Six years ago, when I last preached on these texts, Episcopal priests and Lutheran pastors across the country were being urged by their bishops to address in our sermons the reality of growing racial and cultural tensions in our communities, our nation, and the world. We were encouraged to pray for wisdom, for an acceptance of diversity, and a humbled and repentant spirit amid the complexities of those days.
Tensions were high then – the “Black Lives Matter” movement had emerged and was highly offensive to many; the “All Lives Matter” response offended many as well. I wish I could say that six years later, we have made some progress in the ways that we think and speak and act in regard to race and cultural differences influence those around us…but the death of George Floyd last year, the Covid-induced violence against Asian and Pacific Islanders, and the “slave-trading” dialog that circulated among TCAPS middle and high school youth this summer convinces me otherwise. And in truth, I am not in the position to judge whether there has been progress. Only our sisters and brothers of color can make that judgment.
Some of you may question why I would risk offending by speaking to it today. As I hear the reading from James 2 and the story of Jesus and the Syro-Phoenician (or Canaanite) woman, I don’t see how I cannot speak to it. Frankly, if God’s Word has no guidance or hope to offer to humanity’s most complex challenges, then what are we doing here?
The message in James is clear enough – followers of Jesus sin when they show partiality to some people over others. James reminds the Jewish Christians who hear this letter that God commands: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself” (8) and reminds them that in God’s economy, “mercy triumphs over judgment”(13). And in what is perhaps the most familiar of this letter, James admonishes believers to put their faith to work in their relationships, for “faith, by itself, if it has no works, is dead.” (17) If our lives – our thoughts, words and actions – do not somehow reflect and transmit God’s grace and mercy, then our faith in God is not producing the fruit God intends.
And then we turn to the latter part of Mark chapter 7 – Jesus leaves Galilee and heads to Tyre, along the Mediterranean Sea – modern-day Lebanon. This is foreign soil to Jesus, still within the Roman Empire, but populated by non-Jewish people. And it would seem that Jesus may have headed there to get away from it all. But a Syrophoenician woman has heard about him, and believes he may be able to help her demon-possessed daughter.
She enters the house where he is staying and bows at his feet, as if to worship him. Then she pleads with him to cast the demon out of her, something we know he can easily do.
But Jesus brushes her off, refusing her request, and throwing in an ethnic slur for good measure.
How do we make sense of this? Compassion fatigue on Jesus’ part? Or is he testing her – is the insult of calling her daughter a “dog” merely a means of testing her faith, to see if she really believes?
If Jesus is testing her, then it’s the only place in the Gospel of Mark where he does such a thing. Despite the hatred Jews had for Gentiles, Jesus had already crossed boundaries when he cast out a legion of demons in the man from the Gerasene region (Mark 5). He had already expanded his ministry to the Gentiles – so why would he treat this woman with such calloused disregard?
Remarkably, she withstands the insult and stands her ground, reasoning that even the strays end up getting food that falls from the table where the beloved children eat. That is to say…even Gentiles have received healing from Jesus, who was born a Jew and who came to restore covenant relationship between the Jewish people and their Creator.
Some suggest that it was Jesus being tested here – that Jesus had not yet grasped how wide a net God was casting into the world. But doesn’t Jesus already know that the grace he embodies is for everyone? Hadn’t he already gone beyond the bounds of the Jewish people in ministry?
Someone is indeed being tested by this exchange between Jesus and the Syrophoenician woman. It was Jesus’ disciples with him that evening and those of every age since – including our own.
When the woman challenges Jesus to to address her daughter’s need, she does not rage with anger or insult. She simply turns his own metaphor back to him. She reminds him of what everyone has observed at one time or another – the hungry hounds who hover beneath the table know there will be scraps that fall to the floor for them to eat.
Jesus doesn’t get defensive when she responds to him in this way. He doesn’t dig in his heels or chew her out for challenging him. Instead, he listens and then opens himself to her, and pledges to her that she has already received that for which she has asked.
“Be opened!” Jesus will say to the tongue and the ears of the next man he heals. He himself has already been opened a bit more than he was before to one who was different from him.
Jesus was keenly aware of the deep tensions between races and cultures in his day. Just as Jesus entered into this woman’s world on purpose, He has entered ours – to reconcile us to God and to one another by his cross and to usher us into the reign of God through his resurrection. It is for love that Jesus has come: the love of God who will do whatever it takes – even die – to offer all of us the life that really is life and to form us for love, as He is love. His resurrection in body and in mind is ours as well.
We need healing from the hate and fear we feel toward those who are different from us. Today Jesus gives hope for healing to us in the word and in the meal at this table. He speaks “Be opened” to us – to the eyes of our hearts, so that we might see those whom we might prefer not to see, and have courage to engage with them. He sends us out with the grace and mercy that come from God to offer good news and hope to the angry, the hurting, the fearful.
Let us “be opened”, Lord.
Amen