St. John’s Lutheran Church
8 September 2024 + Lectionary 23b
Mark 7:24-37; James 2:1-10, 14-17; Psalm 146
Rev. Josh Evans
It sounds like Jesus didn’t read James:
“If you show partiality, you commit sin…”
But of course that’s an anachronism.
Jesus would have had no occasion to read James,
a book written many years after his lifetime.
But surely he was familiar with the Psalms,
which sing of a God:
“who gives justice to those who are oppressed, and food to those who hunger…
[who] sets the captive free…
[who] cares for the stranger
[and] sustains the orphan and widow.”
(Psalm 146)
And certainly he would have been familiar with the Torah,
the instructions of God given through Moses to the Israelites long ago,
the bedrock of his Jewish faith and practice:
“You shall love your neighbor as yourself,”
Jesus says only five chapters later in Mark,
holding up the second half of the greatest commandment –
itself not an original thought – but going as far back as Leviticus (19:18),
a book which also reminds the Israelites – Jesus’ ancestors in faith – only a few verses later in the very same chapter:
“When an alien resides with you in your land, you shall not oppress the alien … you shall love [them] as yourself.”
(Leviticus 19:33-34)
So what’s going on with Jesus’ harsh response to this gentile woman of Syrophoenician origin – this foreigner whom Jesus calls a dog?
Preachers and scholars confronted by this indeed perplexing, if not disturbing, text usually offer two possible interpretations for what’s going on here.
One possibility:
Jesus said what he said on purpose – not because he actually believes this woman to be a dog, subhuman, or lesser, but in order to provide an object lesson of sorts, to challenge the conventional thinking of his day, and to expose it as the hateful, racist, sexist rhetoric that it is.
Or:
Jesus, fully human as he was, succumbed to that conventional thinking himself. Jesus messed up, and this woman challenges him, changes his mind – converts him – and opens him up to a more expansive view of God’s love and care.
So which is it:
Jesus the teacher with the well-intentioned but problematic object lesson that exploits a foreigner and a woman to prove a point?
Or Jesus the bigot who, at least initially, is no better than anyone else around him and who gets called out by someone who refuses to put up with his harmful words?
…
If you’re waiting for me to give you the answer…
I’m sorry to disappoint you.
Maybe we don’t have to choose.
Maybe we can’t choose.
Ask anyone who has ever engaged in a war of comments on social media: You can’t read tone through the written word. And so, Jesus’ meaning remains an eternal enigma. Mark doesn’t tell us, and none of us was there to hear it.
Maybe choosing also misses the point.
Just because we’re reading the gospels
doesn’t mean it always has to be exclusively about Jesus.
Here is a woman:
Unnamed.
Foreigner.
Outsider.
A woman who is bold and courageous,
who doesn’t timidly knock at the door, waiting to be acknowledged –
but who barges in, full force, announces herself,
and pleads her case at the feet of Jesus.
Here is, as one commentary succinctly puts it,
“a radiant model of bold, creative, resourceful faith”
and further elaborates:
“[a faith that] puts first things first (a daughter’s health, for instance) [that] marshals every resource available [that] seeks God out with both vim and vigor, and is finally unafraid to wrestle, to strive, to struggle with God.”
(SALT)
This faith, in a phrase, is a verb.
Faith, by itself, if it has no works, is dead.
That’s an interesting one from a Lutheran perspective, isn’t it?
Ours is a religious tradition founded on the very principle that we are saved by grace alone, not by works – and that’s true – and yet, Luther himself is quick to remind us of the importance of a “faith active in love.”
Our faith is an active,
living,
breathing,
working,
marching,
shouting,
voting
sort of thing:
God’s work, our hands: working together,
building a future, repairing the world…
God’s work, our feet: traveling together,
following Jesus, marching for freedom…
God’s work, our voice: singing together,
praying for peace, shouting for justice,
claiming God’s love for the lost and the least…
(All Creation Sings, hymn #1000, text by Wayne L. Wold)
This is faith active in love:
to love our neighbor as ourselves,
to relentlessly seek God out,
to trust in what Jesus is capable of,
to be bold and daring,
confident in the love of a God who shows no partiality,
who fiercely and unconditionally loves us,
and who compels us to do and be the same.
Faith is a verb,
the Syrophoenician woman reminds us,
and courageously shows us.
Faith is a verb
that opens us (ephphatha!)
to the needs of a suffering and vulnerable people,
to bear witness to a God who cares deeply
and who calls us to join them
in their creative, redeeming, and liberating work –
for the sake of the whole creation.