My Parents Said I Was Their Favorite!

11 Pentecost, A p15, August 20, 2017
Isaiah 56:1,6-8  Psalm 67  

Romans 11:1-2a, 29-32 Matthew 15: (10-20), 21-28

Lectionary Link

How many of us are feeling like some hope and optimism today?  The opening of a Dickens' novel, "It was the best of time and the worst of times" is expressive of the reality of life itself all of the time.  Best and worst are determined by the apparent ways in which the best and the worst impinge our individual and community existence.  The best and worst can be happening to all of us, all of the time, even though the severity of the worst and the intensity of the best often speak the loudest in the immediacy of personal experience.

Though the events in Charlottesville and Barcelona have given us examples of the worst of times this past week, especially for the people who were directly affected, I believe that we are called to make a deliberate effort of faith to express our faith, hope and optimism even in the worst of time.

One of the most optimistic passages in Holy Scriptures is found in Psalm 67.  It is one of the recommended Psalms for Holy Matrimony.  Let us read it together again prayerfully.

1 May God be merciful to us and bless us, *
show us the light of his countenance and come to us.

2 Let your ways be known upon earth, *
your saving health among all nations.

3 Let the peoples praise you, O God; *
let all the peoples praise you.

4 Let the nations be glad and sing for joy, *
for you judge the peoples with equity
and guide all the nations upon earth.

5 Let the peoples praise you, O God; *
let all the peoples praise you.

6 The earth has brought forth her increase; *
may God, our own God, give us his blessing.

7 May God give us his blessing, *
and may all the ends of the earth stand in awe of him.

In this prayer, we ask for God's blessing upon us, but we also asked that there be no restriction for everyone on earth to praise God and be glad and sing for joy.  Let all the peoples praise you, O God.  Just as we ask for God's blessing upon us as we know that God has let us be glad and sing for joy, so too we acknowledge the general invitation for all people to bless God and to experience the blessing of God.

Today's lessons from Scripture helps us to highlight the tension between the general and the particular.  As Charlie Brown cried, "I love mankind, it's people I can't stand."  It is easy to say in general what we believe but it is very hard to put it into practice particularly when a certain person or neighbor vexes us.

The tension between the general and the particular is a basic tension in life.  And this dynamic tension is something we have to learn to live with.

Imagine the proverbial funeral where dear Mom has passed away and her children rise to share their memories.  And first one says, "I have to apologize to my siblings, but Mom told me that I was her favorite."   And to everyone's surprise each of the other siblings rose and said that Mom told them the very same thing.  So, each child was Mom's favorite.  Had Mom been dishonest?  How could each child have been Mom's favorite?  Well, there is no contradiction in that son John was Mom's favorite son John and daughter Helen was Mom's favorite daughter Helen and so on.  Mom found no contradiction by conferring individual esteem to each of her children.  She was both loving in general and loving in particular.

We can in our religious life and in our lives of faith do something similar.  We in our pulpits and religious practice can openly or subtly proclaim, "I have to apologize to other people of faith, but God has told me that we are God's favorite."

And when we try to elevate our particular experience as the general rule, we end up excommunicating many people from God's favor.

The Hebrew Scriptures, in part, are about how the people of Israel understood themselves to be God's favorite.  But the Hebrew Scriptures are also about how everyone can know themselves to be God's favorite.  Is God's Temple in Jerusalem only for the Jews?  According to the Prophet Isaiah, God invited the foreigners to God's communion and the House of Prayer in Jerusalem was to be a House of Prayer for all people.

The House of Prayer for all people was to be a place where people could pray the universal prayer of blessing as is found in Psalm 67.

The Prophets and Jesus came to criticize people when they made their particular faith habits exclusive and dismissive of the vast majority of people.  The temptation is to make our particular faith habits as the general rule of humanity even when our particular faith habits are inaccessible or not natural cultural habits for others.

Jesus criticized the religious folks who had elevated special purity rituals as the guarantee of true hearts of faith.  So Jesus reminded those who legislated hand-washing piety that outer ritual cleanliness did not guarantee inward cleanliness.  As to our inward lives, we are as Freud said, "polymorphously perverse" and no water rituals can cleanse the seat of desire.

In the story dialogue between Jesus and the Canaanite foreigner, Jesus highlighted the fact that everyone can have faith.  Faith in what?  Faith in the health and salvation which God offers to all.

We might ask, "If God loves everyone, then what is worth or value of God loving me?"  The worth comes when we don't elevate the ways in which we experience personal esteem in God's eye as the only way for God to show esteem.

Imagine if after I came down the aisle today and I stopped and started dismissing people from the church because of the way that I observed you behaving.  "You didn't kneel.  You didn't sing.  You didn't make the sign of the cross at the right place in the liturgy.  You said AAAAAAAAAAAAmen instead of Ahmen.  How can you consider yourself a valid Christian if you haven't followed my legislated piety?  Get out!"

If I elevate my particular rules of piety to be the universal standard for guaranteeing God's love and blessing, then I have misrepresented God.

Jesus came to correct misrepresentation of God by letting us know that we can all know the experience of being God's favorite even as we accept that everyone else can also have that same experience of self esteem.  This is the wonderful contradiction of the general and the particular.

St. Paul criticized his background experience of religion as a Jew as being practiced in a way that did not invite Gentiles to the knowledge of God's blessing and favor which could be known through faith.

So what should we do today?  Should we abandon our own personal rituals and pieties that we have found effective faith expressions of our lives?  Not at all; we can accept our particular faith expression even as we accept the faith expressions of others, even if they meet in different places with different religious names and different denominations.

I leave you with this.  A secret:  God has let you know that you are God's favorite child.  A second secret: Jesus has shown us that God has let everyone know that he or she is a favorite child too.  So let us learn to live with this tension between the general and the particular.  Let us accept the Great Love of God to let everyone know themselves to be God's favorite.  Amen.