In June of 1882, Scottish minister George Matheson was sitting alone in the manse of the church he served in Inellan, in the region of Argylshire in Scotland.  He was awaiting the wedding of one of his sisters, and was wrestling with some unnamed emotional distress.  It may be that he was still grieving the loss of his fiancée, who had left him when she learned that he was completely losing his sight; apparently, she told him she could not go through life with a blind husband.  It may be that Matheson was struggling with the marriage of his sister; she had assisted him as he lost his sight during his studies, even learning Greek and Hebrew in order to help him with biblical translations. But she would now be leaving to focus her attentions on her new husband.  Matheson does not tell us exactly what the suffering was, but he does say that as he sat in his solitary anguish, suddenly he began writing the words to a new hymn, which came as an assurance of God’s presence:

O Love that wilt not let me go,

I rest my weary soul in thee;

I give Thee back the life I owe,

That in thine ocean depths its flow

May richer, fuller be.[1]

These words, and the verses that followed, came to him complete within the space of five minutes.  He never edited them afterward.  In the midst of his sorrow, unexpectedly, Matheson heard the reminder of God’s unfailing mercy.  “O Love that wilt not let me go . . .”

            “O Love that wilt not let me go.”  This line came to my mind over and over as I read through the biblical passages for this week.  Not often do the three lectionary passages coalesce in such a compelling way.  But listen to these stories again, with Matheson’s lyrics as the soundtrack in your head:

            First we have Joseph, and the dramatic conclusion to his family saga.  If you have not read Joseph’s story recently, you may want to go back and start at chapter 37 for some engaging bedtime reading.  It is as timely a narrative of human betrayal and redemption as you can find on the Broadway stage or the Hollywood screen or the New York bestseller list.  Joseph, particularly beloved by his father Jacob, earns the jealousy of his brothers, who first threaten to kill him, but then decide to sell him into slavery instead, telling their father that he has died in an accident.  Joseph is taken to Egypt, where through his gifts of wisdom and dream interpretation, he earns his way into the good graces of Pharaoh, eventually rising to become the second in command over the entire land.  God gives him the foresight to know that famine is coming, so he helps the Egyptians prepare by saving their crops against the hard times that are to come.  When the famine does strike, Egypt has plenty to eat, while its hungry neighbors slowly creep toward starvation.  It is the famine that drives Joseph’s brothers from their home in Canaan to Egypt, where they know they might buy food in order to survive.  Little do they realize that the one whom they are asking for help is the same one whom they sold into slavery years before.

            The story today picks up after the brothers have come to Egypt for food a second time, and after Joseph has tested them by demanding that the youngest, Benjamin (Joseph’s closest brother) stay as his slave before he will give them any more.  Finally, the pleading of his suffering brothers brings him to a breaking point.  “I am Joseph,” he cries out, “your brother, whom you sold into Egypt.  You sold me here.  But do not be distressed, for God sent me before you to preserve life.”  He goes on to insist that they must go back and bring their father Jacob, and all of them should move to Egypt, where Joseph can provide for them, and they will not starve.  As he says, “God sent me before you to preserve life.” 

            “O Love that wilt not let me go.”  It is an astonishing moment. These men betrayed their brother and deceived their own father.  They deserve condemnation.  Yet God’s love has not let them go.  Through the one whom they threatened to kill, God has preserved their life. They have been unfaithful, but God remains stubbornly, doggedly faithful to them.

            And then there is Paul, who in today’s reading gives us the conclusion to his long reflection on God’s relationship to the Jewish people.  Paul’s gut-wrenching question is: has God rejected his people—the people of Israel, whom God chose to love so long ago?  Many of them have not recognized Jesus as the Messiah, and Paul spends three chapters wrestling with what this means for God’s covenant with Israel.  Has God given up on those descendants of Joseph and his brothers? His response here is unequivocal: by no means!  “God has not rejected his people whom he foreknew.”  He goes on to acknowledge that indeed they have not accepted the gospel, but this does not compromise their election—in other words, this does not ultimately change God’s love for them.  He says, “as regards the gospel they are enemies of God for your sake, but as regards election, they are beloved, for the sake of their ancestors.” “O Love that wilt not let me go.”  His final words today are stunning: “For God has imprisoned all in disobedience so that he may be merciful to all.” [Rom. 11:32]

            Now if you were here last week and heard Bernie’s sermon, you may be shaking your heads.  Bernie rightly pointed out that in the preceding chapter, Paul insisted that our salvation depends at least in part on how we respond to the offer of the gospel.  “If you confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.” [10:9]  Paul there implies that not all will be saved, since not all will confess and believe in this way.  Yet here he says “God has imprisoned all in disobedience so that he may be merciful to all”?  Which is it—does salvation require our faithful response, or does it come as a complete surprise, from God’s mysterious mercy?

            I think what we have here is a central paradox in Paul’s thought, and one that we should not too easily resolve.  Our response to Jesus does matter, and we are called not only to confess our faith but to proclaim it in the world.  If we have witnessed God’s self-giving love for the world in Jesus, then how could we fail to embody that love in our lives? Yet our response (or our failure to respond) is not the end of the story.  In today’s reading, the rejection of Jesus by the people of Israel is absolutely trumped by the dogged, surprising mercy of God, who will not let them go.  And this should be good news not only for them, but also for us. No one’s disobedience—not theirs, and NOT OURS—can finally thwart the redeeming purposes of God.

            “O Love that wilt not let me go.”  We hear this proclaimed by Joseph to his brothers.  We hear it proclaimed by Paul, speaking about the people of Israel.  And then there is Jesus. But for most of the story in Matthew today, it is not Jesus who shows God’s relentless, surprising mercy.  It is an outsider, a Canaanite woman, who demands mercy and healing for her demon-possessed daughter.

            For those of us who want to follow Jesus, who like Paul want to proclaim that Jesus is Lord and believe that God raised him from the dead, this story in Matthew is one of the most difficult to embrace as gospel.  Let’s tell the truth: it takes Jesus a while here to act like a savior.  He is traveling through a region where most people are not faithful Jews, but are Canaanites, whose ancestors were there before Moses led the people of Israel from Egypt to the “promised land.”  They followed other religious practices, and were regarded by Jews as unfaithful idol-worshippers. Yet one of these people cries out, “Have mercy on me, Lord, Son of David; my daughter is tormented by a demon.” And does Jesus respond, offering healing and a compassionate word?  We would like him to.  But no.  He does not answer her at all.  And it just gets worse.  His disciples urge him to send her away, and he tells them, “I was only sent to the lost sheep of Israel.”  Basically, Jesus says: I don’t have anything to say to her; my mission is to the Jewish people.  She persists, coming right up to him and begging, “Lord, help me.”  And his response cuts her—and those of us overhearing—to the core: “It is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.”

            Calling the Canaanite people “dogs” was a common insult, apparently, among the Jews of Jesus’ day.  And it was roughly the same as calling a woman a female dog today.  Jesus couldn’t be more clear that God’s mercy is for the covenant people, the Israelites, not for those outsiders who share the land, with their strange gods and their weird customs and their incomprehensible accents.  

            But her dedication is unswerving: “Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters’ table.” Could it be that she, quick-witted and iron-willed, glimpses in Jesus something he himself has forgotten: the surprising scope of God’s mercy?  Finally, finally Jesus looks at her with respect.  Finally his own eyes are opened to see her for who she is. “Woman (no longer dog, now, but woman), great is your faith!  Let it be done for you as you wish.”  And her daughter is healed instantly.

            “O love that will not let me go.”  This mother is a triple outsider: a woman, a Canaanite, and a parent of a daughter tortured by demons.  Can any of us imagine what her life must have been like, insulted by neighbors, desperately trying to care for a child who lashed out violently against her, whose very presence in the world provoked suspicion and fear?  Yet her love will not let go--not of her daughter, nor of the healing grace that she glimpses in Jesus.  Doggedly, persistently, she holds on.  And it is her faith in God’s boundary-breaking love that Jesus (finally) recognizes and honors with healing. She herself is a witness to God’s surprising mercy, which will not be confined to those who sit at the table, but tumbles out with abundance into the hungry world.  Jesus himself in that moment may have been the one to sing, “O love that will not let me go.”

            Joseph’s brothers are jealous, lying scoundrels who sell their brother into slavery.  Yet God’s surprising mercy will not let them go.  Paul’s own Jewish brothers and sisters have not recognized Jesus as Messiah.  Yet God’s surprising mercy will not let them go.  A Canaanite mother lives outside the bounds of the covenant community, begging for help for her daughter.  Yet somehow she knows in her bones that God’s surprising mercy is for her—even for her.  Love will not let her go.

            Such mercy comes as deep healing for those burdened with demons, guilt, despair.  Because of the boundless mercy of God, the Canaanite daughter was healed.  Perhaps God loves even us, unloveable though we are!  Yet mercy does not always come easy.  God’s mercy upends our assumptions about who is worthy, trampling on our judgments about who is inside and who is outside the bounds of divine love. 

            How might we live if we really believed that God’s mercy extended to Joseph’s no-good brothers—and to those who have done wrong to us?  How might we live if we believed that God’s mercy extended to those who are unfaithful?  The Jews in Jesus’ day were sure that the Canaanites were unfaithful idolaters.  The Gentile Christian communities around Paul were sure that the Jews had been unfaithful.  Who do we today label as “unfaithful” and therefore outside the bounds of God’s mercy?  Which borders do we mark and police in order to contain the forgiveness, the healing, the mercy of God?

            Georgia writer Flannery O’Connor specialized in pointing out God’s surprising, disturbing mercy at work in the world. One of her last short stories, “Revelation,” published in 1965, makes this particularly clear.  In the story, the main character, Ruby Turpin, spends most of her time observing the people around her and organizing them into groups so that she can be clear about how she and God should treat them. “Sometimes Mrs. Turpin occupied herself at night naming the classes of people. On the bottom of the heap were most colored people, not the kind she would have been if she had been one, but most of them; then next to them—not above, just away from—were the white-trash; then above them were the homeowners; and above them the home-and-land owners, to which she and Claud belonged.  Above she and Claud were people with a lot of money and much bigger houses and much more land.  But then the complexity of it would begin to bear in on her, for some of the people with a lot of money were common and ought to be below she and Claud and some of the people who had good blood had lost their money and had to rent . . .” 

            At the end of the story, after a traumatic incident at the doctor’s office, she is back at home on her farm, standing beside the pig pen, gazing up at the sky and the setting sun.  “There was only a purple streak in the sky, cutting through a field of crimson and leading, like an extension of the highway, into the descending dusk. . . . She saw the streak as a vast swinging bridge extending upward from the earth through a field of living fire.  Upon it a vast horde of souls was rumbling toward heaven.  There were whole companies of white trash, clean for the first time in their lives, and bands of [blacks] in white robes, and battalions of freaks and lunatics shouting and clapping and leaping like frogs. And bringing up the end of the procession was a tribe of people whom she recognized at once as those who, like herself and Claud, had always had a little of everything and the God-given wit to use it right. She leaned forward to observe them closer.  They were marching behind the others with great dignity, accountable as they had always been for good order and common sense and respectable behavior. They alone were on key. Yet she could see by their shocked and altered faces that even their virtues were being burned away.”[2]

            God’s surprising mercy extends to the lunatics, to the demon-possessed, to the foreigners and the deceitful liars and the unworthy—and yes, perhaps even to us.  Together with Joseph and his brothers, Paul and his Gentile audience as well as his Israelite family, the Canaanite woman and her daughter, even Ruby Turpin and Claud, with shocked and altered faces may we, all of us, join in that procession, stumbling toward heaven, singing, “O Love that wilt not let me go.”