Have you ever changed your mind about something?  A couple months ago I discovered that I can play Solitaire on my phone.  I know, I know, this isn’t exactly brand-new technology!  People have been playing Solitaire on their computers and phones for decades.  But I had never tried it until recently.  And, wow!  It’s so much easier than playing the way my mom taught me with a real deck of cards spread out on the kitchen table.  For one thing, if I have a choice between two moves, I can try them both out before deciding which one to go with.  My mom never let me do that.  And if it turns out I made the wrong choice, I can always hit the “undo” button as many times as I want!  I win a lot more Solitaire games on my phone than I ever won playing the old-fashioned way.

Having the flexibility to change our minds is indeed a game changer!  During the first several months of the pandemic, we heard the word “pivot” constantly.  We needed to be able to change our minds, change our plans, change our expectations, more than ever before.  But having the freedom and openness to change our minds is a timeless value.  That’s why for many years our tag line as United Methodists has been, “open hearts, open minds, open doors.”  We are open to the Holy Spirit bringing new people, new information, and new revelation into our midst, because changed minds, hearts and lives bring glory to God!

In the course of changing our minds, it’s common to have a “crisis point” of sorts.  Something dramatic that gets our attention once and for all that the way we saw things before just isn’t doing it for us anymore.  I think that’s what is happening in our scripture lesson today.  Jesus is at a crisis point in his ministry.  He has had great success, attracting attention within and without Israel.  He has preached to thousands of people, healed perhaps just as many, and has performed amazing signs and wonders.

Yet despite all this attention, he has not been a great success in terms of people seeing him and loving him for who he is.  He began his public ministry with the understanding that he had come as the long-awaited Messiah the Jewish people were expecting.  But instead of embracing his identity, Jesus felt many people were simply using his power for their own benefit. Others accused him of being a servant of Beelzebub, the prince of demons—in other words, they thought his power to heal and cast out demons came from darkness, not from light.  One Sabbath day Jesus healed a man with a withered hand, and instead of his fellow Jews rejoicing, they plotted to kill him.  That was in chapter 12.  Remember how a couple weeks ago we said that every time there is a revelation of light, there is a backlash of darkness?  But still, I was surprised at how early in Jesus’ ministry the assassination plans began.

So suffice it to say, Jesus is not hitting it out of the park in his mission to convince the Jewish people that their Messiah had come.  Yes, there were amazing moments, such as when he walked on water, and Peter got out of the boat and walked on water, too.  But even the people in his own hometown took offense at him.  He was a prophet without honor in his own house.  His disciples weren’t understanding things as quickly as he’d liked.  His cousin John had been beheaded. All the people who should have known him best, should have been the first to see his true identity, all the people who should have been his first and most faithful supporters, had either deserted him, been taken from him, or were still with him but simply not capable of keeping up with him.  It must have been a very lonely time.

So Jesus decided to go on a retreat, a little get away to the region of Tyre and Sidon.  Tyre is located in modern day Lebanon, about 12 miles north of the Israel border, on the Mediterranean Sea.  What a beautiful setting for a retreat that must have been!  Blue skies, blue water, fresh air, expansive vistas.  But it wasn’t long until someone wanted something from Jesus again.  No rest for the weary.  A Canaanite woman—importantly to note here, a non-Jewish woman—came to him, crying out, “Lord, Son of David, have mercy on me!  My daughter is suffering terribly from demon-possession.”  Now, given what we’ve read in Matthew so far, what would you predict Jesus would do?  Heal her! We’ve read a dozen accounts of healing, casting out demons, feeding thousands—and Matthew has been careful to point out that not all of these miracles were done for Jewish people.  People from Galilee were healed, yes, but also people from the Decapolis (a Greek city name if ever there was one!), Syria, two Gentile men in the region of the Gadarenes whose demons were cast out into a herd of pigs, the Roman centurion.  Healing this Canaanite woman’s daughter would be no different from all of those.

But Jesus won’t even acknowledge her.  Instead of healing her, he ignores her.  She persists.  So when ignoring her doesn’t work, he tells her it’s not his job to heal her daughter.  “I was sent only to the lost sheep of Israel.”  But again, she pleads with him, “Lord, help me!”  Jesus escalates the situation.  He goes from ignoring her, to brushing her off, to straight up insulting her.  “It is not right to take the children’s bread and toss it to their dogs.”  Keep in mind that in the ancient world, dogs were not beloved pets like we tend to think of them.  Calling someone a dog was a major put-down.  But she is not deterred.  She believes in him.  Again, she calls him Lord and says, “even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from the master’s table.”

And with that, something inside Jesus clicks.  The conflict is resolved.  And by that I don’t mean the tension between Jesus and the Canaanite woman.  I mean the conflict within Jesus.  The tension within him that he had gone on retreat to address.  Jesus thought his mission was to show the people of Israel that their Messiah had come.  But the people of Israel were not interested in seeing Jesus as their Messiah.  Some liked how he healed and helped, some wanted to kill him, but very few wanted to put their faith in him.  And this is creating a lot of tension for Jesus.

But here comes this non-Jewish woman whose faith in him is so strong, she stands up to Jesus.  She refuses to let him be something other than he truly is.  She doesn’t let him get away with ignoring her, brushing her off, or insulting her.  She believes he is the Son of David, the Holy One of God, sent for ALL people!  And because she sees it, now Jesus can see it.  He went to Tyre and Sidon to get some rest.  But he went back to the region of Galilee with an even bigger assignment than before.  Not only was he to be the Messiah, the Savior for the Jews, he was to be the Anointed One for the whole world.

How remarkable, to see written in scripture, how Jesus changed his mind.  How his understanding of his mission grew over time, and how God used things like conflict and failure to help him grow!  How he gradually got clarity about his mission and calling.  Several years ago I sang a song with a church choir called, “One Step He Leads”, and this idea gives me great comfort.  One step God leads, and one step we follow.  Rarely do we see the whole picture at once.  Rarely do we get a turn-by-turn directions plan for what to do from now until we reach our final destination.  Faith generally does not work like that!  Instead what we get is gradual revelation.  We get one step at a time directions if we’re lucky.  More often, we don’t get directions as much as we get data.  We have experiences, we have setbacks, we try things, and we see what seems to work and what doesn’t.  We discern God’s leading, bit by bit.  And once in a while, we have a significant moment, a “crisis point” if you will, where we realize, our old understanding is just not going to cut it anymore.  We need to think differently.  We need to think bigger.  We need to change our minds in order to be at peace.

I love how Matthew records this happening for Jesus.  He went to the Mediterranean Sea all in a jumble.  He left there with clarity.  If you’ve ever had a time of confusion in your spiritual walk, you know what a gift it is to get clarity!  Even if it means your assignment is bigger than you previously thought, it’s a beautiful feeling to know your mission and own it.

I think that has been happening here at Lima in the last few years.  When I first came as pastor here in 2018, I heard many of the usual concerns about, “how do we get more families with young children here”?  I call them usual concerns because almost every church is struggling with this same issue.  But then along came the pandemic, and we went from a small number of children in church to no children.  During that time, though, we began to began to name a bigger idea, that God didn’t just want us to focus on families with young children coming to Lima, but to show care to all kinds of families.  We discerned a new mission, that “Lima UMC is a church family that cares about all families.”  We tried Help Build Hope, a mission to help a family achieve home ownership.  We committed to Zoe Empowers, an agency that works with orphaned families in extremely impoverished parts of the world.  Now we’re helping Eddystone UMC prepare to host a refugee family from Ukraine.  We are living into our mission, of being a church family that cares about all families—not just the ones who might someday walk through the doors of our building.  As we began living into this expanded mission, we find ourselves once again having children in Sunday school.  What an enormous blessing!

Good things happen when we own our mission.  But that doesn’t mean it’s easy.  We will see more instances of Jesus wrestling with his mission, of painful “crisis points” where the tension finally resolves into peace.  And we will likely see this pattern in ourselves as well.  This is one of the rhythms of discipleship.    Right now, some people in our congregation are wrestling with their mission, of whether they are called to go on a trip in September to Rwanda.  Actually, this is something every single one of us is invited to wrestle with!  At Church Council on Monday night, we had a wonderful conversation with a representative from Zoe Empowers, giving us more information about traveling to Rwanda.  The trip will be from September 6 through 14, and as many as 18 people can travel at once.  I have no idea how many people from Lima might like to go.  It’s not an easy trip—it takes about 14 hours of flying time, broken up into two or three flights, to get there.  It will be between $2500 and $3500 a person.  It requires being healthy enough to get some vaccines ahead of time, take malaria medication if needed, and be away from all but basic medical care.  It’s not for everyone!  But no doubt, it is for some.  If you are interested in learning more about the trip, we have put up links on our website.  You don’t have to be on any particular church committee to go.  You just have to feel like God is calling you to expand your vision of what God is doing in the world, and be open to what God is calling you to do in response once you get back home.

One step God leads, and one step we follow.  It’s been five years now since I heard that I would be coming to Lima, and I can honestly tell you that never in a million years would I have guessed that coming to Lima would mean eventually traveling to Rwanda!  That was not on my radar at all!  But God is in the business of gradually expanding our mission and vision.  And this means, there will be conflict. There will be tension.  Not necessarily with one another, although that often happens, but conflict within ourselves.  This was true even for Jesus!  And sometimes when we’re feeling a great deal of tension, we say things we would not otherwise say.  Jesus loved the Canaanite woman, even though he ignored her, brushed her off, and then insulted her.  But none of those reactions were a reflection on her.  They were a reflection on what was going on in him.  He wasn’t going to be at peace with those around him until he got peace within him.

So what do you think?  Isn’t is comforting to see that even Jesus changed his mind?  What a perfect story to talk about in the month of January, named after the god Janus, who was depicted as having two faces—one that looked toward the past, and one that looked toward the future.  May the experiences of our past help guide us into the new, giving us the freedom to change our minds, hearts and lives, for the glory of God.  Amen.