We Just Need a Little Gumption in Our Lives

Readings: Matthew 15:10-28, Isaiah 56:1, 6-8
Arlington Presbyterian Church

August 20, 2017

On Friday night, after a long dinner with a colleague, I got home and turned on the television as I often do. I am sure I watch too much TV as it tends to be my go-to when I get home and want to relax.

Anyway, I was watching the movie, The Holiday, which stars Cameron Diaz and Kate Winslet. It’s the story of two women whose love lives are fall apart and decide to swap houses and countries for the Christmas holiday.

Kate Winslet’s character, Iris, is from a small country town outside of London. And in the story, she meets a lonely old man who lives next door to Cameron Diaz’s character, Amanda, in LA.

The old man happens to be a famous screen writer and has worked on some famous movies the likes of Casablanca.

As they get to know one another, he tells Iris that in the movies, there are leading ladies and there are best friends. And that Iris is playing the best friend in her own life.

He gives her a list of movies to watch, all with leading ladies who have incredible gumption.

And while the premise of this movie is silly, I was struck by the word gumption.

I think gumption is the quality that this Canaanite woman exhibits. I checked the definition and everything. Gumption, according to Google, is shrewd or spirited initiative and resourcefulness.

We all could probably use a little more gumption in my life.

Last week, after delivering a bold sermon calling us to be vigilant in our daily lives

and to listen in the silence for the still small voice pointing us to examine the ways our laws are crafted, the ways that they are enforced, how the norms within our institutions are shaped…

to examine bias that is normalized in our churches, our schools, our communities and our consumption of the news…

and to stand up and speak out in the face of structural racism and sexism and classism and heterosexism….

I wrote to my new boss at Bread for the World to say that I thought we at Bread need to respond to the tragedies in Charlottesville. And I was met with resistance.

To be fair, there were a few dynamics at play that made this response likely.  

My boss is new and has come from a government agency, not a Christian non-profit. And she was on vacation with her family out of the country.

Our president was also on vacation, out of the country.

And many of the directors were coming back to work after a week of vacation. So their brains weren’t thinking work over the weekend.  

But each day in the office, I heard something from an individual or group asking, how are we going to respond?

And by Wednesday, I couldn’t take it anymore. So I talked with one of our VPs who was our acting president and managing director for the week.

And we came up with a plan, which I shared with the directors on Thursday and then emailed to my boss on Thursday evening.

Our plan was in place by Friday morning and many of you who are members of Bread should be receiving an email today or tomorrow with our response.

As a younger person, I often wondered what I would have done in the 1960’s had I been a young adult during the civil rights movement.

Would I have joined the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee? Would I have put my body on the line like so many people did?

In my teens, my answer was that I probably wouldn’t have the courage to do that.

In my twenties, I hoped the answer would have been that I was part of non-violent protests because I felt so strongly about ending discrimination.

But now in my 40’s, sadly, I must ask myself this question for real—not about what I would have done in the 1960’s, but what I will do now.

What will I do to stand up to white supremacy in our country?

I don’t think it’s enough to stand here and preach a sermon.

It’s not enough to push for Bread to write a statement.

It’s not enough to repost a bunch of articles on Facebook, which I have barely done in the last week, because, frankly, I’m overwhelmed by my newsfeed.

I need some non-activist friends.

I wonder what the Canaanite woman would do? What would a woman with gumption do?

What she did in the story this morning was to recognize Jesus…even before the disciples who followed him everywhere truly recognized him.

She had faith that Jesus was sent by a God that was so powerful as to be able to redeem everyone—not just the people of Israel.

And when Jesus was silent, she kept speaking. When he said no, she claimed him anyway.

And when she asked for Jesus mercy on her, she was pleading with Jesus to heal her daughter.

It wasn’t just about her own well-being but the well-being of another.

But what does that mean for us? As always, I think we continue to proclaim Jesus as Lord. Jesus is the one in whom we put our trust, just as he is the one in whom the Canaanite woman puts her trust.

But I also think it means that we look at what Jesus did. He didn’t just save people so that they would go to heaven in the end times.

Jesus was literally saving people from sickness, from death, from possession by demons.

Jesus was restoring the lives of people who were disenfranchised from the community.

Just as the Canaanite woman pled for her daughter, we too must plea with Jesus to have mercy on us

so that we too may work for the restoration of the people around us into our communities.

Whether that is people of color

or immigrants or

queer and trans people

or women and girls whose voices also get lost in the crowd.

In the passages leading up to the story of the Canaanite woman, whose daughter has been possessed by a demon, Jesus instructs the disciples and the Scribes and Pharisees that it is not what goes into one’s body that makes it unclean, but that it is what comes from the heart.

A good place for us to start is examining our hearts. What is coming from our hearts?

Are we regurgitating ugliness that comes from our new feed on Facebook, from the commentators on CNN?

Are we buying into the code language for race that makes us think that black kids are thugs?

Are we buying into the narrative that poor people are lazy and mooching off the system?

And when we examine our hearts, what do we find God calling us to?

Our Bread email isn’t just a statement denouncing white supremacy and violence, though it does.

Our email invites our members to continue to be part of our monthly time of prayer and fasting and action to end white supremacy and to end hunger

because we can’t end hunger without making some serious gains in addressing racism in our institutions.

I want to extend this invitation to you as well.

You don’t necessarily need to fast from food.

But deprive yourself of something that distracts you from listening to that still small voice calling you to examine the world around you.

Deprive yourself from something that keeps you from finding your own gumption like the Canaanite woman. –I think I need to fast from TV.

And while you are fasting tomorrow, I hope you will spend some time considering what you might do,

what we might do as a community

to find our voice in this movement to end white supremacy and hatred and violence in our community and in our country.

And then on Monday, August 28, you might consider joining the moving forward team as they work to develop our mission plan.

Your discernment and your voice are critical for making this plan a go.  

This has been a hard week for our country and our world. With violence of terrorists and mudslides and new election results and resistance movements.

But even in these moments when we are exhausted by the news and exhausted from our work, we cannot give up.

We must be persistent like the Canaanite woman.

We must dig deep and find the gumption of the Canaanite woman.

And we must have faith like the Canaanite woman, claiming that Jesus is Lord of all.

Amen.

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