Proper 18 B 2012
Isaiah 35:4-7a
Psalm 146
James 2:1-10, 14-17
Mark 7:24-37
Does God change?
Does Jesus, the attention grabbing healer and storyteller,
Ever have the tables turned on him?
Let’s leave aside the first question for now.
Whether God changes
Is one of the basic theological questions,
And it can lead us many ways,
Some illuminating,
Some confusing.
I invite you to ponder this in the watches of the night,
Talk about it with your friends –
But some other time.
For now, what about Jesus?
Again, there’s a basic question here,
(the same one I asked and then let go last week) –
in what way does the earthly Jesus,
the first century Palestinian Jew,
wandering rabbi and healer and miracle worker,
partake of the eternal divine,
merciful, holy, just, good, and wise
all-knowing and unchanging –
just to name a few of the attributes
we ascribe to the unknowable God?
The gospels tell us
That Jesus knew hunger, thirst,
That he grew weary,
Became angry,
Knew sorrow and fear.
Did he also change his mind?
Jesus set out from his home
To proclaim the radical,
Root-shaking news
That God’s intention for the world –
The triumph of love,
The establishment of justice and peace,
The healing of harms
And the mending of all brokenness,
The knitting up of the raveled
The restoration of sight and hearing
And freedom from all oppression –
Was breaking out all over
And nothing could stop it.
That’s what Jesus means
With that simple mysterious phrase,
The kingdom of God is at hand.
Jesus went out on the road
To deliver the message of the kingdom,
In word,
And more often in deed, in acts of healing
And miracles of sharing,
And invitations to dinner
For those who were always left out.
Everywhere he went,
He shared God’s good news
And enacted God’s mercy.
By some mystery,
He not only delivered the good news of the kingdom –
He was the kingdom.
That’s one way to tell the story.
He is the kingdom.
It springs forth in response to his presence.
The spirit of God flows through him
To a waiting world,
And the world reaches out to touch him,
And is healed and fulfilled
And made whole.
But was it so
From the beginning?
Is it possible that when he left home,
And went out on the road,
Jesus himself did not know
Just how radical,
How transforming,
How truly new and exciting
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The plan of God
For the whole
world would be?
One way to tell the story is this:
Jesus was a Jewish reformer and prophet,
Sent, as he says in Matthew’s retelling of this story,
To the lost sheep of the house of Israel.
God’s plan, though,
Is for the whole world.
The healing and freedom of God
Have been promised to all people,
Everywhere, from the beginning.
Time after time,
The prophets of the Hebrew Bible promised
That God would gather all the lost from everywhere,
Feed all the hungry,
Bind up all broken hearts,
And heal every harm.
Jesus, too,
Is a prophet of God’s goodness,
Proclaiming that healing and welcome,
Gathering all the lost.
And still, sometimes,
The prophet needs a prophet.
That’s what happens today,
When Jesus meets an unnamed Gentile woman,
From the notorious region of Tyre,
A city famous for centuries for its wickedness
And worship of false gods.
We don’t know anything about her
Except that she comes from there,
And that she has a daughter
Afflicted with a malady
We now would identify
As epilepsy, or perhaps a mental illness.
And we can discern this,
From the story:
She is clever and courageous,
like the woman at the well,
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Like the mother of Jesus,
Like Martha of Bethany.
Like them,
she is clever and courageous
and she gets in his face.
Jesus loves a good exchange of words
And he does not shrink from conflict
So it should come as no surprise
That he calls this woman a dog –
A common Jewish epithet for Gentiles.
We already know this woman has guts,
Because she seeks Jesus out
When he wants to be alone.
( I wonder:
Why did Jesus go to the Gentile city of Tyre
If he did not intend to bring the good news there,
And why did he go somewhere new
And then hide?
Maybe, as in other stories
Where a woman maneuvers him into action,
Maybe he intends to act but is not ready?
I don’t think we can know.
But I wonder sometimes.)
We already know this woman has courage,
And she does not cringe
When Jesus calls her a dog.
Try for a moment
To imagine her tone of voice
As she responds.
Is she humble,
Or angry?
Brash?
Shrill – that word that used to be used so often
To label women who made their voices heard?
Or does she, perhaps,
Have a gleam in her eye,
And humor in her tone?
Might she be forthright,
And confident?
This we do know:
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She proves to be a prophet
To the prophet.
Who knows how long Jesus stands in silence,
Taking in her words,
Before he acknowledges the truth of what she says,
And acts as God would act.
Inspired by a prophet,
He acts as a prophet.
This is what prophets do.
They hear what God wants to say,
Understand what God wants to do,
And deliver the message without fear.
They poke a finger
Into anything that is out of line
With God’s intention,
God’s will to bring freedom and healing
And hope to all.
To all.
The good news reaches beyond
Even what Jesus had expected.
When an unnamed Greek woman
Gets in his face,
She shows him something new,
And he is transformed.
Jesus changes his mind.
What matters to me,
As I think about this story,
Is that Jesus does change.
He enters into dialogue,
Especially with this unnamed woman,
And many like her in other stories,
And he recognizes her.
She is fully human,
Formed in the image and likeness of God,
Worthy of God’s favor,
Eligible for membership in the household of God.
She gets a place at the table.
He sees all this,
He lets in her truth,
And he emerges from the encounter changed,
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With new insights,
Ready to spread his good news farther and wider.
That’s something any of us can do,
If we have the courage,
And the humility.
We can change.
When the revelation comes
In the words of a stranger or friend,
We can, like Jesus,
Take notice,
Pay attention, and change.
We can move beyond our history and our expectations.
We can cast our net wider.
We can be bolder,
Take more risks,
And bring the message,
A message of healing, of hope,
Of reconciliation,
Of freedom,
To those who are waiting to hear,
To those we might never have encountered before.
But there is more.
Yes, we are called,
I am sure,
To bring a message of welcome and hope
To more and more people,
In more and more places.
And there is this:
We might be called,
Like the unnamed Syrophoenician woman,
To be prophets even to the prophet.
Remember –
The prophets don’t always
Bring God’s message to the people.
Sometimes,
They bring the people’s cries to God.
They get in God’s face,
Just as this woman gets in Jesus’ face.
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So, I’m wondering today,
If this gospel tells us
We can get in God’s face,
Is now the time?
Who needs us,
As the unnamed little girl
Needed her mother?
Who needs an advocate?
Who needs us to get in God’s face?
Is it time to ask God, why?
When?
Is it time to ask God, how?
Are there children of God out there,
Who are searching under the table for crumbs?
Why, God,
Are they searching for crumbs under the table
When you have sent out your message,
Your good news,
That everyone is welcome at the table?
When, God, can we expect that to change?
How, God,
Would you have us act?
Like Jesus?
Like the unnamed,
Courageous, confident woman
Who changed Jesus?
That action changed the world.
It could happen again.
It could happen now, or soon.
It could begin from here.
If we are ready
To get in God’s face.
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