2008
Sermons
Dez 28 - The Costly Gift
Dez 24 - The Whole Story
Dez 21 - Disrupted!
Dez 21 - Blessed be God, anyway
Dez 14 - Signpost People
Dez 7 - Turn Around!
Nov 30 - Lament
Nov 23 - Seeing Jesus
Nov 16 - Treasure
Nov 9 - Good News, or Bad?
Okt 12 - Now We Join in Celebration
Okt 5 - Is All Lost?
Sep 27 - No reason to brag
Sep 21 - At the Right Time
Sep 14 - The Holy Cross of Christ has set us free!
Sep 7 - Responsibility for One Another?
Aug 31 - Extreme?
Aug 24 - Questions
Aug 17 - Inside, Outside, Upside Down
Aug 10 - Against Giants
Aug 3 - You Are What You Eat
Jul 27 - Whose Treasure?
Jul 20 - ...and the Harvest
Jul 13 - God, Seed, Growth, Harvest
Jul 6 - Burden and Yoke
Jun 29 - The Big Question
Jun 22 - Death and Life
Jun 15 - Priestly and Holy
Jun 8 - Lord, Have Mercy
Jun 1 - And it will be hard
Mai 25 - Just One More....
Mai 18 - Good...very good!
Mai 11 - Transformed!
Mai 4 - It's a battle..............
Apr 27 - In the conversation
Apr 20 - We are...we will be....
Apr 13 - Worship and Life
Apr 6 - Just Talking
Mrz 30 - Resurrection of the Body
Mrz 23 - This New Day
Mrz 22 - Blessed be God!
Mrz 21 - It is finished!
Mrz 21 - Died, For Me!
Mrz 20 - This Do!
Mrz 16 - Good News for those who flunk the test
Mrz 9 - To Laugh, Yes, To Laugh!
Mrz 2 - Together in Christ - Glenn Lunger
Mrz 2 - Why?
Feb 24 - Bigger than we thought
Feb 17 - Abraham the Player, Nicodemus the Spectator
Feb 10 - Saying NO
Feb 6 - In deep conversation with the Father
Feb 3 - How close to God?
Jan 27 - What? Who? Where? When?
Jan 20 - Behold, the Lamb who takes....
Jan 13 - It Just Might Happen
Jan 6 - The Gift of You
Inside, Outside, Upside Down
Fourteenth Sunday after Pentecost - August 17, 2008
Our Gospel today is surely one of the strangest stories of Jesus in the Bible.
It is told in seven short verses: the woman comes, has this odd conversation with Jesus, and is gone.
Such an unusual incident will mean that there are many ideas about what it all means,
but we can keep it straightened out if we remember who is the subject of the story.
It is not the woman,
or the disciples,
but Jesus who is the subject and the center of the story.
The disciples are at the edge of the encounter, and, as usual, they miss the whole importance of the scene.
They are only thinking about the practical situation:
There is this pesky person following them around and making such a commotion.
It is very distracting for everyone else.
“Either fix things, or shoo her away from here,” is their desire.
It was a very practical and efficient bit of advice from the disciples, but Jesus does not follow it.
Now, if the woman were the chief character in the story, then we would say that her persistence was the theme of the story,
and we have all heard sermons across the years that say just that.
In spite of the disciples complaining, in spite of the strange words of Jesus,
she is persistent in her complaint until she gets satisfaction.
Persistence in prayer is indeed a good thing, but this is not the best text to speak to that idea.
If this were the story of a consumer-complaint action-line,
then she would be a heroine:
she keeps after it until there are results.
Indeed, some folks think of prayer in just this way:
“by the frequency and intensity of my prayers I can force God to do what I want.”
Now immediately upon my saying that, you know how foolish is that idea.
You or I cannot force God to do anything at all, no matter how long or how fervent are our prayers.
The need said once is known by God even before it is spoken!
So the story today could not have been told and remembered because it glorified a noisy and persistent woman who forces Jesus to change his mind.
It is in the Bible because it shows Jesus at work in a very appropriate way:
He is not forced into doing something that he would otherwise ignore;
he is proceeding, very deliberately, to do precisely what he intends to do.
What is that?
Jesus stands at the border between the traditional old and the very unexpected new creation.
--He is also at or beyond the border between Galilee and non-Jewish Tyre and Sidon.
--He is in danger of being ritually contaminated by foreigners.
--He has contact with a woman, which is socially unacceptable.
--The woman does not appear to be accompanied by a man in public; this was considered a shameful thing.
--And besides all that, she is obnoxious!
What is Jesus' intent in this encounter?
To show how corrupt and empty the old ways are, and to show how life in the kingdom of God will be.
He begins by doing the “proper” thing when approached by the noisy female – he ignores her.
That's what we are so quick to do also – to pretend that the outsider doesn't exist.
I've heard it in both theological and ethical contexts:
1. Theological: One person told me, “I don't know anyone who is not a church-member.”
In this day and social situation,
I really doubt that!
2. Ethical: “There's not really a homeless situation in this area. In a big city, maybe, but we don't have anyone sleeping on steam grates in Wmspt.”
True, but we also don't have any steam grates!
The homeless are here among us, if we discover where to look.
When pretending that outsiders don't exist is not enough, then the next thing is to move on to insults.
To call her a “dog” is the lowest of the low.
Yet we do the same thing:
How many times have I heard across the years that folks who live in low-cost housing are dumb and no-good.
To my sorrow I remember from my childhood that one of the deepest insults that my German-Irish family could bestow was to call someone a dumb ____ (one would fill in there an epithet referring to Eastern Europeans.)
I knew only a few Eastern Europeans and they were fine, but still that hatred of the foreigner was lurking somewhere in our family past.
I was reminded of that bit of family history when I had the opportunity to visit the Czech Republic, Slovakia, and Hungary 15 years ago, when I saw people working very hard to erase the effects of 50 years of Soviet oppression.
Our old attitudes are so foolish!
So, after giving her the proper silent treatment, Jesus then mouths the typical hate that the Pharisees and other leaders would espouse.
“We're the chosen people, and you foreigners are outsiders and dogs.”
But amazingly, Jesus has led her to the brink of faith,
for she now acknowledges that she has no real power of her own,
that she cannot earn her way into Jesus' favor,
that she has no claim on him.
Can she have a table-scrap, she asks Jesus.
Jesus smiles, “Great is your faith,” he says.
“Now that you realize that nothing is your own,
now that you have stumbled into faith in me, I'll give you much more than a scrap – instead, a place at the great banquet itself.
More than you ever hoped or dreamed, much more than you asked and demanded.
Great is your faith, woman.”
You hardly understand it yet,
you don't know how it all fits together yet,
but the first key step has been taken:
Jesus has reached out to you, and that makes all the difference.
There are no more unpassable boundaries, no more outsiders or foreigners to be scorned.
There are only people, all of whom need to that that Jesus is determined to reconcile them to himself, to transform wickedness into righteousness,
and to have a place for each one of the redeemed at his final banquet table.
In accepting the Syrophonecian woman,
--Jesus acts out the breaking in of the kingdom of God,
--he acts out the full meaning of the prophet's words that we heard from Isaiah this morning.
--he acts out the truth of the love of God that Paul has talked about in Romans, the love that intends to break down the barriers, even between Jew and Gentile.
--Things are turned upside down from their usual expectations in Israel.
And the message and the challenge are now delivered to us as well.
The ways of the old Adam shall not continue forever.
Teachers: how will you run your classroom in the coming year?
Will you see the students as bothers up with which you must put,
or will you know them to be of the Lord's beloved even when they are acting in a mightily unlovely way?
Students: Will you treat your fellow students as competitors to be beaten at any cost, or shall you be encouraging one another to excellence since everything you have is a gift of God for you to use well?
Employers: how do you relate to the unemployed? as objects, or as potential brothers and sisters?
Retired folks: how will you treat the greedy, or the weak, or the manipulative, or the sick?
As ones to be ignored or scorned, or as ones who also need Christ's forgiveness and reconciliation?
Jesus announces a new society in the kingdom of God, and he means for us to live now like we believe that it will finally and fully come.
Think about his gifts that have already been given to us.
Rejoice in what they will yet be.
In spite of what we have been in the past,
Jesus' interest is with what he will yet do with the foreign woman, with us, and with the crowd around us.
Insiders are transformed,
outsiders are brought in and changed,
conventional things are upside down,
and the kingdom of God breaks in.
For all of this we rejoice:
Hallelujah! Praise God. Amen.
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Please note: The preceding sermon is provided as a resource for the thought, prayer, and meditation of the members and friends of St. Mark's. It is the residue of a verbal event, and thus it does not have academic footnotes and other details that would be expected in a written document. The writer gladly acknowledges the prior thought and work of many Christians before him. |