A Sunday Morning at Santa Clara

by Sandy Johnson

It was a crisp, sunny Sunday morning in Lidingö. Our host and friend, Runar Eldebo, roused Phil and me from our sleepy inclinations to prepare for the day’s adventures. Runar, his son Charlie, Phil, and I had decided the night before to go to both an English and a Swedish church service this morning. Our hostess, Carina Eldebo with Johan and Anna, their two younger children, would join us at the later Swedish service at the Covenant Immanuelskyrkan. So, at 8:30am, four of us took off, crossed the bridge from Lidingö island into Stockholm’s maze of old streets and buildings, and made our way to and through the large iron gates of Santa Clara churchyard.

Inside Santa Clara, the international Lutheran congregation was gathering. Pastor Mary Phillipson noticed Runar and Charlie and came to greet her good friends and their guests from the United States. Mary’s welcome was warm and gracious.

People of many nations gathered near the front of this large, old, beautiful church. Pastor Phillipson invited us into worship. Her presence was compelling. I nestled in. We sang, gathered in prayer, and listened to the reading of the day’s lessons. And then came Mary with the gospel lesson.

It was the story from Matthew 15:21-28 (NIV), in which the Canaanite woman, an outsider, is calling for Jesus to heal her daughter. Jesus does not answer at first, but she persists. He finally responds, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of Israel.” The woman comes closer and pleads with Jesus, “Lord, help me!” — but Jesus replies, “It is not right to take the children’s bread and toss it to their dogs.” I always wonder at this point of the story if this woman felt insulted by the response. If so, her reply is even more poignant to me: “Yes, Lord, but even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their master’s table.” Jesus cannot resist this sort of power, and he grants the woman’s request with the exclamation, “Woman, you have great faith!”

Pastor Mary Phillipson proclaimed that this is not merely a story about a persistent woman getting what she wanted. What she did is much more important than that. This woman — an outsider — showed Jesus that his ministry could not be exclusive; and in her persistence she ministered to him in this powerful way that would shape his future ministry. She did not give up and go away when Jesus told her he could not toss the children’s bread to the dogs. Instead, she reflected his words back to him like a mirror: “Even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their master’s table.”

I can imagine that, at this point in his ministry, Jesus was beginning to wonder about his mission. He had tried to teach in his home town synagogue and was rejected. He was just the carpenter’s kid. The Pharisees and Saducees were always trying to trip him up. The religious leaders did not support him. His followers were not the powerful people. Even his disciples were usually confused about what he was doing. If he could not minister to these, God’s chosen, how was he to minister to an outsider?

Jesus was challenged by this outsider’s faith the likes of which he had not seen in many of the insiders. In that mirror of her words, he saw his mission clarified — “even the dogs eat the crumbs . . . .” Jesus had been listening and watching for clues himself. Was not his statement about being “sent only to the lost sheep of Israel” at a deeper level really “sent a question only to to this the woman? — at an even deeper level a question to God? Who am I and to whom am I called?

I have listened to hundreds of sermons in my lifetime. Most of them have been preached by male pastors. Some have been very empowering and some disempowering. In many of them I have had to “translate” in some way to identify with the message because almost all the words and characters are male I did not have to translate this time. Mary’s language included me. My three male companions told me later that they felt included, too.

I was in seminary when I began to discover the power of using inclusive language. What we say, the stories we tell, and how we tell them will either include people or exclude people. Though I have often heard both men and women say that “man” really means both men and women, I wonder why then do we not say “men and women” or “human beings” or “people.” Language has power. Words give us power to keep people down, to keep power over others, or to empower people.

I have been empowered by the use of words that include me as a woman. I think of how terrifying and disempowering the words “Heil Hitler” must have been for the excluded people during Hitler’s reign of terror and how much influence those words had on the behavior of many people. Or in America, how disempowering it has been for Black Americans to face the contradiction between words like “the land of the free” and the word “colored” on restroom doors and water fountains. Why this was ever deemed necessary is beyond me. Segregation hurts my soul and breaks my country’s back. It makes insiders and outsiders of us. Words can exclude; they can also include.

On this Sunday morning in Sweden, I was delighted and empowered as a powerful woman preached about another powerful woman. Mary Phillipson’s sermon revealed the power of women that is often hidden, and she demonstrated the inclusive power of words.