Proper 15, Year A
August 14, 2005
Christ Church, Covington
“For God has imprisoned all in disobedience so that he may be merciful to
all” (Rom. 11:32).
When I was a boy I loved to read stories about escape from prison; in fact, I
still do. Devil’s Island, German Stalag, Mississippi Chain Gang: it really
didn’t matter to me. Confinement and escape was the thing. I still love to see
Steve McQueen make a break for the Swiss border on his motorcycle in The Great
Escape (maybe this time he’ll make it), or Tim Robbins burst out of the cesspool
pipe in The Shawshank Redemption. If the popularity of the prison-escape theme
in movies is any indicator, I’m not alone in my appreciation. There’s something
about the theme of imprisonment and then release that appeals to and resonates
with human beings.
Not all forms of imprisonment are as obvious as the high-walls-and-watchtower
type. The Polish poet Czeslaw Milosz writes about his experience in
German-occupied Poland during the Second World War. Milosz gives a sense of the
malicious lunacy that ruled over millions of people in Poland; he details his
own role in the Resistance, but won’t take any credit for it. Not out of
modesty, though Milosz is a modest man. Here’s the reason for taking no credit:
“To live with one’s cowardice is bitter…. I admit it openly: I turned cold with
fear even at home if I happened to meet our apartment manager’s eyes with their
veiled threat, knowing that he suspected one of our guests was a Jew… The
manager once drove away two Jewish children who used to eat dinner at our house,
and they were afraid to come any more. They slept somewhere in unfinished houses
or in ruins; I spotted them once; the older boy, a ten-year-old, was sitting on
a pile of bricks, reading a newspaper to the younger. But out of shame I did not
go up to them” (Milosz, Native Realm). A simple scene that Milosz recounts (so
like the poet), but anyone with any sensitivity to twentieth century history
will know its terrifying implications, for these children and millions of
others.
This is a prison that Milosz lives in: not simply the prison of occupied Poland,
but the prison of knowing the way the world is supposed to be and being unable
to act upon it effectively. In 1939, Milosz had already written, “I had come up
against the powerlessness of the individual involved in a mechanism that works
independently of his will”. That’s a prison, and you do not need to live in
German-occupied Poland to know what that’s like.
The Apostle Paul covers this same familiar ground in our second reading today.
He talks about Jews and Gentiles, both imprisoned in their disobedience to God.
Paul is outlining the human situation of imprisonment, our own situation. The
Scriptures use this metaphor, again and again. A bit earlier in the letter Paul
had written, “For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is
what I do” (Rom. 7:19). Not all forms of prison are obvious. It’s imprisoning to
know what the world is supposed to be like, and feel powerless to change it or
ourselves.
This brings us (thank God) to Jesus in our Gospel today. Here we have a Gentile
woman, whose daughter is possessed by a demon. The daughter is in the grip of
powers that torment her, about which she can do nothing. Yet God overcomes this
imprisonment, giving release. What did Paul write, after all? “For God has
imprisoned all in disobedience so that he may be merciful to all.”
There are three things to point to in Jesus’ encounter with the woman. First,
generosity: God’s generosity in giving healing; God’s generosity in fulfilling
prophecy and including the Gentiles in his plan. Second, the woman’s humility,
looking not to claim her rights but rather to a bold and persistent waiting upon
the mercy of God. Third, faith: the woman’s faith that Jesus can free her
daughter from imprisonment; her trust in the liberating power of God.
So the “take away” this morning is straightforward. We leave here as liberated
people, escaped prisoners. We’re going to need to keep in mind our Gospel today.
We will need to have faith in God, trust that he can make us free. We will need
to have humility, thankfulness to God for what he’s done. And we will need to
follow Jesus’ example in generosity, both to others and to ourselves. We’re not
perfect, but we have been liberated.
John Bauerschmidt is Rector of Christ Church, Covington.
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