With Ears to Hear and Hearts Wide-Open

I guest preached last Sunday---and joked with Jeannene as I was writing my sermon that I could see why our pastor would have avoided the text! It's a difficult one, indeed. Jesus not only gets it wrong, but does so while uttering a racial slur, getting it really wrong. The text is Mark 7:24-37:

²⁴From there Jesus set out and went away to the region of Tyre. He entered a house and did not want anyone to know he was there. Yet he could not escape notice, ²⁵but a woman whose little daughter had an unclean spirit immediately heard about him, and she came and bowed down at his feet. ²⁶Now the woman was a Gentile, of Syrophoenician origin. She begged him to cast the demon out of her daughter. ²⁷He said to her, “Let the children be fed first, for it is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.” ²⁸But she answered him, “Sir, even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs.” ²⁹Then he said to her, “For saying that, you may go—the demon has left your daughter.” ³⁰So she went home, found the child lying on the bed, and the demon gone.

³¹Then he returned from the region of Tyre, and went by way of Sidon towards the Sea of Galilee, in the region of the Decapolis. ³²They brought to him a deaf man who had an impediment in his speech; and they begged him to lay his hand on him. ³³He took him aside in private, away from the crowd, and put his fingers into his ears, and he spat and touched his tongue. ³⁴Then looking up to heaven, he sighed and said to him, “Ephphatha,” that is, “Be opened.” ³⁵And immediately his ears were opened, his tongue was released, and he spoke plainly. ³⁶Then Jesus ordered them to tell no one; but the more he ordered them, the more zealously they proclaimed it. ³⁷They were astounded beyond measure, saying, “He has done everything well; he even makes the deaf to hear and the mute to speak.”

After the service, I had one guy tell me he really needed to hear my message and said he got tears in his eyes. Another woman said she hopes I'm saving these so I can collect them in a book. So, I thought I'd share this, in case any of you needs to hear it: 

Any Wonder Woman fans in the congregation? Anyone else a bit disappointed that she doesn’t have her own movie coming out next year, but is instead relegated to being part of Batman Vs. Superman? (Take heart, I hear the Wonder Woman movie is in pre-production!) I have loved Wonder Woman since I was a little girl. She is just so cool, with her invisible jet & her Lasso of Truth. Yep, she could make anybody tell the truth when she twirled the rope and lassoed them. Definitely awesome.

I’ve been kind of immersed in superhero stuff lately (big nerd), so when I read today’s passage from Mark this time around, the Syro-Phoenician woman reminded me of Wonder Woman. Usually, in stories about Jesus, Jesus is pretty much guaranteed to be the hero. In this story, well, he doesn’t look so heroic. We don’t really feel comfortable with a Jesus who comes across as less than heroic. We’re good with it if the heroism isn’t the kind of dashing, riding in on a white stallion and taking over sort of heroism first century Jews were expecting. We totally get that sometimes heroism looks meeker than we expect, gentler, milder. We’re cool with that.

What we aren’t so comfortable accepting is a Jesus who’s outright mean, even prejudiced. Wow. What in the world do we do with that? Did Jesus really just basically call that woman and her daughter dogs? Yup. He sure did. Doesn’t sound much like our Jesus, does it? Believers look for ways to make this ethnic slur, very common at that time among Jews, not really mean what it meant. The suggestion that maybe Jesus just messed up, that he was, in addition to the “fully divine” part, also fully human and, therefore, to some degree, a product of his culture, though, makes people pretty uncomfortable. In this culture, both women and foreigners were seen as pretty dang low, in fact, unclean. Touching or associating with them could spell trouble. So, Jesus was working with a common cultural assumption of his time. But declaring that Jesus was wrong? That can be a tough sell. My dear UCC seminary buddy, Adam, posted the following words to Facebook as he prepared his sermon for today: “This Sunday, come watch me tap-dance through a field of heresy and come out smelling like orthodoxy, with a message entitled: ‘When Jesus Got it Wrong...and Other Phrases that Will Get Your Minister Fired...’ (This event is BYOP -bring your own pitchfork- torches, tar, and feathers to be provided...)”

While I’m not very interested in a BYOP event with my immolation as the featured entertainment, I’m not your pastor, so I will just say it. Jesus was wrong. He was a product of his culture, so it’s not 100% his fault. We can’t expect the “fully divine” part to kick in all the time, if he’s also to be seen as “fully human,” can we? To take a step further in his defense, sort of, Jesus had just traveled to Tyre for, basically, a vacation. Immediately prior to this trip to what is now Lebanon, Jesus managed to completely shock and outrage the establishment by declaring all foods clean. He proclaimed that it isn’t what goes into our mouths that defiles us, but what comes out. This totally, completely flew in the face of everything that had been established, practiced, long believed in his culture.

So, he has withdrawn to recharge, regroup, maybe even to consider the response of his people to his teachings. He’s looking forward to a few days among foreigners who won’t be pestering him for miracles or castigating him for, basically, heresy. He’s been under a lot of stress and all he really wants to do is sit on the beach under a palm tree, piña colada in hand, and let the ocean do its healing thing. He has a little time off, a little time to breathe, and then along comes this woman who knows of him and his miraculous works. She has actually had the audacity to come into the house where he has been trying to keep a low profile and not have to deal with people. And she wants him to do more work. And when he does that work, he just knows, more people will come and demand his energy, his time, his attention. And, suddenly, there goes his much-needed vacation. Really, what would you do? Especially if you happened to be not only exhausted, but maybe a little hangry?

We may think Jesus’ response was harsh, but don’t we all know about faithful Christians who still today think certain people or classes of people are unclean or unworthy? Aren’t there plenty of Christians now who see outsiders as undeserving of even our crumbs? Friends, there are still churches in our lovely, open-minded UCC---I imagine even in our conference---that would never tolerate a woman pastor, places where a woman may as well not even submit her profile to the search committee. Or where a person with brown skin will hear that churches “have other candidates that are a better match for our church” after submitting a ministerial profile. This in the UCC. And don’t we ourownselves sometimes think people are unworthy?

So, when the very common, but very unpleasant, racial slur pops out of his mouth and he refuses to help her, it is clearly not his finest moment. Now, here’s an ugly story about me. At my last church, there was a really lovely woman, an artist, whose husband and son had died. So, she was quite lonely and had developed the habit of, if she saw I was free, coming into my office and talking for 45 minutes at a time. I really loved talking with her. That is, when I had the time. When I was frantically trying to pull together a confirmation pilgrimage, though, or hard at work on a sermon, or girding my loins for a contentious Council meeting, my heart sank when I heard her voice in the main office. Now, no slurs about her person came immediately to mind, but I’m pretty sure some salty language did. And I was often tempted to hide under my desk or pretend to be on the phone. And this was a woman I really liked and respected a whole lot. It was nothing at all to do with her and everything to do with my stress level and my lack of time. 

So, I can see why an exhausted, agitated Jesus might respond automatically and unkindly to this woman, this foreigner, this person who should never have had the temerity to approach him, since his ministry has heretofore been specifically for Jews. But here’s where the story gets really interesting. The woman, rather than showing that she was offended or just giving up, stands her ground and speaks her mind. Desperate to gain a cure for her daughter, whom no doctor could help, she likely would have done anything to restore the girl. Who cares what Jesus thinks of her, as long as her daughter is back to her normal self soon? Wouldn’t you parents do the same for your kids?

So, rather than insisting that they are not dogs at all, as she may have wished to do, she calmly and quietly, using her love for her daughter as her source of strength, uses a logical argument in an attempt to persuade Jesus that they deserve his help. Using her words, her steady gaze, her best manners, and all the dignity she can muster as a kind of Lasso of Truth, she captures Jesus with her argument. She owns the dog label, if it’ll get her what she wants. I mean, you never see Wonder Woman arguing that she’s not whatever the villain chooses to call her. She knows who she is, no matter what anyone says. She simply works toward her objective.

So, too, this Syro-Phoenician woman. As Harvard professor and historian Laurel Thatcher Ulrich famously said, “Well-behaved women seldom make history.” Making history, this woman is most definitely not well-behaved. She speaks up and her words convict Jesus. He sees her clearly, his own ears are opened by her words, and he is forced to speak the truth, that, yes, even the dogs do get to eat the crumbs. So, why not expend the smidge of energy, no more than crumbs of his power, to give this woman what she has requested? He changes his mind, heals the daughter, and, in that one act, that one piece of willingness to listen and change, his whole ministry is changed. Can you imagine her joy, as she returned home to find her darling, precious daughter restored? Jesus said yes to her and her whole life changed. It reminds me of a poem by Kaylin Haught:

I asked God if it was okay to be melodramatic

and she said yes

I asked her if it was okay to be short

and she said it sure is

I asked her if I could wear nail polish

or not wear nail polish

and she said honey

she calls me that sometimes

she said you can do just exactly

what you want to

Thanks God I said

And is it even okay if I don’t paragraph

my letters

Sweetcakes, God said

who knows where she picked that up

what I’m telling you is

Yes Yes Yes

Jesus said yes. Then, when Jesus returns to Galilee by way of the Decapolis, a Greco-Roman area in what is now Jordan, Syria, and Israel, his ministry opens up and he begins to work with and heal Gentiles, as well as Jews. With her courage, born of desperation, the Syro-Phoenician woman brought great benefit not only to her daughter and family, but to many. Jesus may have been saying to her, “No” or he may have been saying, “Not yet.” Either way, her refusal to take no for an answer, her persistence, created an earlier onset of Jesus’ ministry to a broader audience. In that way, really, we here in this sanctuary today may very well have the unnamed Syro-Phoenician woman to thank for our own relationships with Jesus. How about that? I think maybe she needs her own movie. And isn’t it marvelous that even God’s crumbs are more than ample to feed all God’s children?

I find it interesting, too, that the first healing miracle he performs after this is to open the ears and release the tongue of a man who is both deaf and mute. Yes, this was of great benefit, I am sure, to that man. But the symbolism of opening ears and loosening tongues? Well, my friends, that is one of the greatest gifts we have to gain by being in relationship with Christ. We have ears to hear---and we’re called to hear the cries of the needy, the chains of the oppressed. We have tongues to speak, to refuse society’s no to cries for justice, and to demand a better world for us and for our children, indeed for all God’s children. These loosened tongues, by the way, are excellent for speaking love and reconciliation to one another, as well.

So, what does it look like for a congregation to have ears to hear, tongues to speak, and hearts open wide? Well, God’s realm breaks down barriers & invites us to do the same. How do we embody our faith both within the church and beyond? We are challenged to leave our comfort zones, as both Jesus and the Syro-Phoenician woman did, not only beyond the church walls, but also our comfort zones within the church. Sometimes, that will be messy and uncomfortable. It might mean adapting to worship practices we might be leery about, like doing communion by intinction rather than tray. It could mean not looking askance at a teen who doesn’t fit traditional gender norms or not wrinkling our noses if the person in the pew next to us really needs some deodorant---or if the pastor wears jeans and a Wonder Woman t-shirt, like I almost did today. One of my favorite pastors, Nadia Bolz-Weber of House for All Sinners and Saints in Denver, is tattoo-covered, leather-clad, and completely unconventional---and her words are life-changing, in a very good way. You should Google her, if you are not familiar with her work. Whip out your smart phone now, if you want. I won’t be offended. Nadia rocks.

Strangers and those who are different from us can teach us a whole lot---can even change our lives for the better---but only if we have ears to hear. And mostly, they’re not going to approach us from the margins, so we have to reach out and ask to hear their stories. In the line at the grocery, while serving dinner at The Ruth Ellis Center, at a cocktail party, heck, how about during coffee hour, instead of sitting with our friends? Who can we, as a congregation, identify as people who are perhaps not being heard or included and make sure they are listened to & included? And, for those who feel like they’re not being heard or included, remember the power of the Syro-Phoenician woman standing up, speaking out, and not only asking Jesus for help, but challenging him when he said no.

How willing are we to be open and expectant and flexible? If we congregations are willing to do that, Luther Seminary New Testament professor Matt Skinner reminds us, it may pay off in the discovery of grace flowing in new directions this Autumn here at FCC and in our own personal lives. I encourage us all to flex, and stretch, and grow, even when it’s scary or stressful. Even when we don’t wanna. Let’s take up our Lassos of Truth and use them wisely, with ears to hear the truths of others, and hearts wide open to receive them with love. Amen.