Be Opened
September 06, 2015
Written by Kathryn Matthews (Huey)
Written by Kathryn Matthews (Huey)
Sunday, September 6
Fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost
Focus Theme
Be Opened
Fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost
Focus Theme
Be Opened
Weekly Prayer
Holy God, maker of us all, you call us to love our neighbors as ourselves and teach us that faith without works is dead. Open us to the opportunities for ministry that lie before us, where faith and works and the need of our neighbor come together in the name of Jesus Christ, our Savior. Amen.
Holy God, maker of us all, you call us to love our neighbors as ourselves and teach us that faith without works is dead. Open us to the opportunities for ministry that lie before us, where faith and works and the need of our neighbor come together in the name of Jesus Christ, our Savior. Amen.
Focus Scripture
Mark 7:24-37
Mark 7:24-37
And from there he arose and
went away to the region of Tyre and Sidon. And he entered a house, and would
not have any one know it; yet he could not be hid. But immediately a woman,
whose little daughter was possessed by an unclean spirit, heard of him, and
came and fell down at his feet. Now the woman was a Greek, a Syrophoenician by
birth. And she begged him to cast the demon out of her daughter. And he said to
her, "Let the children first be fed, for it is not right to take the
children's bread and throw it to the dogs." But she answered him,
"Yes, Lord; yet even the dogs under the table eat the children's
crumbs." And he said to her, "For this saying you may go your way;
the demon has left your daughter." And she went home, and found the child
lying in bed, and the demon gone.
Then he returned from the
region of Tyre, and went through Sidon to the Sea of Galilee, through the
region of the Decapolis. And they brought to him a man who was deaf and had an
impediment in his speech; and they besought him to lay his hand upon him. And
taking him aside from the multitude privately, he put his fingers into his
ears, and he spat and touched his tongue; and looking up to heaven, he sighed,
and said to him, "Eph'phatha," that is, "Be opened." And
his ears were opened, his tongue was released, and he spoke plainly. And he
charged them to tell no one; but the more he charged them, the more zealously
they proclaimed it. And they were astonished beyond measure, saying, "He
has done all things well; he even makes the deaf hear and the dumb speak."
All Readings for
this Sunday
Proverbs 22:1-2, 8-9, 22-23
Psalm 125
James 2:1-10 [11-13] 14-17
Mark 7:24-37
Proverbs 22:1-2, 8-9, 22-23
Psalm 125
James 2:1-10 [11-13] 14-17
Mark 7:24-37
Focus Questions
1. How does the notions of
"cleanness" v. "uncleanness" or "insider" v.
"outsider" translate into our religious and social practice?
2. Do we act as if some people deserve healing and help more than others? How do we decide?
2. Do we act as if some people deserve healing and help more than others? How do we decide?
3. What lessons have you
learned from "outsiders"?
4. Are the crumbs from our
tables abundant or meager?
5. What does this story have to say to us today, in a very different culture and time?
5. What does this story have to say to us today, in a very different culture and time?
Reflection by
Kate Matthews (Huey)
Many readers, including
scholars, seem to miss something very interesting about this reading from the
Gospel of Mark. They may recognize that the healing of the Syrophoenician
woman's little girl and of the man who couldn't hear or speak are miracles
worked in Gentile territory, and they may even connect these miracles to the
preceding passage, verses 1-23. But they don't mention the progression from the
story of Jesus feeding the crowd in the sixth chapter, along with healing and
miracle stories among the Jews (including the daughter of the leader of the
synagogue), through his teaching about what is "clean" or
"unclean" (and the importance of the heart in such matters), to his
acting on this teaching, described in today's reading by the healings of two
Gentiles, and finally, in Chapter 8, another feeding story, this time "on
the other side," where the crowd is presumably made up of Gentiles.
Because we read the Bible in
short, "bite-size" passages, we can miss the arc of a given section
of narrative, and we often miss an important point in the larger story. We're
also understandably unaware of the deeper significance of terms like "the
other side" or of lake and border crossings or of trips to areas with
names like "Sidon" or "Tyre."
A moment of great
tension and importance
It could be said that Mark
is making a "larger" point here than the healing of two people in
need of his help: listen, after all, to the interesting exchange between Jesus
and the pagan mother, which often makes Christians feel uncomfortable. How, we
might ask, can Jesus, our loving and tender Savior, turn away a desperate
mother by telling her that she and her little girl are "dogs"? Our
discomfort with Jesus' humanity and his very real experience and perspective as
one who grew up and lived in a specific cultural context, trips us up on this
exchange, even though things turn out well in the end. But if we look closer,
we see several possibilities: could this be a great turning point in the Gospel
of Mark? Could the early church which produced this narrative be evident in the
tension it expresses and resolves?
In recent weeks, we've heard
the letters of the early church reminding us that what we do and how we go
about our lives are the sure signs of our being followers of Jesus. Our words,
our right doctrines, and our self-image as "good Christians" can't
define us as Jesus' faithful disciples if we neglect the heart of the law of
compassion and love. For example, it helps us to understand the meaning of this
story (and what comes after it) if we read the contentious conversation Jesus
has just had with the scribes and Pharisees at the beginning of this chapter.
In that confrontation, Mark
says something that would have shocked the earliest Christians, a side,
explanatory comment: "Thus he declared all foods clean." Just one
short sentence (which doesn't bother us much at all), but one that must have
shocked those in Mark's audience who were observant of the dietary laws of
Judaism. What may seem obvious to us (specific foods aren't unclean in
themselves) was abhorrent in the religious practices of the Jews, and many
early Christians were faithful Jews. Instead, Jesus points to the heart of the
matter indeed: it's not what goes into your stomach that defiles you, rather,
it's the evil things that thrive in your heart.
No rest for the weary
Having shocked the religious
authorities and the crowds that were listening, Jesus decides to take a little
break from his own people and familiar territory; he crosses over into Gentile
territory for some time away from it all. Perhaps he needs to re-charge his
batteries and re-group his spiritual forces. Megan McKenna suggests that Jesus
may want to spend a little time reflecting on the rejection he's experiencing
from his own people, if he can just get away from them and find a little peace
and quiet. He takes refuge in a house and hopes that no one will interrupt his
retreat. However, there were people from that same area (Tyre and Sidon)
present when Jesus had worked earlier deeds of wonder in his own region (3:8),
and they had come home bearing stories about him that they were eager to share.
We contemporary readers of
Mark's Gospel may not be familiar enough with the geography of the Holy Land to
know that Tyre and Sidon are in pagan territory, although, centuries later,
their names became tragically more familiar during the bombings that occur in
one outbreak or another in the conflict between two sides of the region's
ancient struggle. But the earliest Christians would have known that these were
pagans that Jesus was dealing with, and they would have found the healing of a
foreign child far more shocking than the words Jesus first uses to turn down
the pleas of her anguished mother. We, on the other hand, find Jesus' use of
the word "dogs" to describe the woman and her daughter offensive to
our modern sensibilities and in conflict with our understandings and
assumptions about him.
A formidable woman
enters the scene
How ironic that the
astounding, shocking gift of healing happens because of the persistence, the
tenaciousness of this mother who has been raised in neither Judaism nor
Christianity. Megan McKenna observes that the presence of a woman in Mark's
story alerts us that something important is about to happen. In this case, he's
saying something about the life of the earliest disciples, and our lives as
well, if we are truly followers of Jesus, no matter how much it may offend us.
So this isn't just a pagan, but a pagan woman, and that tells everyone in the
audience to listen carefully for what is about to happen. McKenna also calls
her "formidable," an "essential" characteristic for those
early "outsiders" in the church, including Gentiles and women.
The mother is desperate to
help her tormented little girl, struggling at home on that bed, so she listens
carefully to the rumors about an itinerant healer who is visiting her area. She
can't bear the suffering of her child one minute more, so she does what she has
to do, even if she has to humble herself, in order to help her little girl. Any
mother hearing this story would understand.
Border crossings and
uncomfortable conversations
The Syrophoenician woman not
only breaks into Jesus' retreat but also breaks a number of Jewish conventions,
including (and perhaps especially) when she touches him. That would have been a
problem for the Jewish male who was touched by an "unclean" Gentile
woman. She is, it appears, a woman of position and means: her little girl, at
the end of the passage, is lying on a bed, indicating a comfortable standard of
living in that time. This is not insignificant in the story: feminist
theologians have offered in recent years a thought-provoking commentary on the
text that explains Jesus' rude-sounding response in several different and
intriguing ways. Loye Bradley Ashton summarizes them well: she offers Mary Ann
Tolbert's perspective, which focuses on Jesus' annoyance with "the woman's
culturally unconventional and even shameful request," in contrast to
Sharon Ringe's view that Jesus' perplexingly harsh response has more to do with
the political-economic situation, an "imbalance between the wealthy
Gentiles of Tyre and the Jewish peasants of the region." Ringe, Ashton
writes, suggests that this story reminds us that the tables will be turned, or
righted, in the reign of God, with money and social status no longer deciding
who sits where.
In any case, we have borders
and boundaries of more than one kind being crossed here, and the audience,
still reeling from Jesus calling all foods clean, must be even more
uncomfortable with this conversation between their teacher and a foreign woman.
Where are the clear-cut beliefs, the non-negotiable truths, the simple answers
to our questions?
It's curious that anyone
might speak of this woman's "faith." (When Matthew tells the story in
the fifteenth chapter of his Gospel, he refers to her "faith," but
here Mark, in the first Gospel, doesn't mention it.) How could a pagan woman
have faith in an itinerant preacher from a foreign religion? Desperate hope,
perhaps, but faith? What does she really know of his teachings, of his person,
beyond the rumors of healings and other wonders? Perhaps, in seeking a
motivating force, we're closer to the truth if we focus on her passionate love
for her child, a love that would not be discouraged or deterred even by insult
or rejection. And deep down, if we read the story closely and try to imagine
what's going through her mind, we don't find it so hard to relate to her, no
matter how different she may seem to us. Those of us who are mothers (and
fathers) can imagine her thoughts: "Who cares what he says or believes, if
he has the power to heal my child? Who cares what he calls me, or what he
thinks about me?"
The tenacity of maternal
love
Recalling Sharon Ringe's observation
about an unequal balance of political and economic power between the Gentiles
and Jews, we could say that the tables are already turned here, in this little
house, when a wealthy pagan is desperate for help from a poor Jewish healer. It
reminds me of the Roman centurion of the mighty imperial army coming to Jesus
and humbly asking for his help in Luke 7 - remember how Jesus said then that he
saw more faith in this foreigner than in anyone he had met in Israel? In that
case, Jesus himself is talking about faith, which inspires us, perhaps, to
explore more deeply what "faith" is. Here, certainly, it isn't simply
an intellectual acceptance of doctrines and dogmas, but a radical and humble
dependence on a God who loves us and will provide what we need.
Back to the desperate
mother, who can also think quickly and cleverly, so cleverly that, in an age
and culture of riddles, her answer to his riddle wins Jesus over and changes
his mind, not only about one child but about opening up his own (and the early
church's) vision to a new inclusiveness of all of God's children in the gifts
of grace. Perhaps the "firstness" of the Jews is expressed well in
the loaf of bread, and the crumbs are abundantly overflowing and nourishing for
all of God's children, even a pagan woman and her suffering child. It says
something about the incredible generosity of God that even the crumbs from the
table are more than enough for all of God's children. The heart of Jesus is
touched, even moved in new directions, not by faith but by love, the
mother-love that is at the heart of God's own love. Something deep inside Jesus
remembers and recognizes this mother-love. We might even say that something in
Jesus' heart and mind and plans is "opened up" by this love.
Who is "other,"
who is unworthy?
Hearing this as a painful
story from long ago that doesn't matter anymore (all foods are clean,
obviously, and so are all people) is contradicted by Megan McKenna's sad
reminder that Christians have not always done a good job of accepting and welcoming
"the other," whether that other is a woman, a foreigner, a member of
a different racial or ethnic group, or a person of a different sexual
orientation or gender identity. Today, it's not a stretch to say that, deep
down, some "good Christians" find some people "unclean" and
"unworthy" of being fully included at the feast. A colleague once
told me about beginning ministry in a church where a man said he simply
couldn't accept a woman as pastor; he and his wife left the congregation (minds
and hearts aren't always changed). And yet, the Syrophoenician woman, this
outsider, uses a word that is second nature to us "insiders" only
because it became the Christian title for the Risen Christ: "Lord,"
or "Sir," the only time in Mark's Gospel that this term is used.
In this way, McKenna says,
Mark says something important about "the place" of outsiders
(Gentiles and women, for example) in the early church. Considering the sad
history of the church in regard to women and outsiders, we might also examine
the attitudes of many "good Christians" as we make judgments about
issues in our public life (and, God have mercy on us, during this long election
process) - issues like immigration, health care, hunger and poverty: is it
possible to name "outsiders" who "deserve" (or receive)
only crumbs, or less, from our table of plenty? How do the notions of
"crumbs" and "abundance" play out in the rhetoric of church
meetings, political campaigns, and even in our household budget discussions?
Extending God's
overflowing compassion
The second part of our
Gospel reading tells another story of being opened up, in this case, through
the healing of a man who can't hear. Yes, we might say that his ears are
opened, but the enthusiastic reaction of Jesus' "astounded" audience
illustrates even more powerfully what it means to have one's eyes and ears and
heart finally opened to God at work in the life and ministry of Jesus. Could
the second feeding, of another hungry crowd, this time a Gentile one, that
follows these shocking words of Jesus and his even more shocking deeds, be a
sign, a bookend with the earlier one, in Chapter Six? The plea of the
Syrophoenician woman and her bold claim on the overflowing, tender mercies of
God, in a sense, challenge Jesus to the logical conclusion of what he has just
been saying. And so he follows up his words about food with the action of
feeding the crowd of "others," in Gentile territory, who hunger
physically and spiritually as well. (Because we read from the lectionary rather
than straight through the Gospel, many are not even aware that there are two
feeding-of-the-crowd stories in Mark.)
The crumbs from our table
Just as Jesus declared all
foods clean, then, he declared all people "clean," acceptable,
included at the table. The healings and the mass feeding that follow make that
evident in more than words, but in actions as well, just as our own statements
of faith should be followed up by action. If "he has done all things
well," can we say that we have done even a few things well? Is it ironic
that in a nation and world where so many of God's children don't even receive
the crumbs from our table, that the churches are still arguing over who's
included, who's acceptable, and who is born outside the embrace of God's grace?
Do we turn any of God's children away from more than one kind of table, one
kind of loaf?
Perhaps we need to take a
hard and painful look into our own hearts: Barbara Brown Taylor's sermon,
"Owning Your Own Shadow," on the earlier passage where Jesus declares
all foods clean, connects with this understanding of the Syrophoenician woman's
story. Jesus, Taylor writes, knows the truth about us and our judgments about
one another, especially when we place some of God's children on the other side
of a line that we draw. She observes that "the danger" is within us,
not out there, in those "others" unlike us: "There is actual
evil in the world, no doubt about it," she says, "but until we meet
up with the evil in ourselves, we cannot do battle. We cannot fight the shadow
we will not own." Will our own hearts and minds, then, be opened up to
receive, and share, God's abundant, and overflowing, grace?
A preaching version of this
reflection (with book titles) and an additional reflection on the 1 Kings text
is at http://www.ucc.org/worship_samuel_sermon_seeds_september_6_2015.
The Rev. Kathryn Matthews
(Huey) serves as dean of Amistad Chapel at the national offices of the United
Church of Christ in Cleveland, Ohio (https://www.facebook.com/AmistadChapel).
You're invited to share your
reflections on this text on our Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/SermonSeeds.
