Wrong Way.  On Purpose.

“I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel . . .

It is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.”

(Matthew 15:24, 26)

A sermon by Siegfried S. Johnson on the 14th Sunday after Pentecost, September 10, 2006

(Volume 1 Number 12)

First United Methodist Church, 605 West Sixth, Mountain Home, Arkansas 72653

 July 1938.  Douglas Corrigan tops off the fuel tank of his 1929 Curtis Robin monoplane. Moments later Corrigan is airborne from the East Coast’s Floyd Bennett Airfield.  The plane is hardly state-of-the-art.  His cabin door is literally tied shut with baling wire.  Two compasses comprise the sum of his navigational instruments.  Corrigan’s flight plan was to head west across the interior of the United States.  Destination?  Long Beach, California.  

But something goes wrong.  Seriously wrong.  Twenty-nine hours later Corrigan lands his monoplane near Dublin.  Not Dublin, California.  The real Dublin.  Ireland.  Remarkably, Corrigan has flown east instead of west, crossing the entire Atlantic Ocean.  Believe it or not, it actually happened on July 17, 1938, the day the aviator earned the title, “Wrong Way” Corrigan.

How does one explain such a blatant navigational blunder?  Corrigan claimed one compass did not work at all and the other malfunctioned, pointing his plane 180 degrees in the wrong direction.  For nearly sixty years, until his death in December of 1995 at the age of eighty-eight, Corrigan forever insisted that he was surprised to see the Irish, instead of Californians, when he taxied his plane to a stop. 

There’s good reason to believe Corrigan’s famous flight was anything but a mistake.  Lindberg’s solo flight across the Atlantic occurred on May 21, 1927.  Corrigan, fascinated by Lindberg’s feat, learned to fly.  He paid $310 for the monoplane, which even his friends derided as a “crate.”  By 1938, still only ten pilots had matched Lindberg’s pioneer flight across the Atlantic. Corrigan longed to be one of a select group, the first dozen pilots to fly across the ocean. 

But he ran into a problem.  The Department of Commerce inspected his plane and rejected his request for a transcontinental flight plan.  The airplane, they said, was unsafe.  Didn’t pass inspection.  Low quality.  Slipshod.

His dream of crossing the Atlantic thus postponed, Corrigan accepted the government’s ruling and announced his intention to go home.  He had failed to convince authorities that he could do it.  It was time to relax and retool.  The government was probably right.  After all, it had taken him nine days to fly from California to New York, making numerous stops due to weather and mechanical problems.  (One of those stops, by the way, was in Arkadelphia, Arkansas where in 1938, it was said later, no one landed on purpose.)  The government had made its judgment.  So Corrigan climbed into his crate.  Took off for California.  And landed in Ireland!  He was straight-faced and twinkle-eyed in his insistence that Ireland was not his intended destination.  But everyone suspected . . . no, everyone knew, that Corrigan had gone the Wrong Way, On Purpose.  So it was that Douglas Corrigan achieved international celebrity, widely regarded as a hero of adventure and daring.

Jesus often went the Wrong Way On Purpose.  Our text is an excellent example.  So much about this story seems wrong.  It seems out of place with what we know of Jesus’ ministry, out of character with what we’ve learned of Jesus’ spirit.  The story just isn’t right.  To begin with, this is the only instance in the four gospels of Jesus traveling outside Israel.  Tyre and Sidon are situated on the coast of the Mediterranean, in Phoenician territory, populated by non-Jews.  That’s the wrong direction for one who, in response to a woman’s plea for help, defined his mission as one “sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.”   Jesus is telling this woman, “My compass is pointing in the direction of Israel, not of Phoenicia.”   That alone seems out of character for the Lord we have come to know.  

Ah, but it gets worse.  When she is bold enough to add an addendum to her plea for help, Jesus brushes her off.  “It is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs!”  Ouch!  Jesus would earn a bundle of demerits using that sort of insensitive, politically incorrect language.  It just seems wrong.  Is Jesus really saying this woman and her daughter should be excluded as recipients of his ministering mercy on the grounds of their race?  That’s not the Jesus we’ve come to know.  These words seem so uncaring, so hurtful.  His heart seems closed.

Listen closely.  Listen, and I think you’ll hear the Pharisees applauding.  The Pharisees?  Is that not wrong?  What an unusual cheering section for Jesus.  These guys were his regular antagonists and constant irritants.  Not on this day.  “That’s right, Jesus!  Now you’re talking!  Tell that gentile dog of a woman to shoo!  She is a defiling influence. Keep this talk up and we’ll soon be passing a petition to allow you back into our group.”  

We read this passage and feel like we’re in a different book than the New Testament we’ve known.  Something is wrong.  Seriously wrong.  The normally steady compass of our gospel understanding is somehow malfunctioning, pointing 180 degrees in the opposite direction.

Seeming so wrong, numerous theological raindances have been attempted to explain away this gospel story.  Some suggest it’s not genuine, a mere fabrication of the early church. Others see it as evidence of Jesus’ human nature, that he was merely tired, that his weariness was exhibited in frustration and rudeness.  Others suggest Jesus was only testing her resolve, seeing how badly she really wanted this gift.

Let me offer another solution.  I think that perhaps Jesus said these things to the woman tongue-in-cheek, with a twinkle in his eye.  Remember how Corrigan insisted that his mission was to California, even though he had landed in Ireland?  Everyone knew that he had come the Wrong Way On Purpose.  I suggest Jesus did the same.  Perhaps Jesus said “Oops, I’ve come the wrong way,” in the same sense in which Corrigan spoke to the Irish.  But the world suspected . . . no, the world knew, knew in a single glance that Corrigan had fulfilled his higher purpose.  He was right where he wanted to be. 

I read a delightful story last week in Rabbi David Cooper’s book, God is a Verb, a Jewish fable from Hasidic tradition.  It’s the story of Yosele, a rich miser in a large city.  He had more money than he could possibly spend, but whenever a poor person would approach him begging for a few coins or something to eat, Yosele turned away.  His heart was closed.  In turning away the needy, he often seemed very rude.

So when Yosele died, no tears were shed.  He had no family and friends.  Sadly, no one would miss him.  But a strange and unexpected thing happened.  The week after he died, every needy family in town showed up at the home of the town’s rabbi, Rabbi Kalman.  All told the same story, that for many years, on Wednesday evenings, someone had secretly placed envelopes of money under their doors.  The families had come to depend on this financial assistance every week, as if manna were being sent directly from heaven.  These anonymous gifts had, last week, suddenly stopped, leaving the people frightened and confused.

When several weeks passed, an astonishing possibility dawned on Rabbi Kalman.  There was only one thing that could account for the sudden end to this charity.  Could the man who had portrayed himself as a miser really have been something very different?  When night fell, Rabbi Kalman retired to his study and prayed for an answer.

So heartfelt was the rabbi’s prayer that his consciousness transcended time and space.  He crossed the boundary of death and saw Yosele, now surrounded by Abraham, and Isaac, and David.  “So it WAS you who hid the envelopes!” the rabbi said.  “How wonderful to be in heaven, in this beautiful place.” 

Yosele said, with a slight smile and with a twinkle in his eye, “Yes, it is wonderful to be in the presence of these holy ones.  But there is nothing, even here in heaven, that can compare with the joy I felt when I hid those envelopes every week.  This is paradise, but that was the true meaning of joy.”  And with these words, Yosele taught that there is a joy even greater than heaven, the joy of unexpectedly blessing others.

In Mark’s gospel, Jesus seems to fit the role of Yosele, the Holy Miser – in his initial, apparent lack of mercy.  Though he claimed that he has come the wrong day, could it be that he had a twinkle in his eye that betrayed his real purpose?  Might this woman have caught this glimmer of playful hope in Jesus’ eyes?  “I’ve come the wrong way.  I am not among the children of Israel, to whom my spiritual food and blessing belong.  I find myself among the dogs.  But if you look closely in my eye, my excitement will betray that this was my intent all along.  I mean to experience a joy greater than heaven itself – to extend mercy where it is least expected.”

Evidently, this woman noticed the open door.  Maybe Jesus’ tone gave his real intention away, maybe his inflection, or his body-language.  Maybe it was his outright smile.  These things we can’t pick up in a mere reading of the text printed with ink on paper.   But through the rough exterior of these words she sees the goodness of his true intent and responds, “Yes, but even the dogs eat the crumbs of such goodness.  I will be happy with the crumbs.”  

Jesus bursts out with exuberance.  “Here is a grand example of faith.  Your daughter is healed.” At that point, this passage which seemed so terribly wrong now seems so wonderfully right, foreshadowing the expansion of the gospel to all the nations, to all points of the compass.  There is no point on the compass which, when we take the gospel in that direction, will be the wrong direction.  If some consider it wrong to take the gospel to a people of a different race, or a different nationality, or a different socio-economic grouping -- then let us intentionally go the Wrong Way On Purpose.

Sometimes we are called to go the wrong way on purpose, against the grain of accepted practice. Jesus did.  He allowed his hungry disciples to prepare food on the Sabbath in contradiction to the accepted tradition of the Pharisees and scribes, thus elevating human need above the demands of the law.  On another occasion he healed a man’s shriveled hand on the Sabbath.  A violation of rabbinical Sabbath laws.  The scribes weren’t happy about these deviations from the rules, any more than the government inspectors were happy about Corrigan’s ignoring their decision to deny his flight over the Atlantic.  The scribes prided themselves on playing by the rules and would not be amused by Jesus coming into contact with a gentile woman – defiling, low quality, slipshod activity for a Jewish savior.  But Jesus firmly stood his ground that acts of love, mercy and acceptance must be elevated above acts of strict obedience to the dictates of law and tradition.

Jesus seemed to have a sense of when to violate tradition, when to head the Wrong Way On Purpose.  He did so whenever he was in pursuit of higher objectives.  Let’s remember that Jesus has come the wrong way for us.  Think of Bethlehem.  How wrong does it seem that the creator of the universe should be born in a stable?  Surely Bethlehem was not in the flight plan of God.  The Creator, born in a stable?  A stable!  How out of place it seems.  And, what about the cross? God’s Son on a cross?  How wrong that seems! 

Yet it was a part of his merciful mission to come the Wrong Way.  On Purpose.  For our redemption.  As our example.  Amen.

Sources and notes:

Trans-Atlantic Flier “Wrong Way Corrigan” Dies At 88, by Myrna Oliver of The Los Angeles Times, in The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, December 13, 1995.

The idea of Jesus speaking to the woman with a twinkle in his eye is delightfully proposed in a treatment of Matthew 15:21-28 by Max Lucado.  He included his comments on this text in a chapter titled, Why God Smiles from the book, In The Eye Of The Storm, Word Publishing, 1991, page 214.