Year B

Mark 7:24-37

The Rev. Denise Vaughn

The Boundary Breaking Mission

When we place the four Gospels side by side, what we find is that each one is unique in their own way. In the gospels of Luke and Matthew, we encounter detailed characters and conversations. John’s gospel is much more personal and Mark, well he writes like a man on a mission, concise and to the point. Mark’s mission is to help everyone hear the story about a liberating God who through Jesus makes this known. So he focuses on the highlights and seems to be writing to the kind of person you or I have encountered in our world today, the kind of person who says, “Don’t tell me what you believe—I don’t really care. I want to see how you live, the way you treat people, what your spirituality looks like, and what you do with your time.”

As James in our Epistle today said, “What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if you say you have faith but do not have works.” Almost anyone can talk the talk. Walking the talk is much harder to do. Today, all our readings encourage the “doing of good,” encouraging us to move beyond the standard of quid pro quo. James pays attention to the poor by issuing a warning to those who ignore the poor in favor of the rich, and Mark includes two stories of Jesus’ healing of outsiders those known to be beyond the acceptable bounds of the Jews. These two healing stories give us an opportunity to see God’s power at work in the world and in our lives. God takes up the cause of the poor, and the outsiders, and shows us the kind of faith we can proclaim to the world.

The Syrophoenician woman had everything going against her when she pushed her way into Jesus’ presence. She was a woman and a Gentile, a Greek from the wrong side of the tracks. She had no right to engage Jesus in conversation but despite the dictates of custom, this woman approaches Jesus. She is desperately driven by fear for her daughter’s life. Some of us may be able to relate to this kind of desperation and fear. She bows before Jesus and begs him to cast the demon out of her daughter.  We would expect our kind, loving Jesus to say, “Why, of course I will save your daughter,” but instead Jesus treats this non-Jewish woman with a severity that he has not shown to any of the others who have come to him for healing.

This scene leaves me feeling disturbed by Jesus’ insulting response to the woman’s plea for help. And possibly even wondering if this is the kind of faith I want to proclaim to the world. There have been many attempts to soften its force. It helps to know that Jesus was convinced that he must not be distracted from his primary mission to his people, the Jews and that possibly in its original setting; it was simply a familiar saying, roughly equivalent to our “Charity begins at home.” Still very shocking and at the same time it was very shocking for a woman to approach Jesus with a request. His prejudice, a very human response becomes a conversion experience as he comes to understand her challenge, and his insight after her response is perhaps divine.

Her Gentile faith takes Jesus by surprise and Mark wants us to see that this encounter calls forth a larger vision of God’s mission to the Gentiles. It does seem Jesus begins to understand that his mission is not to be restricted to the Jews alone. She in a sense opens him up and the story of the healing of the deaf mute that directly follows would serve as an example of how being opened up empowers one to open up to others. However unsettling this exchange may be, its resolution clearly reveals God’s love expands beyond all barriers and it reveals that God is compassionate and merciful to all people. The discomfort caused by this story challenges us today to examine how we treat the other, the poor and persons from another racial or ethnic background in our midst. Do we just talk the talk?

In the healing of the deaf man with a speech impediment, the people bring the man to Jesus and beg him to lay hands on the man and heal him. Being deaf in Jesus’ day was not merely about not hearing or speaking. For many, this kind of physical impairment was viewed as the consequence of sin. They were barred from the social and religious institutions of the day because people were afraid of their physical problems. But Jesus sees beyond this man’s infirmity. He sees a valued child of God so he takes this man away from the crowd and heals him. Jesus not only releases this man from the bondage of his affliction but he also restores this man to his community. Often when Jesus healed, he healed not only the body but also the alienation people experienced from others.

These two stories of healing taken side by side, present us with two rich and provocative examples of God’s liberation at work in the world. New Testament scholar Mitzi Minor writes that Mark gives us God’s initiatives in these stories. And Jesus’ actions show that a “worthless, Gentile woman whose daughter was devoured by a demon” and a “good for nothing deaf man who couldn’t speak clearly” are children of God to be embraced and valued. Our response to God’s liberating healing challenges us to open up and share God’s gifts of grace, peace and healing with all people. James, the brother of Jesus, calls us to the standard of agape or divine love whether rich or poor, showing no partiality, “Loving our neighbor as ourselves”. It is not too much to ask us to recognize that there are no walls made of troubled minds, or deaf ears separating us from God or us from each other.

There are no external barriers between God and any human being: not race, class, ethnicity, gender, age or physical condition. And when we engage in the struggle to show agape love to others we are also “astounded beyond measure” because what we discover for own mental, spiritual, and physical health, is a transformation, a change of heart, and a hope for all of us who have been deaf to God’s call to share the good news of Jesus Christ with others. Faith with works, faith with agape love can lift us beyond the confusion and conflicts of our time and help us to see the working of God’s hand, building the kingdom of God now and yet to come. We are being called to a higher standard as faithful followers of Jesus. Like Mark, let us also be on a mission; a mission to make sure everyone hears the story about this liberating, healing Jesus. And from James, let us remember that divine love which shows no partiality excels all other forms of love and is our call as faithful followers of Jesus Christ our Lord.