Lawrence Yoder: Turning to the Foreigner

August 17, 2008
Matthew 15:21-28

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Turning to the Foreigner
Isaiah 56:1, 6-8; Psalm 67; Mt. 15:21-28;

Jesus says two things during his ministry, which seem to be in conflict with each other. Several times he says that he was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. But he also gives strong teaching and bold examples of reaching and caring for foreigners.
As he does this, he draws examples from Old Testament prophets about receiving foreigners and even giving them first priority. The Isaiah passage we read contains the phrase, which Jesus recited when he drove the merchants and moneychangers from the temple, from court of the Gentiles. “’My house shall be called a house of prayer for all nations,” he said,“ but you have made it a den of thieves.”
But when Jesus selected his twelve disciples in Matthew 10 and sent them out to carry on the very ministries that he himself was doing—healing the sick, cleansing lepers, expelling unclean spirits and announcing the arrival of the kingdom of God—Jesus gave sharp, clear instructions: “Do not go to gentile areas or Samaritan towns; go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.”
With these seemingly conflicting messages, it is not surprising that Jesus’ disciples were having trouble getting his message clear in their heads. They would seem to catch one thing, but completely miss the mark on the next. And the Pharisees and other Jewish leaders were increasingly testy about what Jesus was doing and saying.
So, as our gospel reading tells us, Jesus withdrew and went north to territory of Tyre and Sidon, in the area of Syria and Phoenicia. We often get the impression that this excursion of 100 miles or so was mainly for rest and relaxation—a sort of vacation. Maybe so.
But back at the beginning of his ministry in Matthew 4, it is reported that Jesus’ fame spread throughout Syria and they brought to him people suffering from all kinds of diseases and he healed them all. Maybe Jesus wanted to get up there into the territory where all those Syrians had come from. What was it going to be like when all those foreigners were invited to enter God’s arriving kingdom?
All through the gospels we have to deal with the question of how much did Jesus know about what was going to happen and when did he know it. Our tendency is to assume he knew it all from the beginning, but the gospel stories suggest that he learned some things along the way—through his encounters with different people.
Perhaps the reason Jesus wanted to focus on the Jews during the central part of his ministry is that his work—his teaching and ministry, and especially his coming suffering, death and resurrection—were very much a continuation and fulfillment of the story of God working with his chosen people in the Old Testament. When the fulfillment of that history was finally worked out and understood in the Jewish context, then the whole story could be carried and shared with every people and nation.
But most of the Jewish people of Jesus’ time were strongly prejudiced against foreigners. As they saw things, generally speaking, there was no place in God’s kingdom for gentiles and foreigners. They didn’t think right. They didn’t act right. They didn’t eat right. They didn’t dress right. They didn’t know the right things. They didn’t believe the right things. They were unclean. They hadn’t undergone the right ceremonies and rituals. They hadn’t experienced the right things. Jews surely did not expect much of such people. Neither did Jesus’ own disciples.
So, in our gospel reading today, what would be the point of Jesus going up north into the gentile areas of Tyre and Sidon if it were not for rest and relaxation? As it happened, they were apparently still on the way when a Canaanite woman of the area came up to Jesus crying out, ‘Son of David! Have pity on me! My daughter is tormented by a demon.’ But Jesus says absolutely nothing in response to her.
Perhaps Jesus had just been getting into the relaxation mode. Maybe he thought no one would know or recognize him there, although their somewhat unusual dress as Jews likely betrayed them. Could someone tell that Jesus was a Jewish rabbi by the way he looked? Or, perhaps things were operating as Jesus explained in the Gospel of John, where he said, When I’m speaking, “I only say what I hear my Father saying.” And in performing his works of power, he said, “I only do what I see my Father doing.” Perhaps these quiet moments of no response from Jesus were moments of watching to see what his Father was doing and listening to hear what his Father was saying.
But in those quiet moments, it did not take very long for his disciples to make some conclusions about the situation. They urged Jesus, “Send her away! Don’t you see the commotion she is making, shouting after us!”
Now Jesus does respond, and his response seems to be something that came up often. It was partly something he intended his disciples to hear, but also partly something addressed to the woman: “I was sent to the lost sheep of the house of Israel!”
But the woman rushed forward and fell at his feet and cried out, “Help me, Sir!” Jesus now responds with words that seem surprisingly crude and even cruel, something you might expect from some of the more xenophobic Jews: “It is not right to take the children’s bread and throw it to the dogs!”
Now if someone would speak to you or me in this way, I’d hate to predict how we would respond! But not this woman! Immediately she replies, “You are right sir! Yet even the dogs get to eat the crumbs that fall from their master’s table."
Perhaps it was this interchange that opened Jesus’ eyes so he could see what his Father was about to do. Or perhaps Jesus took things this far so that his disciples would see reflected in stark, bold relief what their typical Jewish attitudes were really like.
Either way, through the response of this pagan Canaanite woman, Jesus hears what his Father is apparently already up to. Jesus does not have to cast the demon out of this woman’s daughter or heal her in some way. He simply says, “What amazing faith you have! Let it happen just as you wish!”
Do you remember what happened when Jesus told this kind of story back in his own hometown—a story of God healing gentiles? They got so furious at him that they hauled him out of town and nearly threw him over a cliff. Hopefully, though, through this experience in Syria-Phoenicia, Jesus’ disciples were catching some glimpses of what this gospel of Jesus—this Kingdom he kept talking about—would finally turn out to be.
The gospel of the kingdom that Jesus was proclaiming would be open to all. In fact pagan foreigners who were only hearing it for the first time might find it easier to understand and accept than pious Jews, who were used to the narrow, restrictive vision they had been hearing and living for centuries. I hope we can all get a clear grasp of how it might be that the pagan foreigner might be more able to see to the heart of Jesus’ gospel than those who had been good Jews all their lives. Perhaps we, who have been in church all our lives, need to hear the testimony of the foreigner who is seeing the light of God’s love for the first time.

Forty years ago I was in seminary, about ready to begin my last year. It was during the war in Vietnam, and Shirlee and I were feeling called, as we put it in those days, to do something positive in Asia.
When we learned that MCC was looking for a seminary graduate to teach in the Mennonite seminary in Indonesia, we began to feel God calling us to go. We were rather surprised to learn that these churches had been started in the 1850s and were growing rapidly in the midst of a strongly Islamic community.
We accepted the assignment and went to New York City to study Indonesian language at Columbia University while we waited for our visas. Since most of people in Indonesia are Muslims, I decided to take a course in Islam as well.
It was a whole year before our visas were granted. When we arrived, we were busy getting settled, and soon we were more busy getting started with teaching.
On Kartini Street where we lived, almost everyone was Muslim. We soon got to know these people—Pak Simin, the Electric Company technician and his wife and children lived next door. Here is a relief made by their son, Nandar. Pak Soehadi with his wife and children ran the hotel on the other side. Dr. Koerman and his wife lived right across the street. These were all ordinary, polite Javanese Muslims.
There was a big mosque on the square in our town two blocks away. Soon I was thinking about going to the mosque to learn to know the Imam and some of the other leaders. But first I asked Pak Djojo, the leader of the Muria Javanese Mennonite conference. I was a little surprised when he said, “Oh, I don’t think that would be a very good idea.” I wondered, why would he want me to stay away from the Muslim leaders. Virtually all of our neighbors are Musim. My barber and my tailor are Muslims. About a million Muslims lived in our county. But he was wary of us associating with Muslim leaders.
Now we need to realize that Pak Djojo was an extraordinary man by any measure. He was a remarkable pastor and church leader. He was a scholar and an excellent teacher. He could speak six modern languages, including English, Dutch, German and French. He had an European theological education. He was also a scholar in Javanese language, literature, culture and religion. Later on, when I was doing my own research on the culture and religions of Java, Pak Djojo was my mentor. He sometimes went with me on my field trips introducing me to leaders of non-Christian groups. I thought, “How is it that he is happy to introduce me to these other religious leaders, but he does not want me to relate to Muslim leaders?”
But as I did more research into the history of the churches there, I learned about some very difficult and painful things that happened between Christians and Muslims. The Muslims felt that the Dutch, who ruled Indonesia for 350 years, gave unfair support to Christian missions. So at the beginning of WWII when the Japanese invaded and occupied Indonesia, forcing the Dutch to leave, some of the more radical Muslims seized the opportunity to try to forcibly convert Christians to Islam. They rounded up Christian pastors and leaders and treated them very badly. They destroyed Tayu Mennonite Hospital. They destroyed the finest Mennonite church building, which had been constructed of teakwood, as well as several others. They beat up Mennonite pastor Surat Timotius and threw him into a well. They attacked the Mennonite leprosarium at dawn and killed the Dutch missionary pastor ministering there, who looked about like me.
As I interviewed people and gathered these stories, I began to feel like I understood better why Pak Djojo was uneasy about relating to Muslim leaders and why he was hesitant for me to do so. He was probably also worried about my safety. So I continued to follow the example of Javanese Christians not to develop close relationships with Muslim leaders.
As I reflect further, I believe that many Christian leaders and members of that generation were traumatized by what they experienced. Feelings of fear and terror might arise at any time and interfere with any idea of developing relationships with Muslim leaders.

After we completed our ten years of MCC service, we went to graduate school and then began to teach here at EMU. We also began to look for short-term opportunities to return to Indonesia.
One such opportunity arose in 1997, when I was asked to prepare a revised edition of the history of the Muria Mennonite Church. On our way to Indonesia, we meet a Javanese woman named Yayah, who turned out to be a scholar returning from graduate studies in conflict resolution at the University of Massachusetts. She was a professor at Surakarta Muhammadiyah University. She invited us to come and visit her university. We decided to accept her invitation.
The day of our visit maybe 15 professors met with us for several hours. Our discussion ranged over many different topics. It was a very interesting and eye-opening experience. You might say “heart-opening” too. I think we had been infected by some of the residual fear of the church leaders and had often allowed it to guide our behavior. But now we were learning in a very direct way that there are many Muslim leaders and academics—and not only moderates—who are very open to conversations and relationships with Christians, including foreign Christians like us.
We looked for more opportunities. In 2004 when we took a tour group to Indonesia, we spent part of one day in a traditional, moderate Islamic boarding school. You can ask Cal and Freda Redekop, Ed and Millie Stoltzfus, Glenn and Mary Kauffman or Ed and Edie Bontrager about that experience. We also visited some of the oldest Islamic centers on Java.

But last year, when we began to plan for my sabbatical year, we noticed that MCC had a position open for a professor in some area of theological studies to teach in a new inter-religious Ph.D. program called ICRS, which means Indonesian Consortium for Religious Studies. It is sponsored jointly by a state university, an Islamic university and a Christian university. The faculty are Muslims and Christians, as are the students. Each course is taught by a team of at least one Muslim and one Christian.
Islam is by far the largest religious community in Indonesia. Christianity is the second largest, with something less than 9 percent of the population. Since our visit to the Muhammadiyah University in Surakarta, I had been thinking more and more that Christians need to find more ways to build relationships with the Muslim people around them. This seemed like an opportunity to do that. So we accepted the assignment.
I was assigned to teach a course on the History of Religions in Indonesia since 1945. My colleagues in teaching the course were Syafa'atun Almirzanah, who is professor of comparative religion at the Islamic University, and Bernie Adeney-Risakotta, the director of the program. We taught the course together, each of us responsible to lead five of the 15 three-hour sessions.
It was my job, for instance, to lead the session covering the slaughter of a million or so suspected atheist-communists by the Army and radical Muslims in 1965 and 1966. I led another session covering the rapid growth of the Christian church in the same period. Amazingly the 8 Muslim and 5 Christian students in the class and the professors were able to work their way through often very difficult inter-religious issues with hardly a sign of conflicted understanding.
This culture of friendship between Christians and Muslims was carried over into a Mission Conference at the Christian university, in which two Muslim scholars were among the six key speakers. It was carried over also into a half-day consultation on Christian and Islamic mission (which is called da’wah).
Building good relationships between people of different religions does not mean setting aside essential elements of what we believe, but rather living out clearly and explicitly God’s special regard for outsiders and foreigners. Just imagine what will happen when more and more Christians get into the flow of what God is doing and saying.








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