Is It Fair?

Last week, we left Joseph in a pit. Well, not exactly. He was in a pit and then he was dragged out and sold into slavery and was on a camel train to Egypt— runaway train. At least, it felt so to him. He was not in control; he was pulled along by forces bigger than he was. And where did he end up? In a good job that he lost, in prison for years, then tossed before Pharaoh and asked to produce, like a performing monkey on a leash.

But it turned out well. He was given authority and power, and he used it wisely. And now he is second in command over all of Egypt. And his brothers show up, hat in hand, needing a handout, needing a government subsidy. They were the ones who threw him in a pit because they didn’t have the will to kill him as they wanted to. Now they are on Joseph’s doorstep, inches away from despair and destruction. And he kicks them to the curb.

Doesn’t he? Wouldn’t you? This is your chance to get back at all those who hurt you. Your chance to strike back against the runaway train that you were thrown on in that weak moment, in that dark time. Now you’ve got the power, how are you going to use it?

Well, read the text. That’s how Joseph chose to use the power. And we notice there’s a lot of kissing in this scene! And weeping. Not really what you’d expect in a confrontation of long-held grudges and chips on the shoulders. In fact, if we are honest, it sounds a little crazy. This forgiveness thing sounds wonderful in the abstract, but almost offensive in reality. Don’t you think they deserved a little more punishment than they got? Don’t you think they should pay for their crimes? How can they get off so easily and we all feel ok with that? Is that fair?

That’s the problem with this runaway train we are on: it makes what is sane sound crazy and what is crazy sound sane. Wouldn’t getting off the train make more sense? Wouldn’t living by different rules and trusting in a different driver make more sense?

See, that’s what happened to Joseph. He switched trains. From the outside, it looked like the same one. Things are out of control; tuff happens to him; he pays for mistakes that weren’t his. But from the inside, it all looked different. He was trusting in something different, something bigger than himself and his circumstances. He began to ask a different set of questions. Instead of, Why me?” or “Why is this happening to me?” he began to ask, “What does God require of me now?” No matter the depth of the now, no matter the hurt in the now, no matter the injustice of the now, he still could ask, “What does God require of me now?” And then based on the answers he discovered, he followed.

He trusted that the train wasn’t a runaway after all, that it had a destination that he couldn’t always see, or understand, or even like all that much. But he went along for the ride. He trusted the driver. Some of our greatest frustrations come not from the circumstances we are in, but from the belief that God should have worked them out in a different way. “If only,” we say and think and pray; “if only.”

The Canaanite woman was also on a runaway train or at least living in a world that isn’t fair, to ground the metaphor somewhat. It was a world in which she had little power and scant ability to control outcomes. She was overlooked and marginalized. So, she became used to having to be persistent and loud to get anything, to be heard and seen. She, no doubt, had been the subject of abuse long before the incident that Matthew records, so she shrugged off the name-calling and leaned into the image provided. “Even the dogs,” she said. She was willing to exist on crumbs because it meant that she and her child would eat and live a little bit longer.

We can argue whether this was a test on Jesus’ part, whether he was “just kidding,” as some commentators suggest, or was softening his words by calling her a cute little puppy, or even that Jesus was just having a bad day. We can speculate on what was going on in Jesus’s mind when he spoke those words to her, but I am not sure what we will accomplish in so doing.

And does anyone find it ironic that Matthew puts this story right after that whole conversation about words and what comes out of the mouth revealing what’s in the heart? Read the parenthetical part of the assigned gospel text for this week (Matthew 15:10-20. Are the lectionary preparers just messing with us, or is there something to learn here? I certainly would rather preach on verses 10 through 20 on their own than try and lay them alongside this event.

Is it our job to defend Jesus from his own actions or his own words? Or are we to learn something from this encounter about how we speak of others or how we respond to words that hurt? Jesus commends this woman’s faith, in the end. Elsewhere, he applauds persistence, and perhaps that is what he sees in her, the faith that won’t let her give up even when pressed down by those in power. Her faith grows out of both a desperate need and the willingness to challenge authority. The runaway train that threatens to sweep her away is not, in the end, more powerful than her strength of will. Is it fair? Of course not. But she and we come to ask not for fairness, but for mercy.