You may remember that one of the defining questions of a past inquiry into presidential wrong-doing was, "What did he know and when did he know it?" In a later presidency, this question became "What didn't he know and when didn't he know it?" This is the question scholars ask of Jesus in today's story. In today's story, a Gentile woman prevails upon Jesus (through clever argument and persistent chutzpah) to cough up a desperately-needed miracle for her daughter. Jesus first acts as if he is a miracle- miser, unable to part with some of the divine action because all the Jewish children haven't been healed yet. We Gentile Christians might find that offensive. It might cause us to ask the deeper question, "If Jesus is God, how could he not know that he was supposed to minister to Gentiles?" What did Jesus know and when did he know it?

The gospel-writer is addressing a church struggling with prejudices against Gentiles. Can Gentiles even be Christians? Should we preach to Gentiles and poor people and people with scabs? What about former slaves or blacks or people on welfare? Ought we to invite our friends to church -let alone total strangers? There is some comfort in reading that even Jesus had to let his understanding of his ministry unfold and expand as he went along. Maybe then we can be open to learning, too.

Maybe we can learn. I mean, if Jesus learned something, what about us? One of the things I've been learning in the last couple of weeks is what God has to work with. In me. You may have experienced me as a pastor obsessed with spiritual growth. I hope so. It's what I intend to project! My deepest desire for each one of you-and for this congregation as a whole-is spiritual growth. It is the one thing which will trip my trigger, which will motivate me to leap through flaming hoops of fire on your behalf. When people ask me, "How can I learn more about the Bible? How can I learn more about my faith? How can I be a better Christian?"-that's the sort of thing that gets me excited. If three or four people were to say, "I'd like to discuss my faith questions with other Christians" or "I'd like to learn how to pray"-you would see me weeping for joy.

Which ought to give you some hint about how I approach my own discipleship. My own spiritual growth is what drives me out of bed in the morning. I read something recently by CS Lewis that shifted my understanding of discipleship. Apparently, God doesn't view me as an improvement project. Lewis writes, "Christianity does not simply replace our natural life and substitute a new one: it is rather a new organization which exploits, to its own supernatural ends, these natural materials." In other words, God likes what God has to work with us in us. God takes the ordinary things about us and uses them for God's own extraordinary ends.

Mother Teresa was recently beatified. If you are Catholic, this means to you that Mother Teresa is close to becoming a saint. As Presbyterians, we hold to the notion that Christians are saints, so Mother Teresa's potential sainthood doesn't come as much of a surprise to us. But what shocked me about the proceedings regarding this saintly woman is that she confessed in writing and conversation that she felt acutely God's absence. Well, that kind of rocked my boat. Here is the world's most humble woman, the sweetest servant of the grossest poor-the dying, the lepers, the smelly and scabrous and deformed and decrepit-this woman too humble to accept gifts on her own behalf. She of all people carried on her work with a sense that God was absent from her. What sets her apart from the rest of us, who might feel similarly, is that she figured this sense of God's absence was God's to deal with; her job was just to keep on doing what God had called her to do.

I had to do some theological tap-dancing on that. Here's what I came up with. The prophet Isaiah says that God lives with "the contrite and humble in spirit"-someone like Mother Teresa, for instance. But we also know that God is mind-bogglingly holy, so beyond us in purity and power and greatness, that our comprehension doesn't begin to take it in. My puny logic says that the people who are the holiest ought to feel closest to God, but apparently truly saintly (but humble) people are so in touch with human unworthiness and God's greatness, that they are more acutely aware of the gulf between humans and God, and that feels like "absence of God."

I'm not advocating you cultivate a sense of God's absence. I'm just saying that it might be a natural consequence of an energetic pursuit of discipleship, and it shouldn't scare you, because you are in good company-if Mother Teresa is any example. God's greatness is as central to our understanding of our faith as is the certain knowledge of our need for salvation. Jesus was fully human and fully God, yet Jesus was the perfect example of humility. Which implies that Jesus-as-fully-human could learn something regarding his ministry and relationship with God, and if Jesus needed to, what about us?

Maybe we are called to learn a thing or two about our ministry and relationship with God. Let's start by understanding that God doesn't wait around for us to become perfect so we can be useful for the proclamation of the gospel of Jesus Christ. We don't have to get to a point where we "feel closer to God" before we can commit our ordinary gifts to God's extraordinary ends. Christian discipleship isn't about "how close" we are to God. Christian discipleship is about how committed we are to doing God's work with what we have. Two words: commitment, God's work.

We can learn a thing or two from that unclean, inappropriate Gentile mother in today's story. She didn't try to be ritually pure before trying to get Jesus' attention. She took what she knew how to do-mothering-and it was the driving force of her ministry on behalf of someone else. God is dying for you to offer something. God is too respectful to grab, but our "ordinary whatever," persistently offered, will be accepted and used. Imagine taking what feels like your comfortable and ordinary-giving that to God. You like talking on the phone? Talk to me or a session member about using that gift in God's kingdom. You like to read the newspaper? Talk to me or a session member about using that gift in God's kingdom. You like to bake? Talk to us about using that gift. You like to chop weeds or kill blackberries? Talk to us about that as kingdom work. You like to cut and paste? Talk about useful to the kingdom! You love the challenge of shopping with coupons? Talk about useful! You love to drive? Talk about kingdom!

God loves to accept what we offer in love and thanksgiving. And because God has this thing about making the best out of everything, God will either sanctify us or sanctify our ordinary work. I guarantee that God will take what you offer in love and gratitude, and transform it for God's uses. God may offer to teach us the "language of discipleship," but what we offer, God is willing to work with. All we have to do is offer what we have. All we can offer is what we have. All we can offer is what we have. We can offer all we have. And trust that God is doing and will do the rest.