August 20, 2023 – Rev. Deacon Richard P. Limato

Genesis 45:1-15<br /> Psalm 133<br /> Romans 11:1-2a, 29-32<br /> Matthew 15: 21-28 Get Mahoney! After experiencing Jesus’ interaction with the “Canaanite Woman,” I can only imagine someone in the crowd shouting “Get Mahoney!” Jim Mahoney was a fixer. A Hollywood Public Relations Specialist who managed highbrow clients like Frank Sinatra, Bob Hope, Johnny Carson, Peggy Lee, and many others. I read his book this summer. If there was a celebrity misbehaving, a crisis, or a reputation to be saved, Mahoney was your man. Seemingly there’s a lot to fix in this Gospel story. We have a demanding woman shouting out to Jesus, Jesus first ignoring her, then calling her a dog, annoyed disciples, and a child, possessed by a demon. Jesus appears to be doing real damage to his reputation. Surely crisis management needs to fix this encounter that goes terribly awry. We need a fixer – “Get Mahoney.” This is actually one of my favorite Gospel stories. And well for us to consider. No, not because I’m advocating misogynistic behavior. But for reasons I’ll tell you about as this sermon progresses. Many preachers try to be “Mahoney,” they work to fix Jesus’s poor behavior. Oh, he’s “hangry” or irritable from being tired. He’s just a product of his time, a man acting badly toward woman because that’s what men do. It’s my view that Jesus doesn’t need Mahoney’s help to repair his reputation or my attempt to mansplain his behavior away. Jesus needs to be “egged on,” not critiqued. Understandably, Jesus grew up and was living in a patriarchal time. Patriarchy was the social umbrella under which the various stories, poems, parables, priestly edicts, and prevailing attitudes evolved. Like us, Jesus is a product of his time. Culture, customs, and way of life are all a part of his “mode of operandi,” governing his thought, attitude, and behavior. Jesus isn’t immune to culture any more than we are; he is steeped in it. The world that Jesus lived in largely discriminated against women. Women were excluded from participation in synagogue worship, relegated to the role of spectator, forbidden to enter the Temple beyond the Court of the Women. They could not touch the Scriptures, less the scriptures be defiled.<br /> A man was not supposed to talk much with a woman, even his wife. Talk with women in public was even more restricted. Women could not engage in commerce; rarely would they be seen outside the home. If on the streets, they were heavily veiled. It was the way of the man “to go into the marketplace.” One Talmudic passage perhaps best sums up the situation of women in the first century: “They are swathed like a mourner (referring to face and hair coverings), isolated from people and shut up in prison.” It’s in this context that Jesus travels without explanation to Tyre and Sidon, the equivalent of, well let’s say it’s not “Barbie land”. He leads the disciples outside of their comfort zone, a place they view as a spiritual slum, a ghetto of unbelief. They had to be feeling very uneasy, concerned for their s