Pentecost 15 Year B

Mary Holmen

Proverbs 22:1-2, 22-23; James 2:1-10, 14-17; Mark 7:24-37

Our gospel reading for today puts two healing stories side by side. These events are not necessarily sequential – that is, they may or may not have taken place in the order in which they are told. The people who compiled the stories and sayings of Jesus, including the person known to us as Mark, put episodes from the ministry of Jesus together in a way that made sense to them, given the time and place in which they were writing and the communities for whom they wrote. Sometimes, one story is “sandwiched” inside another. We had an example of that earlier this summer, with the healing of the woman with the flow of blood placed within the healing of Jairus’ daughter. Other times, as we have today, the stories are told one after the other. In both cases, I think Mark may have done this to let the stories illuminate each other.

The first story is one of the most disturbing, if not alarming, stories about Jesus that we have. What intrigues me is that not one, but two separate communities of believers preserved this story, even though it seems to show Jesus in a most unfavourable light. This suggests to me that we can’t just pick our favourite parts of scripture, the ones that make us feel good, and let these be our way of understanding God. We have to wrestle with the whole of scripture, including and maybe especially the parts we find difficult or offensive or just plain strange. It’s only by wrestling in this way that we will enter more fully into the mystery of God and the ways in which we are called to live as God’s people, Christ’s body in the world. Mature faith demands that we struggle with the demands of discipleship and not just take the easy, more comfortable way.

The story is told here and also by Matthew in somewhat more detail. Jesus goes into a foreign area, and a woman comes to him because her daughter is ill. Even though Jesus doesn’t want people to know he is there, she somehow hears about him and comes seeking healing for her daughter. When she begs Jesus to act, he says that it isn’t fair to take the children’s food – meaning God’s grace for the chosen people – and throw it to the dogs – meaning Gentiles and unbelievers. The woman persists and replies that even the dogs are allowed to eat the scraps that fall from the master’s table. And Jesus responds by telling her that she has what she wants; her daughter is healed.

To our 21st century ears and sensibilities, this exchange smacks of both racism and sexism. If anyone behaved to me like that, I would be highly offended. Refusing to help someone in need? Oh, hang on – we just did that. Our minds, eyes, and hearts have been filled this week with the image of a drowned Syrian toddler whose family gave up on sponsoring them to Canada and instead sent the money for the dangerous crossing by boat because an earlier attempt to sponsor another relative was rejected – rejected because the forms weren’t filled out right. Calling someone a dog? Oh, right, we did that too – a journalist in the UK referred to the refugees as “cockroaches” and suggested gunships should be deployed against them. This incident has held up a mirror to the eyes of the developed world and forced us to look, and what we see is not attractive. But these words on the lips of Jesus? Really?? What was he thinking? What kind of behaviour is this?

First of all, I think this is an important story because it emphasizes Jesus’ humanity. He actually appears to change his mind. His first reaction to the woman’s request is the expected response of a Jew to a foreigner, and especially to a member of the race that even in scripture epitomized wickedness. There is a wall of separation between them, and they both know it. Jesus was a man of his time and place. But the woman’s persistence ensures that the wall stopped being a barrier and instead becomes the point of meeting.

It’s the tone of the dialogue that is probably the most troubling to us. It bothers us because it is so different from what we would consider normal good manners. There is perhaps no stronger example of the difference between our culture and the culture of Jesus. It is a way of conversing that involves capping saying with saying, even insult with insult – a kind of “can you top this?” approach. Jesus and the woman are first-century Middle Eastern country folk engaged in a good-natured banter. It is not the style of their dialogue, but the subject, which is serious. What they are discussing is the woman’s distress. She is desperate, and she brings her desperation to this itinerant healer who has wandered into her community. The point of the story is that Jesus recognizes openness and dependence on God’s grace in a new situation, and responds with the same compassion he extended to his own people.

The following story is about the healing of a man who is deaf and has a speech impediment. Jesus is still in foreign territory, in the region of the Decapolis, a group of ten cities on the eastern edge of Palestine that had been founded mostly during the period between the conquests of Alexander the Great and then the Roman Empire. They were centres of Greek and Roman culture in this otherwise Semitic region. So it’s reasonable to assume that the man brought for healing is a Gentile, just like the Syrophoenician woman. This story is a little different from most other healing stories involving Jesus. Usually Jesus spoke to the person, or sometimes ordered the evil spirits to leave. Sometimes he didn’t even see the sick person, as in the healing of the Syrophoenician woman’s daughter, but simply says to the person asking, “Go on your way, your daughter is well.” In both instances, we see the power of the spoken word, the Word of God to heal and make whole.

But here, Jesus takes the man aside, in private. He puts his fingers in the man’s ears. He spits and touches the spit to the man’s tongue. He looks up to heaven and sighs. Only then does he speak – one word – Ephphatha – be opened. Look how physical Jesus gets. Touch, spit, looks, sighs. And one word. Jesus could have healed the man in his usual way. It would have taken very little to pause in the middle of the crowd. But this time he chooses to do it differently. He takes the man aside. He spends time. He gets involved. The Good News is that God in Christ gets involved in the human condition.

Two foreigners, two kinds of need, both people desperate in their own way for healing, for restoration, for community. Jesus’ mission expands to anyone in need, regardless of their ancestry, gender, or social status.

Which brings me to the letter of James, bolstered by the words we heard from Proverbs: “The rich and the poor have this in common: the Lord is the maker of them all.” We don’t know very much about the details of Christian worship in the New Testament period. We have only a few descriptions, and they are mostly written to address problems rather than ordinary situations. For example, Paul chastises wealthy members of the Corinthian church, who bring plenty of food to eat at the common meal during which the Eucharist was celebrated, while the poor go hungry. And it seems that something similar is happening in James’ community. The details sound like an eyewitness account. A person wearing fine clothes comes to the assembly and people say, “Please, have a seat here.” You can almost see them falling over each other to honour the rich person. Meanwhile a poor person in dirty clothes also comes in, probably not smelling too good, and is told “Stand over there.” Or even more patronizing, “You may sit at my feet.”

Paul and James are often regarded as the chief spokesmen for opposing views in the New Testament – faith versus works. Martin Luther, with his emphasis on justification by faith, famously called the letter of James “a right strawy epistle”. But both James and Paul insist that the Christian assembly must be the place where Christian principles are lived out, and for both of them the fundamental Christian principle is love. Paul’s criticism leads eventually to his great hymn on love, love which is greater even than faith and hope. And James, in today’s reading, quotes what he calls “the royal law” – you shall love your neighbour as yourself. Those who show favouritism are guilty of sin and are convicted as lawbreakers. There is nothing in what James says that would suggest that love is limited to nice feelings. It is demonstrated by showing acceptance and respect for all, regardless of appearance or social status. Love transforms relationships and the people involved in them. Love leads to justice, because justice is love in action.

For both James and Paul, the Eucharistic gathering must model life in the realm of God. Both James and Paul are critical of practices that undermine the authenticity of the gathering and the integrity of the community that gathers. Their words give us a yardstick by which we can measure our own behaviour. When we gather, we are, in the words of one author, “living as if”. In this community we can both learn and practice the ways of love and justice, the politics of the kingdom which we believe must become the politics of the world. Right now we are hearing daily from politicians seeking election or re-election to federal office. Politics is simply another word for how we live together. It is derived from the Greek word polis, meaning a state or society characterized by a sense of community. Here, week by week in this place, we learn and practice divine politics, politics of respect, acceptance and kindness, of caring for one another, of forgiving as we pray to be forgiven.

“The rich and the poor have this in common,” says the writer of Proverbs, “the Lord is the maker of them all.” And, we might add, the neighbour and the stranger, the friend and the foreigner. Sometimes Christians are guilty of thinking that only those who attend church every week, make a financial pledge, or join the adult study group are true believers. Today’s readings suggest that we are surrounded by believers who seek nothing more than God’s goodness. That is the true definition of faith. Amen.