Beyond the Pale

Proper 15A: Matthew 15: 21-28

As someone who works a lot with words, I love learning about the origins of common idioms and expressions. For instance, the expression “let the cat out of the bag” is thought to go back to the marketplaces of old England, where valuable piglets would be sold in a bag. Sometimes, though, an unscrupulous seller would sneak a cat into the bag instead when the buyer wasn’t looking. To “let the cat out of the bag” then came to mean inadvertently revealing a deception. Or take the saying, “caught red-handed.” It comes from a time when medieval laws required that, for someone to be found guilty of butchering another’s livestock, they would have to found with literal blood on their hands, as undeniable evidence of their crime. Another, less gory expression is “close but no cigar.” We’re used to carnival games where stuffed animals are given out as prizes, but in the late 19th century, the games were targeted to adults, not kids. So, instead of getting a giant teddy bear, winners might get a cigar. If they almost won but didn’t, they’d be “close, but no cigar.”

When I was studying abroad in Ireland during college, I discovered the origin of another common expression, “beyond the pale.” The expression has nothing to do with pails or buckets of any kind, but to a geographical reality of 14^th century Ireland. You see, even though England had conquered Ireland centuries before, English rule in the late Middle Ages still really only operated in the city of Dublin and the four surrounding counties. This area was called the “Pale,” because it was bounded by a fence made up of wooden stakes, pali in Latin. This boundary, the pale, separated English settlers from the native Irish, which were considered unruly and uncivilized. From this, “beyond the pale” has come to mean “beyond the bounds of what is acceptable, outside good judgment or civility.”

Today’s lesson from Matthew is a story of Jesus going “beyond the pale,” in several senses. In a literal sense, Jesus has gone beyond the geographical “pale” of the land of Israel. As Matthew tells us, after Jesus and the disciples got back from their water-walking adventures on the Sea of Galilee, Jesus immediately heads north to “the land of Tyre and Sidon.” Now, those names, Tyre and Sidon, mean nothing to us today, but for the Jews of Jesus’ day, this was a no-man’s land, or rather a “no Jew land.” Over a thousand years before, God had carved out territory for the Israelites to live in, pushing the native peoples, the Canaanites, to the hinterlands. Many centuries and several conquests later, there was still in Jesus’ day a clear boundary between the land of Israel and their neighbors to the north. In journeying to Tyre and Sidon then, Jesus was entering a hostile, foreign country.

But of course, the boundary Jesus crosses wasn’t just political or ethnic but also theological. Jesus is the Jewish messiah, the One God anointed to be Israel’s king. But for some reason, Jesus decides to go to a country that not only isn’t Jewish, but is explicitly pagan and hostile to Israel’s God. You see, that ancient fight between the Israelites and the Canaanites wasn’t just about who would occupy the land, but also which God would be worshipped there, which religion, which vision of the good, true and beautiful would prevail. In taking possession of the land, the Israelites claimed it for the Lord, making sure that Israel’s God, the one God of the Universe, was honored and obeyed there. Everywhere else, people could do what they want, could worship whatever pagan god, whatever counterfeit deity, bow down to whatever idol, they wanted. But in this land, the people would worship of the true God, the Creator of the Universe. So what then is the Jewish Messiah doing there in Paganland? Why would Jesus go to them?

To these political and theological transgressions, we might add a moral one. Many today would argue that Jesus crossed the line, the line of propriety, of decency, of justice, by using an ethnic slur. When the Canaanite woman asks for Jesus’ help, Jesus replies, “It is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.” It was a common enough term in Jesus’ day, calling gentiles, non-Jews, “dogs.” But to many today, it is beyond the pale, beyond what is acceptable. It shows Jesus guilty of prejudice, of racism, of chauvinism, of “othering” this poor woman. How could he be so insensitive?

However you look at it, then, Jesus’ intrusion into pagan territory was sure to upset everyone, no matter what side one is on. Those of us who are averse to confrontation may well wonder why Jesus did it, why he couldn’t have left well enough alone, just stayed on his home turf, on his own side of the line, among his own people, and not gone where he wasn’t supposed to be. That certainly would have made things easier, for him and certainly for us his followers, who have to then explain and justify his behavior. What was Jesus doing there?

Traditionally, the Church has seen Jesus’ boundary-crossing as a sign of the Gospel’s universality, its being for all people, not just Jews. Old Simeon had prophesied when Jesus was a baby, that as Savior Jesus would be not just the “glory of his people Israel” but “a light to enlighten the nations,” that is, non-Jews. And so by this account, Jesus was living into that identity, fulfilling that prophesy, here with the Canaanite woman, showing that no one is beyond God’s concern.

Some preachers, though, think that doesn’t go far enough. They hold that what Jesus shows here is not simply that God wants to save all people, but that in God’s eyes, there are now no longer any distinctions, any differentiation, any discriminations between peoples at all. All boundaries, all divisions that exist in society are by nature illegitimate and must be torn down, indeed have been torn down by Jesus. And therefore it is a sin to “exclude” anyone, for any reason, because God’s salvation embraces everyone regardless of race, nationality, age, sex, status, religion, or behavior. Jesus, they say, didn’t understand this before his encounter with the Canaanite woman and so needed to be “corrected” by her, just we need to have our own attitudes corrected.

As virtuous and high-minded as that may sound, the claim goes too far. It fails to recognize what is going on in the story. For, Jesus isn’t just crossing the line or even tearing down the line. He’s doing something more profound. He’s replacing that idea with a whole different conception of God’s relationship with the world. We are used to thinking in terms of a line that separates God’s people from everyone else, us-vs-them, in-vs-out, clean vs unclean. That’s how the Pharisees thought, indeed how most people think. Jesus though is operating from a different perspective, a different model of relationship— one characterized by the “center” and the “periphery.”

Imagine a group, a community, or a people as a circle, or better a wheel. The “center” is that which is the heart of a community, the controlling vision of society. Relationship to this center is what gives the people their identity and their focus. It sets the society’s order and defines what is right and good and true. The periphery exists at the edge of the circle, as a boundary, a border that is both a limitation and a protective barrier. As a limitation it is the furthest extent of the circle, representing what is outside the center yet connected to it. And as a protection, it separates the ordered life within from chaos outside.

I know that all sounds rather abstract. So let me give you some concrete illustrations. Think of a traditional town, as you might find in Europe. In such a town, what is at the center, and often the highest point, is the church or cathedral. The church is not only geographically at the center, but it’s the heart of the community, giving the people their identity, telling them who they are and ordering their relations to others. It defines their morals and behavior. At the edge of the town, on the outskirts, you’d find that which is part of the town but doesn’t fit with that vision of the people—brothels, gambling halls, ale houses, and other less desirable establishments. And outside that are woods, the wilderness, where chaos, disorder and the uncivilized live, the stranger, the outlaw, the misfit.

The same structure can be seen in a garden. In the interior, order and beauty reign, while the border, the boundary, often a hedge or wall, separates it from the wild of the nature outside.

Or take a Medieval cathedral. The whole structure is designed to give glory to God and reflect his rule on earth. And what is at the center of the cathedral? The altar. Yet at the edge, outside the building, are what? Gargoyles! Sometimes scary, but often merely profane, rude, even bawdy creatures, clinging to the cathedral walls.

In the church’s vision of the world, we see, there is a place for the strange, the ridiculous, for that which doesn’t fit the standard, what does not conform. Indeed, the church has traditionally respected the fact that in God’s order, both the center and the periphery are important. They both have their place, and we shouldn’t try to get rid of either. The center is what holds things together and organizes movement and relationship in a society. But because the periphery flirts with chaos, that is where you find creativity, novelty, and foreign energy. There’s a reason artists, prophets and poets traditionally are found on the periphery of society.

But the periphery needs the center too, needs it to push against, to have something to challenge, to set itself against. Without the center, the periphery turns on itself: the periphery becomes the center and the further periphery, the scary fringe, becomes the new periphery. And this dynamic is repeated again and again until there is no longer a center but only chaos.

Think of it like this, a kingdom needs the king to maintain order and identity, but just as important is the fool, the court jester, who keeps the king honest, pointing out the flaws in the structure, the hypocrisy and inconsistencies in the king’s rule.

Now, applying this center-periphery model to today’s story, what we see is Jesus affirming the center, God’s order: “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel,” and the center’s relationship to the periphery: “It is not right to take food from the children’s table to give to the dogs.” And the Canaanite woman acknowledges her place, at the periphery. But notice Jesus doesn’t leave it at that, with just reasserting the societal hierarchy. Jesus is not only King but also Savior. He refuses to stay at the center, but makes a point of going to the periphery, beyond the pale, to where this woman is, far from the center, God’s kingdom, and the benefits of that order, to bring those blessings to her and her daughter. Jesus doesn’t just affirm God’s authority but also his goodness, extending grace to everyone, even those on the periphery, far from God.

Funny thing is, in this way, extending grace to the periphery, Jesus is in fact reestablishing, reaffirming the center, what is central to being Israel, God’s chosen people. When God establishes his covenant with Abraham, he says: "I will make you into a great nation, and I will bless you; I will make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. … through you all the families of the earth will be blessed." Again, through the prophet Isaiah, he declares, “I will also make you a light for the nations, to bring My salvation to the ends of the earth.”

Israel, we see, was never meant to simply be blessed; God’s people were blessed to be a blessing, to be a light on the hill, a model nation, a sign to others of God’s glorious and gracious rule. That’s Israel’s vocation, her purpose. And that is what Jesus is highlighting in today’s lesson. God’s grace is centered on Israel, God’s elect, but it extends out to all peoples, even especially to those at the periphery.

And we are ourselves beneficiaries of this grace. None of us I don’t think were born Jewish. None of us are by blood part of God’s people, his elect. Even though our ancestors might hail from historically “Christian” countries, from Israel’s perspective, we are Johnny-come-latelys, and have no claim to God’s grace. And so, we come before God as the Canaanite woman came before Jesus, on our knees, begging for the Lord’s help. But also like the Canaanite woman, we know God will hear us. For, our story is her story, too, the story of God who crossed the line, who went beyond the pale, to get to us, to show us his grace and bring us into his circle. For that we give thanks, today and always!