Isaiah 49:1-7; Mark 7:24-37
A week or so ago I
found myself engaged in a longer than expected conversation with a
colleague. This happens a lot! I had stopped by this person’s office to just
quickly pick up a book. But this
colleague was kind enough to pause and ask how my family transitions are
going. I shared just a few words about
being busy and about the blessings and growing edges of being a newly blended
family. Something in my brief reply opened
the conversation further. My colleague
decided to share a little bit about the past and present complexities of their
own family life. This included
mentioning how life-changing it was during teenage years to have attended
Alateen, the 12-step program for teens living with alcoholism in their family.
This was not a
colleague I knew much about at all, and, really, I had just stopped by to quickly
pick up a book. But the Spirit was
clearly breathing through the conversation.
So I found myself sharing right back how life-changing it was for me to
have attended Ala-teen meetings at my local Presbyterian church starting in 10th
grade. This fueled a few moments of faithful discussion
about the support we found in that group and about the slogans used in recovery. Slogans
such as “Let Go and Let God” and “You Can’t Cure It, Didn’t Cause It, and Can’t
Control It” – helped us to straighten out the chaos in our lives and propel us
onward toward a healthier, faithful way of being family in this world.
The Spirit’s breath
was refreshing. That unexpected
conversation about common ground during troubling teenage years was something I
happened to really need on that particular busy day. It helped me to remember how very significant
the spiritual and emotional process is when we allow others to help us deal
with our most gaping emotional wounds, our potentially damaging defenses, our
unhealthily isolating tendencies. Opening
ourselves up to others can help inaugurate great healing in mind and soul. And you know what else it can do? When the opportunity arises -- be it a planned
conversation or an unexpected one -- it can inspire us to help others
straighten out, open up, and be empowered onward.
Who is the one person
in all of history that we wouldn’t think ever needed to be straightened out,
opened up and empowered? Jesus,
right? The Son of God. The Savior.
The One born to straighten out the sin of this world and open us all to
God’s eternal, unconditional love.
Yet did you read and
hear our lesson from Mark very carefully?
Did you pick-up on Jesus’ unkind remark and how it got rejected so He
could be corrected? So he could be
reminded and empowered about his true purpose as the Messiah of the whole world?
She wasn’t a dog.
She was a loving, brave and otherwise totally scared mom of very sick little
girl. Yet even though she humbly and reverently bowed
at His feet, Jesus had called her a dog. Her daughter too.
Now I’m a dog lover,
especially these days since Dinah our family dog has fully moved in. Dog
doesn’t sound offensive to my ears, and probably not to yours either. But back in the day and place when and where
this encounter with Jesus took place, it was a very derogatory term. There weren’t any adorable domesticated pet
dogs in first century Palestine. There
were only wild, scavenging, unclean dogs.
Somehow it came to be that this
word was used prejudicially, especially it seems by Jews against non-Jews. No matter how we many times we re-read it and
perhaps want to edit it out, Mark is
telling us that Jesus had initially let this woman and her daughter know they were
not worth his time, not an ounce of his healing power because they were filthy foreigners. God’s chosen children, Israel, were his
priority. He didn’t use sticks or
stones, but those words had to have hurt.
Have you ever reached
out to someone you believed could help you or a loved one but found your plea
being gut-wrenchingly and rudely rejected?
I fear how many people through the ages have had this happen from the
mouth of someone trusted to be a representative of God.
We could spend a lot
of time analyzing Jesus’ intentions in responding this way. Lots of Bible-studying folks have opinions
in print. But suffice it to say for
today that I believe this was a fully human moment for the Son of God. It was
a moment that represented our sinful brokenness as brothers and sisters, the
very reality God took on human flesh to experience and overcome. In order to overcome, Jesus had to go
through. In this case, His full
humanness needed a prompt on his way to being the Savior of the world, a firm reminder
of the universal, all-inclusive nature of God’s redeeming love.
The dog comment was
his initial reply. So I find it’s really even more important to
spend time reading and re-reading this Gentile woman’s faithful words and
actions. She knew who Jesus was. She knew of and it seems had come to believe
in his healing power. And she knew well
her status as a disregarded outsider to His people. And
though she approached Him with great humility to beg for her daughter’s healing
and was bluntly rejected, she did not give up.
She did not let prejudice overcome the power of her faithful plea.
In words that seemed
to have surprised Jesus, she acknowledged the derogatory dog comment and then turned
it into a prophetic word. Even the dogs
under the table, she proclaimed, eat the children’s crumbs. If the full humanness of Jesus had indeed somehow
lost sight of the fact that all children of God are worth receiving his healing
power, this brave woman rang a big reminder bell. It was the ring of truth that returned him
to the straight path proclaimed of Him by the prophet Isaiah, who spoke for God
saying it is “too light a thing” to just serve Israel -- the Messiah’s purpose
is to be a light to all nations so that salvation can reach the ends of the
earth (Isaiah 6).
Upon hearing it, Jesus
didn’t just have second thoughts about the exclusionary words He’d just said. Instead, “His vision and vocation” got “radically
reoriented.” His power was not
diminished by that difficult exchange, as in when someone feels ashamed for
having said something totally inappropriate.
His power was instead expanded by
it … it was straightened out, opened up
and empowered onward toward his Messianic purpose as he granted the healing
that was this woman’s heart’s desire. [i]
Mark’s Gospel
punctuates this lesson learned by next telling us of another healing granted by
Jesus. This time, it was a deaf man
with a speech impediment. He was
possibly also a Gentile. We are told
that he was brought before Jesus by way of friends begging for Jesus’ healing
touch.
What makes Mark’s placement
of this healing request right after the previous one so potent is that we, the
readers, had basically just met another deaf man with a speech impediment. Jesus had initially been unable to hear a precious
child of God pleading for her daughter’s life.
His initial speech in reply had been impeded by prejudice. But through
her faithful plea, he’d then been opened up to the greater, inclusive truth He
was born to live and die and live again for.
So Mark immediately
tells us the big, positive impact that first encounter had on our Lord. Without making any public showing of what
he’d been reminded about, he privately helped to re-create the man’s ability to
hear and to speak. He did so by mixing spit from his mouth with
dirt on the ground, a holy method of re-creating that hints for us to remember
the first human was formed by God breathing upon dust. And
then the Son of God (who himself had just been helped to open up) sighed,
looked up at heaven, and as if talking to himself, to God the Father and to the
man before him all at the same time declared “Be Opened!”
In both of these
healing stories, we mustn’t fail to notice how intercession played a very
important role in the holy healing process.
The sick daughter and the physically impaired man were not able to communicate
directly to Jesus and ask for restoration.
This happened only after the faithful intentions and actions of loved
ones and friends. We have this
faithful responsibility. We have this
duty to help bring healing to other people’s lives, to help open them up to
God’s restorative power. And getting
back to what I shared at the opening of my words today, we are particularly
inspired to do so when we have personally experienced this opening and
empowering in our hearts and minds.
In just a few minutes,
we will share in the sacrament of our Lord’s Supper together. May we do so reflecting on the Good News
proclaimed in today’s passage from Mark … the Good News that we can reach out
to Jesus in personal plea for ourselves and in intercession for others, fully
trusting that His healing love and saving grace extends to and includes all
God’s children. Amen.
[i]
Dawn Ottoni Wilhelm, Feasting on the Word: Year B, Volume 4 commentary on Mark
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