Christian

Gospel Reading: Matthew 15.10-28
(Click HERE for last Sunday's readings)

I often think that if I'm a Christian, I'll be the last to know
- Kathleen Norris in Amazing Grace

I used to wonder whether the whole world was a sham. It seemed possible to me as an introspective (neurotic?) child that the reality I experienced was carefully staged.

You see, I didn't know what people were thinking, and I didn't know what they really did as soon as they left my sight. Maybe they stepped into a waiting room replete with discarded magazines and the drone of unwatched television sets until it was their turn to appear as a jogger, or a bank teller, or a President of the United States in the underwhelming drama that is the life of Scott.

My description sounds terribly narcissistic (at best). But the whole strange hunch arose from an appreciation of all that we don't really know, more than the thrilling or terrifying sense that the universe revolved around me. Self consciousness was the definition of all I really knew firsthand.

Religious faith has come to be a self conscious affair. We assume that religion happens, if it happens, in the recesses of self consciousness. Or it arises from an overly exercised self consciousness. But Kathleen Norris makes the counterintuitive suggestion that if she's Christian, she may be the last to know. How can that be?

Our gospel Sunday also shakes up our idea of what it might mean to be a Christian. The hero of the story, a Canaanite woman, is dismissed and demeaned by Jesus himself. It's clear that she doesn't have a warm feeling that she's loved by this Jesus. She just won't go away. And Jesus tells us that this is what great faith looks like.

Self consciousness would have (and still does) kept me from Jesus, I'm afraid. I'm comfortable thinking about religion, but I'm challenged by this Canaanite woman's religion. The same root for 'ligament' lives in 'religion'. Which reminds us that religion binds us to other people. It's not just an isolated, internal affair. So maybe there's nothing more religious than begging an offensive but apparently holy man for the miraculous healing of someone we love.

I don't think this woman was thinking about what it meant to be a Christian. She probably would be the last to know. But maybe Christian faith has always been a leap beyond self consciousness and towards someone or something else. An uninhibited leap towards the holy.