St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Wesley Chapel, FL
Preacher: The Rev. Adrienne R. Hymes
Proper 18/Year B ▪ September 5, 2021
Gospel: James 2:1-10, 14-17; Mark 7:24-37
In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.
Human beings live and move in the world with personal points of view formed through the individual’s life experiences—their family of origin, their years in school or a career, relationships, and of course, their own identity. Depending on how one show’s up in the world, visually or otherwise, or how they are identified or marginalized by others because of race, gender, age, language, body type, able-bodied or differently abled, one’s unique point of view may be filtered through lenses of privilege and inclusion, while another’s may be lenses of disfranchisement and exclusion.
In today’s gospel, Jesus’ own worldview, was challenged by a Syrophoenician woman who dared to be seen by Jesus in order that he might heal her demon-possessed daughter. I emphasize that the woman dared to approach Jesus because her lived point of view informed her reality—she was not Jewish and she was female—which culturally rendered her insignificant and invisible to the Jewish male Jesus, and she was keenly aware of that.
As the woman bowed down at Jesus’ feet and begged for healing for her daughter, Jesus, through the lens of his own cultural privilege, rejected her plea for healing with the justification of his own reality. Jesus’ understanding of his purpose and earthly mission was to focus on the Jews, and that he was sent to that region with the specific purpose of shepherding God’s lost sheep of the house of Israel, of which this woman certainly was not. Ouch.
This is a challenging passage because we are used to a compassionate Jesus who loved and served all people. Yet, in response to this woman’s desperate cry for the healing of her child, Jesus, offered a stinging, cold insult, “It is not right to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs,” dogs referring to gentiles (v. 27). The woman, undeterred by Jesus’ statement of purpose, remained bowed down at his feet, as a sign of worship. Meeting Jesus where he was in the conflict, and acknowledging his position, the woman said, “Sir, even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs” (v. 28), meaning, “I don’t need everything, just something.” Recognizing the conviction of the desperate mother’s faith, which led her to seek Jesus in the first place, the woman was not her gender, nor was she a gentile; she was a person of great faith, worthy of receiving the spiritual healing for her daughter that only Jesus could give. And, Jesus instantly healed her daughter from a distance.
This once, invisible woman, likened to a dog, claimed her identity as a human being through skilled speech and reasoning, with the hope that her spoken words could make a difference. Not only was Jesus moved to grant her request; his conflict with the woman ultimately served as a point of clarity for Jesus about his earthly mission. Through the combination of the woman’s faith and the good work of Jesus’ healing, the conflict served as a nexus of understanding which mutually enriched them, and bound them with the shared experience.
The healing of the deaf man with a speech impediment follows the sharp-tongued gentile woman, reminding us that few things alienate human beings more than the inability to communicate. When speaking and hearing are hindered in various ways, understanding is difficult. The man was brought to Jesus, presumably by friends, who perhaps wanted to communicate with him. As long as the communication barrier persisted, the man would remain excluded from the full life of the community.
When Jesus touched the man’s ears and tongue, and commanded them to function, the man was healed of his afflictions—able to hear and speak plainly. Such a healing of the physical body has implications for the spirit. The spiritual alienation, caused by the man’s inability to communicate with his community, was also healed, making his inclusion in the full life of the community possible. Through the combination of the people’s faith and the good work of Jesus’ healing, the astounded witnesses to the healing, experienced the widening of their own earthly worldviews to include the spiritual healing miracles that Jesus was empowered by God to perform.
Individual points of view, filtered through our lenses of the world and our society, dictate how we live and move. More and more, it seems that individual points of view suffocate any possibility for mutual understanding through communication and reason. Like the deaf, mute man, our individual points of views, have the power to handicap human relationship. Our individual points of views have the power to exclude others. And, if left unchallenged, we are in danger of becoming deaf to the needs of humanity and mute when skilled speech is needed in order to speak truth to power, and right to wrong, in order to make a difference.
Our work as people of faith, is to be willing to lay aside our individual, human, insufficient, skewed lenses of this world, in order to put on the spiritual lenses of the sacraments. Seeing the world through the sacrament of baptism helps us to seek Christ in all persons—believers and unbelievers alike, strive for justice and peace, and respect the dignity of every human being. Seeing the world through the sacrament of the Eucharist rejects the individualism of the society in which we live, and heightens our awareness of God’s grace that makes us one body, one spirit in Christ, that we may worthily serve this world in His name. The Eucharist reminds us that the holy table is a table where all are invited to be fed with dignity from the table and not with crumbs from the floor.
In the Prayer of Humble Access, we pray to God that “…We are not worthy so much as to gather up the crumbs under thy Table. But thou art the same Lord whose property is always to have mercy.” The Syrophoenician woman experienced God’s mercy. The friends of the deaf, mute man, witnessed God’s mercy and zealously proclaimed it. And you, and I, as followers of Christ, are called to do both—experience and receive God’s mercy and tell everyone about it.
Through the combination of our great faith in Jesus and our good works patterned by his life, we are used by God as instruments of God’s divine healing instruments that dare to make a difference for the good of all humanity.
Amen.
