Rev. Tessie Mandeville
June 03, 2007
Christ Covenant MCC
Decatur, GA 30033

The day of Pentecost, which we celebrated last week, was a day of power and liberation. On that day the Holy Spirit broke through barriers of culture, race, religion, gender, socio-economic status, and sexual orientation. The Holy Spirit bestowed on us that same power to break through barriers in our own hearts, to relate across our differences, and to welcome one another in.

On the day of Pentecost the scriptures tell us that all the people were together in one place, and when the Spirit descended in tongues of flame, “each one heard them speaking in the native language of each.” (Acts 2:6) It doesn’t say that they no longer had their own languages and customs but that they could understand one another. God made breaking through barriers and relating across difference possible by the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, which transforms the lives of people and their communities.

Today we start our Pride sermon series, Voices of Pride, by looking at different LGBT leaders and activists. Our sister, Audre Lorde, writes from the particulars of who she is: Black woman, lesbian, feminist, mother of two children, daughter of Grenadian immigrants, educator, activist, and one who courageously battled breast cancer until her death in 1992.

In her book, Sister Outsider, she says, “Certainly there are very real differences between us of race, age, and sex. But it is not those differences between us that are separating us. It is rather our refusal to recognize those differences, and to examine the distortions which result from our misnaming them and their effects upon human behavior and expectation.”

Every year, the United Nations sponsors International Human Rights Day on December 10. This event was started in 1948 after the UN adopted the Declaration of Human Rights. Last year’s UN poster read, “ It is not wrong to be different, it is wrong to be treated differently if you are.”

This is a lesson that even Jesus had to learn. Our gospel story this morning shows that Jesus initially turned away a woman who needed help. This image of Jesus turning away a desperate woman is not the image of Jesus that I was taught about in Sunday School. It’s a troubling story. At the same time, this story gives me hope because it contains a powerful message of inclusion and it shows us that Jesus himself was transformed.

As the story unfolds, we learn that it is Jesus’ one and only trip outside the borders of Palestine. We don’t know exactly why he went there except that maybe he was tired and was looking for a place to ‘get away from it all.’ Whatever his reasons for going, he arrived and met a local Gentile woman. There were strong ethnic tensions and deep-seated hostilities between the Jews and Gentiles in that region. The fact that this Gentile woman would approach a Jewish Rabbi is an indication of how desperate she is.

This woman and Jesus have several perceived barriers between them: she is a Gentile from one region and he is a Jew from a another region and they have different customs; their religious paths are different—she is pagan and he is Jewish; she’s a woman and he’s a man in a patriarchal society which affords power and privilege to men and relegates women to the status of property; she is in a higher socio-economic class and he is a carpenter in the working class. And on top of this, her daughter, another female in a patriarchal society is possessed by a demon. There are many differences between them.

This woman breaks through the barriers that are meant to keep her in her place, approaches Jesus and cries out for help. This is where the story makes us uncomfortable because we realize that the first thing Jesus does is ignore her. Then he excludes her. Then he insults her. But to her credit, the woman does not take no for an answer, even though she makes the disciples uncomfortable and they beg Jesus to send her away.

The disciples want Jesus to fix their problem and Jesus answers the woman by saying, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of Israel.” In effect, he was saying, “I’m sorry but we don’t accept your kind here. You’re not covered in our mission statement. Go away.” We don’t like to think of Jesus speaking or acting this way, but he did.

But the Canaanite woman does not go away. She asks Jesus again to help her. He says, “It is not fair to take the children’s bread and throw it to the dogs.” I think he was better off when he was silent because now he’s crosses the line. He calls her a dog. In that time, when a Jewish person used the word ‘dog’ to describe a Gentile, it was a racial slur. This is where we see that momentarily, Jesus was limited in his vision. I would ask us not to judge Jesus or the disciples too harshly. Just as they were forced to face their perceptions of others, we, too, have to confront how we categorize people whom we perceive as different.

Many of us like to focus on the part of Jesus that was divine and gloss right over the part that was human. In this story, we see Jesus’ humanity and his inability to relate across difference. We’ll never know exactly why he said this but we do know that too often people resort to slurs or stereotypes to brush off people they don’t want to deal with.

But the woman is not deterred. She speaks truth to power when she talks back to Jesus and says, “Even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from the table.” She is not saying that it’s okay for some of us to eat at the table and others to get our crumbs; she is saying that in the economy of God, there is enough for everyone and there is room for everyone at the table. In God’s economy there are no scraps. She knows that God provides enough to include her.

In the course of this story, it is Jesus who is transformed. Who he is at the beginning is not who he is at the end. Jesus recognizes the differences that exist between them and then examines the distortions in his own heart that resulted from him misnaming the differences and using them to keep her at a distance. Jesus breaks through the barriers in his own heart that keep him from seeing this woman as an equal and equally worthy of God’s love. In doing this, he learns how to “relate across difference.” He reaches out to her and welcomes her in, just as she is, without expecting her to change who she is. It takes a person of enormous courage to change like this and to admit that he was wrong. I believe a Messiah who is willing to be transformed is the Messiah worth following.

Now some scholars and preachers will tell you that in this interaction, their differences melted away. But that’s not what I’m saying to us this morning. The barriers of race, ethnicity, nationality, religious differences and gender did not go away—and they shouldn’t be expected to go away; they were seen through different eyes, without fear and loathing.

Audre Lorde says, “Racism, sexism, heterosexism and homophobia are forms of human blindness which stem from the same root—an inability to recognize the notion of difference as a dynamic human force, one which is enriching rather than threatening [to us]. [But] we have been taught to either ignore our differences, or to view them as causes for separation and suspicion rather than as forces for change. Without community there is no liberation…But community must not mean a shedding of our differences, nor the pathetic pretense that these differences do not exist.”

In other words, ‘difference’ has a “creative function” in our lives. When we move beyond merely tolerating our differences, but rather let them be the creative catalysts they are meant to be, then “the necessity of interdependence will be unthreatening. Only within that interdependency of different strengths, acknowledged and equal, can the power to seek new ways of being in the world generate, as well as the courage and sustenance to act where there are no charters.”

Jesus found himself in a situation where his comfort was disrupted and then he learned from those disruptions. The Episcopal Church and the World-Wide Anglican Community finds itself today in a place where their comfort is disrupted because of the ordination of openly gay Bishop, Gene Robinson. It remains to be seen what they will learn from this disruption.

Once every ten years, the Anglican Community has a global gathering of all its Bishops. Just recently the Archbishop of Canterbury sent out 800 invitations to the Lambeth Conference but Bishop Gene Robinson wasn’t invited because he is gay. It seems to me that they see his sexual orientation as a barrier instead of recognizing this difference as a creative catalyst that can bring about change in the Episcopal Church and the larger Anglican Community which will lead to inclusion of all God’s people.

But here’s the thing I want us to remember, even as we celebrate Gay Pride this month. As Audre Lorde says, “There is no such thing as a single-issue struggle because we do not live single-issue lives.” It is important for us to connect LGBT justice struggles to the struggles of people of color, women, youth, poor people, people with disabilities, and others…because many of us have multiple identities: we are not only LGBT people. We also have racial, cultural, class, and other identities. The LGBT community must never ask us to check those identities at the door. In the same way, Christ Covenant MCC must never ask us to check any of our identities at the door. All of who we are is welcome here.

On the day of Pentecost, the Holy Spirit broke through barriers of culture, race, religion, gender, socio-economic status, and sexual orientation. The Holy Spirit bestowed on us that same power to break through barriers in our own hearts, to relate across our differences, and to welcome one another in. May we take to heart the wisdom of our sister, Audre Lorde. Hear her voice of pride as she says: “Now we must recognize differences among [people] who are our equals, neither inferior nor superior, and devise ways to use each others’ difference to enrich our visions and our joint struggles.” Sisters and brothers, if we do this, there is no telling what we can do to change the world, starting with our own hearts.” Let it be so. Amen.

Dr. Musimbi Kanyoro, General Secretary, World YWCA, “Celebrating Our Global Diversity”

Audre Lorde, Introduction by Nancy K. Bereano in Sister Outsider, The Crossing Press, NY, 1984, p. 8.

Audre Lorde, “Age, Race, Class, and Sex: Women Redefining Difference” in Sister Outsider, The Crossing Press, NY, 1984, p. 115.

Rev. Dr. Justin Tanis, “Eating the Crumbs that Fall from the Table” in Take Back the Word: A Queer Reading of the Bible, Pilgrim Press, 2002.

Audre Lorde, “Age, Race, Class, and Sex: Women Redefining Difference” in Sister Outsider, The Crossing Press, NY, 1984, p. 123.

Audre Lorde, “Scratching the Surface: Some Notes on Barriers to Women and Loving” in Sister Outsider, The Crossing Press, NY, 1984, p. 45.

Audre Lorde, “The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House” in Sister Outsider, The Crossing Press, NY, 1984, p. 112.

Ibid. p. 111.

Adapted from Everyday Miracles, “Reflections on the Revised Common Lectionary, Cycle A” by Jim and Shelley Douglass.

Rev. Elder Nancy Wilson, Moderator of Metropolitan Community Churches, “Public Statement on the Exclusion of Bishop Gene Robinson from Participation in the Lambeth Conference of the Anglican Communion.” May 2007.

Quote by Audre Lorde taken from the website of Zami: Atlanta’s Premier Organization for Lesbians of African Descent. Mary Anne Adams, Executive Director, www.zami.org

“Developing Innovative, Community-Based Responses to Anti-LGBT Violence” by American Friends Service Committee, Philadelphia, Penn.

Audre Lorde, “Age, Race, Class, and Sex: Women Redefining Difference” in Sister Outsider, The Crossing Press, NY, 1984, p. 122.

Copyright © 2007 by Rev. Tessie Mandeville. Permission granted for non- profit circulation with attribution of author and venue. Other rights reserved