August 18, 2002 - Thirteenth Sunday after Pentecost
Genesis 45:1-15
    NRSV KJV CEV
Matthew 15:10-28
    NRSV KJV CEV

“Circles of Compassion”

            He drew a circle to shut me out –
            Heretic, rebel, a thing to flout.
            But Love and I had the wit to win –
            We drew a circle that took him in!

I believe that little piece by Edwin Markham to be quite profound and its message of inclusion too often ignored in our world.  The other day there was a story on the evening news about two mothers, one an Israeli, the other a Palestinian.  Both women are about the same age and both were growing increasingly angry and frustrated with their situations.  The Israeli woman took to the Internet after yet another suicide bombing and asked, “Why?”   She received many responses, some angry, and one that touched her.  Over a six month period the two women exchanged emails and finally, through the effort of the news network, they met and talked of the hope they had for peace in that place.  Another six months has passed and they communicate very little and their anger grows.  Where once they had drawn a circle, now they have joined the others in drawing a line.

Drawing lines seems to be a fairly ordinary part of our human experience.  I’m sure all of us have done it – don’t cross that line or… -- I know I have.  We saw lines drawn, and crossed, in the story of Joseph’s treatment at the hands of his brothers.  He had crossed the line and so they got rid of him, sold him into slavery in Egypt.  Now, wrapped in ignorance, They don’t realize that this important Egyptian official who holds the life of the clan in his hands is their very own brother.  It’s a very powerful story and a powerful image, as Joseph can no longer control himself and reveals his identity to them.

I wonder what flashed through their minds in that moment?  Joseph could have very easily ordered done to them what they had contemplated doing to him and had them killed.  He could have ordered them shackled and sold just as he was.  Instead, he embraces them, forgives them, and lets them in on a secret – God can do great and good things even with malicious actions.  God can take the lines we draw and turn them into circles of compassion.  They may have thought they were in charge but, as Joseph said, “it was God who sent me before you to preserve life.”  God’s providence, again, drew a wider circle and preserved the people of the covenant.

Sometimes we take God’s circles of compassion and turn them into “inner circles.”  I think this is another thing all of us have experienced in one way or another.  We finally get into this “inner circle,” this special place and we’re not particularly interested in sharing it with too many people.  What we end up doing is setting up boundaries or requirements that make sure only the “best” or “right” people are admitted to our circle.  People like us.  People we can feel comfortable around – people who were actually quite different from us until we got where we are in this circle!  Isn’t there an endless cycle of people who were once persecuted become persecutors, which takes us back to our Israeli and Palestinian friends.  Nevertheless, boundaries are set and rules are made and that is exactly what Jesus addresses in Matthew’s Gospel.

Jesus first takes on the question of ritual purity, the keeping of the traditions of the elders and the like, and shows very clearly that there is a real difference between ritual purity and the purity of the heart.  What we see in Matthew’s Gospel is that it is far more important to act in accordance with the heart of God than to obey rules laid down by people, no matter how sincere or well meaning they might be.  The Pharisees had advanced the concept of tradition alongside Torah to explain parts of the Law or to cover things not explicitly covered in it.  The Pharisees sought purity of observance of the letter of the Law, rather than purity of intent.  One might say that there is a conflict between orthodoxy and orthopraxy here – right belief over against right practice.

This question of purity is an important one in the Scripture and in our Christian faith.  Almost from the outset we’ve been trying to get at the purest or simplest expression of the faith.  So the whole history of doctrine is littered with people who set out to reform or purify, get called heretic or heterodox, and then manage to have their point rise to the top and do the same to someone else!  Our Congregational forebears, I’m not proud to say, did the very same thing and study after study has been written examining the whole development.  A classic example of it was when Roger Williams, the founder of the Baptists, was exiled by Massachusetts Bay colonists and sent to the “cesspool of vice,” which we now call Rhode Island.  They even allowed Catholics and Jews in there – the idea!  The Baptists originally were very tolerant, but not long ago the head of one of their largest groups declared that “God doesn’t hear the prayer of a Jew.”  Another inner circle had been formed.

While our tendency is to be making and refining orthodoxies the examples we see in the Scripture repeatedly call us to orthopraxy.  God sets the example for us by constantly widening the circle of inclusion until he draws the ultimate circle of compassion in the person and the work of Jesus Christ.  Jesus’ teaching directs us to right action, to the living out of what we believe.  He saw to the needs of the poor, he freed those enslaved by the demons of self-centeredness and fear, reconciled those who were estranged, healed the broken and embraced the outcast.  To borrow a cliché: he talked the talk and walked the walk.

The Canaanite woman was way outside the circle of Jewish inclusion – the Canaanites were the people displaced from the land by the people of the promise.  Some find Jesus’ initial words to her disturbing, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.”  However, the great teachers of the early Church saw the inclusion of the Gentiles in God’s will to salvation in this exchange.  The Canaanite woman became a type of the Church and her humility and persistent faith examples for the way the Church was to function.  The circle widens and reflects the wideness of God’s mercy, as the hymn writer said, “wider than the sea.”

There are two wonderful stories told about “The Seer,” Rabbi Jacob Yitzhak of Lublin, in Martin Buber’s Tales of the Hasidim. I believe these make the point of drawing circles of compassion as open as those God draws.

Rabbi Baer of Radoshitz once said to his teacher, the rabbi of Lublin: “Show me one general way to the service of God.”  The zaddik replied: “It is impossible to tell men what way they should take.  For one way to serve God is through the teachings, another through prayer, another through fasting, and still another through eating.  Everyone should carefully observe what way his heart draws him to, and then choose this way with all his strength.

Some time after Rabbi Shalom, the son of Rabbi Abraham, the Angel, had died, two of his disciples came to Lublin to study with the Seer.  They found him out in the open, saying the blessing of the New Moon.  Now, because he did this a little differently in some details from their teacher had accustomed them to, they did not promise themselves much from Lublin and decided to leave the town the very next day.  When they entered the rabbi’s house, shortly after, he spoke words of greetings to them and immediately added: “A God whom one could serve only in one set way – what kind of God would that be!”  They bowed before him and became his disciples.  [Buber, Tales of the Hasidim, bk 1, p. 313]

We experience the expanse of God’s mercy because God has opened God’s heart to us in Jesus and through him we find many ways to THE Way.  We discover, as we sang, “the love of God is broader than the measure of man’s mind; and the heart of the Eternal is most wonderfully kind.”  We will continue to bring the reign of God into our midst if we cultivate the persistent faith of the Canaanite woman and the openness of heart that we see in Jesus.  He was willing to go beyond unnecessary boundaries to ensure the well being of another.  All around us lines may be drawn, but with Love, God, we have the wit to win as we draw circles of compassion to take them in.