14th Sunday after Pentecost [Pr. 18] September 6, 2009 “Series B”
Grace be unto you and peace, from God our Father and from our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.
Let us pray: Dear Heavenly Father, in the person of Jesus the Christ, you came among us to reveal your redeeming grace, and that in Christ, your kingdom is present and open to us. Through the power of your Holy Spirit, grant us a deeper appreciation for your saving grace and empower us to share your love and compassion with those around us. This we ask in Christ’s holy name. Amen.
Our Gospel lesson for this morning contains two healing stories, and they can’t be more strikingly different. In fact many of the commentaries that I read on our text, lamented the church’s decision to pair them together as a single lesson. Yet, it is not as if these stories were pulled from two different sections of Mark’s Gospel. So if Mark chose to contrast these two healing stories, perhaps we should examine them in context as well.
Jesus leaves the familiarity of Galilee, and travels to the region of Tyre, presumably to gain some rest, which the people of Galilee made it difficult for him to achieve. Yet even in this foreign region, Jesus could not go unrecognized as the prophet with healing powers. And so, it didn’t take long for this Gentile woman of Syrophoenician origin to come to Jesus, fall at his feet and beg him to heal her daughter.
But this woman is an outsider. In fact, as one of the commentaries put it, “She was a triple outsider. She is Syrian in nationality, Greek in religion, and female in sex. On top of that, she was outspoken, which meant that she also offended the gender bias that women were to keep silent in the presence adult males, especially a rabbi. She was about as far from the God of Israel that you could get at that time.” End quote [Gail Ramshaw, New Proclamation, 2003]
Now we come to the troubling part of this story. Jesus refuses to heal this woman’s daughter, not only because she was an Israelite, not only because she was of a different religion, not only because she was an outspoken woman. Jesus goes even further, and insults this woman and her people. He says, “Let the children be fed first, for it is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.”
Here, we encounter one of those situations that just naturally tugs at our modern-day, Christian image of Jesus as this really nice, serene, loving redeemer who is the friend of everybody. Perhaps it is a reminder of the fact that Jesus was truly human. He was tired, in need of rest, and had his rest interrupted by this outsider. So he snapped, and referred to her with the common slur that many in Israel used to refer to the Gentiles. It is not fair to give what belongs to Israel to the dogs.
But this woman would not be deterred. She took Jesus’ slur upon herself, and in desperation, retorted, “Sir, even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs.” And upon hearing those words, Jesus had a change of heart. He said to the woman, “For saying that, you may go – the demon has left your daughter.” And when the woman returned home, she found her daughter healed.
Following this, Mark tells us that Jesus began his journey back to the Sea of Galilee. On his way, he is encountered by some folks who brought to him a deaf man who had a speech impediment, and they begged Jesus to lay his hand on him to cure him. Of course, there is no mention here that this man was a member of the house of Israel, or if he, too, might have been a Gentile, an outsider. But there certainly is a distinctively different approach that Jesus takes toward this man in need of healing, than he did to Syrophoenician woman.
In this story, Jesus shows true compassion. We are told that Jesus takes the man to a private place, apart from the crowd, perhaps to calm his fears. Then Jesus uses sign language to communicate to the man what he is about to do. Jesus put his fingers into his ears to indicate that he was about to heal him of his deafness. Jesus spat on the ground, and touched his own tongue, indicating that he was about to heal him of his speech impediment.
Then he looked up to heaven and sighed, indicating that it was God who was about to heal him. Then he said to the man, “Ephphatha,” which means “Be opened.” And the man’s ears were opened, so that he could hear, and his tongue was released, so that he could speak plainly. I think that we can say that Jesus developed a remarkably improved bedside manner.
So what are we to make of this strange pairing of these two stories of healing from Mark’s Gospel? First, I think we need to realize that Mark is writing his Gospel proclaiming Jesus to be the Son of God, to first century Gentile Christians. So why would Mark include this story of the healing of the Syrophoenician woman’s daughter, including the unwillingness of Jesus to heal the little girl, and especially his slurring reference to the Gentiles as dogs?
Clearly, if we were to take this story out of context, not only as it appears in our text for this morning, but also out of the context of the whole of Mark’s Gospel, it would not have been a wise marketing decision for the spread of the evangelist’s work. In her commentary on our lesson , Gail Ramshaw points out, and I quote, “Recently, however, being willing to see Jesus as a first-century Jewish male, some commentators have seen in this story the spiritual maturation of Jesus himself. Here, an outsider teaches even Jesus about the breadth of the mercy of God. The woman’s persuasive argument reminds even Jesus about the needs also of women…
We wish that we knew more than we do about how the early Gentile Christian communities dealt with issues of racial and gender prejudice. There is, however, evidence that at least some early Christians communities were ridiculed by outsiders for taking women too seriously.
Since these issues of prejudice and preference remain powerful two millennia later, we must assume that Mark is saying something perhaps about the maturation not only of Jesus, but surely about that of his resurrected community.” End quote.
I believe that Dr. Ramshaw makes an interesting point. Now, I’m not trying to be heretical in my thoughts this morning, in claiming that Jesus could actually learn from the pleas of an outsider to his faith, the breadth of the grace of God. Jesus is the Incarnate Word of God, God’s beloved and only Son, of which I have no doubt. But he was also truly human, in every sense that that might imply.
I’m sure as an infant, Jesus was dependent upon his parents, learned what it meant to live in relationship with his family, developed motor skills and faced the tasks that every child does as they mature as a human being. I also believe, that even as an adult, Jesus continued to learn, as I hope all human beings do, who stand beneath the cross of Christ, what it means to live and grow to reflect the grace of God to those around us.
At the same time, I must also admit, from my study of Scripture that this thought is not a universal endorsement of anything that a person does, is acceptable to God. Yes, I believe this text serves to break down the walls between male and female bias, to call on us to embrace those outside of our faith and culture with compassion. But I do not believe that it is a for us as Christians to embrace every ideology that comes our way.
In this modern age, we have confused reaching out beyond gender, racial and religious bias, with a philosophy of individualism, in which every person has a right to do what they wish, that needs to be embraced by the whole community. The Syrophoenician woman, whose daughter Jesus healed, actually acknowledged that she was a dog, an outsider, who pled for the mercy of God to heal her daughter.
Perhaps the truth that Jesus learned that day, is that we human beings, are all sinners, in need of the grace of God to restore us to a meaningful relationship with God. But I certainly would not interpret these healing stories, which appear back to back in Mark’s Gospel, as an endorsement of anything goes.
Quite frankly, I find it really disturbing, that our church could not discern the difference between these two ideals. The woman whom Jesus healed her daughter, was not demanding that she be recognized for her gender, or for her nationality, or for her religious belief. She was, in actuality reaching out beyond herself, pleading for the grace of God to change her life, and heal her daughter. In essence, she pled to Jesus, God’s very Son, who was above the powers of her own gods. And Jesus acted.
I do not see that kind of contriteness in the way that our country is now headed. We now have schools that have embraced a series of textbooks that teach tolerance for all lifestyles of people, including those of gay penguins to our youngest students. And in those school districts that have adopted them, they are mandatory reading.
In light of my fear for our country, there is only one hope that I cling to. And that is the compassion of Jesus the Christ, who grew in the grace of God from his encounter with the Syrophoenician woman, to embrace the man who was deaf and had a speech impediment, with so much compassion. May God look upon us with his grace, and enable us to experience the healing we need, individually, and as a nation.
Amen.
