Her Gift (Mark 7:24-37)

Wellington Ave. United Church of Christ

September 9, 2012

“Did Jesus sin?” This was one of the first questions asked to one of my fellow seminarians at her ecclesiastical council. What kind of trick question is this I thought as I and I imagined others anxiously awaiting her answer. “ Of course he is without sin, he’s the Lamb of God. He died for our sins.  What the ….?   Just as she was about to give her answer, the pastor threw in a clarifying question, “What about his conversation with the Syrophoenician woman?” The who? Oh, my God, I’m never going to make it through this process. I’m still biblically illiterate. My colleague paused for what seemed eternity and then said, “No, he didn’t sin.” And that was the end of the questioning on this fine theological point. My colleague passed her Ecclesiastical Council but I was quite convinced that I was not going to pass mine for I started to wonder all over again about Jesus’ divinity and humanity----could his human part sin?

 So I went over to Rev. Kakos during the celebratory tea and cake to ask him about his question. I wanted to know why he had asked this question and if she had answered satisfactorily. He said he likes to throw in a difficult theological question to see how the minister-to-be handles it, how open they are to admitting what they know and what they don’t know. “How did she do?” I ventured carefully, hoping he wouldn’t turn this around and ask me the same question.  He smiled and said cryptically, “Ministers need to be able to think on their feet and be flexible, be open to multiple points of view.” 

This conversation with Rev. Kakos was sort of like a Zen story, something profound was being communicated to me but I wasn’t entirely sure I was getting it. What I did get, however, was that I needed to know what this story was about and what it had to do with whether or not Jesus sinned.   So I went home and read this story first in Mark and then in Matthew.  I was awed and shocked. I was awed by this woman’s persistence, audacity, gustiness, self-possession, and wit. I was shocked by Jesus’ response to her ---both his silence and then his derogatory comment about her and her daughter being like dogs not worthy to eat the crumbs under the table.

Let us review the story together. The story unfolds in the region of Tyre and Sidon, the heart of pagan territory. Jesus goes to this Gentile land not as a prophet with a message about love or salvation but to rest and escape the crowds and the constant demands on his time. He has also just had a confrontation with the Pharisees in Galilee and so is probably not feeling like his ministry is going very well with his own people.  He is in need of a little alone time, down time.

So, then, here comes this woman into the place he is staying, a pagan woman, a Syrophoenician in Mark’s Gospel, a Canaanite in Mathew’s gospel. She is desperate about her daughter’s illness and begs Jesus to heal her. It is important to know that in the Jewish tradition, non-Jews were considered unclean and outside of God’s care and redemption. This woman is a religious outsider and a foreigner. She is also a woman.  Furthermore, women do not talk to men in public including backwater healers like Jesus from Galilee. The cultural clash is striking on all fronts.  Yet love and concern for her daughter, coupled with her faith that Jesus can cure her drives her to approach this man. She does so humbly, kneeling at his feet.

         Jesus does not offer her his usual kindness pastoral but rather a harsh rebuke, “Let the children be fed first, for it is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.” Jesus is saying that what he has, the food of the soul, is for the children of Israel only. Furthermore, it would be absurd to waste it on foreign dogs like her and her child. She can have the crumbs later. There are priorities and protocols, rules and regulations. Jesus sounds like one of the Pharisees. How ironic. Perhaps he just has compassion fatigue. Perhaps he is product of his own time full of racial prejudices.

         The woman, this desperate single-minded mother doesn’t take no for an answer though. She does not allow her own hurt feelings to stand in her way. She doesn’t stomp off in a snit or start yelling or anything else I could imagine doing myself if I were in her shoes. Instead she frames an intelligent, I dare say, witty response that neither contradicts him nor cedes her own point. She meets his dismissal with honor and respect, “Sir, even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs.”

She demands he help her even with crumbs. Now, on one hand, she is saying that even the crumbs are holy and that this will be enough. What faith! And on the other hand, like one of Gandhi’s followers in his nonviolent resistance movement, she has just revealed the teeth of the oppressor for all to see or hear--- in this case including the oppressor himself, Jesus. She has spoken truth to power and risked everything for the love of her daughter, her daughter’s health. Her truth telling, her humility, her risk taking, her faith in crumbs opens the door to Jesus’ heart.

         Then Jesus said, “For saying that, you may go---the demon has left your daughter.” Jesus, the man or god, who was caught with “his compassion down” now has a change of heart, a moment of grace.  This woman’s intercessory ministry moves Jesus past his tiredness, his bad mood, his racism, and his sexism.  She calls his bluff.  She calls him back to his humanity by reminding him of hers.  Jesus was suddenly able to see and “let the dogs out of his consciousness” and regain his perspective, which is both human and divine. He has been taught by this brave woman how to reclaim his identity as the Christ whose Beloved Community is for all, not only the Jews.

As a UU minister friend of mine said about Jesus shift, “He was cured of the bigotry of his time and society.” She says the irony is that while he restores the daughter to health, the Syrophoenician woman restores Jesus to himself so that he can become the Messiah.

 “For Saying That” was my second choice for sermon title because it is the woman’s sharp retort that changes everything including how the mission will now include even those pagan dogs, the Gentiles. It is her gift to him.

 There is a mutuality of gift giving here that implies that God needs our engagement, even our retorts, for all that God can be. I find this a radical notion that God needs us, each one of us for God to accomplish the mission of salvation.

         My Jewish friends and rabbis tell me, of course you can dialogue with God, influence God’s decisions for isn’t this what Moses did and all the prophets when they pleaded with God not to smite everyone for the sake of a few wicked.

 As I think back to my conversation with Rev. Kakos and the question he didn’t ask me, I would say to him now, the question isn’t whether or not Jesus sinned but rather how Jesus acted and then changed.  He changed because he listened to the extent that love would go. He changed because he didn’t like the kind of man he saw in the mirror she was holding up for him to see.  Jesus changed because He listened to someone he didn’t want to listen to, to someone he considered less than human, no better than a dog. He changed because he knows that the crumbs are connected to the bread, to his body broken for others to be made whole. He changed because he knows in his heart, if not his head, even if it will be hard to convince others, that his mission of salvation is for everyone.  He knows, like we do, that the table must be open to all regardless of class, race, sexual orientation, legal status, or even beliefs.

 So one of the lessons I hope you will take away from this story is that we don’t always have to get it right, but we do have to listen to people, especially those we don’t want to. We especially have to listen to those folks we have deemed “other”, who are foreigners, who are on the margins. Jesus learns how to be the Christ from one of the poor and most despised outcasts, a foreign woman.

Who are you learning from?

Who are you feeding only the crumbs of your being to? Who do you give the fullness of yourself to? 

Finally, are you OK following the way of a messiah who doesn’t always get it right?

Is perfection the goal for any of us?

         So, back to the question, did Jesus sin when he refused to see this woman as part of his family, his beloved community? Yes, he missed the mark. His dismissive and hurtful remark denied her humanity, her dignity. It also denied him his and thus, the ability to fulfill his divine mission.  Was he redeemed? Yes. He was saved by love, the unconditional and relentless love of a mother for her sick daughter. He was saved because he heard the injustice of his remarks in her willingness to accept even the crumbs. His hearing restored him, which allowed for mutual healing to occur.

         I have come to love this difficult story of protest and reclamation in which a displaced woman reclaims her place at the table. I love the fact that Jesus starts out not looking so good but gets saved.

This story confirms what I have experienced---that I am changed by the people I minister to. And yes, I love stories about uppity women, women who speak their minds no matter what, like some of the women named on my stole or in this congregation. I am drawn to people who dare to risk being who they are or who practice a ministry of witnessing for others. Our UCC tradition is rich in its history about people speaking out against injustice; this is part of our rich and proud legacy. Her story is a beacon for us.

Let us model ourselves after both Jesus and this Syrophonecian woman. Both were boundary crossers. Both risked transformation. Let us accept their gifts. Amen.

Holiness is Intimate not Pure

The following prayers come were created by me as the liturgist for September 2, 2012 at my home church of Wellington Ave. United Church of Christ. I chose to focus my Call to Confession on the lectionary texts for the Sunday: Song of Solomon 2:8-13 and Mark 7:1-8, 14-15,21-23. As is the tradition in my church the liturgist leads the first half of the service which includes The Call to Confession, Unison Prayer of Confession, and Words of Assurance. If it is a Communion Sunday then the liturgist will also preside at the table. I wrote an Invitation to the table based on the themes covered in the Confession and the texts of the day and the theme of gathering that Rev. Mousin used in his preaching about labor and Labor Day.  

Call to Confession

I love this morning’s Hebrew texts especially this joyous poem from the Song of Songs. Whether you believe it is about God’s love for Israel as Jewish scholars have taught or God’s love for the church as Christians have taught or a mystical snapshot on romantic and sensual love, it is all about how holiness is intimate, beautiful, and invitational. It’s about what God’s love can teach us about human love, or what human love can teach us about God’s love.

And maybe because of this, early church father Origen advises against us talking about these texts too much, “I advise and counsel everyone who is not yet rid of vexations of the flesh and blood, and has not ceased to feel the passions of this bodily nature to refrain from reading the book and the things that will be said about it.”

Is love only for those who would describe themselves as “rid of vexations of the flesh and blood” or has “ceased to feel passions” of a “bodily nature?”  There seems to me to be a huge fear of the body here and a fear of the erotic in general, such that even talking about it might… might what?  Might make us want to do things we shouldn’t?  Might suggest we have an embodied faith?  that we are called to love our Lord our God with all our heart, mind, soul, and body.

So this lovely springtime love lyric comes along in our lectionary at the end of summer, accompanying a New Testament text about purity laws and defilement.  It comes after the feeding stories where real people are literally fed.

This text also comes after weeks of attacks on women and their bodies. It has been so bad that some have called it a War on Women.

            It has been so intense and crazy that women have even been called sluts for simply wanting birth control. One was even asked to leave the legislative assembly for saying Vagina in public. And how some, mostly white men, have suggested that there is a difference between legitimate and illegitimate rape and that you can’t get pregnant from rape because the body knows how to shut down to prevent this from taking place.

This combination of fear and ignorance of the human reproductive system and sexuality is truly frightening and deserves our faithful attention as much as the other social, economic, and political issues we work on here at Wellington.  The repercussions of this war are lethal--- real women are being denied healthcare and real women are having unwanted pregnancies due to rape.

But this fear of women and their bodies is also about fear of Women’s power, just follow what is happening to our Catholic sisters who are being asked to pull back on their social justice work and focus more on abortion issues or else… Their orders are on censored lockdown with a few brave souls speaking out.

And this fear is not limited to women, this fear of bodies and the erotic, it’s an ongoing denial of rights for our GLBT sisters and brothers, denying them healthcare, marriage, even leadership roles in our faith communities. Sexual orientation and identity are even side-lined in our comprehensive sexual health programs and as NBC in Utah has just shown not appropriate for their viewing audience when they censored “The New Normal” a new TV show about two gay men starting a family.  

Perhaps Origen was right we are not ready to read these texts but not because we are not finished with exploring our erotic passions but because we don’t even know where or how to begin, how to integrate our bodies into our faith, our lives.

And so I turn to the Song of Songs, to Jesus’ healing stories about touching lepers and “unclean women” for some relief, some perspective. And then there comes this lectionary text about purity and impurity, a toe to toe with the Pharisees about washing your hands of all things. Jesus manages to make washing your hands secondary to the issues of clean hearts and actions. He uses this confrontation to once again remind us that it is not what goes into the body that is too be feared but what comes out.

“Then he called the crowd and said to them, “Listen to me, all of you, and understand: there is nothing outside a person that by going in can defile, but the things that come out are what defile” or as the Message translation puts it, “It’s not what you swallow that pollutes your life; it’s what you vomit---that’s the real pollution.”

“For it is from within, from the human heart that evil intentions come”

“It’s what comes out of a person that pollutes.”

 “All evil comes from within, and they defile a person,” ---“there is the source of pollution.”

Defilement or pollution comes from within. It includes actions like murder and theft, adultery and greed, slander and obscenities, arrogance and foolishness. All of these come from within.

So to finish this morning, I invite you this week to meditate  or pray on the ways you have defiled yourself or others or when you yourself have felt defiled. 

As you do this remember to breathe. You might use your outbreath as a breath of letting go, letting God.  

In addition, when you see or hear about others defiling others, stand up, speak out. Your silence makes you complicit. As the late Howard Zinn said, “You cant’ be neutral on a moving train.”

Join me now in our Prayer of Confession as we collectively bring forward to God the ways we as a community have missed the mark, polluted our environment, not responded yet to God’s invitation.

  

Unison Prayer of Confession

Beloved, you invite us to love you with our whole selves---playful, sensual, fun, and romantic.  You invite us to encounter the world, not escape from it, to become intoxicated with the fragrance of the fruits of your creation. You invite us into a heavenly and earthly intimacy. Beloved, you invite us to love each other with our whole selves—dirty hands and all, to walk the talk, to speak to our shadow sides, to let go of self judgments that declare us “defiled”, or project onto others our sense of impurity.  You invite us into a relationship where the actions of our hearts are stronger than the laws we have created to worship you. Your holiness is based on wholeness not purity.  We confess that without your embodied desire for us to arise and meet you, we would most likely stay put in our prisons of shame and set up border patrols against all those we have decided are “other” or unworthy.  Forgive us these trespasses and those who trespass against us.  Help us to know and live the truth that we are deeply loved, imperfect and flawed as we are.  Beloved, pour your grace upon us this morning, anoint us to sing your songs of love and justice. Amen.

Words of Assurance

Arise dear ones, our Beloved calls each one of us into the dance of life to enjoy the fruits of creation. Intimacy, sexuality, leaping and bounding around like gazelles are all permissible.  Eating with dirty hands with common folk are also permissible for what God demands of us is not purity but faithfulness between our heart and our actions.  Our bodies are temples but they are also instruments of love.

And when we are not in alignment, when we are polluting the world with our defiling actions towards ourselves, others and creation, God’s love is still there---wide enough to forgive us if we are willing to name these transgressions and truly seek help or repentance. For God’s love is like a GPS device which seeks to keep us on the path, no matter how many wrong turns we make. God does not punish us, but seeks to correct our mistakes by recalculating the route.  Finally, God wants our partnership, loves us like a lover, wants union with us like a marriage. These are our assurances. 

Reflection Before Invitation

We cannot love God unless we love each other,

and to love we must know each other.

We know God in the breaking of bread,

and we know each other in the sharing of bread,

and we know we are not alone any more.

Heaven is a banquet, too, even with a crust,

where there is companionship.

Dorothy Day, in The Long Loneliness

Invitation to The Table 

As bread that was scattered on the hillside,

was gathered together and made one,

so too, we, your people,

scattered throughout the world,

are gathered together around your table

and become one.

As grapes grown in the field

are gathered together and pressed into wine,

so too are we drawn together

and pressed by our times to share a common lot

and are transformed into your life-blood

for all.

So let us prepare to eat and drink

as Jesus taught us with hands cleaned or not.

Let us invite the stranger, the outcast, the “defiled”, the worker, the immigrant, the gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgendered

 to our table----all are welcome.  There are no guest lists.

May those who are absent from this table serve to remind us

of the divisions this Eucharist seeks to heal.

May their presence help transform us

into the whole body of Christ we share.

* Invitation Prayer was adapted from a Prayer attributed to the Iona Community