Penelope Bridges
Today is Homecoming Sunday. You saw the procession of ministries at the beginning of this liturgy, and in a few minutes I will read off a list of our many ministries as we commission the lay ministers – that’s all of you – for renewed service. There is something for everyone, and if you are curious about any of the ministries please ask me after the service to tell you more, or come to the Guild Room and browse the Ministries Fair after 10:30.
This is a Sunday when we acknowledge the start of the academic year and hope to welcome new additions to our community. It’s a Sunday when we want to offer the most attractive picture possible of the congregation, the facility, and the God we worship. So, it’s ironic that the Gospel assigned for today includes a hint that Jesus might not be as meek and mild as we would like to think; that he might not even be very likeable. His conversation with the Gentile mother is jarring to our 21st century ears. Essentially calling someone a dog is shocking when anyone does it, and especially when the speaker is Jesus. So let’s look at that right away.
Jesus’ insult is offensive to us. But context matters, especially when we are considering informal conversation, and the social context of the Gospels was very, very different from ours. Jesus used what was probably a familiar metaphor, and it was one that evidently didn’t phase the woman he was speaking with. Biblical scholars suggest that it’s equivalent to our “Charity begins at home” and indicates Jesus’ perception that his mission is first to the Jewish people. The rest of the world will be fed, but later, he may be saying.
The cultural context in Jesus’ lifetime was so different from ours that there might be all kinds of things about him that today we would regard as objectionable. If you read some of the Gospels that didn’t make it into the Bible that we know today, you can find lots of examples of Jesus being ornery. We need to guard against creating Jesus in the image of our favorite uncle, smoothing out the rough edges, or giving him attitudes and approaches that fit our own post-enlightenment worldview. He wasn’t a 21st century pastor transposed into an ancient context: he was a man of his time and place, which actually makes the fact that he ate dinners with tax collectors and spoke to strange women all the more remarkable. So let’s not get waylaid by the way he addresses this Syro-Phoenician woman.
In this section of the Gospel, Mark is opening the door for us to the Kingdom, by telling a series of stories about Jesus opening and being opened. Jesus has just been telling the Pharisees that, contrary to what the laws of kosher diet may indicate, what they put into their bodies won’t make them unclean, but the actions that come from their hearts are the true impurity. He is opening up their closed minds. And, surprise! Now he will have that experience too.
The human side of Jesus is very visible here. He went to this non-Jewish region to get away from the crowds who knew him and their demands for miracles and revolution. And here comes this pesky woman, intruding on his me-time, who somehow recognizes him as a man of power. How does she know? Why is it always the non-Jews and the demons who recognize Jesus in this Gospel? Well, Mark’s particular angle on the story of Jesus is to highlight the blindness of Jesus’s own people to his Messiahship. Outsiders can see it, we the readers can see it, but those closest to him can’t see it.
Up until this point, Jesus has been focusing on his mission to the Jews, the chosen people of God; he doesn’t want to be bothered with outsiders, and so he tries to dismiss the woman with a careless proverb. But she doesn’t give up. Do you remember the earlier story of the woman with the issue of blood who dared to touch Jesus’s cloak? She was desperate enough to cross a social boundary, as this Syro-Phoenician woman does. A desperate mother will dare; she will even talk back to a stranger from a hostile group who insults her, if it might mean getting help for her child. This Gentile woman doesn’t even believe in the God of Israel, and yet she dares to hope that that God might deliver healing. So she persists, and perhaps a light bulb comes on for Jesus, an inkling that he doesn’t have to limit his message to the Jews after all. And he rewards the woman for her courage by declaring her daughter healed, without even meeting the girl, let alone laying hands on her.
The second story in this Gospel passage tells us that Jesus, having had his own mind opened up by the encounter with the woman, now opens up the voice and ears of this man, likely also a Gentile, whose friends plead on his behalf, just as the woman pleaded on her daughter’s behalf. This time he performs the miracle with an elaborate ritual that the crowds can witness. Opening ears, mouths, hearts is a continuing theme of God’s mission. And perhaps Jesus himself is modeling this opening up for us.
This possibility takes us into the dangerous territory of potential heresy, so fasten your seatbelts! Can God change? Traditional Christian doctrine has held that God is unchanging and unmoving; that God is the steady center of all things; that God does not change God’s mind. And yet this flies in the face of much of Scripture. Abraham persuaded God to give Sodom a second chance; Jonah’s reluctant preaching caused God to turn away from destroying Nineveh; Moses talked God out of blasting the people in the desert. Every time, God moved in the direction of compassion and mercy. SO, if Jesus is God on earth, why shouldn’t he too be open to change and growth?
We hear over and over in the Gospels that Jesus brings a message of liberation from the ways we imprison ourselves: he argues with the Pharisees over their rigid adherence to purity laws, he heals on the Sabbath, he touches the dead and converses with demons. If one of the essential messages that Jesus has for us is that human-made boundaries are porous and ever-expanding, doesn’t it make sense that he should model that expansion in his own behavior? And then, doesn’t it follow that we also should push out the boundaries that hold people back from knowing God’s love?
We’ve experienced this repeatedly in the Episcopal Church over the last 100 years, as the church has recognized the full humanity of people of color, has embraced the leadership of women, has celebrated the full inclusion of LGBTQ individuals and couples, has taken up the cause of caring for this fragile Earth, our island home; and as we have relaxed rules around who may receive Communion, or who can be ordained, and what kinds of activities are acceptable in church buildings. We learn and grow, but only because Jesus showed us the way to learn and grow.
This Gospel gives us two stories in which people ask for healing, not for themselves but for someone they care about. God’s healing power reaches beyond the physical touch, beyond even the presence of healer and healed in the same room. We show our faith in that power when we go to the healing station after Communion to request prayers for loved ones, and when we read the prayer list every day, interceding on behalf of family, friends, and neighbors, for God to hear and heal. God’s power extends beyond all human boundaries, because God knows what is in our hearts; God knows our deepest desires and hungers. I hear over and over how people are lifted up by knowing of the prayers of their friends: our prayers matter.
So, on this homecoming Sunday, I invite you to have faith in God’s healing power; to find your home among our ministries; to open your ears and heart to new growth in the Spirit; to answer the call to serve, in the name of the Christ who loves us and gave himself for us, an offering and sacrifice to God. Amen.
