary’.

It is never just ‘Satan’ the personified being.

            That comes later in the Christian tradition,

                        with the mythology surrounding Satan developing through the centuries.

In the early church, authors like

            Justin Martyr, Tertullian, Iraenaeus, and Origen,

            conflated other biblical characters with the idea of ‘satan’

                        to flesh out the idea of the adversary as a personified divine being.

So, the serpent of Genesis 3,

            the defeated ‘morning star’ of Isaiah 14,

                        and the disgraced king of Tyre from Ezekiel 28,

            all ended up being more closely associated with the construct of Satan,

                        than the actual satan passages themselves!

The identification of Satan with the serpent associated him with original sin;

            the Latin for ‘morning star’, ‘Lucifer’, gave Satan one of his nicknames;

                        and the idea that Satan led a revolution in heaven

                                    before the creation of humanity

                        came into being when the story of the fall of the king of Tyre in Ezekiel

                                    combined with a saying of Jesus in Luke’s gospel

                        to form yet another strand to the emerging mythology of Satan

                                    as a divine character (Ezek. 28.12-19, Lk. 10.18).

Moving well beyond the New Testament for a moment,

            the Faust legend of the middle ages contributed the idea

                        that an ambitious person can make a ‘deal with the devil’ to achieve success,

            while Dante’s Divine Comedy from the early fourteenth century (1308-1321)

                        depicted Satan as large and frightful, but ultimately impotent.

In contrast, Milton’s Paradise Lost from the seventeenth century (1667)

                        created a new era in the mythology of Satan,

            giving him a heroic and sympathetic reading,

                        despite casting him as the incarnation of evil

                        whose agenda is to overthrow God.

While Milton may have portrayed Satan as a flawed hero

            in order to highlight the grandeur of God’s victory over him,

many other more recent writers and artists

            have been inspired to take further this idea of a powerful Satan,

                        to the extent that in the popular imagination

                        Satan has become a kind of evil counterpart to God,

            battling for the control of the cosmos

                        and for the ownership of human souls.

All of which is a very long way from the biblical picture

            of an adversary whose role is to test human piety.

And if we are to understand what is going on

            when Jesus turns to his friend Peter,

                        and says to him, ‘Get behind me, Satan!’,

            we need to set aside our inherited Satan mythology,

            and we need to set aside our inherited idea

                        that personified evil lurks round the next corner,

                        waiting to take control of us if we let our guard down.

The picture that emerges from Jesus’ encounter with Peter

            is exactly the opposite of this.

What we come to realise from this story

            is that evil is not an embodied being awaiting his opportunity,

                        but rather evil is something that can originate

                        from within even the most pious of human hearts.

Evil takes hold in the world whenever and wherever

            people enact a way of being that is contrary to the way of God

                        as revealed through Christ.

Even Peter can take on the role of the satan.

In Jesus, we encounter the one in whom the way of God is made flesh.

            And what we meet in Jesus is one whose life was dedicated

                         to the overcoming of evil in all its forms.

I’ve said before that I think the root cause of all human sin is idolatry,

            and what I mean by this is that whenever God is displaced

                        from the centre of a person’s life,

            the path to hell opens before them.

I think that we each have the capacity to create hell on earth

            when we follow any way of being

                        that is contrary to the way of God.

And we do this whenever we give allegiance to any power

            other than the will of God as revealed in and through Christ Jesus.

This is what Peter does in our passage from Matthew’s gospel,

            and this is why Jesus calls him the satan.

Jesus has just been telling Peter and the other disciples

            that he must now go to Jerusalem to be killed.

He has been making it clear to them that his path is the way of the cross,

            and that the only way to overcome evil

                        is to submit to its power over life

                        in order to defeat it with resurrection.

The Christ-like route to true life

            runs through the valley of the shadow of death.

And Peter, it seems, is right on board with the battle to defeat evil,

            Peter is totally committed to the path of overthrowing the powers-that-be

                        in the name of the coming kingdom of Christ Jesus.

But for him, this doesn’t look like the cross,

            it looks like armed insurrection.

It looks like throwing the Romans out of the city

            and expelling them from the land.

It looks like Jesus seated on David’s throne in the holy city of Jerusalem,

            with his disciples by his side.

It looks like the heavenly throne-room made real on the earth,

            as through Jesus, the reign of God begins.

And suddenly, without meaning to,

            Peter finds himself in the position of the satan,

                        the advisor who tests the resolve of the king,

            the one who argues the alternative path

                        to that which has been chosen.

Jesus is taking the difficult, costly, painful path to the cross,

            and Peter offers him a far more enticing alternative.

Jesus has met this temptation before, of course,

            in his wilderness wanderings,

when his own internal battle with the satan

            held before him the prospect of the kingdom without the cross.

And Peter offers him that same temptation,

            and so encounters the same title.

And it is such a tempting temptation, isn’t it?

To do righteous battle with the forces of evil in the world,

            boldly proclaiming the lordship of Christ over the earth,

                        taking decisive action to make it real in our midst.

It is the path of godly glory,

            it is the path of those who get things done,

it is the path of the activist, the campaigner,

            the revolutionary, the crusader,

                        the freedom fighter, the terrorist…

And that is why good people end up committing acts of great evil

            with the very best of intentions.

As Paul puts it in his letter to the Romans,

            ‘Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.’ (12.21).

The way of Christ is not tit for tat, it is the way of the cross.

            It is not the law of an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth (Mt. 5.38),

                        it is the way of the cross.

            It is not the path of proportionate and considered tactical strikes,

                        it is the way of the cross.

            It is not military superiority from the air but no boots on the ground,

                        it is the way of the cross.

‘Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.’

The horrific truth is that evil simply compounds evil,

            even when it originates from the best of intentions.

The insight that Jesus grasped,

            which Paul so clearly expressed,

                        and which Peter struggled so hard to understand,

is that evil can only be defeated by good.

In many ways, this is the ultimate choice,

            it is the definitive temptation.

Which path will we choose?

            Which path will Peter choose?

Do we, like Peter, feel the compulsion to take the opportunity

            to do good things by earthy means

            when the opportunity presents itself?

Do we long to use our power, influence, and money

            to transform the world in line with the kingdom of God?

Or can we instead hear the quiet call to join Jesus

            in rejecting all such attempts to make the Kingdom real in our midst,

                        taking instead the costly and sacrificial path of the cross?

The temptation to use coercive means

            to achieve our ‘right’ ends is always before us.

Whether at a personal or international level,

            whether within our families or between nations,

            we need to hear the voice of Jesus calling us to account:

‘If any want to become my followers,

            let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.

For those who want to save their life will lose it,

            and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.

For what will it profit them

            if they gain the whole world but forfeit their life?

Or what will they give in return for their life?’ (16.24-26).

The way of Jesus is the path of overcoming evil with good.

It is the way of salvation

            from the hellish and satanic outworkings of human violence.

Jesus did not come to save people from a violent God

            who is looking to cast them to the depths of hell

                        if they fail to comply with his will.

Neither did Jesus come to save people

            from Satan’s attempts to steal their souls for eternity.

Rather, Jesus came to save people from something far more real:

            he saves us from the violence that lurks within each human heart.

He comes to deliver us from evil,

            to save us from satan,

and to lead us through death to life eternal.

---

[1] See the article ‘Satan’ in Dictionary of the Bible and Western Culture, eds M.A. Beavis and M.J. Gilmour, p. 468. See also Satan, A Biography, by Henry Ansgar Kelly, 2006.

National-ism

Matthew 15:10-39  Then he called the crowd to him and said to them, "Listen and understand:  ¹¹ it is not what goes into the mouth that defiles a person, but it is what comes out of the mouth that defiles."  ¹² Then the disciples approached and said to him, "Do you know that the Pharisees took offense when they heard what you said?"  ¹³ He answered, "Every plant that my heavenly Father has not planted will be uprooted.  ¹⁴ Let them alone; they are blind guides of the blind. And if one blind person guides another, both will fall into a pit."  ¹⁵ But Peter said to him, "Explain this parable to us."  ¹⁶ Then he said, "Are you also still without understanding?  ¹⁷ Do you not see that whatever goes into the mouth enters the stomach, and goes out into the sewer?  ¹⁸ But what comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart, and this is what defiles.  ¹⁹ For out of the heart come evil intentions, murder, adultery, fornication, theft, false witness, slander.  ²⁰ These are what defile a person, but to eat with unwashed hands does not defile."  

²¹Jesus left that place and went away to the district of Tyre and Sidon.  ²² Just then a Canaanite woman from that region came out and started shouting, "Have mercy on me, Lord, Son of David; my daughter is tormented by a demon."  ²³ But he did not answer her at all. And his disciples came and urged him, saying, "Send her away, for she keeps shouting after us."  ²⁴ He answered, "I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel."  ²⁵ But she came and knelt before him, saying, "Lord, help me."  ²⁶ He answered, "It is not fair to take the children's food and throw it to the dogs."  ²⁷ She said, "Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters' table."  ²⁸ Then Jesus answered her, "Woman, great is your faith! Let it be done for you as you wish." And her daughter was healed instantly. 

²⁹After Jesus had left that place, he passed along the Sea of Galilee, and he went up the mountain, where he sat down.  ³⁰ Great crowds came to him, bringing with them the lame, the maimed, the blind, the mute, and many others. They put them at his feet, and he cured them,  ³¹ so that the crowd was amazed when they saw the mute speaking, the maimed whole, the lame walking, and the blind seeing. And they praised the God of Israel. 

³²Then Jesus called his disciples to him and said, "I have compassion for the crowd, because they have been with me now for three days and have nothing to eat; and I do not want to send them away hungry, for they might faint on the way."  ³³ The disciples said to him, "Where are we to get enough bread in the desert to feed so great a crowd?"  ³⁴ Jesus asked them, "How many loaves have you?" They said, "Seven, and a few small fish."  ³⁵ Then ordering the crowd to sit down on the ground,  ³⁶ he took the seven loaves and the fish; and after giving thanks he broke them and gave them to the disciples, and the disciples gave them to the crowds.  ³⁷ And all of them ate and were filled; and they took up the broken pieces left over, seven baskets full.  ³⁸ Those who had eaten were four thousand men, besides women and children.  ³⁹ After sending away the crowds, he got into the boat and went to the region of Magadan.

Isaiah 56:1   Thus says the LORD: Maintain justice, and do what is right, for soon my salvation will come, and my deliverance be revealed.

Isaiah 56:6-8  And the foreigners who join themselves to the LORD, to minister to him, to love the name of the LORD, and to be his servants, all who keep the sabbath, and do not profane it, and hold fast my covenant--  ⁷ these I will bring to my holy mountain, and make them joyful in my house of prayer; their burnt offerings and their sacrifices will be accepted on my altar; for my house shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples.  ⁸ Thus says the Lord GOD, who gathers the outcasts of Israel, I will gather others to them besides those already gathered.

It has, occasionally, been said of me,

            that I am ‘very English’!

But the thing is, I’m never quite sure whether I should take this as a compliment?…

            I suspect it depends on who is saying it,

                        and also on which particular aspect of my cultural baggage

                        it is that has prompted the observation.

Part of me wants to simply reply, ‘well of course I am, how could I be anything else?’

            After all, I was born in England, to English parents, with English grandparents…

            My native language is English, and I speak it with a home counties accent.

But I don’t think that’s necessarily what is always meant,

            when people tell me that I’m ‘very English’.

There are other aspects to being English beyond parentage and accent,

            that all combine to create the culture that comes into view.

I’m reading an interesting book at the moment,

            called ‘Watching the English’ by Kate Fox;

And she identifies a number of characteristics of ‘Englishness’

            which go beyond the obvious, and into the cultural.

One of these, as you may be able to guess,

            is conversation about the weather,

            which she says has many similarities to a religious or liturgical response,

            between a priest and their congregation:

So, I say, ‘the Lord be with you’,

            and you reply, ‘and also with you’.

I say, ‘Lord have mercy upon us’,

            and you reply, ‘Christ have mercy upon us.’

I say, ‘Nice day isn’t it?’

            and you reply, ‘very pleasant for the time of year.’

I say, ‘it’s a bit chilly today’,

            and you reply, ‘at least it’s not raining.’

And so we could go on, all day if necessary!

Well, earlier this year, Dawn and I attended

            the London Baptist Association ‘St George’s Day’ event,

which was billed as an exploration of Englishness

            in a multicultural city.

As part of the preparation for the day,

            we were asked to fill out an online questionnaire

            which rated us on an ‘Englishness scale’.

Interestingly, on this occasion I didn’t come out at the most ‘English’ person in the room;

            that honour went to one of my fellow ministers,

            a woman of West Indian heritage,

                        whose parents had come to the UK as part of the Windrush generation

                        in the Government sponsored post-second-world-war mass immigration.

She had decided, in her teens, that her West Indian accent,

                        and her Afro Caribbean cultural heritage,

            were going to be a disadvantage to her.

So she had consciously and deliberately bought into

            a very specific perception of what it meant to be ‘English’.

She had changed her accent,

            but more than this, she had changed her cultural values and mores,

and she had very effectively adopted the nuances and attitudes

            of the English educated middle classes.

So, what does it mean to be English?

            And does it matter?

Alternatively, what does it mean to be Scottish?

            And does that matter?

            Well, I guess we’ll find out on September the 18^th!

But what does it mean to be Welsh, or Northern Irish,

            or indeed Irish, or Australian, or Filipino,

            or any one of the many nationalities represented here this morning,

                        in our wonderful multi-cultural congregation.

And what does it mean to be Ukrainian, or Russian,

            or Iraqi, or Syrian, or Jewish, or Palestinian…

Does any of this matter?

Well, it seems to, doesn’t it, given how much of the trouble in our world

            finds its origins in disagreements between people

            who are at loggerheads over issues of cultural, ethnic, or national identity.

From casual or institutional racism, to ethnic cleansing,

            questions of who is ‘in’, and who is ‘out’,

                        questions of tribalism and protectionism,

                                    questions of nationality and ethnicity,

            dominate and determine so much that goes on in our world.

And it has always been the case, it seems,

            that ethnic, cultural and national identities carry troublesome baggage.

Take the story of Jesus the Jew and the Canaanite woman,

            a story loaded with ethnic tension if ever there was one.

As we spend a few minutes unpacking this story,

            and considering how it might speak to our contemporary situation,

                        I’m going to be drawing on some material

                        by Brian McLaren[1] and Grant LeMarquand,[2]

                        and if you’d like to know more, I’ll happily point you to what they’ve written.

But firstly, I’d like to tease out the differences

            between ethnicity, cultural identity, and nationalism,

            because whilst they are often treated as the same thing,

            I don’t think they are the same thing at all.

Someone’s ethnicity is a simple matter of genetics;

            it is something over which we have no choice.

And it is often denoted by physical characteristics shared by genetically related peoples.

            So, things such as skin colour, shape of the eyes and nose, or height,

            can all be markers of ethnicity.

I was born looking like this,

            and have had very little choice in the matter.

My ethnicity is probably best described as Caucasian,

            meaning that I am descended from a particular tribal group from central Europe.

But someone’s cultural identity

            is more a matter of where someone was born,

            than it is to do with who their parents were.

So, I speak English this way, because I was born and raised in Sevenoaks.

            If I’d been raised in Yorkshire, I’d still look the same,

                        my ethnicity would be the same,

                        and I’d still be culturally English,

            but I’d speak with a different accent,

                        and probably like cricket more than I do!

Similarly, if I’d been raised in France, I’d still look the same,

            but I wouldn’t be culturally English at all.

So my English culture,

            is a function of the society within which I was raised,

            and to some extent of the choices I have made.

There are English people who look like me,

            and there are English people who look nothing like me.

We may have different ethnicities, but we share a common culture.

And then there’s the issue of nationality,

            which is less a social construct,

            and more a political construct.

So, my nationality is British,

            which, at the moment, includes those who are Scottish,

            as well as the Welsh, and the Northern Irish.

Britain, the United Kingdom,

            is a political entity, comprising many ethnicities, and a variety of cultures.

I can remember being taught Geography by a Welshman,

            and he used to get very upset if any of us English lads

            ever used the word ‘England’.

“It’s ‘Britain’, boy!” he would shout,

            demonstrating both his commitment to the political union of the nation,

            and also his pride at his own Welsh culture.

He was, I am sure, also very aware, although he never said it,

            of the history of English suppression of the Welsh.

Where over many centuries, for political reasons,

            the Welsh culture was devalued at the hands of the English

            to the extent that the Welsh language was almost entirely wiped out.

A similar narrative of conquest lies behind the current debates

            regarding Scottish independence.

And the troubles in Northern Ireland

            owe much to the activities of a certain Oliver Cromwell

                        who seemed to need to do something with his army

                        once he had overthrown Charles the First of England.

All of which points to an important observation:

            when ethnic and cultural identity become fused with national identity,

            we create the recipe for dangerous and demonic nationalism to emerge.

In recent centuries,

            both within these Islands, and on a global scale,

The culture of Englishness has acquired implications of imperialism,

            connotations of conquest.

And this political ascendancy took the form of an expansionist political ideology,

            backed by an efficient military,

                        facilitated by a strong economy,

            and legitimated by a mythology of divine approval.

And it was ever thus.

Before the English it was the Romans,

            the Babylonians, the Assyrians, the Egyptians, even the Israelites.

And in more recent times we have seen the rise of other empires,

            from communist block to global capitalism.

And this is the context within which we read

            our story from Matthew’s gospel this morning.

Time and again,[3]

            religious communities have demonstrated their capacity

            to become complicit with the imperial narratives

            of the host nation that offers them protection or advantage.

Christians have been no exception to this,

            and there are plenty of examples of times and places

            where people have edited their version of Jesus

            to fit their nation’s narrative of imperial conquest.

However, one of the themes that we keep coming back to here at Bloomsbury,

            is the idea that Jesus’ life and message are centred

                        on the articulation and demonstration

                        of a radically different framing story

            – one that critiques and exposes the imperial narrative

                        as dangerous to itself and to others.

Jesus does not proclaim the kingdom of Israel,

            or any other earthly power.

Rather, he says repeatedly

            that through him a different kingdom is coming into being;

one that is defined not along national, cultural or ethnic lines,

            but by values of peace, justice and reconciliation.

The story of the Canaanite woman from Matthew

            is just such a story which challenges the nationalisms of the first century.

We know that Matthew is re-writing Mark’s version of this story,

            and he makes a surprising change to Mark’s language

            as he retells it for his own readership.

Matthew is often thought of as the most Jewish of the four gospel writers,

            and yet, surprisingly, he identifies the woman in this story as a ‘Canaanite’,

            unlike Mark, who calls her a ‘Greek, born in Syrian Phoenicia’ (7.26).

Matthew’s use of Canaanite here is surprising,

            first, because the term appears nowhere else in the New Testament,

            and second, because Canaanites were, strictly speaking,

                        non-existent at that time!

To call someone in Jesus’ day a Canaanite would be an anachronism,

            like calling a contemporary Norwegian a Viking,

                        or a contemporary Scot a Celt;

            it was a word from the past.

This gives us a strong clue that in using this term Canaanite,

            Matthew is wanting to signal something more than simply her ethnicity,

                        or even her culture.

We’re in the world of nationality here, the world of politics and empires.

Canaan was not only a place name,

            it was an ideologically loaded geographical marker.

You see, the term Canaanite was a direct evocation

            of Israel’s violent conquest of Canaan at the end of the Exodus.

It’s a story found in the biblical books of Exodus and Deuteronomy,

            and it’s a disturbing story of violence and nationalism,

            all legitimated by a mythology of divine approval.

According to the old story, the land of Canaan was good,

            but the Canaanites were evil.

So why did the Israelites kill the Canaanites?

            ‘Because God told them to’, says the Old Testament story.

And Matthew knows this,

            and his use of the term Canaanite for the woman is quite intentional.

His use of this term denotes the woman and her daughter

            as the worst kind of outsider.

They are Canaanites, the quintessential enemies of Israel.

And Matthew tells the story this way

            to show Jesus deconstructing the violent conquest narrative

                        that had previously dominated the relationship between the Jews

                        and the descendants of the original inhabitants

                                    of the land flowing with milk and honey.

Matthew is wanting to show that the Kingdom of God

            is not the same thing as the national identity of the people who worship God.

Matthew has already included non-Jews in his story in striking ways,

            from the naming of the Canaanite women Tamar and Rahab

                        in the Genealogy of Jesus (1.3,5),

            to the visit of the Gentile Magi (2.1-12),

                        to the healing of the Roman centurion’s servant (8.5-13).

And Matthew will include Gentiles in an even more striking way

            at his story’s end, affirming that Gentiles

                        must be included in the circle of disciples (28.18-20).

But here, in between, during Jesus’ unique excursion into Gentile territory,

            Jesus encounters this woman identified by Matthew as a Canaanite.

Their encounter is disturbing, not least because Jesus appears to be racist.

            He responds to her request for mercy and healing for her daughter,

                        first by ignoring her,

                        then by saying, ‘I was sent only to the lost sheep of Israel’ (15.24),

                        then by using language that to our ears sounds indefensibly dehumanising

                                    and, I’ll say it again, racist:

                        He refers to her people as ‘dogs’ (15.26).

Some readers, trying to ‘save’ Jesus from the appearance of racism,

            along with the appearance of changing his mind,

            would say that Jesus was simply engaging in wordplay with the woman,

                        that he knew all along that he was going to heal her daughter.

However, playing with a distraught mother,

            and using dehumanising language to do so,

            doesn’t seem to ‘save’ Jesus from much, if we’re honest.

In Jesus defence, we should note that he doesn’t say,

            ‘I was sent only to the elite people of God,

                        the chosen ones, holy Israel,

                        not to you hopeless dogs.’

No, rather Jesus identifies his fellow Israelites as ‘lost sheep’,

            hardly itself a great nationalistic affirmation or compliment.

Jesus is no Zionist here.

In this light, Brian McLaren suggests that maybe Jesus is saying something like this:

            ‘Woman, I’m sorry about your daughter.

                        But I have enough problems with my own Jewish people.

            Herod, a Jewish ruler, just killed the prophet John, my close colleague.

            The Pharisees are misleading the people,

                        and we just had a very harsh confrontation.

                        In fact, they’re plotting my assassination as we speak.

            So my own people have lost their way, and I’ve been sent to them;

                        that’s why I can’t help you.’

Her clever and persistent reply, however,

            seems to convert Jesus,

            so that he gains new insight into the God-given scope of his mission.

It may be that this Canaanite woman knows the original call to Abraham,

            that God will bless Abraham and make his descendants a great nation

            so that they will bring blessing to all nations.

If so, her statement about dogs eating scraps that fall from the table

            would then mean:

‘Yes, I understand that your calling is to your people.

            But since your people are supposed to bring blessing to the rest of us,

            wouldn’t it be good to let this scrap of blessing fall to my daughter?’

It’s telling that the woman isn’t interested

            in recapturing the lost wealth of her ancestral lands.

She merely wants the crumbs of bread that fall from the conquer’s table.

And whatever she knows or doesn’t know,

            in this encounter, instead of a Jew violently and mercilessly

                        conquering a Canaanite in harmony with the old stories of Exodus and Joshua,

            the Canaanite wins and conquers the Jew

                        so that he responds to her request for mercy.

Jesus then utterly reverses his earlier statement.

            ‘I was sent only to the lost sheep of Israel’ recedes into the past,

                        and he now moves dramatically forward to care not only for one Gentile girl,

                        but for literally thousands of Gentiles.

In the following episode, in verses 29-31, he dramatically heals multitudes,

            and they are quite obviously Gentiles,

            because Matthew specifies that they ‘praised the God of Israel.’

And then, even more dramatically,

            Jesus feeds the Gentile multitude in a way that perfectly parallels

            his earlier feeding of five thousand Jews.

But there is one critical difference.

            When Jesus feeds five thousand Jews, there are twelve baskets left over.

                        The number clearly signifying the twelve tribes of Israel.

            But when he feeds four thousand Gentiles, how many baskets are left over? Seven.

                        Many have debated what that number might signify…

            For the probably answer, we need to turn to

                        one of the more terrifying passages in the Hebrew Scriptures,

                        certainly in terms of its justification of religious violence.

According to the Hebrew story, in about 1,400 BC,

            Moses gave the word of the Lord to Joshua, his successor in leadership,

            instructing him what to do when he leads his people into Canaanite territory:

Deuteronomy 7:1-5  When the LORD your God brings you into the land that you are about to enter and occupy, and he clears away many nations before you-- the Hittites, the Girgashites, the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites, seven nations mightier and more numerous than you--  ² and when the LORD your God gives them over to you and you defeat them, then you must utterly destroy them. Make no covenant with them and show them no mercy.  ³ Do not intermarry with them, giving your daughters to their sons or taking their daughters for your sons,  ⁴ for that would turn away your children from following me, to serve other gods. Then the anger of the LORD would be kindled against you, and he would destroy you quickly.  ⁵ But this is how you must deal with them: break down their altars, smash their pillars, hew down their sacred poles, and burn their idols with fire.

What seems to be happening in Matthew’s story,

            is that Jesus takes the old ‘destroy the Canaanites’ narrative,

                        and dramatically turns it around.

The reversals are striking.

            Jesus does not follow Deuteronomy’s ‘no mercy to Canaanites’ policy,

                        but rather shows mercy to this Canaanite woman and her daughter.

            According to Deuteronomy, seven nations are to be destroyed ‘totally:

                        yet seven baskets of loaves are gathered as a symbolic testimony

                                    to the fact that through the ministry of Jesus,

                                    Canaanites are not to be destroyed, but fed.

            According to Deuteronomy, Canaanite daughters are dangers,

                                    and will lead Israelite sons astray,

                        but Jesus, an Israelite son, sees a Canaanite daughter not as a danger,

                                    but as a person in need, and heals her.

If Jesus’ first feeding miracle and its twelve-basket surplus

            suggested a reconstitution of the twelve tribes being led through the wilderness

                        with a new kind of manna,

            [as we explored when we looked at that story here a couple of weeks ago,]

then this second feeding suggests a new kind of conquest,

            not with swords and spears, but with bread and fish;

                        not to destroy, but to serve and heal.

Jesus seizes the old narrative, shakes it, turns it inside out,

            and offers a new story that reframes a future radically different from the past.

He rejects the narrative of nationalism,

            and proclaims instead a common citizenship

            within the kingdom of heaven.

And in so many ways, in our world today,

            the nations of the earth are still living out the old story

            of conquest and imperialism and violence and subjugation.

Nationalism still has the capacity to unleash the demonic,

            and recruit the indifferent and unaware to its cause.

From the rise of the far right in Europe,

            to the recent successes of the British National Party,

            to the dis-assimilation of minority ethno-religious groups

            and the consequent rise of extremist groups and associated Islamophobia…

Whether it’s the English oppression of the Welsh, the Scots, or the Irish,

            or warring factions in Iraq,

            or tensions in the Ukraine,

            or ongoing violence between Israel and the Palestinians,

                        or Canaanites as Matthew might refer to them!

We live in a world where empires dominate, and people are subjugated,

            where militarism and money are soul-mates,

            and where the mythology of divine approval provides the necessary legitimation.

And I find myself wondering what Jesus would do…

I wonder what might it mean for the powerful to discover

            that power is only meaningful when it is used to bless the weak,

            rather than to protect the vested interests of the powerful.

I wonder what might happen if the followers of Jesus

            started calling the powerful to account,

refusing to offer the narratives of divine legitimation

            for the violence and oppression offered on our behalf.

I wonder what it might look like if more Christians

            rejected the politicised narratives of nationalism,

                        and celebrated instead the glorious, God-given diversity

                        of ethnicity and culture.

I wonder what might happen if more churches were inclusive of those

            whom others would want to reject,

rather than setting themselves up as the last bastions of legalism

            in a world gone to the dogs.

I despair sometimes that we have such capacity to get it so wrong.

            It is too easy for us to become like the Pharisees,

                        convinced that purity is more important than mercy,

                        and that religious observance is more important than justice.

            It is too easy for us to enter into our alliances with the powers that be,

                        justifying our compliance on the basis of holiness.

And cutting through this comes the story of Jesus,

            rewriting the script, retelling the story of what it means to be human,

            and what it means to belong to one another.

To be a follower of Jesus is a far different affair than many of us were taught.

            It is a long way from the vision of little England

                        that we sang into being at my school in Kent

            as we weekly intoned the stirring words of Blake’s Jerusalem.

The Kingdom of God is not England,

            nor is it America, or Israel, or any other nationally defined entity.

Any nation that claims to be doing the work of God as it kills his enemies,

            has taken for itself that which belongs only to God.

And any religion that aligns itself with such activity,

            proclaiming the blessing of God on the smiting of the ungodly,

            is a long way from the kingdom of Heaven.

Rather, to be a follower of Jesus means to join

            what McLaren calls Jesus’ peace insurgency:

it is to see through every regime that promises peace through violence,

            peace through domination,

                        peace through genocide,

            peace through exclusion and intimidation.

Following Jesus means forming communities that seek peace

            through justice, generosity, and mutual concern,

            and a willingness to suffer persecution but a refusal to inflict it on others.

To follow Jesus is to become an atheist

            in regard to all bloodthirsty, tribal warrior gods,

            even those that call themselves by the same name

                        as the God we proclaim and worship.

To follow Jesus is to become a believer in the living God of grace and peace

            who, in Christ, sheds God’s own blood

            in a manifestation of amnesty and reconciliation.

To follow Jesus is to repent, to believe, and to follow . . .

            and together, these mean nothing less

            than defecting from the empire’s campaign of violence

                        to join Jesus’ divine peace insurgency.

---

[1] Brian McLaren, Everything Must Change, 2007, 154-160. See also http://girardianlectionary.net/year_a/proper15a.htm

[2] http://www.tsm.edu/sites/default/files/Faculty%20Writings/LeMarquand%20-%20The%20Canaanite%20Conquest%20of%20Jesus.pdf

[3] The following is heavily derived from McLaren