Cosmic Drama

Today we celebrate a milestone in salvation history: the opening of the Land of Promise to "the nations." Their representative is a Canaanite woman whose name spells out this landmark event: for it was Canaan upon which the Promised Land would be settled. Her name says, "the driven out," "the scattered," and "the despised." Jesus describes the situation concisely: the bread of life is set aside for "the lost sheep of the House of Israel" not for "the little dogs" of the Gentiles.

Now, this passage in St. Matthew's Gospel has long been controversial. For most English translations — the King James Version, the Revised Standard Version, the New International Version — render Jesus term for this suffering woman, dog, simply dog. "You see!" said The Most Reverend Frank Griswold, Primate of the Episcopal Church, "even Jesus was tainted by racism!" Recently others have pointed to this passage as evidence Jesus was not God, but a man who progressed to a Divine state. But such interpretations, you see, stumble because of poor translation. The underlying Greek word for this plainly derogatory term, which is actually κυναρίον / kunaríon is not "dog." The correct translation is "little dog." But we cannot grasp this distinction until we realize that the "little dog" was a magical amulet worn by Phoenicians and other pagans. Now, magic is not new to us. Consider Simon the sorcerer and others who burned their costly magic books (Acts 8:9ff). We encounter magic in the First Book of Samuel, as Saul goes to the Witch of Endor to summon the Prophet from the dead.

In particular, the "little dog" was associated with healing. And we infer that its putative powers have failed, for the Cananite woman seeks Jesus urgently asking that He heal her daughter. Now, Jesus acknowledges that her magic has failed set against the almighty power of God. He contrasts these two things in parallel phrases: "lost sheep" and "little dogs."

But to understand this passage more fully, we must reflect on the drama that Jesus is bringing about, for drama is the signature method Jesus uses to teach. If He were a university professor, all the students would say the same thing: He doesn't set out abstractions, but He places dramas before us.

Let us attend to the scene. The Lord and His Disciples trek to the district of Tyre and Sidon in Phoenicia, where magic was prevalent. Like Corinth, also a hotbed of magic, Tyre and Sidon were seacoast cities teeming with seaport excesses: public drunkenness of sailors, prostitution, as well as magic. The Disciples would have been on edge. They are far from the life well regulated by statutes of God. Their ideals were more focused on personal purity (as St. Paul lyrically described this morning in our Epistle lesson) than on the raucous world of the Gentiles. Small wonder, that Jesus says of those who resist God's statutes,

From afar the Disciples see the Canaanite woman approaching. Her perfumed fragrance precedes her. Perhaps they hear bells on her toes and bangles on her wrists. She would have been immodestly dressed. And, — "Oh, no!" — she is looking directly at them. She begins to speak to them! So they rush to Jesus

Jesus sees all the making of a drama. He permits dialogue to begin:

she says offering nearly a prayer of the Early Church. She continues,

No doubt, the Disciples whispered to each other, "This whole place is demon-possessed!"

Jesus then sets into motion that hallmark of drama: rising tension. He says,

And then tension continues to rise with His next statement:

And now the climax:

Her act of humility not only elicits the pathos of everyone in the theater, so to speak. But it acknowledges a latent connection between magic and Divine power, also suggested in St. Peter's interaction with Simon. That is, magic is but only a particle, a crumb, of the power of God: "the little dogs eat the Master's crumbs."

Bear in mind that Jesus very well could have begun healing Gentiles before now. He could have done it in passing, and few would have noticed. Surely, the same significance would have seen by us, the later Church: salvation to the Gentiles. But this is not the Master's way, this is not the Teacher's way. He wanted such a momentous announcement to be made from a high stage. And the necessary ingredients were right in front of Him: the pious Disciples, social intercourse with a Canaanite woman, and rampant demon possession, not to mention the failure of magic. He permits these elements to weave together, engendering rising action that leads to the purpose of this little drama:

which, after all, is the point of His ministry.

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Let us consider: what are Jesus' greatest teachings? Or let us borrow Jesus' words:

We know: He is the Son of God, begotten of the Father before all ages (Credo). He and the Father are One (Jn 17:21). He is the Creator of all worlds and all creatures (Jn 1:1-5). He is Life Itself. While every creature has being, He alone is Being. "I AM" is His Name (Exod 3:14). To ask with St. Paul," O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?" (1 Cor 15:55) is to commit understatement. For death, He repeatedly teaches, is a fiction, a fraud, a sham. Death is the evil one's vain attempt to disfigure a Divine force so great that our own century cannot claim to understand it: that stirring, sentient motion we call life. And, to be sure, we shall never have the power to create it. That we might even destroy it is no more than an illusion. For God made His human creatures to be permanent. No earthly power can alter His indefectible design .... as we learn on Holy Saturday. The question is not whether is there life after death, but rather where is life after death?

As we consider Jesus' statements at His trial, He could summon twelve legions of angels (that is, 60,000 unconquerable super-men), we realize that

He might have appeared amongst us as an invincible colossus with lightning proceeding from His fingertips with resounding thunder.

But Jesus, as He repeatedly says, is a Teacher. Rabbonia. The power He has chosen is to enlighten. He has called us to be His friends, and has prepared us for that friendship. As we considered last Wednesday, the Crucifixion is a Divine drama whose meaning is friendship with and the love of God.

Recall that His act of raising a widow's son from the dead was performed on a high stage. In the first century, any woman who lost her husband would become the face of destitution. Her only hope lay in her sons. And now the widow of Nain has lost her only son sounding her death knell. The funeral procession proceeds with wailing-unto-fainting, for this tragedy is two tragedies: the death of a son and a widow's certain doom. Jesus steps forward and before the multitude awakens the widow's only son from death:

Jesus later raises Jairus' daughter. This too was done on a high stage: the general mourning for the daughter of the synagogue ruler, Jairus' seeking out Jesus crying aloud as he went, a great crowd assembling following Jesus to where the girl lay. Suspense is heightened when we hear the words,

And then, before this great audience, Jesus extends His hand and says in sweet tones, "Little girl, arise."

In a third drama, Jesus' friend Lazarus has died. The Jews say that had Jesus been present to heal Him, this would not have happened (Jn 11:37). But healing, you see, is not His intention. His intention is drama.

He waits, permitting a large audience to fill the theater, so to speak. He waits for intense mourning to take hold including the recriminations that so often accompany a loved one's death. He waits for news to circulate far and wide. And He sets into a motion a rising tension as Lazarus' body decomposes filling the area with stench. Indeed, this is high drama! To borrow from the graphic King James translation,

And now the climax:

The scene is nothing less than perfection. The "wardrobe department," as it were, has outdone itself. And the whole of it — the long wait, the tension, the decomposing corpse, Jesus' loud command, Lazarus making his entrance onto the stage, still wrapped in his winding cloth — all combine to bring this drama to a crescendo that no one will forget.

What shall we call this Divine drama in three acts? I nominate, The Belittling of Death. Now there is a title that is sure to enrage the evil one!

But wait! The drama is not over! Take your seats, there is a fourth act! And this last, by comparison to the other three, is towering, even casting its long shadow over all human history. For two thousand years, it will continue to be fresh and new, year after year: a gut-wrenching spectacle, soaked with floods of tears and heaving sobs. Every Friday before the Vernal Equinox its silhouette is seen upon a hill causing powerful emotions to sweep over us. Even its place-name is darkly electric: Golgotha.

What ingenious art! On the one hand, who could not see it coming? Yet, it still overpowers anyone with an open heart. We have the three acts preceding it. The Protagonist repeatedly declares that He will be handed over to suffering and death and then rise again. Certainly, those around Him knew the ending of this cosmic drama: who saw Him command the ship-wrecking elements, who saw Him raise the dead .... three times, who heard that prophetic truth uttered in Nain, "God has visited His people!"

When we later encounter a tone of incredulity from the angel at the tomb — "Seek ye the living among the dead?!" — can we really be surprised?

Indeed, given all that has happened, who could expect otherwise from this angel?

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As might be expected, one school of thought insists that act four is about the offering of blood sacrifice to a deity. Indeed, their whole lifeworld revolves around blood sacrifice to a deity. This was their mindset, learned in Babylon and then instituted in Judah by Babylonian overlords. In this interpretation, Jesus' death has been offered to placate a god not very different from Marduk. The pattern, indeed, is not very different from pagan worship in general in the first century.

The Judean interpretation points to the timing of events, for all happened around the time of the Jewish Passover. You know, the offering of a lamb.

But non-Judeans would reply that act four has nothing to do with the Jewish Passover, which St. John the Theologian terms "Passover of the Jews" (Jn 2:13), a term he uses sixty-six times in his Gospel with evident distaste. In effect, he dismisses their feast as theirs, not ours.

Jesus and His followers were Hebrews from a far land hating Judah, hating Judah-ism. The very thought of going to Jerusalem was repugnant to them. "Not there!" they would cry out to the Master. If they went to the Temple, it would have been like the Essenes to make the acceptable offering of a purified mind and soul, but never blood sacrifice — a practice which enraged Jesus (Jn 2:15), a practice that He mocked in the Parable of the Good Samaritan. In the words of their contemporary, Philo,

This is an expert witness speaking.

Jesus' Passion did not take place in one week. It began when He emptied Himself of Heavenly Glory and entered the horrible confines of narrow humanity. Yes, He was truly human and truly died a human death. But, tell me, which would you prefer if given two inescapable choices? More than three decades confined in a small, suffocating box or one week of suffering and three hours of crucifixion? To fail to reflect on these two choices is to fail to reverence the depths of our Lord's Passion.

We must never forget that He was the Lord of all Life — the Logos, the Everlasting God begotten before all ages. To propose that this elaborate drama, prepared from the foundations of time, was simply about a swap of a human animal for salvation is reductio-ad-aburdum. Indeed, no one would ever have proposed such an interpretation had it not been for the hybrid religion planted in Zion by the Persians (who had conquered Babylon).

The meaning of the great fourth act, as Jesus Himself said, is

You know: as Damon had for Pythias and Pythias had for Damon, a story celebrated for its holiness throughout the known world. Jesus stood in the place of our execution as a ransom committed to the highest friendship and love for us. And He said,

The reason this fourth act has retained so powerful a hold on us is simple: Damon stepped forward boldly to be a ransom for Pythias; Pythias stepped forward boldly to be a ransom for Damon. But no one stepped forward for Jesus, a fact that will haunt us forever. Talk about generational sin! Pilate announced loudly to the people that he would release Jesus if only someone would speak in his favor. No one's life would be required .... only their friendship and love. But the people cried out instead, "Crucify Him!" without a single dissenting voice. And His Disciples, who claimed they would die for Him (Thomas and Peter come to mind) all ran.

What is the message of act four? He called us His friends. He invited us into Divine life. He stood as our ransom. And then He waited. He waited for us to return. But no one came.

We who are the heirs of this shameful state of affairs are invited into the work of a lifetime. No, it will not do to propose a swap. This shallow interpretation should have died out with the Zion Temple.

What Jesus has offered us is to follow Him, to up our Cross and in this, finally, to offer ourselves as a ransom as He had done. This is the proper ending to a drama named The Belittling of Death. But let us go up to a higher view and propose a revised title: The Exaltation of Life. For this is the Divine command He has bequeathed to us: nothing less than to enter the Kingdom of God. He calls us to be His friends! He commands us that we take up our Cross. My brothers and sisters, let us boldly step forward and do what our ancestor failed to do. Let us declare ourselves to be the ransom for whom He waited. As Isaiah would say, "Send me. I will go."

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.