The Ego-less Dog

Sermon preached by the Rev. Lowell E. Grisham, Rector
St. Paul's Episcopal Church, Fayetteville, Arkansas
August 17, 2008; 14th Sunday after Pentecost, Proper 15, Year A
Episcopal Revised Common Lectionary

(Matthew 15:21-28) -- Jesus left Gennesaret and went away to the district of Tyre and Sidon. Just then a Canaanite woman from that region came out and started shouting, "Have mercy on me, Lord, Son of David; my daughter is tormented by a demon." But he did not answer her at all. And his disciples came and urged him, saying, "Send her away, for she keeps shouting after us." He answered, "I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel." But she came and knelt before him, saying, "Lord, help me." He answered, "It is not fair to take the children's food and throw it to the dogs." She said, "Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters' table." Then Jesus answered her, "Woman, great is your faith! Let it be done for you as you wish." And her daughter was healed instantly.
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"It is not fair to take the children's food and throw it to the dogs."

"Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters' table."

That is one of the most fascinating exchanges in all the scriptures. Six years ago when I last preached on this passage, I talked about it from Jesus' perspective. I talked about cultural conditioning. Cultural conditioning is the world-view that our environment gives us -- what our families, our neighbors, our religion, our nation and our circumstances tell us about the way things are. We drink it in with our mother's milk; we breathe it in from the atmosphere. It is part of our human inheritance.

Even Jesus, the Son of God, was formed by his own cultural conditioning. Orthodox faith asserts that Jesus was fully divine and fully human. Cultural conditioning was part of his humanity, just like his need for rest after a long day or the effect of nails on his human flesh. Jesus had been taught, like every child in Nazareth, that Canaanites are dogs. The dogs we're talking about weren't pets; they were scavengers. Unclean animals, like vultures or buzzards. "Dog" was a word you used to describe someone who was unclean. After centuries of conflict and alienation, for Jews, all Canaanites were dogs; and the Canaanites felt the same way about Jews. It was part of their cultural conditioning.

In our story today, a Canaanite woman confronts Jesus. She will not be silenced by the disciples; she will not be deflected politely by Jesus' gentle bit of self definition when he says, "I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel." Instead, she keeps on pushing; she won't stay in her place. So Jesus speaks to her as he has been taught. "It is not fair to take the children's food and throw it to the dogs."

Now, I know people from an older generation who were conditioned to call black people by the "N-word," without any personal hostility. I remember when, for me, gay people were "queers." I've heard ugly culturally conditioned references to Moslems and Middle-Easterners, especially during the past seven years. Occasionally I hear people say things about Fayetteville and Springdale. I'm cheering for the Americans during the Olympics. How about you? We're all culturally conditioned. It's part of our inheritance as human beings.

But Jesus shows us the way out. When this Canaanite woman says, "Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters' table," Jesus hears something that is out-of-sync with the way he always thought things were. Her comment catches him by surprise. It is not the comment of a dog. It is a profoundly human comment. More than that, it is a word of faith. His ears are always open to the possibility of a word of faith, even in unexpected places. He looks again at this woman whom he had been taught was just a dog, and he recognizes that she is a child of God. Instantly, without hesitation, he throws away a lifetime of cultural conditioning and responds to her with divine compassion, "Woman, great is your faith! Let it be done for you as you wish." Her daughter is healed instantly.

Right after this story, Jesus goes into a pagan foreign land, and gives to them the same gifts he has been giving to his own people -- healing them and feeding a multitude. Never again did Jesus distinguish between outsiders and insiders as he mediated the abundant extravagance of God's grace to all people.

But I want to look at this story also from the perspective of this remarkable woman. Look at her. She comes to this foreign man and his retinue. She asks for mercy, placing her daughter's plight before them. She meets stony silence. She hears the disciples tell him to send her away. Then the man politely declines her request. She could have left at that point and kept her dignity. Instead, she will not take "no" for an answer, and keels before him, begging. He responds, "It is not fair to take the children's food and throw it to the dogs." She knows what that means.

Notice what she doesn't do. She doesn't resist; she doesn't retain the insults; she doesn't react emotionally. "Dogs! Are you calling me a dog? Let me tell you what you are..." She doesn't reconfirm her own cultural conditioning and leave reinforced, "My mother told me about you Jews. She was right."

"It is not fair to take the children's food and throw it to the dogs."

I imagine some time elapsed, as she let the insulting stuff pass through her. I can feel the silence before she turns, and with dignified humility says, "Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters' table." What a disarming response.

This is an "ego-less" response. It might be what Eckhart Tolle calls an "out of ego experience." Listen to what he offers in his popular book A New Earth:

A powerful spiritual practice is consciously to allow the diminishment of ego... For example, when someone criticizes you, blames you, or calls you names, instead of immediately retaliating or defending yourself -- do nothing. Allow the self-image to remain diminished and become alert to what that feels like deep inside you. For a few seconds, it may feel uncomfortable, as if you had shrunk in size. Then you may sense an inner spaciousness that feels intensely alive. You haven't been diminished at all. In fact, you have expanded. You may then come to an amazing realization: When you are seemingly diminished in some way and remain in absolute non-reaction, not just externally but also internally, you realize that nothing real has been diminished, that through becoming "less" you become more. When you no longer defend or attempt to strengthen the form of yourself, you step out of identification with form, with mental self-image. Through becoming less (in the ego's perception), you in fact undergo an expansion and make room for Being to come forward. True power, who you are beyond form, can then shine through the apparently weakened form. This is what Jesus means when he says, "Deny yourself" or "Turn the other cheek." (p. 215)

Beneath all of the ego self -- the false self that we build up defensively around us, cooperating with the cultural conditioning that tells us who is strong, who is right -- beneath all of that we are all essentially God's children. We are all created in the image of God, filled with divine life, and one with every other creature in the universe. That's our true condition.

Whenever we can dis-identify with the ego-self, the cultural self, the false self -- we can simply be. Needing no defense; needing no defending. At one with all life, including the one who might appear as enemy.

In Centering Prayer we teach the "four-R's" as a way to deal with distractions in prayer: resist no thought, retain no thought, react emotionally to no thought, and return ever-so-gently to the sacred word. Maybe that's something like what this Canaanite woman did in the presence of this discomfort. She offered no resistance; she retained no insult; she did not react emotionally to the situation; and she returned ever-so-gently to the love that prompted her need. She was here to help her daughter. Her Being came forward as she spoke the disarming words, "Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters' table."

Immediately two miracles happened. Her daughter was healed, and Jesus shed the cultural conditioning of a lifetime.

We are given, two lessons, two examples in this remarkable story. There is the example of the Canaanite woman who remained centered in her own Being while her ego was being attacked, and there is the example of Jesus who immediately dismantled his cultural conditioning when he saw a deeper reality. This story offers us a path to both inner peace and outer reconciliation.

The divine presence that is our true self is also the divine presence that is the deepest reality of every other self. Can our eyes open to see God within our Being and to see God within every other being? As the 13th century mystic Meister Eckhart said, "The eye with which I see God is the eye with which God sees me."
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Thanks to Jim Burklo and his article The Bible and Eckhart Tolle for ideas for this sermon. Published in The Progressive Christian, July/August 2008)

(to read my previous sermon on this passage, go to our web site www.stpaulsfay.org, click "sermons", click "2002", click "August 18, 2002, 13 Pentecost; Proper 15 Year A" or go directly to: http://stpaulsfay.org//sermon081802.html. Link to sermon )