A Time To Weep
Stories
Object:
Contents
What's Up This Week
A Story to Live By: "The Sound of a Man Forgiving"
Shining Moments: "A Time to Weep" by Christina Berry
Good Stories: "Leonardo the Lonely Squirrel" by John Sumwalt
Scrap Pile: "Foreign Territory" by John Sumwalt
What's Up This Week
The story of Joseph forgiving his brothers in the Genesis text is one of the most profound examples of grace in scripture. In "The Sound of a Man Forgiving" in this week's A Story to Live By, we see how God's grace is still transforming lives today. Lloyd LeBlanc, the father whose murdered son's story is the subject of Helen Prejean's book Dead Man Walking, says, "Forgiveness is never going to be easy. Each day it must be prayed for and struggled for and won." In Shining Moments, Christina Berry tells about a very unexpected reaction from a father grieving the death of his son.
A Story to Live By
The Sound of a Man Forgiving
And he kissed all his brothers and wept upon them; and after that his brothers talked with him.
Genesis 45:15
Helen Prejean, author of Dead Man Walking, tells how the father of a murdered son forgives his murderer:
Lloyd LeBlanc has told me that he would have been content with imprisonment for Patrick Sonnier. He went to the execution, he says, not for revenge, but hoping for an apology. Patrick Sonnier had not disappointed him. Before sitting in the electric chair he had said, "Mr. LeBlanc, I want to ask your forgiveness for what me and Eddie done," and Lloyd LeBlanc had nodded his head, signaling a forgiveness he had already given. He says that when he arrived with sheriff's deputies there in the cane field to identify his son, he had knelt by his boy -- "laying down there with his two little eyes sticking out like bullets" -- and prayed the Our Father. And when he came to the words "Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us," he had not halted or equivocated, and he said, "Whoever did this, I forgive them." But he acknowledges that it's a struggle to overcome the feelings of bitterness and revenge that well up, especially as he remembers David's birthday year by year and loses him all over again: David at 20, David at 25, David getting married, David standing at the back door with his little ones clustered around his knees, grown-up David, a man like himself, whom he will never know. Forgiveness is never going to be easy. Each day it must be prayed for and struggled for and won.
Sister Helen Prejean, CJS, is an author, organizer, and crusader against capital punishment. This segment is from Dead Man Walking: An Eyewitness Account of the Death Penalty in the United States (Vintage, 1994).
Shining Moments
A Time to Weep
by Christina Berry
And he wept so loudly that the Egyptians heard it, and the household of Pharaoh heard it.... Then he fell upon his brother Benjamin's neck and wept, while Benjamin wept upon his neck. And he kissed all his brothers and wept upon them; and after that his brothers talked with him.
Genesis 45:2, 14-15
A dear friend's eldest son, age 31, died unexpectedly in a city on the west coast. As she and her husband were planning to travel there to attend a memorial service her son's friends and partner had arranged, and to collect his things, she told me that her husband did not know their son was gay. The relationship between father and son had been strained in the past, and we were sure my friend's husband, a really traditional guy, would not handle this information well.
"How could he not know?" I asked. "Are you going to tell him?" She said that she would wait and see.
They had so much to deal with in their preparations that we never had a chance to talk again before they left. Amid much chaos and grief, they left home. On the plane she said something in passing about their son and his roommate. Her husband answered, referring to the roommate as the son's partner.
My friend said, "Where did you learn that?"
"Well, he told me."
"What did he say?" Her husband related what their son had told him. "When did you find out?" my friend asked, shocked.
"Two years ago, that time I was in the hospital."
"Why didn't you say anything to me?"
Her husband looked surprised. "Didn't you know?" he asked. She was so relieved she didn't have anything more to say.
When they arrived at the home of their son's friend, where the memorial service was being held, the first person they saw was the son's partner. My friend said her big, macho husband looked at this bereaved young man, then went to him, enfolded him in his arms, and said, "Thank you for loving my son." And the two of them wept together.
Christina Berry is a member of St. Andrew Presbyterian Church in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and a student at Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary in Austin, Texas. For the past 15 years she has served Presbyterian churches as a volunteer, as children's ministry staff, and as a preacher and pastoral intern. Christina was the writer for the PC(USA) Children's Mission Yearbook for 2003 and for 2004, and was a contributing writer to Seasons of the Spirit curriculum for 2005.
Good Stories
Leonardo the Lonely Squirrel
by John Sumwalt
Jesus left that place and went away to the district of Tyre and Sidon. Just then a Canaanite woman from that region came out and started shouting...
Matthew 15:21-22a
Once upon a time, in the land of gray squirrels, there lived a little red squirrel named Leonardo. There were many little gray squirrels, and they had a wonderful time chasing each other about from tree to tree, but Leonardo was the only little red squirrel in the whole forest. Every day he watched the little gray squirrels playing together, and he wished that he had someone to play with too. But alas, the little gray squirrels never invited him to play with them.
Leonardo became very lonely -- it is no fun to play all by yourself. So one day he scampered up to the little gray squirrels and asked if he could play with them. They took one look at him and said, "Sorry, Red, you're the wrong color. We only play with gray squirrels. Go away, you're bothering us."
"Oh yeah?" said Leonardo. "We'll see about that!" Before the little gray squirrels could blink, he ran up the tree they had been playing in and called out over his shoulder, "Catch me if you can!" Without stopping to think about what color he was, the gray squirrels took off after him. They chased him all afternoon and didn't give up until they heard their mothers calling them to come home to supper. By that time they had forgotten about Leonardo's color -- they just wanted to catch him. "We'll catch you tomorrow," they called out as they headed for home.
Leonardo smiled. He wasn't lonely anymore.
Scrap Pile
Foreign Territory
by John Sumwalt
Matthew 15:21-28
Seeking to avoid the crowds that surrounded him everywhere he went in Israel, Jesus leaves the country for a little R&R. Tyre and Sidon were in Phoenicia, a region in Syria which stretched north between Galilee and the Mediterranean Sea.
This is foreign territory, a dangerous place for a Jew to be. The Phoenicians are of Canaanite stock, the ancestral enemies of the Jews, the forbearers of the people we know as Palestinians today. To Jews in Jesus' time, all non-Jews (that is, all gentiles) were considered to be unclean. Anyone who did not keep the Jewish cleanliness laws was by definition "dirty." A Jew was to have nothing to do with anyone who was unclean.
Have you heard the expression "dirty foreigner"? Some of us have grown up in families who were called that when we emigrated here from another part of the world. My own Irish ancestors, my mother's people, the Longs of Longfield (in Tipperary), who came to Wisconsin in the 1850s during the potato famine, were called that and worse. I believe "dirty micks" was the most common expression of derision. Irish, Italian, Polish, German, Hispanic, Asian, African, Indian, Scandinavian, Native American, Arab, and Jew -- we have all had our turn as a despised minority in Wisconsin.
I am sad to say that in my childhood I heard members of my own extended family refer to African-Americans as "dirty." When I was in high school our family was a part of an exchange program with a county in Mississippi. An 11-year-old African-American girl named Linda Gulledge came to stay with us for three weeks. One of our relatives was quite distressed about this. She said to my mother, "Aren't you worried about her blackness rubbing off on the sheets?" She was very serious.
That is an attitude born of fear and ignorance, a learned social prejudice which has no basis in fact but is as common in our time as it was in first-century Israel.
Some of you remember the late Larry Wasson, a longtime member of this congregation who used to tell about his racist upbringing in a little coal-mining town in the foothills of the Ozarks in Arkansas. Larry said:
"One of the high points of the history of this little town, its sense of its importance, was a simple statement that floated around the community almost like an ambiance; and that statement was: 'No n______ ever stayed overnight in this town.' (You know the "n" word.)
"My parents didn't particularly promote that statement. They were neutral about it, and I thought that I was not affected by it. I thought that I was fairly free of any kind of prejudice. I grew up, went on to high school and college. In college, the janitor in our dormitory was a negro, liked and respected by everyone on campus, including me. So I went on assuring myself that I was free of any kind of racial bias.
"After we married, my wife and I came to Milwaukee, and in due course we became chairpersons of the Commission on Christian Social Concerns in this church. As a part of our responsibility to the commission, my wife suggested that maybe it would be a good idea for us to visit one of the African-American United Methodist churches in Milwaukee. I agreed to it without any major reservations.
"So one Sunday morning we went down to one of the black neighborhoods. We parked our car and walked over to the church, about a block away. And I found myself struck by a tremendous sense of dread. It's nothing I can put a name to, even now. It was just a dread I felt of going into that church. It amazed me, because I still didn't think of myself as prejudiced. But if I had had any kind of excuse with which I could have saved face, I would have turned around and gone back home. But my wife didn't let that happen! She took my arm and we went on into that church, where we were accepted like long-lost kinfolk.
"Well, that's the story of how I became aware of the fact that I had been tainted by the racism I grew up with: that I had carried around an internal bias that I had not even been conscious of. Having a spotlight shone on something in yourself that you don't like is very helpful in taking steps to remedy it. One thing I did was to sing part-time in the negro church choir. Our church had two worship services, so it was easy for me to visit the African-American church and still attend my own congregation. And a few years later, my wife and I became members of the board of directors of Northcott Neighborhood House, just about four years after it was formed, and while it was in the process of trying to find its role in the African-American community in Milwaukee. We worked closely there, got well acquainted with many people, and one woman in particular became a close friend. She invited my wife and me to her home one week for Sunday dinner. And after dinner neighbors and friends came in and we had a delightful conversation. It wasn't until about 11:00, when the group broke up and we were getting in the car to go home, that I became conscious of the fact that my wife and I had been the only white people present." (from Lectionary Tales For The Pulpit, CSS Publishing Company, 1996, pgs. 117-119)
It can be disconcerting to go into foreign territory. Strange places and strange peoples can bring out the worst of our fears and bad behavior. And strangely, it is in foreign territory that we often learn more about ourselves than anywhere else. Richard Rohr writes in Simplicity: The Art of Living (Crossroads, 1990) that to find a new way of life, "You have to leave the world where you have everything under control. You have to head into a world where you are poor and powerless. And there you will be converted in spite of yourself" (pg. 113).
Jesus is in foreign territory, and a "dirty foreigner" approaches him. The fact that she is a woman compounds the dilemma for Jesus. Jewish men were not to speak to women in public, even members of their own families, lest they risk making themselves unclean.
The Canaanite woman shouts at Jesus, "Have mercy on me, Lord, Son of David." She addresses him as the Messiah; she knows exactly who he is, something that even the disciples were not yet clear about. She yells, "My daughter is tormented by a demon."
Jesus ignores her: "...he did not answer her at all." But he must have known that his little vacation was over. The disciples urge him to send her away because she won't stop her shouting. Jesus finally speaks: "I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel."
The woman is not deterred by this. She comes and kneels at his feet, the proper deferential position for a woman in this time and place. And she pleads with him, "Lord, help me."
Jesus responds in a manner that seems uncharacteristically harsh. "It is not fair to take the children's food and throw it to the dogs." This is a sharp rebuke. To suggest that someone is like a dog is not a compliment. But without missing a beat, the woman answers him. And I think she must have smiled as she said this. "Sir, even the dogs under the table eat the children's crumbs." Bada-bing, bada-bang. The woman is good at repartee. She does to Jesus what he is so good at doing to the critics who dare to engage him in oral combat. Nowhere else in the Gospel accounts is there any report of anyone so clearly getting the best of Jesus. This Canaanite woman takes Jesus to school, and he knows it. What's even more surprising, Jesus not only gets it, he admits it. He does what all of us can learn to do when we are shown to be wrong. He graciously acknowledges the rightness of her position.
"Then Jesus answered her, 'Woman, great is your faith! Let it be done for you as you wish.' And," Matthew writes, "her daughter was healed instantly."
There are two miracles here. The first one is obvious and by itself no small thing. The demon that possessed this child, whatever it was, is gone. If you have ever loved a child who suffered from some debilitating, perhaps painful, illness, you know why this woman is willing to risk public humiliation to get help. She will do whatever is needed to make her daughter well. She has nothing to lose and everything to gain.
Jesus heals this little girl, but clearly it would not have happened except for this mother's great love. In one of his study books, James Moore calls this "love with an attitude." He says the woman was bold and courageous because she lived by an attitude of love. She would not be put off. She would not be discouraged. She would not give up. "Love bears all things, hopes all things, believes all things. Love never ends." Long before the apostle Paul penned these words, this Canaanite woman lived them.
The second miracle in this story of healing is even more significant. Jesus' immediate response to the Canaanite woman is tribal. "I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel."
We are all members of a tribe first. Who you are related to counts for something in this world. My Uncle Theron hired me to work for him in his milk-testing lab when I was in college, not because I was more qualified than a dozen or so others he could have hired, but because I was his sister's son. He preferred to pay someone in his own family even though he might have found someone more qualified than me. I loved him for that then, and I love him for it now. Families take care of their own. Blood is thicker than water and everything else.
How many wars have been fought, how many millions have died in our world because of this? In 1994, 800,000 persons from the Tutsi tribe in Rwanda were murdered by members of the Hutu tribe, who were then in power. "Ethnic cleansing" we now call this, bad blood between neighbors which begins with simple disagreements about religion and who owns what territory, and ends in a bloodbath. Witness Bosnia, Kosovo, Burundi, Chechnya, Kurdistan, Northern Ireland, and Palestine, to name just a few of the places where ethnic tensions have erupted in violence again and again. One wonders where God is in these places, why it seems that God cannot be heard or is not known in these bleeding hearts.
Jesus said to the Canaanite woman, "It is not fair to take the children's food and throw it to the dogs." The Canaanite woman speaks with the voice of God to the Son of God (is that possible?) when she says, "Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from the master's table."
In 1988 one of this Canaanite woman's descendants was on trial in Israel for "incitement and possession of inciting materials," having illegal books and tapes in the library of the Society for the Rehabilitation of the Family, for which she served as president. Samiha Khalil was known at that time as the most powerful woman on the West Bank. Her Palestinian neighbors affectionately called her "Khalil Umm Khalil" (Aunt Umm Khalil). "But perhaps the best way to describe Khalil is the way she described herself. 'I am Palestinian to the core. My wish before I die is to have a passport with the word "Palestinian" on it.' When the Israeli military governor of Khalil's district asked how she was one day, she responded dryly, 'God is with us.' Not to be outdone, the governor responded, 'No, he is with us.' Without blinking an eye, Khalil shot back, 'God was with you, but he is beginning to correct his mistake' " (The Christian Century, November 23, 1988). Bada-bing, bada-bang!
Last month, a 13-member delegation sponsored by the General Board of Church and Society of the United Methodist Church conducted a fact-finding tour of the Middle East. These 13 American Christians in foreign territory were taken aback by what they saw and heard. It was a very different perspective than that provided by the American news media.
Nelda Reid of Dallas said now she understands how destruction of Palestinian croplands and damage to water supplies creates hardships in Arab communities. "Their lives are on hold, at the command of the Israeli army," she said. Bob Hughes of Seattle said he heard the word "suffocation" used to describe the conditions. "It's collective punishment for an entire community," he added.
During the visit the delegation spent the night of July 27 in farmers' homes in a Palestinian village. Les Solomon, of Alexandria, Virginia, noted that despite his extensive travels to other parts of the world, "I have never experienced the levels of repression on a people that I experienced during the visit. Its basic intent is to break the will of the Palestinian people by breaking their spirit." (From United Methodist News Service as printed in Newscope, August 9, 2002)
Esther Armstrong and Dale Stitt, of Portland, Oregon, have an ecumenical ministry called Journey Into Freedom that, among other things, sponsors what they call "Trips of Perspective." Esther wrote in their newsletter of a "wonderfully disturbing" trip to Haiti where they met some of the poorest of the poor. They heard stories of starving people so hungry they are forced to eat emaciated dogs and donkeys, and of schoolchildren in Port-au-Prince swallowing stones to assuage hunger pangs due to poverty. Why do they go? Esther says, "We go on our Trips of Perspective not to fix the problems, to have answers, or even to make a difference. We go to be present, to stand in solidarity with the people of Haiti, to confront our real powerlessness in the face of dire need, and to be transformed." (Journey Into Freedom, 4620 SW Caldew St, Unit E, Portland, OR 97219-1573, www.journeyintofreedom.org)
[At this point in the sermon I told Christina Berry's "A Time to Weep" story, and then repeated the following line from the Gospel text. "A Time to Weep" is a touching story that fits the "foreign territory" theme very well.]
"Then Jesus answered her, 'Woman, great is your faith! Let it be done for you as you wish.' And her daughter was healed instantly."
Excerpts from a sermon preached at Wauwatosa Avenue United Methodist Church in Milwaukee on August 18, 2002. This piece also appeared in the Proper 18 (Cycle B) edition of StoryShare.
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How to Share Stories
You have good stories to share, probably more than you know: personal stories as well as stories from others that you have used over the years. If you have a story you like, whether fictional or "really happened," authored by you or a brief excerpt from a favorite book, send it to StoryShare for review. Simply click here share-a-story@csspub.com and e-mail the story to us.
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New Book
The third book in the vision series, Shining Moments: Visions of the Holy in Ordinary Lives (edited by John Sumwalt), is now available from CSS Publishing Company. (Click on the title for information about how to order.) Among the 60 contributing authors of these Chicken Soup for the Soul-like vignettes are Ralph Milton, Sandra Herrmann, Pamela J. Tinnin, Richard H. Gentzler Jr., David Michael Smith, Anne Sunday, Nancy Nichols, William Lee Rand, Gail Ingle, and Rosmarie Trapp, whose family story was told in the classic movie The Sound of Music. The stories follow the lectionary for Cycle A.
Other Books by John & Jo Sumwalt
Sharing Visions: Divine Revelations, Angels, and Holy Coincidences
Vision Stories: True Accounts of Visions, Angels, and Healing Miracles
Life Stories: A Study in Christian Decision Making
Lectionary Stories: Forty Tellable Tales for Cycle A
Lectionary Stories: Forty Tellable Tales for Cycle B
Lectionary Stories: Forty Tellable Tales for Cycle C
Lectionary Tales for the Pulpit: 62 Stories for Cycle B
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About the Editors
John E. Sumwalt is the pastor of Wauwatosa Avenue United Methodist Church in Milwaukee, and is the author of eight books for CSS. A graduate of the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the University of Dubuque Theological Seminary (UDTS), John received the Herbert Manning Jr. award for Parish Ministry from UDTS in 1997. John is known in the Milwaukee area for his one-minute radio spots which always include a brief story. He concludes each spot by saying, "I'm John Sumwalt with 'A Story to Live By' from Wauwatosa Avenue United Methodist Church."
John has done numerous storytelling events for civic, school, and church groups, as well as on radio and television. He has performed at a number of fundraisers for the homeless, the hungry, Habitat for Humanity, and women's shelters. Since the fall of 1999, when he began working on the Vision Stories series, he has led seminars and retreats around the themes "A Safe Place to Tell Visions," "Vision Stories in the Bible and Today," and coming this spring: "Soul Growth: Discovering Lost Spiritual Dimensions." To schedule a seminar or a retreat, write to jsumwalt@naspa.net or phone 414-257-1228.
Joanne Perry-Sumwalt is director of Christian Education at Wauwatosa Avenue United Methodist Church in Milwaukee. Jo is a graduate of the University of Wisconsin-Parkside, with a degree in English and writing. She has co-authored two books with John, Life Stories: A Study In Christian Decision Making and Lectionary Tales For The Pulpit: 62 Stories For Cycle B. Jo writes original curriculum for church classes. She also serves as the secretary of the Wisconsin chapter of the Christian Educators Fellowship (CEF), and is a member of the National CEF.
Jo and John have been married since 1975. They have two grown children, Kathryn and Orrin. They both love reading, movies, long walks with Chloe (their West Highland Terrier), and working on their old farmhouse in southwest Wisconsin.
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StoryShare, August 14, 2005, issue.
Copyright 2005 by CSS Publishing Company, Inc., Lima, Ohio.
All rights reserved. Subscribers to the StoryShare service may print and use this material as it was intended in sermons, in worship and classroom settings, in brief devotions, in radio spots, and as newsletter fillers. No additional permission is required from the publisher for such use by subscribers only. Inquiries should be addressed to permissions@csspub.com or to Permissions, CSS Publishing Company, Inc., P.O. Box 4503, Lima, Ohio 45802-4503.
What's Up This Week
A Story to Live By: "The Sound of a Man Forgiving"
Shining Moments: "A Time to Weep" by Christina Berry
Good Stories: "Leonardo the Lonely Squirrel" by John Sumwalt
Scrap Pile: "Foreign Territory" by John Sumwalt
What's Up This Week
The story of Joseph forgiving his brothers in the Genesis text is one of the most profound examples of grace in scripture. In "The Sound of a Man Forgiving" in this week's A Story to Live By, we see how God's grace is still transforming lives today. Lloyd LeBlanc, the father whose murdered son's story is the subject of Helen Prejean's book Dead Man Walking, says, "Forgiveness is never going to be easy. Each day it must be prayed for and struggled for and won." In Shining Moments, Christina Berry tells about a very unexpected reaction from a father grieving the death of his son.
A Story to Live By
The Sound of a Man Forgiving
And he kissed all his brothers and wept upon them; and after that his brothers talked with him.
Genesis 45:15
Helen Prejean, author of Dead Man Walking, tells how the father of a murdered son forgives his murderer:
Lloyd LeBlanc has told me that he would have been content with imprisonment for Patrick Sonnier. He went to the execution, he says, not for revenge, but hoping for an apology. Patrick Sonnier had not disappointed him. Before sitting in the electric chair he had said, "Mr. LeBlanc, I want to ask your forgiveness for what me and Eddie done," and Lloyd LeBlanc had nodded his head, signaling a forgiveness he had already given. He says that when he arrived with sheriff's deputies there in the cane field to identify his son, he had knelt by his boy -- "laying down there with his two little eyes sticking out like bullets" -- and prayed the Our Father. And when he came to the words "Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us," he had not halted or equivocated, and he said, "Whoever did this, I forgive them." But he acknowledges that it's a struggle to overcome the feelings of bitterness and revenge that well up, especially as he remembers David's birthday year by year and loses him all over again: David at 20, David at 25, David getting married, David standing at the back door with his little ones clustered around his knees, grown-up David, a man like himself, whom he will never know. Forgiveness is never going to be easy. Each day it must be prayed for and struggled for and won.
Sister Helen Prejean, CJS, is an author, organizer, and crusader against capital punishment. This segment is from Dead Man Walking: An Eyewitness Account of the Death Penalty in the United States (Vintage, 1994).
Shining Moments
A Time to Weep
by Christina Berry
And he wept so loudly that the Egyptians heard it, and the household of Pharaoh heard it.... Then he fell upon his brother Benjamin's neck and wept, while Benjamin wept upon his neck. And he kissed all his brothers and wept upon them; and after that his brothers talked with him.
Genesis 45:2, 14-15
A dear friend's eldest son, age 31, died unexpectedly in a city on the west coast. As she and her husband were planning to travel there to attend a memorial service her son's friends and partner had arranged, and to collect his things, she told me that her husband did not know their son was gay. The relationship between father and son had been strained in the past, and we were sure my friend's husband, a really traditional guy, would not handle this information well.
"How could he not know?" I asked. "Are you going to tell him?" She said that she would wait and see.
They had so much to deal with in their preparations that we never had a chance to talk again before they left. Amid much chaos and grief, they left home. On the plane she said something in passing about their son and his roommate. Her husband answered, referring to the roommate as the son's partner.
My friend said, "Where did you learn that?"
"Well, he told me."
"What did he say?" Her husband related what their son had told him. "When did you find out?" my friend asked, shocked.
"Two years ago, that time I was in the hospital."
"Why didn't you say anything to me?"
Her husband looked surprised. "Didn't you know?" he asked. She was so relieved she didn't have anything more to say.
When they arrived at the home of their son's friend, where the memorial service was being held, the first person they saw was the son's partner. My friend said her big, macho husband looked at this bereaved young man, then went to him, enfolded him in his arms, and said, "Thank you for loving my son." And the two of them wept together.
Christina Berry is a member of St. Andrew Presbyterian Church in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and a student at Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary in Austin, Texas. For the past 15 years she has served Presbyterian churches as a volunteer, as children's ministry staff, and as a preacher and pastoral intern. Christina was the writer for the PC(USA) Children's Mission Yearbook for 2003 and for 2004, and was a contributing writer to Seasons of the Spirit curriculum for 2005.
Good Stories
Leonardo the Lonely Squirrel
by John Sumwalt
Jesus left that place and went away to the district of Tyre and Sidon. Just then a Canaanite woman from that region came out and started shouting...
Matthew 15:21-22a
Once upon a time, in the land of gray squirrels, there lived a little red squirrel named Leonardo. There were many little gray squirrels, and they had a wonderful time chasing each other about from tree to tree, but Leonardo was the only little red squirrel in the whole forest. Every day he watched the little gray squirrels playing together, and he wished that he had someone to play with too. But alas, the little gray squirrels never invited him to play with them.
Leonardo became very lonely -- it is no fun to play all by yourself. So one day he scampered up to the little gray squirrels and asked if he could play with them. They took one look at him and said, "Sorry, Red, you're the wrong color. We only play with gray squirrels. Go away, you're bothering us."
"Oh yeah?" said Leonardo. "We'll see about that!" Before the little gray squirrels could blink, he ran up the tree they had been playing in and called out over his shoulder, "Catch me if you can!" Without stopping to think about what color he was, the gray squirrels took off after him. They chased him all afternoon and didn't give up until they heard their mothers calling them to come home to supper. By that time they had forgotten about Leonardo's color -- they just wanted to catch him. "We'll catch you tomorrow," they called out as they headed for home.
Leonardo smiled. He wasn't lonely anymore.
Scrap Pile
Foreign Territory
by John Sumwalt
Matthew 15:21-28
Seeking to avoid the crowds that surrounded him everywhere he went in Israel, Jesus leaves the country for a little R&R. Tyre and Sidon were in Phoenicia, a region in Syria which stretched north between Galilee and the Mediterranean Sea.
This is foreign territory, a dangerous place for a Jew to be. The Phoenicians are of Canaanite stock, the ancestral enemies of the Jews, the forbearers of the people we know as Palestinians today. To Jews in Jesus' time, all non-Jews (that is, all gentiles) were considered to be unclean. Anyone who did not keep the Jewish cleanliness laws was by definition "dirty." A Jew was to have nothing to do with anyone who was unclean.
Have you heard the expression "dirty foreigner"? Some of us have grown up in families who were called that when we emigrated here from another part of the world. My own Irish ancestors, my mother's people, the Longs of Longfield (in Tipperary), who came to Wisconsin in the 1850s during the potato famine, were called that and worse. I believe "dirty micks" was the most common expression of derision. Irish, Italian, Polish, German, Hispanic, Asian, African, Indian, Scandinavian, Native American, Arab, and Jew -- we have all had our turn as a despised minority in Wisconsin.
I am sad to say that in my childhood I heard members of my own extended family refer to African-Americans as "dirty." When I was in high school our family was a part of an exchange program with a county in Mississippi. An 11-year-old African-American girl named Linda Gulledge came to stay with us for three weeks. One of our relatives was quite distressed about this. She said to my mother, "Aren't you worried about her blackness rubbing off on the sheets?" She was very serious.
That is an attitude born of fear and ignorance, a learned social prejudice which has no basis in fact but is as common in our time as it was in first-century Israel.
Some of you remember the late Larry Wasson, a longtime member of this congregation who used to tell about his racist upbringing in a little coal-mining town in the foothills of the Ozarks in Arkansas. Larry said:
"One of the high points of the history of this little town, its sense of its importance, was a simple statement that floated around the community almost like an ambiance; and that statement was: 'No n______ ever stayed overnight in this town.' (You know the "n" word.)
"My parents didn't particularly promote that statement. They were neutral about it, and I thought that I was not affected by it. I thought that I was fairly free of any kind of prejudice. I grew up, went on to high school and college. In college, the janitor in our dormitory was a negro, liked and respected by everyone on campus, including me. So I went on assuring myself that I was free of any kind of racial bias.
"After we married, my wife and I came to Milwaukee, and in due course we became chairpersons of the Commission on Christian Social Concerns in this church. As a part of our responsibility to the commission, my wife suggested that maybe it would be a good idea for us to visit one of the African-American United Methodist churches in Milwaukee. I agreed to it without any major reservations.
"So one Sunday morning we went down to one of the black neighborhoods. We parked our car and walked over to the church, about a block away. And I found myself struck by a tremendous sense of dread. It's nothing I can put a name to, even now. It was just a dread I felt of going into that church. It amazed me, because I still didn't think of myself as prejudiced. But if I had had any kind of excuse with which I could have saved face, I would have turned around and gone back home. But my wife didn't let that happen! She took my arm and we went on into that church, where we were accepted like long-lost kinfolk.
"Well, that's the story of how I became aware of the fact that I had been tainted by the racism I grew up with: that I had carried around an internal bias that I had not even been conscious of. Having a spotlight shone on something in yourself that you don't like is very helpful in taking steps to remedy it. One thing I did was to sing part-time in the negro church choir. Our church had two worship services, so it was easy for me to visit the African-American church and still attend my own congregation. And a few years later, my wife and I became members of the board of directors of Northcott Neighborhood House, just about four years after it was formed, and while it was in the process of trying to find its role in the African-American community in Milwaukee. We worked closely there, got well acquainted with many people, and one woman in particular became a close friend. She invited my wife and me to her home one week for Sunday dinner. And after dinner neighbors and friends came in and we had a delightful conversation. It wasn't until about 11:00, when the group broke up and we were getting in the car to go home, that I became conscious of the fact that my wife and I had been the only white people present." (from Lectionary Tales For The Pulpit, CSS Publishing Company, 1996, pgs. 117-119)
It can be disconcerting to go into foreign territory. Strange places and strange peoples can bring out the worst of our fears and bad behavior. And strangely, it is in foreign territory that we often learn more about ourselves than anywhere else. Richard Rohr writes in Simplicity: The Art of Living (Crossroads, 1990) that to find a new way of life, "You have to leave the world where you have everything under control. You have to head into a world where you are poor and powerless. And there you will be converted in spite of yourself" (pg. 113).
Jesus is in foreign territory, and a "dirty foreigner" approaches him. The fact that she is a woman compounds the dilemma for Jesus. Jewish men were not to speak to women in public, even members of their own families, lest they risk making themselves unclean.
The Canaanite woman shouts at Jesus, "Have mercy on me, Lord, Son of David." She addresses him as the Messiah; she knows exactly who he is, something that even the disciples were not yet clear about. She yells, "My daughter is tormented by a demon."
Jesus ignores her: "...he did not answer her at all." But he must have known that his little vacation was over. The disciples urge him to send her away because she won't stop her shouting. Jesus finally speaks: "I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel."
The woman is not deterred by this. She comes and kneels at his feet, the proper deferential position for a woman in this time and place. And she pleads with him, "Lord, help me."
Jesus responds in a manner that seems uncharacteristically harsh. "It is not fair to take the children's food and throw it to the dogs." This is a sharp rebuke. To suggest that someone is like a dog is not a compliment. But without missing a beat, the woman answers him. And I think she must have smiled as she said this. "Sir, even the dogs under the table eat the children's crumbs." Bada-bing, bada-bang. The woman is good at repartee. She does to Jesus what he is so good at doing to the critics who dare to engage him in oral combat. Nowhere else in the Gospel accounts is there any report of anyone so clearly getting the best of Jesus. This Canaanite woman takes Jesus to school, and he knows it. What's even more surprising, Jesus not only gets it, he admits it. He does what all of us can learn to do when we are shown to be wrong. He graciously acknowledges the rightness of her position.
"Then Jesus answered her, 'Woman, great is your faith! Let it be done for you as you wish.' And," Matthew writes, "her daughter was healed instantly."
There are two miracles here. The first one is obvious and by itself no small thing. The demon that possessed this child, whatever it was, is gone. If you have ever loved a child who suffered from some debilitating, perhaps painful, illness, you know why this woman is willing to risk public humiliation to get help. She will do whatever is needed to make her daughter well. She has nothing to lose and everything to gain.
Jesus heals this little girl, but clearly it would not have happened except for this mother's great love. In one of his study books, James Moore calls this "love with an attitude." He says the woman was bold and courageous because she lived by an attitude of love. She would not be put off. She would not be discouraged. She would not give up. "Love bears all things, hopes all things, believes all things. Love never ends." Long before the apostle Paul penned these words, this Canaanite woman lived them.
The second miracle in this story of healing is even more significant. Jesus' immediate response to the Canaanite woman is tribal. "I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel."
We are all members of a tribe first. Who you are related to counts for something in this world. My Uncle Theron hired me to work for him in his milk-testing lab when I was in college, not because I was more qualified than a dozen or so others he could have hired, but because I was his sister's son. He preferred to pay someone in his own family even though he might have found someone more qualified than me. I loved him for that then, and I love him for it now. Families take care of their own. Blood is thicker than water and everything else.
How many wars have been fought, how many millions have died in our world because of this? In 1994, 800,000 persons from the Tutsi tribe in Rwanda were murdered by members of the Hutu tribe, who were then in power. "Ethnic cleansing" we now call this, bad blood between neighbors which begins with simple disagreements about religion and who owns what territory, and ends in a bloodbath. Witness Bosnia, Kosovo, Burundi, Chechnya, Kurdistan, Northern Ireland, and Palestine, to name just a few of the places where ethnic tensions have erupted in violence again and again. One wonders where God is in these places, why it seems that God cannot be heard or is not known in these bleeding hearts.
Jesus said to the Canaanite woman, "It is not fair to take the children's food and throw it to the dogs." The Canaanite woman speaks with the voice of God to the Son of God (is that possible?) when she says, "Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from the master's table."
In 1988 one of this Canaanite woman's descendants was on trial in Israel for "incitement and possession of inciting materials," having illegal books and tapes in the library of the Society for the Rehabilitation of the Family, for which she served as president. Samiha Khalil was known at that time as the most powerful woman on the West Bank. Her Palestinian neighbors affectionately called her "Khalil Umm Khalil" (Aunt Umm Khalil). "But perhaps the best way to describe Khalil is the way she described herself. 'I am Palestinian to the core. My wish before I die is to have a passport with the word "Palestinian" on it.' When the Israeli military governor of Khalil's district asked how she was one day, she responded dryly, 'God is with us.' Not to be outdone, the governor responded, 'No, he is with us.' Without blinking an eye, Khalil shot back, 'God was with you, but he is beginning to correct his mistake' " (The Christian Century, November 23, 1988). Bada-bing, bada-bang!
Last month, a 13-member delegation sponsored by the General Board of Church and Society of the United Methodist Church conducted a fact-finding tour of the Middle East. These 13 American Christians in foreign territory were taken aback by what they saw and heard. It was a very different perspective than that provided by the American news media.
Nelda Reid of Dallas said now she understands how destruction of Palestinian croplands and damage to water supplies creates hardships in Arab communities. "Their lives are on hold, at the command of the Israeli army," she said. Bob Hughes of Seattle said he heard the word "suffocation" used to describe the conditions. "It's collective punishment for an entire community," he added.
During the visit the delegation spent the night of July 27 in farmers' homes in a Palestinian village. Les Solomon, of Alexandria, Virginia, noted that despite his extensive travels to other parts of the world, "I have never experienced the levels of repression on a people that I experienced during the visit. Its basic intent is to break the will of the Palestinian people by breaking their spirit." (From United Methodist News Service as printed in Newscope, August 9, 2002)
Esther Armstrong and Dale Stitt, of Portland, Oregon, have an ecumenical ministry called Journey Into Freedom that, among other things, sponsors what they call "Trips of Perspective." Esther wrote in their newsletter of a "wonderfully disturbing" trip to Haiti where they met some of the poorest of the poor. They heard stories of starving people so hungry they are forced to eat emaciated dogs and donkeys, and of schoolchildren in Port-au-Prince swallowing stones to assuage hunger pangs due to poverty. Why do they go? Esther says, "We go on our Trips of Perspective not to fix the problems, to have answers, or even to make a difference. We go to be present, to stand in solidarity with the people of Haiti, to confront our real powerlessness in the face of dire need, and to be transformed." (Journey Into Freedom, 4620 SW Caldew St, Unit E, Portland, OR 97219-1573, www.journeyintofreedom.org)
[At this point in the sermon I told Christina Berry's "A Time to Weep" story, and then repeated the following line from the Gospel text. "A Time to Weep" is a touching story that fits the "foreign territory" theme very well.]
"Then Jesus answered her, 'Woman, great is your faith! Let it be done for you as you wish.' And her daughter was healed instantly."
Excerpts from a sermon preached at Wauwatosa Avenue United Methodist Church in Milwaukee on August 18, 2002. This piece also appeared in the Proper 18 (Cycle B) edition of StoryShare.
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How to Share Stories
You have good stories to share, probably more than you know: personal stories as well as stories from others that you have used over the years. If you have a story you like, whether fictional or "really happened," authored by you or a brief excerpt from a favorite book, send it to StoryShare for review. Simply click here share-a-story@csspub.com and e-mail the story to us.
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New Book
The third book in the vision series, Shining Moments: Visions of the Holy in Ordinary Lives (edited by John Sumwalt), is now available from CSS Publishing Company. (Click on the title for information about how to order.) Among the 60 contributing authors of these Chicken Soup for the Soul-like vignettes are Ralph Milton, Sandra Herrmann, Pamela J. Tinnin, Richard H. Gentzler Jr., David Michael Smith, Anne Sunday, Nancy Nichols, William Lee Rand, Gail Ingle, and Rosmarie Trapp, whose family story was told in the classic movie The Sound of Music. The stories follow the lectionary for Cycle A.
Other Books by John & Jo Sumwalt
Sharing Visions: Divine Revelations, Angels, and Holy Coincidences
Vision Stories: True Accounts of Visions, Angels, and Healing Miracles
Life Stories: A Study in Christian Decision Making
Lectionary Stories: Forty Tellable Tales for Cycle A
Lectionary Stories: Forty Tellable Tales for Cycle B
Lectionary Stories: Forty Tellable Tales for Cycle C
Lectionary Tales for the Pulpit: 62 Stories for Cycle B
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About the Editors
John E. Sumwalt is the pastor of Wauwatosa Avenue United Methodist Church in Milwaukee, and is the author of eight books for CSS. A graduate of the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the University of Dubuque Theological Seminary (UDTS), John received the Herbert Manning Jr. award for Parish Ministry from UDTS in 1997. John is known in the Milwaukee area for his one-minute radio spots which always include a brief story. He concludes each spot by saying, "I'm John Sumwalt with 'A Story to Live By' from Wauwatosa Avenue United Methodist Church."
John has done numerous storytelling events for civic, school, and church groups, as well as on radio and television. He has performed at a number of fundraisers for the homeless, the hungry, Habitat for Humanity, and women's shelters. Since the fall of 1999, when he began working on the Vision Stories series, he has led seminars and retreats around the themes "A Safe Place to Tell Visions," "Vision Stories in the Bible and Today," and coming this spring: "Soul Growth: Discovering Lost Spiritual Dimensions." To schedule a seminar or a retreat, write to jsumwalt@naspa.net or phone 414-257-1228.
Joanne Perry-Sumwalt is director of Christian Education at Wauwatosa Avenue United Methodist Church in Milwaukee. Jo is a graduate of the University of Wisconsin-Parkside, with a degree in English and writing. She has co-authored two books with John, Life Stories: A Study In Christian Decision Making and Lectionary Tales For The Pulpit: 62 Stories For Cycle B. Jo writes original curriculum for church classes. She also serves as the secretary of the Wisconsin chapter of the Christian Educators Fellowship (CEF), and is a member of the National CEF.
Jo and John have been married since 1975. They have two grown children, Kathryn and Orrin. They both love reading, movies, long walks with Chloe (their West Highland Terrier), and working on their old farmhouse in southwest Wisconsin.
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StoryShare, August 14, 2005, issue.
Copyright 2005 by CSS Publishing Company, Inc., Lima, Ohio.
All rights reserved. Subscribers to the StoryShare service may print and use this material as it was intended in sermons, in worship and classroom settings, in brief devotions, in radio spots, and as newsletter fillers. No additional permission is required from the publisher for such use by subscribers only. Inquiries should be addressed to permissions@csspub.com or to Permissions, CSS Publishing Company, Inc., P.O. Box 4503, Lima, Ohio 45802-4503.
