The Fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost - September 6

What's Our Excuse?
Proverbs 22:1-2, 8-9, 22-23
Mark 7:24-37

The woman came up to Jesus bowing in supplication; she was “a Gentile,” not a Jew, “of Syrophoenician origin,” a foreigner. “She begged him to cast the demon out of her daughter. [Jesus] said to her, "Let the children,” our people, “be fed first, for it is not fair to take the children's food and throw it to the dogs" such as you (Mark 7:26-27).

I’m not a Greek scholar, but I gather a literal translation of Jesus’ words is tricky. But there seems to be no doubt that his words were a dismissive insult. An ethnic slur. Any number of contemporary examples come to mind.

I can’t imagine there are any preachers who look forward to this Gospel passage as it shows up every three years.

There seem to be two primary approaches to interpreting Jesus’ rudeness.

The first, and most common, is that Jesus was testing her faith. He pushed her away, insulted her, to test how sincere and persistent her faith really was. This interpretation is supported a bit, at least, when Jesus says that because of how she answers—with persistent faith—her child will be healed.

But there are big problems with this interpretation (David Lose, here).  Nothing like it occurs anywhere else in the Gospel of Mark. Jesus doesn’t test people before he heals them. Also, there isn’t any clear mention of testing, as there is, for example, in Job. And, finally, this portrays a cold-hearted and cruel God who taunts and tests us in our deepest moments of need. Not the Jesus of the New Testament or our experience.

The second interpretation focuses on the human Jesus. And, of course, Jesus was fully human. 100% human, just like us. And, also, we assert 100% divine, fully God. In this interpretation, it is the human Jesus who speaks, who hasn’t completely figured out God’s purpose or the fullness of God’s kingdom and its rich inclusiveness. In speaking to the woman who comes before him Jesus reflects the cultural norms of his time. Without a doubt his words convey how fellow Jews of his day felt about Syrophoenician scum.

Picking between these two interpretations, I favor the second one. Although there are significant theological problems with it. Like where was the divine Jesus at the time?  But one nice teaching point from this interpretation (which I think I stressed in an earlier sermon) is that Jesus embodies or models the journey from bigotry to compassion. A very important and faithful journey that all of us humans need to make over and over again.

Ultimately, for me there is no satisfactory or “comfortable” explanation of this passage. That’s an important note.  Holy Scripture isn't always comfortable.  And I’m a bit wary of anyone who does have a comfortable interpretation of Jesus’ words.

But this year, as I read this passage again, a different piece of it caught my eye. Just a phrase, but maybe worth looking at.

Mark says that after Jesus came to the foreign region of Tyre, “He entered a house and did not want anyone to know he was there. Yet he could not escape notice” (Mark 7:24).

He entered a house and did not want anyone to know that he was there.  One commentator I read kindly suggested that Jesus was tired. After all, he’d been doing a lot of healing of folks who’d come to him in need. A lot of healing.  He’d been teaching and debating in a setting fraught with stress and complexity as he challenged the religious leaders of his day. Just a little while back he had fed people who were hungry, five thousand of them! Surely he deserved a little down time from the work of bringing God’s kingdom into the world… Surely he needed a bit of Sabbath time from bringing God’s love into the world.

But.  What’s our excuse? For retreating from Christian mission?

What’s our excuse? For wanting to escape notice as Christians?

Why do we hide and remain passive?

Jesus could not escape notice. He was not capable of remaining quiet or inactive in the face of human need.

Oh, that it might be said of us that we cannot escape notice in the face of human need. That we are inescapably noticeable for the work we are doing to bring God’s kingdom, God’s love into the world!

People are hungry, starving, without food, in our world.  Who will feed them?

Who will shelter the homeless, including refugees whatever their ethnicity, in our world?

Who will fight injustice, and its roots in bigotry? And its roots in poverty? Proverbs reminds us to do what we can to redress poverty.

And those who are in distress… Sick in body and soul… Who will offer them hope?

Jesus didn’t do these things to earn notoriety in the society of his day or to earn God’s favor. He did them because it was God’s work. It needed to be done. And he was there to do it.

We are here to do it now.