Rev. Dr. Anne Bain Epling First Presbyterian Church September 9, 2018 Rally Sunday Mark 7:24-37

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1 Rev. Dr. Anne Bain Epling First Presbyterian Church September 9, 2018 Rally Sunday Mark 7:24-37 Keeping an Open Mind Good Morning! It s good to be back with you today. Some of you know that my husband Terry and I were away last Sunday dropping off our second child Tommy at the University of Denver for his freshman year. I ll say a little bit more about that later. But if you ve been away at the lake this summer, or travelling or camping or life has simply taken you away from church, welcome back! It s good to have you here. I m guessing that some of you might be sad that summer is coming to an end. Perhaps others of you are eager to leave the heat and humidity behind. No matter your preference, one thing is certain. The season is changing. Summer is ebbing, and fall is on its way. The changing of the seasons is one of my favorite features of living in the Midwest. I like each of them in certain ways, but I also find myself ready for the next season just as the last one is coming to an end. Each season requires something different. Certain clothes have to be put away, and jackets and sweatshirts reappear. Certain activities (like swimming) start to come to an end. And new activities (sitting around the fire pit) suddenly make more sense. Certain things we used to do suddenly don t make as much sense, and the new season requires us to take up new habits. The changing seasons keep us from getting too stuck, they keep us changing, and in a way, they keep me thinking in new and fresh ways. I appreciate the way Mother Nature forces me into a discipline of letting go and picking up, always changing, always growing, always considering what comes next. As I think about seasons in nature, I am reminded that our life also has seasons. The author of Ecclesiastes puts it this way: There's a season for everything and a time for every matter under the heavens (Eccl. 3.1)

2 A church has seasons as well. Here at First Presbyterian, we re entering a new season as a congregation together. As we step into a new season though, it is worth considering what we as individuals should do differently. What do we need to stop doing, and more importantly, what is it time to start doing? How can we respond to the changing season in our church with changes in our lives? That s what I want to talk to you about this morning. And the story we heard from Mark s gospel helps us to reflect on those questions, because in it Jesus undergoes a change; he stops doing one thing in order to start doing something new. When we meet up with Jesus today, he s in the Gentile region of Tyre where prudent Israelites do not walk alone for you see, the people of Tyre are not friendly to Israelites. Racial stereotypes and biases inform their encounters. And so it the disciples walk with full attention, informed by the stories of animosity, when a Gentile, and a woman at that, shouts at Jesus. But it s not the expected shouts of narrow-mindedness and disdain. Instead, this is the earnest plea of a mother. She comes to Jesus, bows down before him, and begs him to heal her demon infested daughter. Sure, she worships Herod, and yes, she s a citizen of an enemy country, but she s also a mother with a sick kid, and she s heard about Jesus reputation as a healer. She calls him Lord and respectfully appeals to him to heal her daughter of the demon that possesses her. This when the story gets difficult because we expect Jesus to heal the daughter, right? I mean, that s what Jesus does. He heals people, especially children. Right? Well... not here. Not in enemy territory. In enemy territory, he only heals his own, or so he thinks. It s not fair to take the children s food and throw it to the dogs, he says. Referring to foreigners as dogs was a familiar and favorite insult of the Israelites. And as one commentator wrote, calling a woman a dog had the same tone as if it were shouted today in a high school hallway, or on the street. It goes without saying that this is not what we expect to hear from Jesus. After all, Jesus is always the one reminding us that no one is outside the circle of God s

3 love. But not here; here his words and behavior are troubling, and that s putting it mildly. There have been attempts to soften his response. Some people say he was affirming the woman s worth by talking to her in the first place; others say he was testing her faith. Some people even say the Greek word for dog is best translated as puppy, as if calling a woman a puppy somehow makes it all OK. Which it s not. In fact, no matter how we slice it, what Jesus calls the woman isn t OK. So let s just be honest and admit that even Jesus is a product of his culture, a culture that had strict rules about how you could interact with people of other cultures. Which is ironic given the fact that Jesus has just finished criticizing the Pharisees for being narrow-minded, but demonstrates his own narrowmindedness in this passage by denying the woman s request based on her religion and country of origin. It s not fair to take the children s food (i.e. what belongs to the Israelites) and throw it to the dogs (i.e. you and your kind), he says. But she doesn t back down so easily. You may think you are talking to a dog, man, but I m in line for some crumbs, too. And with that, Jesus closed mind opens because he says, By saying that the demon has left your daughter. And her daughter is healed. As one commentator said, Jesus has already taught others that religious customs shouldn t stand in the way of doing good things for those in need. Now he must be taught that social conventions should not do so either. What we see here is Jesus maturing in his faith. I know that s an odd concept for us, thinking that Jesus, the Son of God, God himself, would need an education in faith, but that s what we have. That s what we see in this passage. Many teachers will tell you that they learn more from their students than they teach them. That s what we see here. Jesus is learning something from this woman. It s like a light bulb went off in his head and he had his aha moment. And in this moment his own discernment about his ministry was enlarged by the woman. He opened up his closed mind and realized the possibilities that were in front of him. Let s think about the possibilities that are in front of us.

4 Before leaving to take Tommy to Denver for his first year of college, I finally had the chance to take a tour of the old GE campus. I d been wanting to get over there all summer to see what Electric Works is all about. I try and stay attuned to what is happening around the church, because I think the church can and should play a role in the transformation that s taking place here in downtown Fort Wayne. Now, being to new Fort Wayne, I don t know what that partnership should look like; I don t know enough about what the needs are to know what we, the church, can offer. But I m enough of a veteran of church transformation to know that if we want things to be different here, i.e. more people in the pews, we need to have our finger on the pulse of what is happening out there and be a part of the action. So it was with this mindset that I took a tour of the old GE plant. (How many of you have taken the tour?) The tour starts in the old gym. There we were greeted by our tour guide who was a former maintenance man for GE. He worked there for 33 years; and he was one of the last people to be employed there. In its heyday, which was during World War II, the factory had 20,000 employees, which he said was about 40% of Fort Wayne s work force. By the time he left in 2015, there were 14. And when they left, they turned out the lights behind them. For what it s worth, there were about 10,000 employees in the 1960s, which was when the work force began dwindling. That s the same time the PC(USA) began its decline, too. As we stood in the old gym, he told us about the days when everyone department had a basketball team. He pointed to the stage and told us stories about Santa coming to visit the employees kids, who were lined up waiting to have their picture taken. He took us downstairs to the old bowling alley, and I noted that the shoe holder still had bowling shoes in it even though it had been more than 10 years since a game had been played there. It reminded me of a church in St. Louis that closed, and I was on the presbytery s Administrative Commission charged with wrapping up its affairs. As we toured that old church there were still crayons and leaflets on the tables in the kids Sunday School rooms. Someone joked it looked like the rapture had come and just sucked up the kids and left their stuff behind! Except, it wasn t very funny because those papers just served as a

5 reminder that at one time the church had kids, and now it was closing. But I digress... When we got to one of the old factories, our tour guide pointed out the wood blocks that make up the flooring. He said there are 700,000 square feet of wood blocks in the old plant. As a point of reference, First is 90,000 square feet. He told us that there s a man who s interested in turning those old blocks into refurbished wood laminate. I was blown away just thinking about how big of an undertaking that it. But then again, isn t that what our faith is all about? Bringing life to that which is lifeless. (But again, I digress...) I was also blown away just thinking about how much work there is to be done to rehab the old plant. He replied that the project needs about 1800 skilled union workers, and while the owners are committed to using local workers Fort Wayne doesn t currently have that many it s a great opportunity for a young person to learn a new skill, he told me. And when I asked him at the end what he thought about the whole enterprise, he said it was bittersweet. I think about all the people who worked here, he said. And no longer do. But I m also glad to see it take on new life. As a newcomer to this city, I m continually amazed at what is happening downtown. New restaurants, new developments, new apartment buildings. All around us, this city seems to be coming back to life. At that is amazing to me! When so many other rust-belt downtowns are dead, this one appears to be just the opposite. I ve asked a few people what they attribute this to most people say Parkview Field was the first main attraction but even before that someone had to have had a vision of what downtown Fort Wayne. Someone, or some group, had a vision for something big, something larger than what was already here. They opened their minds to what was possible. Like Jesus in today s story, someone or some group went from thinking small to thinking big. Likewise, we are called to think more broadly and expansively and beyond what happens here to what happens there. Some much more astute than I am once said, The significant mistake of the traditionalist is they require the people to start where the church is instead of the church starting where the people are. Innovators begin by asking, What do we need to do to reach the people where they are? i. It s not about getting the word out so people come in. It s about us

6 getting out and hearing them. Where are we needed? Where might a partnership occur? If our mission is to transform lives through the love of Jesus Christ that includes more than the lives here in these walls. And what do transformed lives look like? I ll share with you what I think they look like they look like people who cross cultures and stereotypes despite the social conventions of the day; who work for the healing of all; who believe it matters that no one is outside the circle of God s love; who don t deny passage to others based on one s gender or life situation; and who work for peace between lifelong enemies. Transformed lives look a lot like Jesus in this story. Last Sunday, at about the time we were crossing into Colorado after driving through the never ending landscape of Kansas, reality hit me that Tommy was leaving. I turned around from my front seat in the car and said to him You re really leaving! And you ll be so far away! It s like all of a sudden I realized Tommy was leaving and things would be different without him. The house will be quieter, the rhythm in our days will change, and (hopefully) my grocery bills will go down. And to everyone who wants to know did you cry when you left him, of course I cried! And so did Terry! We ll miss him! But I also left with the sense that he s in the right place at the right time. Friends, we too are in the right place at the right time. Good things are happening out there that we need to capitalize on, and good things are happening in here that I want you to be a part of and I need you to be a part of. This is a Sunday of new beginnings. School opens, autumn opens, we are opened, and God is open to us. Amen. i Leith Anderson, pastor and authors, quoted in Mnistry ToolBox, April 9, 2001.