How many of you have seen the Barbie Movie? I saw it a couple of weeks ago. I don’t own any pink, but I put on my most atrocious lavender and headed out with my husband and son. Sterling was bribed by the promise of popcorn. This reading today reminded me of the Barbie Movie because both deal with the subject of women’s power.
In the Barbie Movie (I’ll try not to spoil it for you if
you haven’t seen it), Barbie is named as the first doll invented not to teach
girls to be mothers, but to help girls imagine a powerful womanhood. Barbie can be whoever or whatever she
wants: A vet, a doctor, an Olympic Gold
Medalist, a mermaid, President. She is a woman without barriers—she can float
to her convertible, have girl’s night sleepovers every night and her house has
no walls. If you remember the Barbie
dreamhouse has an open floor plan which assists in moving her around wherever
you want her to be. Girls enjoyed this
toy partly because of all the barriers they saw and experienced themselves and
to dream of a better future.
This Canaanite woman today lives a life full of barriers
and Jesus presents himself as one of them.
However, her encounter with barriers all her life have not taught her to
be submissive or give up. Instead she
smashes through barriers one after the other with the power of one who has
experience with tremendous barriers and tremendous power. This woman is not seen as powerful. She has no income of her own to spend. She has no choice where she will live or who
she was married to. Now she has a
daughter. She sees in her daughter the
barriers she will face, but also someone she loves and has dreams for a better
future. Additionally, her daughter is
very sick, adding more barriers in an already difficult life.
So this woman takes matters into her
own hands. No one is able to help her
daughter, to advocate for her. But this
woman won’t accept that this is the end of the story. She has heard of Jesus and breaks all the
rules to find him and beg for his help.
She is not allowed to go out on her own.
She breaks that barrier. She is
not allowed to talk to a man who isn’t her family, she breaks that
barrier. She isn’t allowed, as a
Canaanite person to speak to a Jewish person.
She breaks that barrier. Then
Jesus tells her she doesn’t have access—that what he has is not for her. She could have crumpled. But she had understanding of the power of
God, that it was big enough, that there was enough of it for her daughter, so
she stood up to Jesus. She gave him the
good news that indeed there was enough love to go around.
This woman truly believes the parables
of a couple of weeks ago, that the Kingdom of God is like the mustard seed,
that it starts small, but grows into a large shelter for the most vulnerable
birds. She believes that the Kingdom of
God is like yeast—giving space and rising up to feed all who are hungry. She believes that the Kingdom of God is like
a valuable pearl—that it is worth giving up everything for. She wants the healing of the Kingdom of God
for her daughter and she will risk ridicule and endure it, she will risk
breaking all the rules, and she will risk correcting Jesus. She knows there is enough love and mercy for
her daughter. She won’t demand any for
herself. She puts her daughter before
herself and her own needs, and she is rewarded.
Jesus told her there was not enough
for her daughter. This woman
testified—she gave a testimony—everything she knew of God, generous, kind,
powerful, friend of the powerless, and abundant, meant there was enough. Everything that Jesus had been preaching said
there was enough and she wasn’t going to let him contradict himself. She uses his own life as proof. Maybe she had been there at the feeding of
the 5000—everyone fed with 12 baskets left over. She knew there were leftovers and she wasn’t
too good to accept only the tiniest crumb, because she knew it would be enough.
This woman is an example of turning
the other cheek, of standing in defiance, looking the insulting person in the
eye and daring them to strike again. Jesus’ words were like a slap to her. He called her a dog. I can only imagine how he felt—regret
maybe—when she corrected him. She
schooled Jesus today and we all got a lesson about the least powerful.
When life gives us barriers and takes
all our power away, we shouldn’t accept that.
That isn’t the justice and mercy God promises. That isn’t the Kingdom of God.
When we see life taking away the power
of those with the least say, the least power, the least influence and money,
that is not the way it is supposed to be.
We are to seek ways to share power, to lift voices that have been
silenced, to be quiet for a minute and be taught by someone unexpected.
We can’t expect that if we pray for
healing it will come in the form we hope.
Healing and abundance and compassion show up on a lot of different
ways. This story can give us courage to
stand up to injustice—to speak to our legislators and commissioners, to serve
on juries, to listen to and amplify voices that have been sidelined, to break
through barriers together to create more level, a more navigable world for
people in need.
This story also may inspire humility
in us. Jesus made a mistake. He said something hurtful to someone in
desperate need and pain and dismissed her.
But because of her persistence, he was confronted with the truth that
God’s mercy and compassion is abundant.
His words and actions were not matching up in this situation and when it
was pointed out to him, he was humble.
He took the correction and changed his attitude. We sometimes say things in impatience or out
of our ignorance or are just plain thoughtless about another person’s
feelings.
I am not proud that I have at times
belittled someone smaller than me and later gone into an obsessive loop about
my mistake. I heard another pastor this
week say, “I need Jesus to be consistent.”
She needed Jesus actions to match his words. In this case, I am grateful Jesus is as human
as I am. He knows the pain of dying on
the cross and he knows the pain of hurting someone and learning from that. I can imagine the Gospel writers deciding
what stories of Jesus to include in the Gospel and which ones to leave
out. When they came to this story, two
of them included it. I can imagine the
debate. Do we put this story in where
clearly Jesus is wrong and hurtful? They
do, because he learns from it and the Christ Spirit is certainly present, but
in an unexpected way—more in this
indigenous woman and her faith, her courage, her hope. So she gets to teach Jesus and us the truth
that he has been pointing to all along—that there is enough love and
compassion—even for the outsiders, even for the little people, even for those
who speak harsh words and belittle others, who speak out of their privilege
words that are hurtful and untrue. We
all get another chance to try again to see how abundant and expansive God’s
love really is.
In the Barbie Movie, Barbie is
self-confident, at first out of being naïve.
She is the center of everything.
Everything in her world is made for her to enjoy. But Barbie once Barbie has her eyes opened,
she learns to use her power out of oppression—to tell the story of the barriers
women face and encourage other women to share their barriers. Her power starts to come not from her
privilege and being the center of everything, but from the truth of overcoming
obstacles and crashing through barriers.
We too are invited to open our eyes to the pain of this world and tell
the stories of oppression and abundance.
As those stories get told, we all get to notice how we participate in
these systems and recreate a more just world that gives life to everyone.
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