When Mozart was my age, he had been dead for almost 10 years. One of the more popular movies in theaters today tells the story of a 39-year old man who tried out and became a major-league baseball pitcher. When he was my age, he was into his second retirement. I think about that, and whether it’s too late for me to make a difference both in my life and with my life, which brings me to the story of the Syrophoenician woman, which emphatically answers that question No, and incidentally, explains why human beings can fly—in airplanes, that is.

It will take a few minutes to get to the part where people start flying. Let me begin first with a few comments about language before I jump into the story.

In our faith tradition, we understand that which is greater than us in many different ways. For some of us, the source of our creation and order in the universe is a divine supernatural being with human attributes that hears our prayers and intervenes in our daily lives. For others, it is a supernatural cosmic force that is somehow greater than the physical laws of the universe, but which lacks the human characteristics of will and the power to intervene in human history. For still others, it is not supernatural at all, that is, the power that orders the universe is itself simply another law of physics, like gravity or thermodynamics. Some of us call this source God, others use some form of the word spirit, such as spirit of life. Those of us from the more humanist end of the spectrum might find other language that evokes mystery and transcendence.

Like a true UU, I take what I like about all these approaches and discard the rest. My understanding of whatever governs the universe is closer to the cosmic spiritual energy end of the spectrum. Yet, I am comfortable calling this energy God, even though I don’t think this God intervenes in our daily lives. If you don’t believe in anything that you would call God, you should be able to substitute the word nature and, if I’ve done my job right, this still will be meaningful for you. If you are really open, the way I use this story may serve as a model for understanding other stories of the bible as well, even for the humanists among us.

Now, back to the story of the Syrophoenician woman.

Initially, when Jesus enters the town, he doesn’t want to see anyone. This woman finds him, though, and asks him to cast out a demon from her daughter. Jesus refuses, saying, "Let the children be fed first, for it is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs." What Jesus generally is understood to mean is "my message is first for the Jews, and then for the Gentiles." In effect, he was saying, wait your turn.

In a genuine act of courage and assertiveness, and, I would add, love for her daughter, the woman refuses to accept this answer and challenges Jesus. She replies, "Sir, even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs." Notice that she calls him "Sir", showing respect for Jesus. She doesn’t challenge his basic premise, that his message is first and foremost for the Hebrew people. What may sound like a rebuke really is a very humble plea, to throw her a crumb. Even though she is not a Hebrew, could he please heal her daughter?

Jesus changes his mind because of what she did. "For saying that, you may go—the demon has left your daughter." It wasn’t just that the woman believed that Jesus could heal her daughter, that is, that she had faith in his power. She had that when Jesus arrived at Tyre, but that alone did not heal her daughter. In other stories, we hear Jesus say it is your faith that has healed you. Not here. This healing was not just in response to faith, but also a response to this woman’s willingness to challenge Jesus, even to correct him. There are two themes to this story that I want to emphasize and to which I will return throughout this sermon. First, in challenging the barrier in front of her – Jesus’ initial refusal to help her daughter—the woman showed respect and even awe for Jesus’ power. Second, her request was motivated out of love and compassion. Keep those in mind.

To understand what the Syrophonecian woman did in a modern context, let’s talk about gravity. One of my favorite bumper stickers says about gravity, "it’s not just a good idea, it’s the law." Some people say, "If God had intended for humans to fly, we would have been given wings." Faced with the realty of air travel, this person might say that it is only by God’s grace that airplanes ever get off the ground and only by God’s grace that they are able to land safely. Imagine, just to visualize this idea, God’s hand literally underneath each plane lifting if off the ground. This view comes with a downside, of course, because it follows that when planes don’t land safely, it is only because of God’s will. From this view, everything is the result of God’s grace intervening in everything we do.

Others, though might say, "If we were not meant to fly, we would not have been given the intelligence to design the airplane in the first place." Faced with the reality of gravity, that we haven’t figured out yet how to keep airplanes in the sky indefinitely, that, in fact, no matter how smart we are, what goes up still comes down, this person might say that the physical laws of the universe act, depending on your theology, as an upper limit on the free will granted by God to humans or as evolutionary limits imposed by nature on our capacities, limits that we are yet far from reaching.

The underlying question here is--and I’ll phrase this a couple of different ways to reflect some differing perspectives we have—if either God or nature controls the outcome of everything that happens from the sunrise to flight path of every aircraft or if God or nature created a template from which history has unfolded according to a precise plan, can I affect the outcome? Can I change the plan? I pose these questions because they come to us unbidden; they are eternal human questions. I don’t have the answers. In fact, no one does. In contemplating these questions, though, it became clear to me that I don’t need to know the answers to those questions to answer the question I posed in my introduction. Can I make a difference in my life and with my life? As I suggested earlier, the answer, emphatically, is yes.

We all recognize that there are some rules we can’t break in life. There is an order to the universe that, at some level, cannot be challenged. To return to gravity, gravity does not keep us from doing stupid things. It doesn’t prevent us from jumping off rooftops, but it does make us pay a price. Yet, we can fly, if only in airplanes. The story of the Syrophonecian woman helps us understand why. Recall the two themes I identified in her story. First, in the same manner that the woman addressed Jesus as Sir, successful scientists don’t defy the laws of nature, but, rather, show them respect and awe. Recall as well that her request was motivated by love and compassion. When humans seek knowledge to enrich and enhance our lives consistent with God’s intention for us, when it is noble and it is good and is because it is what God would have us do with our gifts, humankind can fly. When we put our knowledge to evil purposes, for weapons of war and hate, it’s like jumping off rooftops, and we pay the price. Too often, we use the right gifts for the wrong reasons. The pain and the alienation and the oppression humankind so often inflicts on itself keeps us down, it separates us, again, depending on your perspective, from God Godself or simply the natural order of the universe. This separation keeps us from achieving the love and peace and justice that we can achieve when we let the best that is within us govern who we and what we do.

This story offers more than an explanation of why airplanes stay in the air. It offers a framework for dealing with the most challenging moral issues we face, those really tough questions of life and death, when we ask ourselves, "are we playing God". What do we do when we feel our technology has outpaced our wisdom, whether its how we create life, sustain life, or end life? Is in-vitro fertilization a human attempt to circumvent God or is our ability to create life outside of the womb simply using the gifts God gave us to carry out God’s intention that we bear fruit and multiply? Does the use of extraordinary life-sustaining measures fulfill God’s purpose or thwart it? Not all of these questions are so profound. Cell phones, email and pagers have made the whole world a neighborhood, but 24/7 access to each other also effectively has robbed us of the very idea of a Sabbath. Can we have both? In each of these cases, we’re using our gifts to push the edge of our limitations. The technology itself is neutral. The real question for any given application of our gifts is, are we enabling ourselves to fly or are we just jumping out of trees?

This isn’t just about science, though. There are spiritual laws that govern the universe as well, though we may disagree about their source. Gravity existed before Newton understood it and was able to describe it, and, likewise, lying, adultery, and murder were wrong before the ten commandments came around. Like gravity, though, these laws are not self-enforcing. They don’t prevent us from telling lies; they just exact a price from us whenever we do. Also like natural laws, it is through our ability or inability to understand and articulate God’s laws for us that we can either fall or fly. You’d think murder would be a pretty black and white issue, but it’s not. There was a time when the church burned heretics until enough people with enough courage were able to successfully challenge that. Today, we struggle with questions like doctor-assisted suicide, which is not a scientific challenge, it’s a moral challenge.

Our understanding of the moral order of the universe is something we challenge and push no less than the natural order, and sometimes, as in the case of burning heretics, it should be challenged. The same rules apply here that applied to the Syrophoencian woman. As we grapple with these issues and push the boundaries of our understanding of right and wrong, we must always keep our awe of it’s source, and our touchstone must always be rest on love and compassion. Anyone who ever has been in a plane or ridden a bicycle or taken an aspirin, has acknowledged that we have a unique gift among living creatures to see beyond what is in our immediate presence. Metaphorically, humankind saw in the apple that fell onto Newton’s head the path into outer space itself. We don’t just see what exists, but what might exist as well.

Yet, we must never be satisfied with what we think we know. If not, we would be stuck with the "if God has meant us to fly . . ." view. Yet, it would be the height of human arrogance to think, some 3000 years after the revelation of the Torah and some 2000 years after the revelation of Jesus himself, that we, now, have gotten right what no one has gotten right before. We think we’re superior to our ancestors who engaged in the crusades and the inquisition, and on those issues, our positions certainly are superior. What makes us think, though, we are culmination of all knowledge and discernment regarding the will of God? As the poet Rilke challenged us, we must live the difficult questions.

Unitarian-Universalism doesn’t insist you answer that we answer any of those questions I posed earlier one way or another, those "are we playing God?" questions, but we are not silent. We say at least two things. First, whatever your decision, we will support you and nurture you in your decision-making process and we will love you and welcome you into our congregation regardless of your decision. Second is what I believe is a lesson of the Syrophoenician woman: let’s not accept the boundaries in front of us at face value, and that includes things like gravity but also things like our own dogma and doctrine as well Let us have the courage to challenge life and to take risks. Let us remember, too, to never lose our awe of the mystery of the universe, and that our challenges and risks must be grounded in strong spiritual values – human dignity, equity, justice and compassion in all of our relationships, and care and consideration for the earth that sustains us all.

All of us, myself included, still think sometimes that we can tell a lie, or be unfaithful in a commitment, or be silent in the presence of injustice and get away with it. For all of our experience and wisdom, we still think occasionally that we can jump off a rooftop and not hit the ground. When that happens, we are all here for each other, to pick each other up and help each other to heal. It’s all part of being human. But so is love and joy and peace. When we encourage each other to challenge life and to take risks while helping each other also to stay grounded in our values, we can fly. You can fly.

What we do with our lives matters. We can make a difference. Let’s help each to make them good differences.