SERMON SIXTEENTH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST YEAR B FROM INSULT TO INSIGHT MARK 7:24-30 / SEPTEMBER 9, 2018 Let us pray: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be acceptable to you, O God, our strength and our redeemer. Amen. Jesus is tired. He s tired of being followed. Tired of fighting off paparazzi. Tired of people who want something from him. Jesus needs a day off. So, he leaves Galilee and heads toward a house in the Gentile region of Tyre. Nobody would look for a Jew inside a Gentile house. It would be scandalous! Yes, he d have a lot of explaining to do to the high priest when he got back home. But for now, he s found the perfect hiding place. Or has he? As Jesus soon discovers, he cannot escape notice. I wonder what it was that made it impossible for him to hide. He had no halo. There weren t any newspapers or televisions or internet services to broadcast his picture. But there was something about him that drew people to him. And on this day in Tyre, it draws to him a Syrophoenician woman a Gentile. She comes with an urgent request, cure my child. Jesus response is not what we expect from one who purports to be sent by God the creator who so loves the world. It s not right to take food from the children and throw it to the dogs. In other words, I m a Jew from Galilee and you are a foreigner from Tyre. I will look after my own first, thank you very much. 1
As Jesus finishes insulting her, calling her a dog, sounding very much like a certain politician we know, we have to wonder what is going on in the woman s mind and heart. She doggedly stays put. Does she see a twinkle in Jesus eye suggesting he really doesn t mean his words as an insult, but rather as a test of her faith as some have suggested? Does she recognize his exhaustion and think she can wear him down? Does she hear challenge, even anger in his tone? After all Jesus would have known how many of his people, poor Jews, were experiencing economic hardship in the region of Tyre due to the exploitative behaviour of wealthy Gentile landowners. We don t know. All we know is that this mother, desperate for her daughter s life, refuses to be dismissed. Like the migrants desperate for help about to enter Canada irregularly who are told sternly by the border guards that they will be arrested if they are determined to cross the border into Canada. But they are, indeed, determined and invariably they stand firm because these desperate people see a chance for life just as the Syrophoenician woman saw a chance for life and stood firm. She looks Jesus straight in the eye and says, That s true, but even the dogs under the table are given some crumbs from the children s plates. Now not many of us take kindly to being called dogs. That s why this passage confuses us. We don t mind when Jesus calls the Pharisees a brood of vipers or when he tosses greedy moneychangers out of the 2
temple court. But this Gentile woman well, she s like one of us. She s just a desperate person - a parent stumbling down every alley and banging on every door crying out for someone to help her child. We wouldn t turn her away. Would we? Would we? I think that before we judge Jesus, we need to take a peek into our own hearts. The fact is we have turned people away. Certainly, as a society we have turned people away. If it were not so, there would be no families living in slum-like conditions in our inner cities; no children abused by the system; no poor begging in our streets; no people fleeing for their lives treated unkindly or turned away at borders; no children torn away from their parents at borders and placed in cages like dogs. We cannot assume that we would have been kinder to this foreign woman. But Jesus, the Son of God, the fount of life, the source of love? How could he be so cruel? Essentially, he is telling this woman, Get in line, we take care of our own first. There s not enough to go around. Sound familiar? Too familiar. Not enough to go around. We have to meet our own needs first. This is the postliberal Jesus, telling his own story to his own people, making a cozy closed-off private little world. We don t have enough to go around; not enough resources; not enough jobs; not enough food; not enough for others; just enough, barely enough for ourselves. And so, we take care of our own needs first. We turn our backs on the world, and we face each other. We grab hands and tighten the circle and even in the church we sing, I am the church, you are the church, we are 3
the church, and they are not. And I am sure that there are some who prefer this mean spirited, crabby Jesus who says, Get in line sister; we take care of our own first. But the woman cries out all the more. She wants healing for her daughter. How far would we be willing to go to save our children? Perhaps we would take a chance on a leaky boat crossing treacherous waters to get away from danger to a place of safety; perhaps we would walk hundreds, even thousands of miles often through hostile territory to escape death and find life for ourselves, for our families, for our children. The woman stands her ground; she crosses the borders of gender and patriarchy and race and religion and culture to seek healing and wholeness for her child. In every society, children stretch out their arms for mercy, and they are treated like dogs ignored, growled at, kicked to the curb. Somebody once said you can measure a nation s greatness by how it treats its weakest members. All over the world, children are treated like animals. I can t help but think that our debates regarding fossil fuels and pipelines and climate change and pollution are, fundamentally, debates about how we treat our children. For the impact of these things ultimately determine the well-being, the health, even the very life of our descendants our children, our grandchildren our great-grandchildren. You can measure a nation s greatness by how it treats its weakest members. Perhaps it is true that you can similarly measure the world s 4
greatness. All children are a public trust, not just the ones in our family or in our neighbourhood. We belong to each other. As social upheaval continues, the world s children are like the canaries in the mineshaft. They are the ones who get sick and start dying first. See and hear the mothers and fathers who cry for their children. Over 60 million displaced persons and of these over 20 million are refugees living in appalling conditions outside their country of origin. And many make a break for it seeking help from others. Listen to the woman at the side of the road, a foreigner, an outsider. She stubbornly, desperately continues to cry out to Jesus for help. And what impact does this have on Jesus? Well, he has a change of heart. He helps the woman and saves her child. This may well be one of the most important stories in all of the new testament. For in his encounter with this courageous, strong woman Jesus has a conversion moment in which he realizes how he has lost sight of the point of his mission and has to be reconnected to it by someone assumed to be outside it. This is a turning point in the Gospel of Mark because from this point on Gentiles, that is non-jews, take on more and more prominent roles. Jesus is learning that his mission is not for one particular group of people but for all people for the whole world. Now, I admit this idea of Jesus conversion may be difficult for some to take hold of. Writer Loye Ashton asks the intriguing question: Is this shortcoming of Jesus an example of sin? Ashton explains that many parts of the Christian church have been so constrained by traditional readings of other 5
new testament documents and by certain teachings from church councils that declared Jesus fully human, fully divine that they are unable to experience the profound theological tension that Mark provides for us. Such an idea of Jesus learning from his mistakes, of even sinning, does not take away from that doctrine of fully human, fully divine. Is it possible to be fully human and without sin? Interestingly, the passage immediately preceding this one of the Syrophoenician woman depicts Jesus pointing out the hypocrisy of the religious leaders who declare that his disciples are sinning because they are eating with ritually unwashed hands. And Jesus responds to their hypocrisy saying that what defiles someone is not what goes into a person, such as food from unwashed hands, but what comes out of a person. For it is from within, from the human heart, Jesus says, that evil intentions come. Perhaps Jesus here faces his own hypocrisy and struggles to find his own centre in God moving through his own pain of self-integration and identity formation. In other words, Mark is showing us the complexity of the incarnation. To be the Son of God, the Messiah, Jesus must suffer not only at the hands of those who oppose him, who do not understand him, but also under the very conditions of existence, the challenge of the human condition itself. To be otherwise would not allow Jesus to be fully human. Ralph Milton, Canadian author and United Church member, in considering this text in Mark, tells of a nun Sister Corita who once said that the most theological of all words is wow! Ralph writes, I have no idea what the 6
biblical equivalent of wow! might be, but if Jesus could say wow! she s right? in response to the insight of this desperate foreign woman, then the heart of Jesus was very close to the heart of God. I think these writers are right. I believe Jesus had a wow! experience, an aha! experience, a conversion moment, which changed the trajectory of his mission, or rather aligned the trajectory of his mission with God s to reach out with compassionate, selfless, sacrificial love to all people everywhere. Thanks to this unnamed, unknown woman who was relentless in saving her child. And Jesus calls us to the same mission. We are called to love our neighbours as ourselves even more we are to love others as Christ loves. Not just those of the same race, religion, nationality, ethnic origin, but anyone in need. Borders were opened a crack that day when a desperate mother begged Jesus for a crumb and they, and we, get a glimpse of the inclusiveness of God s love. Within just a few years, Gentiles were streaming into the church and Paul was preaching that there is no longer any distinction between Jew and Gentile, slave and free, male and female, clean and unclean. All are God s beloved children. In this complex time and in this complicated world let us keep the message of God s inclusive love in the foreground of our thoughts and actions. Amen. Major Sources: Theological Perspective by Loye Bradley Ashton in Feasting on the Word, Year B, Volume 4, pp. 44-48. Editors: David L. Bartlett and Barbara Brown Taylor. Westminster John Knox Press. Louisville, Kentucky. 2009. 7
Breaking Bread Persistence and Grace by L. Susan Bond in Pulpit Digest, July-September 2000. pp.128-133. Editor: David Albert Farmer. Logos Productions Inc. Inver Grove Heights, MN. Who Let the Dogs In? by Vicki Verhulst Cok, in Preaching Word & Witness,Vol. 03:5 (Year B) pp. 191-192. Editor: Paul Scott Wilson. Liturgical Publications Inc. New Berlin, WI. 2003. Mission of Jesus in Sermon Seasonings by Ralph Milton, p. 104. Editor: Wendy Smallman. Wood Lake Books Inc. Winfield, BC. 1997. 8