The Outsiders' Faith
Sermon Text: Joshua 2.2-21
If you have ever walked along our beautiful coastline after
a storm, you’ve seen how the sea tosses up strange and wonderful things onto
the sand. Shells from the deep, tangled kelp, and sometimes, pieces of wood
from faraway places. The sea has a way of bringing the outside in, of
depositing the foreign right on our doorstep.
In a way, our readings today do the very same thing. They
crash into our comfortable world with stories of outsiders, foreigners, and
unlikely heroes. And in doing so, they challenge us, they unsettle us, and by
God’s grace, they show us the stunning breadth of His saving love.
Our first outsider comes from the book of Joshua. Her name
is Rahab, and she could not be more of an outsider. She is a Canaanite, a
citizen of Jericho—the enemy city destined for destruction. And she is a woman
labelled by her profession, a prostitute. By every religious, social, and
national standard of Israel, she is unclean, unworthy, and outside the
covenant.
Yet, when the two Israelite spies come to Jericho, it is
this woman, Rahab, who recognizes the hand of the one true God. “I know that
the Lord has given you the land,” she confesses. Her faith isn’t perfect or
theologically sophisticated, but it is raw and real. She has heard the stories
of the Red Sea and the kings defeated in the wilderness, and she has staked her
life, and the life of her entire family, on the God of Israel. This outsider
sees what the insiders of Jericho refuse to see. And she is saved, not by her
own righteousness, but by her faith, symbolized by the scarlet cord hanging
from her window—a thread of hope that would spare her from the coming judgment.
Fast forward to our Gospel reading, and we meet another
outsider. A Canaanite woman. It’s surely no coincidence that Matthew, writing
for a Jewish audience, specifically identifies her as such. She is a descendant
of the very people Israel was commanded to drive out. And she comes to Jesus,
shouting, “Have mercy on me, O Lord, Son of David!”
And what does Jesus do? At first, he seems to embody the
very exclusivity she fears. He is silent. Then, he tells the disciples he was
sent only to the “lost sheep of the house of Israel.” And when she persists, he
says those words that make us so uncomfortable: “It is not right to take the
children’s bread and throw it to the dogs.”
This is a hard saying. But look at her response. She doesn’t
argue. She doesn’t get angry. With breathtaking humility and fierce faith, she
accepts the analogy and turns it on its head: “Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat
the crumbs that fall from their masters’ table.”
In that moment, this outsider, this Canaanite woman,
demonstrates a faith that astounds Jesus himself. “O woman, great is your
faith!” He doesn’t say, “Great is your theological argument,” or “Great is your
purity.” He says, “Great is your faith.” Her faith, like Rahab’s,
was a faith that persisted from the outside in, a faith that trusted in the
abundance of God’s grace, even if it was just a crumb.
And this, dear friends, is where the Apostle Paul connects
the dots for us in his letter to the Romans. He lays out the beautiful, simple,
and universal mechanics of salvation: “If you confess with your mouth that
Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you
will be saved.” For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek; for the same
Lord is Lord of all, bestowing his riches on all who call on him.
No distinction. Rahab the Canaanite and the Canaanite woman
of Matthew 15 are not exceptions to God’s rule; they are the proof of it. The
circle of God’s mercy was always intended to be this wide. The covenant was
always meant to be this expansive.
So what does this mean for us, a Lutheran congregation here
on the coast of South Africa? We, who by historical and social accident, are
the “insiders.” We have the liturgy, the theology, the beautiful churches. We
have the bread and the wine. We are, in the analogy, the children at the table.
The uncomfortable, necessary question these texts force upon
us is this: Have we, in our comfort, forgotten that we are all, every one of
us, saved only by the faith of an outsider? Have we built invisible walls where
God has torn them down?
The story of our nation is a story of insiders and
outsiders, of those at the table and those told they were dogs. And the legacy
of that story is still with us, in our economics, in our geography, in the
unspoken tensions of our communities. The gospel today speaks directly into
that history. It tells us that God’s favour is not determined by our ancestry,
our nationality, or our social standing. It is determined by faith in Jesus
Christ, a faith that often burns brightest in those we least expect.
The scarlet cord in Rahab’s window is a sign for us. It is a
sign of God’s protection extended to all who trust in Him, regardless of their
past. It is a challenge to look for that thread of faith in the Rahabs of our
world—in the foreigner, the outcast, the one whose life story makes us
uncomfortable. And it is a call to ensure that our church is not a walled city
like Jericho, but a house with a scarlet cord in the window, a beacon of hope
for all who are seeking refuge in the God of Israel.
For we are not saved because we were first at the table. We
are saved because we, like Rahab, like the Canaanite woman, have dared to
believe that the God of Jesus Christ has given us the land, that His mercy is
abundant, and that even the crumbs from His table are enough to bring healing,
wholeness, and salvation.
Let us then, with humility and awe, approach this table not
as privileged insiders, but as grateful outsiders who have been welcomed in by
grace alone, through faith alone. And let us leave this place, looking for the
scarlet cords of faith all around us, and ready to extend the mercy we have so
freely received.
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy
Spirit. Amen.
No comments:
Post a Comment