When the novelist, Henry James, was invited to become god-parent to George Du Maurier’s grandson, he was apprehensive about his qualifications for such a role. Doctrinally he was a sceptic. Du Maurier reassured him that the presiding minister at the ceremony to be held in this church was far too sensible to bring up religion on such an occasion. In fact the warm friendship between the rather worldly Punch cartoonist and his clerical neighbour* became for James a good example of the comfortable tolerance of the Church of England. Such tolerant inclusiveness was, however, under strain both from the Anglo Catholics and Evangelicals even in the 1880ies. In the coming elections for General Synod it will in many ways be the key factor. Where are the boundaries to be drawn round the Church of England and what are the qualifications for being inside rather than out?
It is a question that confronts the clergy in all sorts of ways now much more so than when I was first ordained, let alone in the 1880ies. If the clergy are ordained to order the church’s life then they are its boundary keepers. Whenever they are approached about baptism, or marriage, or the blessing of a gay relationship, or the organising of an interfaith act of worship, or the admission of unconfirmed children to communion, they are confronted with a choice about the church’s boundaries.
Today we say good bye to Philip as he goes off to start training for ordination. He has I suspect had several conversations in Gardnor Mansions with Alan Goodison about the boundaries of the Church of England. What we mean by orthodoxy has been one of his main challenges while he has been with us and no doubt even in the theological college he is going to it will remain a key concern as he prepares to become another of the church’s boundary keepers.
Today’s gospel reading is all about the crossing of a boundary. Usually we consider this story of the Canaanite women and her sick daughter from Jesus’ point of view. Less often do we look at the story through the woman’s eyes.
She is said to be a Canaanite in other words she represents that race which the Jews displaced from their land and who represent to a Jew all that is unclean and idolatrous. She is said to have come out from her own territory of Tyre and Sidon in other words she crosses a boundary into alien territory in order to meet Jesus. She speaks first and so as a women deliberately invades the male territory of Jesus and his disciples. And in asking for his help she is admitting that her own faith and her own holy men have been powerless to help her. And though this Jewish holy man at first reacts to her as she might have expected, she persists. Of course a Jewish holy man is going to say that his power is given by God for use among his own people. Of course his loyalty is going to be to his own kind. The faith of this Canaanite women tells her, however, that all people have a right to be healed. If God is indeed the source of such healing power then surely such goodness cannot be circumscribed by national or racial boundaries. And for that faith she is rewarded. And in the healing of her daughter Jesus allows himself to be shamed into a larger vision of his ministry. He crosses a boundary himself to meet the woman in a new place for both of them.
What this story has to say to modern boundary keepers isn’t necessarily obvious. It is set for us against a background in which both Paul and Isaiah are also talking in our other tow readings about the redefining of boundaries. Isaiah speaks of the foreigners who join themselves to the Lord and of a Temple which shall be a house of prayer for all peoples. Paul speaks to a Roman congregation about his hopes that one day Jew and Christian will be reunited. But in each instant we seem to see a picture of subordinates being brought into a dominant body the boundaries of that body may be extended but it is the newcomer who has to change. At least that is what it looks like on the surface; but if we look at the gospel story we see something else. We see how much the woman has had to leave behind yes – but we also see the community of Jesus having to change and to revise their views of who their community is for. In being open and transparent to the action of God they are all changed.
Jesus was nurtured by his Jewish faith, its history, traditions, worship, stories, and laws. The church also lives from its past; we cannot be Christians without accepting that past as the gift to us of our Christian identity. And yet if we see the past as having settled everything for us, then we deny the possibility that God can surprise us. We deny the possibility of unpredictable growth and so we shut ourselves off from grace. If the church is to grow then it has to admit to having unfinished business and that will make life unsettling -as it is so profoundly at the moment. If we look at the past in search of the reflection of our own faces we shall never be changed. If we allow ourselves to be astonished by the people with whom we share the history of the church then God can begin to work in us.
His encounter with the woman on the borders of alien territory shows us that even Jesus had to work hard to understand the meaning of his Father. God’s revelation of himself in Jesus does not exempt us from similar labour. Even now God comes to us in Jesus as an unsettling stranger; what sustains us is the belief that in this encounter we shall grow and we shall come together in a new place in love and trust and mutual healing. And so this morning we pray for Philip as he crosses new boundaries to experience yet more growth and transformation; and we pray for ourselves that we too may be changed by our calling to be the renewed people of God in this place.
* This opening anecdote is taken from a recent novel by David Lodge called ‘Author, Author.’ The clergyman is referred to there as Canon Ainger. A Thomas Ainger had been Vicar of Hampstead but died in 1863 twenty years before this baptism. In the novel the minister is referred to as a preacher at the Temple and it may be that he was another member of this famous clerical and legal family who was du Maurier’s neighbour in Hampstead, permitted to preside over the ceremony but not otherwise connected with this church at the time. Further research will resolve a problem which forced some hurried rewriting of the sermon when I came into church and noticed Ainger’s dates in the list of previous vicars.
Stephen Tucker