Opening Collision

Opening Collision

Sermon preached by the Rev. Lowell E. Grisham, Rector

St. Paul's Episcopal Church, Fayetteville, Arkansas

September 10, 2015; 15 Pentecost, Proper 18, Year B, Track 2

Episcopal Revised Common Lectionary

Mark 7:24-37 – Jesus set out and went away to the region of Tyre. He entered a house and did not want anyone to know he was there. Yet he could not escape notice, but a woman whose little daughter had an unclean spirit immediately heard about him, and she came and bowed down at his feet. Now the woman was a Gentile, of Syrophoenician origin. She begged him to cast the demon out of her daughter. He said to her, "Let the children be fed first, for it is not fair to take the children's food and throw it to the dogs." But she answered him, "Sir, even the dogs under the table eat the children's crumbs." Then he said to her, "For saying that, you may go-- the demon has left your daughter." So she went home, found the child lying on the bed, and the demon gone.

Then he returned from the region of Tyre, and went by way of Sidon towards the Sea of Galilee, in the region of the Decapolis. They brought to him a deaf man who had an impediment in his speech; and they begged him to lay his hand on him. He took him aside in private, away from the crowd, and put his fingers into his ears, and he spat and touched his tongue. Then looking up to heaven, he sighed and said to him, "Ephphatha," that is, "Be opened." And immediately his ears were opened, his tongue was released, and he spoke plainly. Then Jesus ordered them to tell no one; but the more he ordered them, the more zealously they proclaimed it. They were astounded beyond measure, saying, "He has done everything well; he even makes the deaf to hear and the mute to speak."

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It is hard for us to internalize the degree of separation and distance between Jesus, a Jewish peasant from Galilee, and this Syrophoenician woman whose privileged child sleeps in a bed. In all probability, Jesus never slept in a bed in his entire life.

She comes from the sophisticated and wealthy coastal region of Tyre. Jesus is from Nazareth, an isolated village of extended family, probably part of a strict sect of Jewish orthodoxy that withdrew itself from the mainstream of Judaism.[i] The Nazarenes were a strange bunch, peculiar to other Jews like Nathanael.

And the Jews were arguably the strangest people in the Roman Empire. Alone among the Roman subjects they were excused from the patriotic observances of the civil religion that united many nations and tribes under the single Emperor.

But the Syrophoenician woman and Jesus shared some things in common as people of the Mediterranean culture. They shared a language for dismissing the other, for marginalizing an enemy.

On December 14, 2008, Iraqi broadcast journalist Muntadhar al-Zaidi committed an act of insult in the strongest terms imaginable. He shouted, "This is a farewell kiss from the Iraaqi people, you dog," and threw his shoes at President George W. Bush during a press conference.

Al-Zaidi used a traditional epithet found in the Bible and the Qur'an. When the Israelites sent an un-armored boy to fight the great Philistine warrior, Goliath screamed his insult, "Am I a dog, that you come to me with sticks?" (1 Sam. 17:43) When Saul's cousin Shimei taunted and insulted King David, the King's general asked, "Why should this dead dog curse my lord the king? Let me go over and take off his head." (2 Sam. 16:9) Proverbs advises, "Like a dog that returns to its vomit is a fool who reverts to his folly." (26:11)

Like every other child in his village, Jesus was taught that those Gentiles, the unclean people from outside their tribe, were all dogs. Everyone knows that. Matthew records Jesus' teaching, "Do not give what is holy to dogs." (7:6)

Jesus has just escaped from being dogged by Pharisees and others, fleeing eastward to Tyre where he hopes for a little breathing room. His cousin John the Baptizer had been executed recently by Herod. When Jesus tried to take his disciples to a deserted place to rest and grieve, a great crowd followed them and intercepted their retreat. The scripture says Jesus "had compassion for them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd." (Mark 6:34) So he taught them all day. As evening fell, Jesus took five loaves and two fish and fed that multitude of Jewish Galileans who had followed him so tenaciously. Day after day he continued to work and teach around the shores of Lake Galilee, hounded by critics who  fought him as we heard last week with explicitly Jewish challenges, "Why do your disciples not live according to the tradition of the elders, but eat with defiled hands?" (Mk. 7:5) How exhausting it all must have been.

So Jesus escaped, crossing the border into Tyre, on the Gentile coastlands. We read, "He entered a house and did not want anyone to know he was there. Yet he could not escape notice." (Mk. 7:24) The Syrophoenician woman. Rich, privileged, sophisticated. She barges uninvited into their retreat. You know how presumptuous the privileged can be. They think closed doors don't mean them. What can she know of the mission and calling of this young Jewish prophet? This clash of cultures could be ugly.

She begged the exhausted teacher to cast out the unclean spirit from her little daughter. Healthy people set healthy boundaries, don't they? This is beyond Jesus' sense of calling. This request is outside his understanding of his job description. So he speaks in the Biblical language of his people. "Let the children be fed first, for it is not fair to take the children's food and throw it to the dogs."

You know, you have to draw the line somewhere. We have a discretionary fund here at St. Paul's. Many of our guests at Community Meals know about that. They can wear us out with requests. Suzi our Administrator will say to me, "Lowell, don't come to your office on Monday or Wednesday, and if you do, keep your door closed and your light off." Even at that, some people ignore the dark office, the closed door, and just barge in.

Like the Syrophoenician woman. You assume she is behaving arrogantly, walking in where she has not been invited. But listen to her response to Jesus' challenge. "Sir," she begins. "Sir," or "Lord." It is the only time that Jesus is addressed that way in Mark's gospel. Later that would become the Christian title for the Risen Lord. "Sir, even the dogs under the table eat the children's crumbs." That's a statement that will catch your attention. Respectfully the wealthy woman of privilege, completely humble, asks the Jewish peasant for crumbs. Jesus looks again, and no longer sees a rich, pushy, foreigner, but a desperate mother who loves her daughter. Somewhere across town in that plush bed a child is healed. And something in Jesus radically changes.

His human inheritance as a child of the Jewish people and his sense of calling as a prophet sent to reform his own people suddenly expands. It is as if he hears personally the ancient calling of the suffering servant of Isaiah, "It is too light a think that you should be my servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob and to restore the survivors of Israel; I will give you as a light to the nations, that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth." (49:6) It is as though his vision has expanded. Now his word will expand as well.

Immediately he goes back west, but he doesn't stop in his home territory of Galilee. He keeps going to what they commonly called "the other side," to the Decapolis, a region of ten Gentile cities west of the Sea of Galilee, centers of Greek and Roman culture in a region that was otherwise Semitic, like Jesus. There he meets a man who is deaf and who cannot speak. Jesus acts and speaks, "Ephphatha" – "Be opened." Immediately the man can hear and can speak. Jesus gives to this other foreigner a form of the gift he was given by a Syrophoenician woman who spoke and opened his ears and his speech to those others.

The next story in Mark's Gospel is another story of the feeding of a multitude. This time it is a gathering of Gentiles. Jesus now gives to the Gentiles the same gifts of feeding and healing and the same loving teaching that he has been giving to his own people. "Ephphatha!" His ministry is opened.

I am like that Syrophoenician woman. Privilged, presumptuous. Can I, like her, refuse to be deflected by the walls and insults that infect our human cultures? I am like that anonymous Gentile. I am so deaf. I fail to hear things unfamiliar to my narrow ears. My speech is limited by my small context and lack of experience.

"Give us the crumbs," the humble voices cry. And the Apostle James' voice accuses us. "If a brother or sister is naked and lacks daily food, and one of you says to them, 'Go in peace: keep warm and eat your fill,' and yet you do not supply their bodily needs, what is the good of that?"

Jesus is our model. Whenever we hear a word of grace or love; whenever we hear a cry of need or suffering – especially when it comes from an unexpected source – we are to jettison immediately the shackles of our deafness, and be opened to the presence of God's grace that is abundant throughout creation. Then we can be privileged to share in the healing and feeding and reconciling work of Christ.

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[i] Charles Page, Jesus and the Land, Abingdon Press, Nashville, 1995, p. 33-38.

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