NRSV MARK 7:24-37
24 From there he 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, 25 but a woman whose little daughter had an unclean spirit immediately heard about him, and she came and bowed down at his feet. 26 Now the woman was a Gentile, of Syrophoenician origin. She begged him to cast the demon out of her daughter. 27 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.” 28 But she answered him, “Sir, even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs.” 29 Then he said to her, “For saying that, you may go – the demon has left your daughter.” 30 So she went home, found the child lying on the bed, and the demon gone.
31 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. 32 They brought to him a deaf man who had an impediment in his speech; and they begged him to lay his hand on him. 33 He took him aside in private, away from the crowd, and put his fingers into his ears, and he spat and touched his tongue. 34 Then looking up to heaven, he sighed and said to him, “Ephphatha,” that is, “Be opened.” 35 And immediately his ears were opened, his tongue was released, and he spoke plainly. 36 Then Jesus ordered them to tell no one; but the more he ordered them, the more zealously they proclaimed it. 37 They were astounded beyond measure, saying, “He has done everything well; he even makes the deaf to hear and the mute to speak.”
It’s great to be back with you all again after a time away. I want to thank the Session for the family leave time to experience that most wonderful of events, the birth of a child; in this case a grandchild, number three, another boy, another venture to the neonatal intensive care unit of Novant Presbyterian Hospital in Charlotte, a place we are becoming well acquainted with. Another time filled with incredible joy but also incredible stress. So much so that I posted something on Facebook, which has since been taken off, that warned that my response would be less than charitable toward anyone who asked me how my vacation went. I won’t lie, it was a stressful time. But one I wouldn’t have missed for the world.
So in many ways it is wonderfully ironic that on my first Sunday back we should be out here, in the midst of God’s good creation, out by the lake, maybe salivating a bit and wondering how long we have to put up with this sermon before we get enjoy the picnic. It‘s a time away, and times away have always been important for the Christian church, even if the place away is less than two miles down the street. It’s not the wilderness, not some monastery, but it is good get out of the house, out of the Sanctuary, so that we can hear and be embraced by God’s word in a new way. In that encounter, we are changed, we are transformed. We experience, just like my little grandson Bennett did, new life.
For many of us – and I would include myself in this regard – coming outside, to another place, reminds us of other outdoor places that were the site of transformative moments in our faith. I know it was one of the highlights of being a part of the youth group in the church where I grew up that we would have a retreat every spring, going out to one of the Presbytery’s camps and enjoying nature. In the process of that we were usually a little more open to hearing God’s word in a new way. In that sense it makes great sense that we dedicate a new Christian Education year by coming out here, especially with this text from Mark’s Gospel. The story of the healing of the deaf mute by Jesus, and especially the word he uses – Ephphatha! Be opened! – is a phrase full of meaning for the educational experience. It is especially so for a faith tradition like ours which has made education not just a nice throw-in but a priority. The Reformed/Presbyterian Tradition has always emphasized an educated clergy, and also an educated laity; not to boast about our advanced learning but to remind ourselves that one never stops being taught. We are always in the process of being reformed, of being transformed, and we hold to the faith that God is always teaching us something – whether we like it or not.
When we open the Bible, when we study a book, when we look over one of the study papers our denomination puts out, we are seeking to open up ourselves to what God has to say, and to where God’s Spirit may be leading us. We do that while also recognizing that God may up to something completely different than we had expected. We do that with humility, aware that we, and others, may not always get it right. Synods and councils do err, the Westminster Confession reminds us. But we keep trying, we keep searching; to use the graphic images of this story, we keep letting Jesus stick his finger in our ears and spit out the bad stuff while opening our tongues so that we can share the joy of the good news in such a way that others will get just as excited about it as we do. That’s when you know that Christian Education is happening. It’s when we truly open ourselves up to what God has to teach us.
But it is the first story that really gets me. Many years ago the youth group of the church I was serving went to one of the youth conference events at Montreat, our big camp and conference center in the mountains of North Carolina where I will be going next month on study leave. They were charged to take a deeper look at this story, and they came back with all kinds of new questions and new discoveries about who Jesus is and what he is about. That’s another way of being opened up, you know: Hearing a story and letting it bother you enough to ask questions about it, and wonder, “I have always heard that this is what this means, but could there be another way to understand this?”
We know the basics – Jesus is in the region of Tyre, Gentile territory, what is modern day Syria, and he is trying to get away for a while. He’s probably tired from all the demands, all the crowds, all the hostility from the Pharisees and religious traditionalists whose noses he’s tweaked. He wants a break. So he goes where there are not many Jews. But even in a house – the place, incidentally, where in Mark most of Jesus’ ministry takes place – he cannot go by unnoticed.
He is noticed by a lady of the area, a Gentile, and she is desperate. Her daughter is possessed by a demon. Probably acting out with loud shouts and shrieks and all kinds of inappropriate behavior. The child is a mess, and her mama is worried sick. So sick that she bolts into this house to find this wonder worker she has heard about. She doesn’t care that he is not like her, that his kind are rather snobby toward people like her; she just wants her child to be made well, and if she has to be extremely pushy, so be it.
Let’s stop there a moment and consider – what is it that is so important to you that you would be willing to be pushy? To be a little bit – or not so little – obnoxious? Women know the dangers of this; if a man is pushy, he is called determined and assertive. If a woman is pushy, she is well, pushy; she is labelled and dismissed. We live in a double standard. I know that being pushy can sometimes come across as being rude and inconsiderate. But there are times when a gentle attitude just won’t do. We need to be pushy, and we need to listen to pushy people. They are pushing us to do what is right, to promote justice, and to lift up those who have fallen for a variety of reasons, and restore them to health.
To her demands, it appears as if Jesus is very uncaring, if not downright rude. “Let the children be fed first,” he says, referring to the children of Israel, “for it is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.” Now to dog people like me we need to remember that Jesus here is not softening this up in the context of a loving family pet. “Dogs” was the derisive and caustic term Jews used toward Gentiles. Jesus is not just blowing her off, he is insulting her, too.
To which the woman doesn’t blink an eye but turns the insult into something creative. “Sir, even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs.” To which Jesus commends her deep faith and gives her an exorcism in abstentia, and the child is healed.
The traditional way of looking at this story has been to say that Jesus, perfect as he is, is just testing the woman. He wants to see if her faith is strong enough to receive the blessing he is going to give. He is not really insulting her as much as giving her an education, and she passes with flying colors.
But there is another way of looking at this, one that is much more disturbing for many of us. It says that the woman was not the one who was tested as much as Jesus was. This is the view that Jesus, for all of the ways we make him fully God and perfect and above and beyond sin, was also fully human; he was a man of his time and place, and that time and place made him a Jew like other Jews, one who felt that they were the chosen people of God, the ones who would be the first to receive God’s blessings, and that everyone else was less than, everyone else was a dog. This is the thought that this woman’s pushiness taught Jesus what it meant to be the Messiah, to be the one who breaks walls for everyone, and that God’s radical newness of life extended beyond nationalistic and religious boundaries. It’s a lesson that Jesus and all of his followers then and now have had to learn over and over and over again – that God’s grace comes to all kinds of people, and we are not called to judge who is worthy and who is not.
Methodist minister and artist Jan Richardson had a wonderful take on this with a poem, “Stubborn Blessing”:
Don’t tell me no.
I have seen you
feed the thousands,
seen miracles spill
from your hands
like water, like wine,
seen you with circles
and circles of crowds
pressed around you
and not one soul
turned away.
Don’t start with me.
I am saying
you can close the door,
but I will keep knocking.
You can go silent,
but I will keep shouting.
You can tighten the circle,
but I will trace a bigger one
around you,
around the life of my child,
who will tell you
no one surpasses a mother
for stubbornness.
I am saying
I know what you
can do with crumbs
and I am claiming mine,
every morsel and scrap
you have up your sleeve.
Unclench your hand,
your heart.
Let the scraps fall
like manna,
like mercy
for the life
of my child,
the life of
the world.
Don’t you tell me no.
What are the broken parts of our lives or those of others which make us pushy and want to cry out to God, “Don’t you tell me no”? Is it seeking the restoration of a relationship that has gone sour? Is it trying to make sense of a world that has made nastiness and meanness a virtue? Is it trying to understand someone whose views are different from your own? Is it looking at the craziness of the world, or your world, and trying to make sense of it?
Whatever it is, don’t be afraid to be a bit pushy. It’s okay to be stubborn with God. If pushiness is what got even the Son of God in his human form to look at his mission differently and more expansively, just think of what it can do for us. There are lessons to be learned, whether or not you make it into one of our Sunday School classes. God is always teaching us something. And sometimes the lesson is received when we are a bit pushy, or when we get pushed. For that is what it means to learn from our Lord – to be pushed to that place where we become a blessing for others who are different, and experience the love of God in a new way that brings transformation; not just to the pushy ones, but to ourselves as well. Amen.