Call Us by Our Name
Reflections on Mark 7.24-37
RCL Proper 23B
9 September 2018
Holy Trinity Cathedral
New Westminster BC
Click here to listen to the Sermon as preached at Holy Trinity Cathedral at the 10.00 Eucharist on Sunday the 9th.
Click here to listen to the Sermon as preached at Holy Trinity Cathedral at the 10.00 Eucharist on Sunday the 9th.
Mark 7.24-37
7.24From there [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, 25but a woman whose little daughter had an unclean spirit immediately heard about him, and she came and bowed down at his feet. 26Now the woman was a Gentile, of Syrophoenician origin. She begged him to cast the demon out of her daughter. 27He 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.” 28But she answered him, “Sir, even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs.” 29Then he said to her, “For saying that, you may go — the demon has left your daughter.” 30So she went home, found the child lying on the bed, and the demon gone.
31Then he returned from the region of Tyre, and went by way of Sidon towards the Sea of Galilee, in the region of the Decapolis. 32They brought to him a deaf man who had an impediment in his speech; and they begged him to lay his hand on him. 33He took him aside in private, away from the crowd, and put his fingers into his ears, and he spat and touched his tongue. 34Then looking up to heaven, he sighed and said to him, “Ephphatha,” that is, “Be opened.” 35And immediately his ears were opened, his tongue was released, and he spoke plainly. 36Then Jesus ordered them to tell no one; but the more he ordered them, the more zealously they proclaimed it. 37They were astounded beyond measure, saying, “He has done everything well; he even makes the deaf to hear and the mute to speak.”
Some years ago I travelled to England to attend a conference. As I went through immigration at Heathrow, the young immigration officer looked carefully at my Canadian passport. ‘So,’ she said, ‘you were born here in the United Kingdom.’ ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘my mother is English, my father American and I now live in Canada where I’ve chosen to live permanently.’ ‘Well,’ she said, ‘welcome home.’ Her smile and warm welcome was a gift after what had been a particularly long flight that had not been as pleasant as I hoped it might have been. It was only when I picked up my luggage from the carousel that I realized what had just happened. A young Muslim woman wearing a hijab and speaking with a metropolitan London accent had just welcomed me ‘home’. I remember saying to myself, ‘Well, home isn’t what it used to be!’
When Jesus and his disciples were on their missionary journeys throughout what we know call Israel and Palestine, they frequently had experiences which could have led them to say something similar to what I said to myself at Heathrow. The ancient kingdom of Solomon, reaching to the Euphrates River in the north, to the Jordan River in the east, to the Sinai in the west and to the Red Sea in the south, was now broken into small princedoms. Some of these princedoms were ruled by princes or kings who were marginally Jewish. Others were under the control of non-Jewish Semitic rulers. But the real power lay in the hands of the Roman governor.
In today’s gospel Jesus and his disciples are travelling near the ancient port city of Tyre in the northwest corner of the Roman province. Many Gentile settlers have moved from the city into the border areas and it’s likely that there were many conflicts between the Gentile settlers and the ‘people of the land’, Semitic communities both Jewish and non-Jewish. Why Jesus is in this area is not entirely clear; he has thus far made clear that his ministry is to the Jewish people. But here he is and here he has an encounter with this Syro-Phoenician woman.
Let me be clear about some key aspects of this story. The first is Jesus’ dismissive attitude towards her and the insult he levels at her. While there may have been people in Jesus’ time who had pet dogs, dogs were, for the most part, tolerated at best. If they were working dogs, then they were valuable, but for the most part they were not warmly regarded. Jesus responds to this woman’s request as the average Jewish male of his time would. She’s a Gentile. She’s a woman. She’s an immigrant putting pressure on the local population. Jesus has no obligation to help her and every cultural and religious reason to put considerable distance between her and him.
It shocks us to have such a story and there are many Christian writers who try to sugar-coat what Jesus says by suggesting that Jesus is just trying to test her faith or by reminding us that Jesus, as Son of God, knew what he was going to do and that this is all some divine morality play. I don’t buy it. If we have learned anything about Jesus, it’s that he is a Jew of his time and Mark, our oldest canonical gospel, is not afraid to show us this side of Jesus.
But what is remarkable is that the woman doesn’t back down. Perhaps she’s desperate and is willing to put everything on the line to help her daughter. Perhaps she’s fed up with Jewish arrogance and wants to put this Jewish rabbi in his place. Who knows? But what we do know is this: she is the first person in Mark’s gospel to call Jesus ‘Lord’.
Now in the English translation we use here the word ‘Lord’ is hidden behind the word ‘Sir’. In the Greek original of Mark’s gospel the word used is ‘Kyrios’. True, it’s a common form of address in the world of Jesus’ time, but here, in this challenging encounter, we cannot ignore the implication of a Gentile, immigrant woman calling Jesus ‘Lord’, something no one else has done, even his closest disciples.
And with this word she snags Jesus. She knows who he is. She knows what authority he has been given. She knows that he needs to be reminded of who he is and what he is called to do.
Friends, we are living through significant changes in the communities in which we live. It’s not just here in the Lower Mainland that cultural and ethnic diversity has made its mark. The small city of Morden, Manitoba has doubled in size over the last decade as a growing number of immigrants from India and elsewhere have found meaningful work as well as a place to call home. A growing number of our neighbours identify themselves as ‘non-religious’ and other religious communities are eager to purchase redundant church buildings for their own use.
It is tempting to react as Jesus reacted to the Syro-Phoenician woman --- a knee-jerk anger and dismissal of those who represent change. But just as she addressed Jesus and reminded him of who he is --- the Lord --- so many of our neighbours address us and remind us of who we are --- Christians, disciples of Jesus, followers of the Way. My late colleague, David Lochhead, was a pioneer in Buddhist-Christian dialogue. At one conference David was trying to minimize the distinctiveness of the Christian tradition in order to engage his Buddhist colleagues, it was his Buddhist colleagues who told him that they needed him to be a Christian for true dialogue to occur.
It is precisely in such a changing and challenging context as ours that our non-Christian neighbours need us to be who we are, a community who, as Archbishop William Temple once said, exist primarily for its ‘non-members’. We are a people for the ‘other’, however we describe the ‘other’, whomever we consider the ‘other’. Just as Jesus came to serve not to be served, so do we, as his disciples, ‘ . . . seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving [our] neighbour as [ourselves]’. [1] One of the more powerful acts of witness undertaken by Christians during the centuries of persecution was our care for the widowed and orphaned, for the poor and homeless, for those who were imprisoned and those who had no helper. Some, because of our actions, chose to join us as disciples, but our service, our caring for others, was an end in itself not a means.
Let us pray.
O God, you have called us to ventures of which we cannot see the ending, by paths as yet untrodden, through perils unknown and by voices we may have wanted to ignore. Give us faith to go out with good courage, not knowing where we go, but knowing that your hand is leading us and your love supporting us, through Jesus the Christ, whom we call Lord. Amen. [2]
1 comment:
I always had to remind myself during the many baby baptisms I performed that we are there for the 'other' while I muttered under my breath that I will never see this family again until there's a funeral!!
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