One of many reasons why stereotypes cannot become helpful information is that they fixate on a generic idea or image of all that they amount to. Not all Asians are good at mathematics (though your living example from that population at St. Agnes’ is quite good at it). Sloths are not really lazy but very slow due to their extremely low metabolic rate since slow doesn’t mean lazy.
The issue with stereotypes is one’s tendency to fixate on something that one believes to be true. This issue is not merely limited to stereotypes. It can develop into stubbornness or narrow-mindedness. It closes off any open communication or possibility for growth and doesn’t invite any changes. A business will not be successful if it simply does things in the way it always has been without adapting itself to changing market needs. Dogmatism doesn’t help people feel free but regulates and imprisons what ought to be believed and followed. The problem is with fixation. In the lesson this morning, we see both Jesus and his friends in a state of fixation. Jesus’ friends are fixated on the idea that the Canaanite (gentile) woman should not ask for help from Jews or shout after them. Also, considering cultural biases and limitations towards women, we can guess that it’s not moderate for women to shout in public. So the friends ask Jesus to send her away. Quite surprisingly Jesus isn’t too different from them. (But don’t be too quick to be disappointed in him.) Jesus is also fixated on the belief that he is “sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” His saying, whether it is intentional to expose the general attitude of the Israelites against Gentiles as a shock pedagogy, gets worse when he says, “It is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.” If he heals the daughter of the gentile woman who is not part of the lost sheepfold, he becomes an unfair parent who wastes children’s food on dogs. He is not called to be an unfair and irresponsible feeder. The Canaanite woman, however, breaks free of Jesus and his friends’ cultural and religious fixation. She doesn’t restrain herself on their terms. How she does it is rather satirical, mischievous, and so wise while setting her focus solely on her daughter’s healing in desperation. She dares to become a dog. There’s no sign of her feelings being hurt or offended or insulted. No resentment to Jesus. She’s not fixated on her self-image or how she should be treated. she’s truly free to become what’s needed for her to heal her daughter. This in turn means she’s free to become an undesirable one according to the customs and traditions of her time. Nothing can get in her way. Her skillful becoming creates in the wall of Jesus’ fixation a gap or a crack through which the Spirit of freedom and change penetrates. As she is willing to become a dog in his analogy, he is invited to become an unfair feeder. He still has a choice to remain a fair feeder but is persuaded to break free from his fixation. He too becomes what’s conventionally conceived to be not desired. So he says, “Woman, great is your faith! Let it be done for you as you wish.” If I may add a comment to his saying, it would be, “Great is your faith to help me expand and get out of my fixated view on whom I am sent and called to do God’s work!” Perhaps today’s story from the gospel isn’t just about how the Canaanite woman’s faith heals her demon-tormented daughter. It may also be about how her skillful becoming of who she’s called to be at the needs of those in need opens Jesus and his friends’ fixated hearts so that they’re no longer led by a god created in their own image but by the living presence of the Spirit. It almost looks like Jesus is prepared to become an unfair feeder in the following story of feeding the four thousand after today’s lesson (12:29-39). You can see the domino effect that is caused by the Canaanite woman’s faith that grounds her in the presence of God and helps Jesus reconsider his calling which is not just for his fellow Jews but for all. The Canaanite woman’s skillful becoming sounds like St. Paul who once said, “To the Jews I became like a Jew, to win the Jews. To those under the law, I became like one under the law (though I myself am not under the law), so as to win those under the law. To those not having the law I became like one not having the law. To the weak I became weak, to win the weak. I have become all things to all people so that by all possible means I might save some.” (1 Cor. 9:20-22) This freedom to become like water is rooted in one’s experience of God’s indwelling presence which vanishes our sense of being thrown into the world and fills the empty space or void with the Breath of God. The question to reflect on this morning would be to ask ourselves, “How fixated or free are we from who we become for the service of others in love?” |
Paul"...life up your love to that cloud [of unknowing]...let God draw your love up to that cloud...through the help of his grace, to forget every other thing." Archives
January 2025
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