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The following message for the moment is delivered by the Reverend Dr. Bruce Wheeler Thielman. Today's sermon is entitled "For One of the Women I Loved." The scripture reading of the morning is the Gospel according to Matthew, the 15th chapter. I begin the reading at the verse numbered 21. "And Jesus went away

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from there and withdrew to the district of Tyre and Sidon. And behold, a Canaanite woman from that region came out and cried, 'Have mercy on me, O Lord, Son of David. My daughter is severely possessed by a demon.' But he did not answer her a word. And his disciples came and begged him, saying, 'Send her away, for

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she is crying after us.' He answered, 'I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.' But she came and knelt before him, saying, 'Lord, help me.' And he answered, 'It is not fair to take the children's bread and throw it to the dogs.' She said, 'Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their

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master's table.' Then Jesus answered her, 'O woman, great is your faith. Be it done for you as you desire.' And her daughter was healed instantly." And may God bless to us and to our understanding this reading from his Word. Pray with me. In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, amen.

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If I were given the opportunity to begin a new congregation, and further, if I were given the privilege of naming it whatever I wanted to name it, I would not go to a number, First Presbyterian or Third Presbyterian. I wouldn't go to a geographical reference, Eastminster Church, Westminster Church, Main Street

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Church. No, I would choose as the name of this new congregation the name of some biblical or historic Christian hero or heroine. And if I could make my very first choice, the one which would prevail, I would call the church the Church of the Canaanite Woman, and I would have two statues of her. One statue

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would be in the front of the church, before the front doors, and the other would be inside the church somewhere near the pulpit. Look at her story with me. It's a very important story because it is the only instance in all of the Scriptures where Jesus is described as ministering outside his homeland. He goes

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into the area of Tyre and Sidon, and he went there to say that the gospel is for the whole world. Now both Mark and Matthew, who record this story, are careful to point out that just before Jesus made this journey, he had been in a confrontation with the scribes and the Pharisees, and they had rejected him. He

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had stated to them that their buttressed legalisms were not the basis for a sound faith, that believing love was of the essence of faith, but they were contemptuous of such an idea. And so to dramatize his rejection of their phony fundamentalism, Jesus turns his back briefly on his own people and goes to

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the area of Tyre and Sidon, goes to a place where people live who are hated by the Jews, but a place where he, interestingly enough, is immediately accepted. If you look back at the gospel according to Mark chapter 3, you will learn that some of the people from Tyre and Sidon came to hear Jesus very early

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in his ministry, and they were moved by what he said, and these people evidently went home and told others of what they had heard from him. So there was a willingness to come and listen to Jesus. And one Canaanite woman, a Gentile as all Canaanites were, came and cried out for help. "I have a daughter," she said, "who

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has a demon. Won't you please heal her?" And the Scriptures say he answered her, "Not a word." Now this was not because he was hard or indifferent to her. It was because he did not know her and was not accustomed to being amongst the Canaanites. This was a test. You see, real faith is tenacious. Real faith is

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persistent. Real faith is not easily frustrated. And so to test her, he says, "Nothing." He wants her to respond like the woman in that parable of his, who keeps knocking on the judge's door until she gets justice. And the woman of Canaan passes the test because she pursues her confidence in Jesus. And he explains to

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her, and this again is by way of understanding, "I have been sent first of all to the children of Israel." And she could grasp that and understand that and she pursued her cause farther. And then Jesus did a very interesting thing. He responded to her with an old Jewish proverb. Now notice this is not Jesus'

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word. This is a proverb which he is quoting, and notice also that he gives it a very interesting but important twist. He begins by saying the beginning of the proverb, "The children must be filled first." In other words, he's underscoring what he said earlier. The Jews are the chosen people of God. They are those in a

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special covenant relationship with God, and Jesus said, "I was sent first of all to them." But notice when you say "first of all," that implies that others are going to be reached also. Not only to them, but first to them. What Jesus is saying then is that while the first ministry that he had was to the Jews, they were to receive

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him, and having been fed by him, they were to go out into the world and share the faith which they had gained by God's grace. And Jesus underscores this by going on to quote the second part of this proverb, "You don't take the children's bread and throw it to the dogs." Now Jews commonly called Gentiles "dogs," and a dog

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in those days was a vicious scavenger. They ran in packs through the streets, wild, uncontrolled. But Jesus does not use the same word for dog that the Jews commonly used when referring to the Gentiles. Instead, Jesus refers to puppies, to those who are loved, to those who are cared for, to those for whom one has

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affection. Jesus is quite literally ridiculing this proverb. He is saying, "True, I was sent first of all to the Jews, but they are to carry the message beyond, and they are to carry it beyond to you, and you are loved, and you are cared for, and you are held in the affection of God." And this woman, being very quick,

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obviously very, very fast in her thinking, replies to him using the same figure of speech. She says, "Well, if we're puppies, the puppies can at least eat the crumbs that fall from the table that the children drop." And these words of hers must have sung their way directly into the heart of Jesus. What she is saying is,

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"We may not be first, but we're ready to receive anything you have to give us, anything that will come from your hand." You see, what we're seeing here is those whom the Jews called unclean are in fact hearing and listening to Jesus. He had been rejected by his own people, and that must have hurt him in his heart of hearts,

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but he's being accepted by these people. The shadows that he had in him because of the contempt shown toward him are driven away by the sunshine of this woman's persistent faith. And so he says to her, "Woman, great is your faith. Your daughter is made well." And that very moment, the child was healed instantly.

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Jesus is here crossing religious barriers. The Canaanites were of a different faith from the Jews. He is crossing sexual barriers. Men did not usually speak to women in public. He is crossing nationalistic barriers. These were separate nations, separate geographical areas. But most importantly,

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and this is what is emphasized in the verse, he is crossing racial barriers. For the verse says that this woman who came to him was a Canaanite. She was of another race. Jesus is the breaker of barriers. Now I said that if I could start this new church called the Church of the Canaanite Woman, that I would have

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two statues of her, and one of them would be out in front of the church on its front steps, and that statue would be out there to remind the people of the church of all those outside the church who are crying out for love and justice in the world. Now we don't have a great deal of overt racism in this country as we had

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but a few years ago. We don't have many lynchings or burning crosses, although even a few, even one, is far too many. And these uglinesses do sometimes occur. Nevertheless, not as much as they used to occur. What we have done is to substitute for overt racism what is called aversive racism. Let me give you some examples of

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what aversive racism is, and all of these are taken from women and men here in the city of Pittsburgh. One woman said, "Two times when my husband was working in the front lawn, people came by and seeing that he was black, stopped and said, 'Are you the gardener?'" A black man tells of how he was shopping in a store. He stopped in

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that store every day on his way home from work. He was wearing his business clothes, his suit, his white shirt, his tie, and he noticed that when he would go down the aisle, an older woman coming toward him with a cart, as white men passed her, she wouldn't even notice them. But as he drew near to her, she picked

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her purse up out of the cart and put it under her arm. Another black man tells of how he went twice a week to a 7-Eleven store here in Pittsburgh. He spent an average of about seven dollars a week each time. On one occasion, he found himself in the store and all he had was a $50 bill, and he asked the manager of

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the store if he would break the bill for him, and the manager replied, "You people," get that, "You people, you blacks, you African-Americans, you people, I would never accept that from you. It's probably counterfeit." And mind you, this man said, "I had been going to this store every week for over a year." A black woman says,

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"When my son entered college, he was required, together with all other black students, to attend a class to learn how to get along with white students. But there was no class for white students to teach them how to get along with black students." A black man tells of how his wife works for an employment agency here

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in the city, a place where businesses can call when they are looking for temporary help. Many times the caller says, "Please don't send us any blacks," not recognizing that the very one to whom they're speaking on the telephone is, in fact, black. Perhaps the point is made in the most interesting way by looking at

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the research of Dr. Samuel Gaitner on the faculty of the University of Delaware. He set up a test. He would have an individual call another person, and when the phone call was connected, the other person would be asked if this was certain garage, and they would say, "Oh no, we're sorry, you have the wrong number."

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And they would say, "Well, look, will you help me? My car is broken down. I only had one quarter. I thought this was the number of the garage, and so I've spent that quarter. Would you mind calling the garage for me and asking them to send out their tow truck?" Many times the people receiving the call would hang up

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before the request was even completed. But what is most interesting is this. When the voice of the one calling was identifiably black, there were six times as many hang-ups as when white voices were heard. And what is most interesting of all is that the people who received these telephone calls had

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all been part of a seminar a year earlier in which they had described themselves as being not prejudiced. Wrap your mind around this. The unemployment rate generally in Pittsburgh is a little over 5%. For blacks, it is 12.5%. If you add in the discouraged workers, that is, those who have been going out

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looking for jobs so long that they finally have given up, the number jumps amongst blacks to 22%. If you are counting just young black men, then the number of those unemployed is 35%. 33% of the people who live in Allegheny County live below the poverty level if they're black. But only 12% in this

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county live below the poverty level if they're white. In this city, 22 black babies die out of every thousand that are born. And in this city, five white children die out of every thousand that are born. And the average life expectancy of a black man in Pittsburgh is 14 years shorter than that of a white man. And yet

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the African-Americans who are part of our community continue to be like this Canaanite woman of long ago. They do not enter into any violence. Instead, they cry out. They cry out asking for healing, asking for justice. And they do this in large measure because they have heard the testimony of other believers from

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their own people. Black leadership from the time of Frederick Douglass to Andrew Young has been dominated by those who were Christian. So the black cries out today with the same cry that was heard in Tyre and Sidon 20 centuries ago, only just like that woman, they're not really seeking crumbs. What they want is mercy

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and healing and justice. But I said I'd have two statues of this woman. The other statue I would have inside the church down near the pulpit. And this statue would be there to remind the people in the church that Jesus was the breaker of barriers, that he was willing to lay aside Jewish traditions in order to give

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the help that was needed. Whenever any tradition or any practice or any theology takes precedence over helping and healing the world's wounded people, the one doing that is tragically misguided. That's what we find in the disciples, because the disciples said to Jesus, "Send her away. She cries out too

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much." And you hear that kind of talk in the church today. Let this be said once and for all. Racial prejudice is evil. It is brutal, it is sensual, it is criminal. Whether it is subtle or overt, no matter what the place of high or low station where it occurs, it is a ruinous menace.

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Racial prejudice is contrary to the most elementary of Christian principles. "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." How would the world's prejudiced feel if all the rest of the world were prejudiced against them? How would they feel if when one of them made a mistake, the rest of the world said, "Oh,

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that's typical of all those people." And racial prejudice is ignorant, for both the Bible and biology teach us that God has made of one blood all the nations of the earth. So whether racism is practiced theoretically or practically, it can only be described as being either inane or insane. It denies God, it denies the unity

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of the human family, it denies the equality of all souls before God, and it denies the authority of Jesus Christ, who made a Samaritan, a person of another race, the lead character in one of his leading parables, and who, in the story before us today, was warmed and responded with compassion to a Canaanite woman.

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Any person who allows himself or herself to become an agent of dissension and discord in racial matters has to be out of touch with reality. What the world is seeking is unity, not disunity. What the world yearns for is peace, not war. How much intelligence does it take to recognize that what the world needs is

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not hate, but love? Is it really so profound that people cannot understand that what the world is seeking with all its heart is not intolerance, but understanding? There are certain things that we can do about this. We can pray for the controlled courage of our African-American friends and thank God

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for their patience. We can pray that those who are racist will be illuminated and saved, for surely they are rejecting salvation. We can pray for our churches that they might open their doors to people of other races and listen to those people when they come into the church and allow them to move into

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positions of power and influence. We can use our businesses to hire the people of other races that many businesses will not employ simply because of their race. We can be agents of peace in the office and in the home and in the school, driving away deeds of darkness with the light of love. We can, each one of us, make

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sure that we have at least one personal friendship with someone of another race, someone of another creed or color or country, and that we involve our families in that friendship. We can volunteer our time and our talents and our cash to advance the cause and to put down racism wherever it is encountered, and we can

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write letters to business leaders and to political leaders. We can tell them they must tear down their glass ceilings, they must stop blaming others, and they must stop using politics at the expense of human lives. Not very long ago now, this city was named as the most livable city in America. Would God it had been so

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designated because of the unity of its people, because of our combined opposition to racism, because everyone here works for the benefit of those who are unable to provide for themselves, that would have been far more meaningful than to win the award because of the number of golf courses and the weather

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pattern that prevails here, and because we have more trees within our city limits than any other major city in America. And how long will we tolerate these politicians who have pitched their tents on Grant Street for decade after decade and have played politics first, preserving themselves and their power

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above and beyond their concern for even the most suffering in our society? And as a church, we can support those groups that are within our own ministry here, that are working to defeat racism and to uphold the dignity of all the children of God. These, my friends, are things we must do if we are to be disciples of the

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breaker of barriers. For what God said to his people in Deuteronomy chapter 30, he says to us today, "This commandment which I command you this day is not too hard for you, neither is it a far-off. It is not in heaven that you should say, 'Who will go up for us to heaven and bring it to us that we may hear it and do it?'

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Neither is it beyond the sea that you should say, 'Who will go over the sea for us and bring it to us that we may have it and may do it?' No, says God, the word is very near you. The word is in your mouth. The word is in your heart so that you can do it." Thus says the Lord, and it is to this ministry we are called. Not for

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the whole world, but just for our part of the vineyard. He doesn't expect us to do it all, but he expects us to do all that needs to be done here. Now there was a woman, a Canaanite by race, and she besought him that he should cast out the demon from her daughter. And Jesus said, "Woman, great is your faith. What you seek

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is already done." She brought joy to Jesus, our Savior, and he brought joy to her. And that is the reason. She is one of the women I love. Let us pray. So God, we set aside a Sunday, and we call it Racial Justice Sunday, and churches all over the city will talk about it. And we pray for the anointing

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power of thy Holy Spirit so that every word that is spoken might be true and that every word that is spoken might be heard. But more than this, we pray that those who hear will do, and they will not do it just today on this Racial Justice Sunday, but that they will do it every day of their lives until every American,

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indeed every person in the world of regardless what creed or color or might be able to say from their hearts and with great joy, "Free at last, free at last, thank God Almighty, free at last." We ask this in the name of the breaker of barriers. Amen.