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Growing 8.16.26 · St. Paul Podcast

0:06
SPEAKER_00: Hi everyone and welcome to the St.
0:08
SPEAKER_00: Paul Podcast.
0:08
SPEAKER_00: My name is Mark Neethammer, Senior Pastor at St.
0:11
SPEAKER_00: Paul Lutheran Church, located in Davenport, Iowa, part of the Greater Quad Cities area of Iowa and Illinois.
0:18
SPEAKER_00: Right here, each week, you will find beautiful music and a message of hope and good news to guide your life.
0:25
SPEAKER_00: I am hopeful that this podcast can inspire you and help you on your journey of faith as you grow in love and trust in our God.
0:41
SPEAKER_00: Hi everyone, and welcome to the St.
0:43
SPEAKER_00: Paul Podcast.
0:44
SPEAKER_00: My name is Mark Neethammer, Senior Pastor at St.
0:46
SPEAKER_00: Paul Lutheran Church, located in Davenport, Iowa, part of the Greater Quad Cities area of Iowa and Illinois.
0:53
SPEAKER_00: Right here, each week, you will find beautiful music and a message of hope and good news to guide your life.
1:00
SPEAKER_00: I am hopeful that this podcast can inspire you and help you on your journey of faith as you grow in love and trust in our God.
4:57
SPEAKER_02: Today we get to hear a story about Jesus.
5:00
SPEAKER_02: While he was off in a region called Tyre and Sidon, Jesus was on the road all the time, teaching and preaching and healing.
5:09
SPEAKER_02: Wherever he went, people would find him.
5:12
SPEAKER_02: And many of them asked Jesus for healing and for help.
5:16
SPEAKER_02: And Jesus would respond with mercy and generosity immediately, sometimes even before they could ask.
5:24
SPEAKER_02: But this story is a little bit different.
5:26
SPEAKER_02: And the reason it is different is because Jesus is outside of his normal geography, in an area outside of his usual neighborhoods and cities, the ones filled with his own people.
5:38
SPEAKER_02: And the woman who asked for help is a Canaanite woman.
5:42
SPEAKER_02: The Canaanites had been enemies of the Jewish people for generations.
5:46
SPEAKER_02: They just did not get along.
5:48
SPEAKER_02: They were part of different ethnic and religious communities.
5:52
SPEAKER_02: And so it's a sort of strange interaction you'll hear about, and a challenging one for us.
5:57
SPEAKER_02: But listen in, and here where you are surprised, and where something perhaps unexpected happens.
6:04
SPEAKER_02: Our reading today is from the 15th chapter of Matthew's gospel, beginning at the 21st verse.
6:13
SPEAKER_02: Jesus left that place and went away to the district of Tyre and Sidon.
6:18
SPEAKER_02: Just then a Canaanite woman from that region came out and started shouting, Have mercy on me, Lord Son of David, my daughter is tormented by a demon.
6:32
SPEAKER_02: And his disciples came and urged him, saying, Send her away, for she keeps shouting after us.
6:39
SPEAKER_02: Jesus answered, I would send only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.
6:45
SPEAKER_02: But the woman came and knelt before him, saying, Lord, help me.
6:51
SPEAKER_02: And he answered, It is not fair to take the children's food and throw it to the dogs.
6:58
SPEAKER_02: She said, Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their master's table.
7:06
SPEAKER_02: And Jesus answered her, Woman, great is your faith.
7:10
SPEAKER_02: Let it be done for you as you wish.
7:13
SPEAKER_02: And her daughter was healed from that moment.
7:18
SPEAKER_02: So listen now to some thoughts on this story.
7:32
SPEAKER_02: This week my sixth grade son went on a band trip to Adventureland.
7:39
SPEAKER_02: And it was a pretty adventurous trip, but the most fun was I was dropping him off with a whole bunch of sixth and seventh and eighth graders.
7:48
SPEAKER_02: And when one of his buddies arrived, I was shocked by how much this kid had grown in the three months since I've seen him.
7:57
SPEAKER_02: He was like a foot and a half taller than he was in May.
8:00
SPEAKER_02: And I mentioned something about this to his mom, and I said, Your son is so tall.
8:05
SPEAKER_02: And she said, I know, he has no pants that fit him anymore.
8:09
SPEAKER_02: He put them on and you could like see half of his calf down to his ankle.
8:13
SPEAKER_02: And then she said, It seems like the minute I get him a new pair of shoes, he's already growing out of them.
8:21
SPEAKER_02: It is an amazing thing to watch kids grow up, to not just increase in height, but to notice their personalities becoming, to watch their skills develop, their sense of self solidify.
8:37
SPEAKER_02: There are times, of course, that uh us parents would love to slow down time, to shrink our kids back into some probably romanticized, adorable time in our lives when they were just the perfect age.
8:52
SPEAKER_02: Or at least to keep them in one pair of shoes for just a little while.
8:57
SPEAKER_02: But this, of course, is neither realistic nor is it loving.
9:03
SPEAKER_02: Growing, growth, becoming, it's just part of life.
9:09
SPEAKER_02: And the truth is, growth is not just for kids.
9:13
SPEAKER_02: Despite that old adage that you can't teach an old dog new tricks, we adults, when we are most alive, and I believe when we are most faithful, we keep on growing too.
9:28
SPEAKER_02: They say, after all, that we have entirely new skin every 28 days.
9:33
SPEAKER_02: We get an entire skeletal remodel every 10 years.
9:39
SPEAKER_02: And every day, we take in new information.
9:43
SPEAKER_02: We might develop some new skill.
9:46
SPEAKER_02: We might discover something about our partner or our family, about our world, about ourselves.
9:53
SPEAKER_02: So maybe, maybe this world grown up isn't the best term for us adults, because that grown is in the past tense, completed.
10:04
SPEAKER_02: And yet we are not yet fully grown, any of us.
10:08
SPEAKER_02: None of us perfect yet.
10:11
SPEAKER_02: Our completeness only comes in that great someday.
10:17
SPEAKER_02: I'm thinking about growing because of what happens with Jesus in our gospel story today.
10:24
SPEAKER_02: A strange story, perhaps hard to hear, hard to read.
10:28
SPEAKER_02: So let's look at it.
10:30
SPEAKER_02: It starts with Jesus and his friend far from home in a land called Tyre and Sidon, where they are among strangers and foreigners.
10:39
SPEAKER_02: And while they were there, a Canaanite woman approaches them.
10:43
SPEAKER_02: And as a Canaanite, this woman would have been an enemy of sorts of Jesus and his friends, of a different religion and ethnic heritage with a long, long history of conflict between the Hebrew people and the Canaanites.
10:57
SPEAKER_02: She was not one of them.
11:01
SPEAKER_02: But she had heard about Jesus.
11:03
SPEAKER_02: She believed that he could help her daughter.
11:08
SPEAKER_02: And so she comes to him and says, Have mercy on me, Lord.
11:13
SPEAKER_02: My daughter is tormented by a demon.
11:17
SPEAKER_02: Initially, Jesus ignores her, but with a determination found in every mother whose child is suffering, this woman persists.
11:26
SPEAKER_02: The disciples try to send her away, and Jesus says, My hands are full trying to save the lost children of Israel.
11:37
SPEAKER_02: And yet the woman persists.
11:54
SPEAKER_02: She has this hunch that the love, the healing power of Jesus is not just for his own people, but for everyone, including her.
12:06
SPEAKER_02: And so she says, even the dogs that eat crumbs that fall from the master's table.
12:15
SPEAKER_02: It's like she says, Jesus, even the smallest bit of your power is enough for my daughter.
12:23
SPEAKER_02: Your peace, your mercy, your love, it's big enough even for us.
12:29
SPEAKER_02: There's enough for those of us outside of your group.
12:32
SPEAKER_02: Even a crumb will save me, she says.
12:38
SPEAKER_02: I know even a little bit of your power can heal.
12:42
SPEAKER_02: To which Jesus says, Great, is your faith that you will receive what you ask.
12:51
SPEAKER_02: And her daughter was made wow.
12:55
SPEAKER_02: It is quite a story, isn't it?
12:57
SPEAKER_02: Jesus doesn't seem to be the hero of it.
13:00
SPEAKER_02: He actually seems kind of cruel.
13:03
SPEAKER_02: A lot of people have tried to explain this.
13:04
SPEAKER_02: Some saying that Jesus didn't actually mean it, that he was calling her a dog to test her faith or to prove some point.
13:19
SPEAKER_02: Just caring for the lost sheep of Israel.
13:22
SPEAKER_02: We don't know.
13:24
SPEAKER_02: But what we do see here is that Jesus seems to grow, to have his own sense of purpose expanded.
13:34
SPEAKER_02: His understanding of God's reign of love widens in this moment.
13:41
SPEAKER_02: It could be that Jesus initially did think that his job description was only to save the lost sheep of the house of Israel.
13:48
SPEAKER_02: This was a big enough job on its own, after all.
13:51
SPEAKER_02: It would have been enough.
13:53
SPEAKER_02: But with persistence and with determination and a brilliant bit of wit, this woman names her belief that Jesus had an even bigger job to do.
14:04
SPEAKER_02: One that included not just that Jewish community in his own little geographic region, but all people, all nations, even for her.
14:43
SPEAKER_02: Or maybe it just it doesn't change course, but simply expands.
14:48
SPEAKER_02: Jesus had already been eating with all kinds of people, had already broken down divisions and destroyed walls that separate.
14:56
SPEAKER_02: But after this encounter, he stays in that faraway land and heals all kinds of people from all kinds of backgrounds.
15:07
SPEAKER_02: And then Jesus sits down with thousands of other people, thousands of Gentiles, and has this other miracle of loaves and fishes, a second multiplication of food.
15:23
SPEAKER_02: And at the end of Matthew, just before the risen Christ ascends to heaven, he says to his friends, go therefore and make disciples of all nations.
15:51
SPEAKER_02: And so we as Christian people can follow in Jesus' footsteps and are allow our own love to grow, to expand.
16:03
SPEAKER_02: Growth, after all, is not just for children and their two short pants.
16:09
SPEAKER_02: It's for us, especially for us as people of faith.
16:14
SPEAKER_02: And I wonder how might we trust in the power of God to work in us to love in bigger and wider ways than we thought possible.
16:27
SPEAKER_02: It starts, I think, with trusting that this love and goodness we know in Jesus is not just for me, not just for us, not just for people who believe or look or act or speak or live just like us.
16:43
SPEAKER_02: It's bigger, expansive, big enough for that Canaanite woman and her daughter, big enough for those people who are different from us, big enough for those awful people in that group that we love to hate.
16:59
SPEAKER_02: Jesus shows us what it means to listen to the people around us, to hear their stories, to be changed by them, to have our own hearts broken open.
17:11
SPEAKER_02: We can learn from Jesus how to expand our circles of care, how to throw open our doors and pull new seats to our tables.
17:20
SPEAKER_02: Jesus teaches us how our love can grow and maybe how even old dogs can learn new tricks of compassion.
17:31
SPEAKER_02: Let me tell you a story about the ways that love changes us.
17:35
SPEAKER_02: You all know, I imagine, you've heard of, you know, John Lewis.
17:40
SPEAKER_02: He was a towering figure of the civil rights movement, a longtime congressman.
17:45
SPEAKER_02: Well, back in 1961, when John Lewis was working for civil rights, he was in a town called Rock Hill, South Carolina, and he was in a bus station with his friend, a fellow civil rights worker.
17:57
SPEAKER_02: And while they were in this bus station, several white men came and beat them bloody with baseball bats.
18:05
SPEAKER_02: John Lewis and his friend didn't fight back, nor did they press any charges.
18:10
SPEAKER_02: They simply treated their wounds and went back to their work, which John Lewis did for the rest of his life.
18:18
SPEAKER_02: In 2009, 48 years after that moment in the bus station, a white man about John Lewis's age walked into his office in Capitol Hill, accompanied by his middle-aged son, Mr.
18:33
SPEAKER_02: Lewis, the man said.
18:38
SPEAKER_02: I'm one of the men who beat you up in that bus station back in 1961.
18:44
SPEAKER_02: I want to atone for what I did.
18:47
SPEAKER_02: So I've come to seek your forgiveness.
18:55
SPEAKER_02: Wilson said that he had found the Lord, but realized he was wrong.
19:00
SPEAKER_02: In an interview with his thri thick drawl, Wilson said, Well, my daddy always told me that a fool never changes his mind, and a smart man does.
19:12
SPEAKER_02: So that's what I've done.
19:14
SPEAKER_02: I'm not ashamed of it.
19:18
SPEAKER_02: When John Lewis recalled this moment in his office with Wilson coming to ask forgiveness, John Lewis said, I forgave him.
19:27
SPEAKER_02: And we embraced.
19:33
SPEAKER_02: And then we talked.
19:48
SPEAKER_02: Palmer describes how after he told the story of Wilson and this moment of reconciliation, John Lewis just stared out the window of his bus as they drove along, as they passed through the countryside that was once killing ground for the Ku Klux Klan to which Elwyn Wilson had once belonged.
20:08
SPEAKER_02: And as they drove in a very soft voice, as if speaking to himself about the story he had just told and the memories it must have stirred.
20:38
SPEAKER_02: Remember that we can grow.
20:44
SPEAKER_02: As we hear one another's stories, as our hearts open just a little bit bigger, as we listen with humility and generosity, we too migrow.
21:02
SPEAKER_02: And the only way we can do this is to live with the faith of that Canaanite woman by trusting that God's love is big enough for us, for the ones in our circles, and even for those ones we struggle to like.
21:18
SPEAKER_02: That's just how the love of Jesus is.
21:21
SPEAKER_02: It's expansive and it's powerful.
21:25
SPEAKER_02: Even a crumb is enough to heal us, to change us, to help us grow.
21:34
SPEAKER_02: Amen.
22:00
SPEAKER_01: Heaven's I got seven handle Glory to the Lord I am on mercy on my sea You are holy holy Universe your majesty You are holy holy Lord of the word of ability Spirit in the morning I was celebrating the life When I stumbled in the darkness I was running an eye God wonders beyond my galaxy You are holy lonely Universe friends your majesty You are born you got to God thirsty and I galaxy You are holy holy Precious Lord reveal your heart to me Father holy Universe Your Majesty You are meant for me to get all that Now we turn to God in prayer, saying those words Jesus taught us in the Lord's Prayer.
25:40
SPEAKER_02: Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as in heaven.
25:48
SPEAKER_02: Forgive us today our daily bread.
25:51
SPEAKER_02: Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us.
26:12
SPEAKER_02: And the whole world includes you.
26:15
SPEAKER_02: You are loving my God with a next being said and horrible.
26:22
SPEAKER_02: Ready to be changed, ready to grow, and ready to love in ways that bring hope and goodness to all of this world.
26:37
SPEAKER_00: I hope you've enjoyed this podcast and thanks for your support of the ministries of the St.
26:41
SPEAKER_00: Paul Lutheran Church.
26:43
SPEAKER_00: Our commitment to endeavors that lend hope to other people stretches across the country and around the world.
26:49
SPEAKER_00: We hope that in a good way you feel a part of that reach.
26:53
SPEAKER_00: Tune in next Thursday for another edition of the Saint Paul Podcast.