Bethesda Lutheran Church,
Moorhead, MN
September 9,
2012
Mark 7:24-37
How good are you at taking “no” for an answer?
Whether you’re selling a product or issuing an
invitation….whether you’re locked in an argument or simply trying to “make your
case”….how do you respond when the other person shakes her head and says: “You have not persuaded me.”
Do you try again, dig in deeper….or do you shrug
your shoulders and mutter: “Oh well, you
win some and you lose some?”
This
Syrophoenician woman in our gospel story was absolutely no good at taking “no”
for an answer.
This woman, a non-Jew from a people who had never
been very good neighbors to the Jews, seeks out a visiting Jew named Jesus who
appears to have come to her seashore city, simply wanting to “get away from it
all.” Why else would Jesus be holed up
in that area, “the region of Tyre” where the local citizens were not of his
kind, and thus all-too-happy to leave him alone?
But somehow this woman found Jesus. Breaking all sorts of gender taboos and
social conventions about Jews keeping their distance from Gentiles…..this woman
located Jesus because she had one laser focus, one single-minded purpose: to get help for her deranged daughter.
And for her trouble, this woman receives a unique
response from Jesus, the normally compassionate healer and savior. Hers is the only request for help uttered
in the four gospels to which Jesus responded, “No—nothing doing.”
That alone might have defeated other petitioners,
but not this woman. A “no” from Jesus
should have put an end to the matter, but not with this woman, who persisted in
hounding Jesus to give her daughter aid.
Isn’t that just like a parent of a very sick child,
though?
But the response she received isn’t “just
like Jesus.” It shocks us with its
apparent rudeness. In the face of
woman’s repeated pleading Jesus dismisses her, rather crudely: "Let the children be fed first, for it
is not fair to take the children's food and throw it to the dogs."
Translation:
“Let the children of my people
Israel be fed first, for it is not fair to take the chosen Jewish children’s food and throw it to the unclean Gentile dogs.”
Ouch. That
had to sting! Whatever got into Jesus?
But Mark, the teller of this story, doesn’t even pause
to ponder that question. Mark, rather
keeps the spotlight on this Gentile woman, who—rather than allowing herself to
be rebuffed—simply barrels on ahead,
coming back at Jesus, using his own words to gain her advantage.
“"Sir,”
she shot back at Jesus, “even the dogs under the table eat the
children's crumbs."
Now I wonder if Jesus was expecting THAT!
I wonder if Jesus suspected how this woman was “on
to him.”
It is as if this woman, whatever research she had
done on Jesus, knew and believed in the center of her being two things about
him: that Jesus came into the world to
help people…..and that Jesus did this out of the overflowing abundance of
God.
She trusted that Jesus’s capacity to heal was so
potent that all the woman needed was just
a little bit of it…simply the ”crumbs” from the table of this Master
would get the job done, bring healing to her tormented daughter.
For saying this, for articulating this persuasive
logic (logos), for making this
compelling case, Jesus gave the woman what she was seeking: "For saying that, you may go—the demon
has left your daughter."
More than another tale of a wondrous healing, this
gospel story holds up for us a picture of faith in which faith is something
more robust and muscular than we often imagine it to be.
Faith, we Lutherans are wont to say, is the means
whereby we receive the good gifts of God---forgiveness, freedom and a future
without end in Jesus Christ.
God gives us those things, unconditionally, for
Jesus’s sake….and we receive those things by faith. Faith in this way of describing it, is often
viewed as a wholly passive thing, a mere receiving.
But what if faith has more to it than that? What if faith is like your heart muscle—a pump
in your chest that’s so powerful and persistent that it will beat continuously
from the moment you come alive until you draw your final breath?
What if faith is like this Syrophoenician woman’s
fierce determination not to accept “no” for an answer—even if the “no” seems to
be coming straight from God? What if faith is like a muscle to be toned
and pounded by a lifetime of rigorous reflection and rugged resistance against
everything and anything that would challenge such faith?
I am captivated by that question, especially on this
Rally Day for so many of our churches….when our focus turns again toward
another program year of faith formation, especially for those in the first
third of life.
What quality or character of faith does God seek to
form in each one of us? A passive,
receiving-only sort of faith? Or a more
adventuresome, daunting faith that boldly sails out of safe harbors, straight
into stormy seas….fearlessly, recklessly trusting that God’s abundance, God’s
overflowing, overpowering grace will meet us wherever we look?
Recently a retired pastor friend told me about an
amazing adult Bible study group that meets right here in Moorhead every Friday
morning. This is not just a chance for
Lutherans to quietly sip coffee together and dip gingerly into the
scriptures. When this group met for the
first time, the tone was set by one of the participants who told my
friend: "I assume that you're going
to draft questions for us, and when you do, make them as hard as possible."
Not surprisingly, this Bible study is still going full-tilt
after 4 ½ years. And what gives it such zip
and crackling energy is the constant expectation that dwelling in God’s Word
should be a hold-on-to-your cap, energetic
endeavor that challenges participants to the max.
“We…discover
that during virtually all of our discussions the risen Jesus shows up,”
my pastor-friend went on to tell me. “We find
ourselves on a fantastic journey with [the risen Jesus] in the context of the
gospel, and in the context of our individual lives between sessions. Indeed, when we [come]together, we…share life
experiences (without betraying confidences), which [serve] to further illumine
our understanding of the gospel.”
So what if, as Bethesda begins another program year
of Christian growth and learning and service, you cultivated among yourselves
such an expectation that dwelling in God’s Word will be one of the most graciously-unsettling
exercises for disciples of all ages?
What if cultivating the questions—the hardest
questions you can pose to God and God’s people—what if treasuring lively,
difficult questions became the heart of all your endeavors to grow together in
God’s grace? What if your children
developed within them a constant expectancy that God is so huge and wide and
full of mercy that we can throw anything at this God, and God can more than
handle it all?
What a sea change that might bring about in the
church!
Two years ago Kenda Creasy Dean of the faculty of
Princeton Theological Seminary wrote a book entitled Almost
Christian: What the Faith of Our
Teenagers is Telling the American Church.
In this book she unpacked the critical findings of the National Study of Youth and Religion (NSYR)
that was conducted in 2005.
A central conclusion of this nationwide survey of
American youth is that most of them adhere to something Dr. Dean calls Moralistic
Therapeutic Deism. That is to say: “Religion helps you to be nice (it's
moralistic) and feel good (it's therapeutic), but otherwise God stays out of
the way except in emergencies (it's Deist).
That's what most teenagers think.
The ways they described God in the study were revealing; God was either
the cosmic butler (staying out of the way until called upon to meet my needs)
or the divine therapist (God's main goal is to help me feel good about
myself).”[1]
And where did our young people learn such a vanilla,
pale-imitation shadow of robust Christian faith?
They learned it from us, not because we intended to
teach this, but because this is how Christian faith has come off to too many of
the next generation—a tepid, harmless version of the Real Thing.
If we think there is a better way, a more compelling
vision to share with our children….let us take our cues from this nameless
Syrophoenician woman in Mark, chapter 7.
Let us “catch” if we can, even a small measure of
her reckless, damn-the-torpedoes faith that will not take “no” for an answer,
because it is a faith that comes straight from our reckless God who never takes
“no” for an answer, either!
In the name of Jesus. Amen.
[1]
“Almost Christian: Q&A with Kenda Creasy Dean” by Terrace Crawford. Accessed on August 28, 2011 at
http://www.churchleaders.com/youth/youth-leaders-articles/145646-almost-christian-q-a-with-kenda-creasy-dean.html. All quotes in this column are from this
article.
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