Pasadena Presbyterian Church Sermon Text
September 7, 2003 - "Homecoming Sunday"

"The Corrective Lens of Love"
Preached by The Rev. Dr. Barbara Anderson

Scripture:  Mark 7: 24-31

(24) From there he set out and went away to the region of Tyre. He entered a house and did not want anyone to know he was there. Yet he could not escape notice, (25) but a woman whose little daughter had an unclean spirit immediately heard about him, and she came and bowed down at his feet. (26) Now the woman was a Gentile, of Syrophoenician origin. She begged him to cast the demon out of her daughter(27) He said to her, 'Let the children be fed first, for it is not fair to take the children's food and throw it to the dogs.' (28) But she answered him, 'Sir, even the dogs under the table eat the children's crumbs.' (29) Then he said to her, 'For saying that, you may go-the demon has left your daughter.' (30) So she went home, found the child lying on the bed, and the demon gone. (31) Then he returned from the region of Tyre, and went by way of Sidon towards the Sea of Galilee, in the region of the Decapolis.

- Mark 7: 24-31

My husband, Mark, and I stood one day on a cliff above the ocean.  The sea stretched away blue, until it met the equally blue horizon.  Instead of sand at the ocean's edge were thousands of smooth, oval stones, gray stones that all looked exactly alike, more of them than the mind could count. We walked the narrow path down the cliff face to what is called "Laughing Beach"  We sat for awhile and listened to the laughing sound the stones make as waves wash over them and then recede ... stone settling against stone, wave after wave of giggling laughter.  Except for this sound, the stones and beach were disappointing in their smooth, dull grayness. 

I love to get my feet wet and I'm exquisitely interested in the details of life.  So after awhile, Mark and I walked to the water's edge, and I bent down to look closely at the wet stones. Now the beach became so fascinating it was hard to leave.  I discovered that these smooth gray stones that all looked alike from a distance or when dry, show their true, beautiful colors when waves of salt water wash across them.  Now I could see that they were pink, red and blue, black and gray, marked by circles, stripes, and spots in an infinite numbers of patterns.  What I had seen at first was not their true character.  Their true character only became evident through the lens of water washing across them.

Much like those stones, we humans look alike to one another, until the film is washed away by the salt water of tears or the clear water of baptism  Then we see that our commonality is nuanced, our variety infinite, and our beauty stunning in its diversity.

Until our eyes and hearts are washed clean, we tend to see each other the way I saw those stones at first:  a sea of indistinct Anglo faces or Latino faces, Asian, African or Middle Eastern faces, young or old faces or middle aged ones.  Whether the faces look like ours or not, we rarely look below the surface.  We only see the mask or the generality, not the human joy and love, heartache and faith that lie beneath and are each person's true character and color.

We look at each other and assume we know what's beneath the surface: she's a nicely dressed Anglo woman, must have an easy life.  He's a Latino, must be a gardener.  But it turns out the Anglo woman's husband lost his job two years ago and the only reason they have food on the table is because their parents are helping.  And the Latino man is not a gardener, but a lawyer whose heart is both proud and breaking because he just took his eldest child to college.  Beneath each face lies the power and truth of a real, human life that wants to be seen and to see. 

Underneath the masks we wear, underneath the dust and dirt life deposits on us, underneath the assumptions others project upon us underneath are our God-given heart and all the life experiences that make us who we are, unique and beautiful in our diversity.  Let the waters of human suffering and joy and the waters of baptism wash your eyes and heart clean so you may be seen and see others as God sees us.

Recently, I heard a young woman from Guatemala share a small part of her life story and her argument with God.

When she was a little girl living in Guatemala, soldiers came down her street and broke open the door of her house.  Her grandmother hid her underneath a bed.  The soldiers fired their automatic weapons all around the room, killing her younger brother and terrifying the little girl.  Bullets came through the mattress where she was hiding, but they missed her.  Both she and her grandmother lived

Later she learned the soldiers had been trained by the United States military and the guns that killed her brother were made in the U.S.  She grew to hate Americans, and believed that we were all evil people who steal her country's resources and train soldiers to kill innocent children. 

She loved Jesus, however, and when she was a teenager, a missionary offered her a scholarship to attend college in the United States if she would join a Presbyterian drama and singing group that tours the U. S., helping God to change people's lives.  She argued with God: "I can't go there!  I hate those people!  They don't deserve you! They have no room in their hearts for you!  They killed my brother and my people!" 

Then one day, her heart broke open and God's love washed over her like waves over stones on a beach.  Her tears of anger and pain mixed with the water of her baptism.  God showed her the faces of Americans as brothers and sisters, parents and children, grandparents and friends who also want peace, and grieve when a loved one dies.  She saw us as like herself, sinners standing in the need of God.  She saw us, too, washed in the salt water of human suffering and joy and in the waters of baptism.  Our diversity, our shared humanity, our common need for God became beautiful and clear.  She followed God's call to the United States.  Her heart was healed.  She has become a voice of challenge and healing for others.  

Today, in the Gospel of Mark, we learn that even Jesus was tempted to judge people by their race, class and religion and to exclude some from love and healing in the ways we, too, are tempted.  It's not a pretty picture of Jesus when a Gentile woman simply asks him to heal her daughter and he not only refuses to help, he calls her a dog because she's not a Jew.  As if that's not a strange enough story right there, the woman argues with Jesus and convinces him that he's wrong. 

(I love this story of a woman changing Jesus' mind.  I believe the only two people recorded in the Gospels as ever changing Jesus' mind about anything are women: his mother at Cana and the Syrophoenician woman in today's story.  It is significant that in a heavily patriarchal society a Gentile woman is recorded as having changed Jesus' mind about the boundaries of God's love.)

God is not stopped by the boundaries we create or the masks we wear, by the lines we draw to keep some people out or the ways we puff ourselves up as though better than others.  The Syrophoenician woman's words wash over Jesus like waves on a beach.  He sees and remembers the common humanity he shares with this outsider woman, and their common standing before God.  He heals her daughter.

The story of the Syrophoenician woman's faithful, dogged persistence is preserved in scripture to teach us that God's love knows no boundaries of race or nation, of language or age, of status or position.  God's love washes away the protective masks we wear, the dirt of life, and the assumptions of others.  God's love  reveals the beautifully colored and uniquely patterned heart that is inside each of us. 

God sees our heartache at a loved one's illness, our worry about our marriages, our loneliness in an empty bed. 

God sees our struggle to do what is right, our disappointment at dreams unfulfilled, our depression at having to give up a driver's license, our longing for a home that's far away. 

God sees, as well, our joy at a job well-done, our hope for the future, our tenderness for our friends, our anger at oppression, our impatience with injustice, our rage at evil. 

When we are baptized, the eyes through which we see the world are washed with the salt water of human suffering and joy, and with the water of baptism.  In baptism, God gives us the same lens of love to see each other through which Jesus sees us.

In the church, those who live in plenty and those who struggle to pay electric bills share hymnals with each other in the pew, and stand side-by-side as equals at the Lord's Table.  Those whose grandparents lived in the United States welcome the children of those who arrived last month. 

The community of the church that welcomes and treats every person equally is different from the world around us that makes distinctions.  This is our witness to the world as the church, and particularly as Pasadena Presbyterian Church. God is, even now, washing our eyes clean, and making hearts made visible to one another, so that we see beauty in the hearts of all God's children.

Like Jesus and the Syrophoenician woman who confronted him, like the young woman from Guatemala and the Presbyterian missionary who challenged her, like myself as I knelt on the shore and watched  beautiful colors be revealed in stones I had too quickly dismissed, when we are washed by the love of God, we see through God's eyes the rich heartache and beautiful joy in each person's heart.  We see and are seen.  

Today, washed clean by God's love, we join together at the Lord's Table where no one is given crumbs.  We come to the Lord's Table, where Jesus welcomes everyone who seeks him.

(c) Copyright 2003 by Barbara A. Anderson.  All rights reserved.  Permission granted for non-profit use with attribution.