Sunday 6 September
Sermon
Ps 146
Isa 35:4-7a
James 2:1-10, 14-17
Mark 7:24-37
When I was a small child, so young I was barely at school, I recall a time when my Father drove the car down onto a river bed in the back country behind Tapawera where we lived at the time. The idea was that we were going to load the boot up with nice dry firewood. The particular riverbed had plenty of wood and without too much work we could take it home and stay warm in the winter. However, the main reason I remember the trip was that the car got bogged in the sand. Every time Dad tried to move the car the wheels simply spun a bigger hole so that the whole back of the car sank completely. Great drama when you’re a small boy, but hugely distressing for my parents who became highly anxious – miles from anywhere and no help in sight. Suddenly out of the blue a farmer turned with his Massey Ferguson tractor. In a jiffy, he had hooked up a towrope and pulled the car out to safety. He didn’t say much. “No worries mate!” might have been the extent of it. I never knew his name and I don’t think we ever saw him again. But that chap who happened upon us on the tractor made our day.
His word to us was, “No worries mate!” And that was the word we welcomed into our hearts that day. When it comes to God and the bible, we welcome the Word into our hearts every time it is proclaimed. What we often miss is that we ourselves are the word before we say anything or do anything. Martin Luther once said, “Your life might be the only bible your neighbour ever reads.” And that is true. Our lives are the medium through which many people will hear the message of God’s Good News.
What kind of word are we? Some people radiate peace and when you are with them one feels a peaceful presence. Some people radiate fun and frivolity. All you have to do is look at their face and you feel like laughing. Some people radiate anger and prickliness and they send a chill up the spine when they come near.
Like it or not, we transmit all sorts of messages about who we are and people pick up a lot about us before we even open our mouths. We receive signals from people and like a finely tuned sonar instrument we pick them up. According to the view point of the letter to James, faith is all about a life that is lived emulating Christ himself. James wants us to be aware of the signals we send out. Our lives, our way of being human is a living word proclaimed. Being Christian means answering the call of God to enflesh the essence and values of Christ in our lives so that all we do reveals the fullness of God’s grace in us. We are to be doers of word, not just hearers. The example he gives today is about refusing to show favouritism to some people. James wants us to see beyond surface appearances to see the humanity of the person before us so that we treat all people with reverence. He wants us to do this because this is how Jesus himself approached people; well most of the time anyway.
Today’s gospel is actually an exception for that. The Syrophoenecian woman is a double outsider. The way St Mark’s unfolds the story of Jesus, we note that Jesus has crossed to the “other side” of the lake, into Gentile territory and in doing so he is extending the frontiers of the kingdom of God to encompass those who tradition said could never be part of the community of the redeemed because of their race. The disciples are way out of their comfort zone, perhaps Jesus is too. He encounters the Syrophoenecian woman, or maybe she encounters him. Not only is she a Gentile, but she is also a woman speaking to a religious leader. According to the values of the culture around them, the woman should be silent unless first spoken to by Jesus. But not today; she initiates the conversation. She demands that Jesus heal her daughter. How does Jesus respond? His words are an insult revealing Jesus’ carries prejudice from his own culture. “Let the children be fed first, for it is not fair to taker the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.” In one foul swoop Jesus has called the woman a Gentile dog undeserving of God’s salvation. Undeterred, the woman comes back at Jesus. “Sir, even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs.” The woman’s daughter is healed, not because of her faith, but because she has outwitted Jesus in a verbal repartee. As numerous commentators have mentioned, this is an occasion when Jesus is the one who has to change attitudes. Jesus is the one taught by the woman. It is she who throws Jesus’ own teaching back in his face and shows him that God’s salvation is for those outside Judaism.
Jesus is the one doing the learning but he is able to learn because of two important things. First of all, he carries within him an openness of heart that is key to a Christian understanding of holiness. Sometimes our language takes a while to catch up with the pilgrimage of faith that God is taking us on. Jesus knew from his study of scripture and from his self understanding that it was the will of God to include Gentiles in the kingdom and when the woman responds he knows that what she says resonates with the leading of the Holy Spirit. The second reason Jesus is able to learn from this woman is because he listens so attentively to her response. Being fully present and fully attentive to someone when they are speaking to us is an important sign of holiness.
What prevents us from being a living word of God? Prejudice and a refusal to learn and change is one of the major blocks. Jesus’ initial response suggested that he had written this woman off. He saw a gentile person, and his first words said that God’s priority was with his fellow Jewish brothers and sisters. This is a story about Jesus having to let go of his Jewish prejudice and accept this woman on her own terms. This is a salient warning for those of us who would be Disciples of Christ. Even Jesus had to keep learning and growing and changing. Even Jesus found God speaking to him through a most unexpected person. We can never say that we have arrived in our relationship with God. The minute we think we have God sorted, you can expect Him to come and poke us from an unexpected place, and speak to us through people we had discounted. Faith is a journey and God will keep us on the move.
What prevents us being a good word for the Word of God? We might also be pitifully deaf and mute and unable to be who we are with those we live and meet. We might be so plugged up with self importance or self interest that the sound of who we are never gets through. Like a stopped up flute we never sound a true tone. What does emerge is the whine of self-centredness and self-importance. We need to be un-stopped, to be opened up and healed. This is where Isaiah’s message is laden with hope. Our God is here and he will do it. God has spoken a word, and that Word stands among us clothed in human flesh. We, the human words of God will be restored and vindicated. The divine word of God will sound through us. It will sound through our crippled humanity. God word will take on our brokenness. This word comes with human fingers that can be placed in human ears so that blockages melt away at a touch. This word comes with a tongue, and its saliva can snap our tongue tied-ness to speak our own integrity and reveal the unique image of God that we have been given to bear. We might be the deaf ones and the voiceless ones who prefer not to hear the cries of our brothers and sisters or to speak up for those with no voice. But when Christ, the Word-Made-Flesh touches us, he does indeed do all things well. He opens our ears and enables us to hear the cries that we were deaf to hearing. He is present in our speaking and in our doing. The Word is no longer bound up tight in our chained up lives.
Today we will pray for those preparing for confirmation. We pray for them as they continue on the same journey that Jesus himself travelled, a journey of faith in which God enlarges our hearts and minds. It’s a risky journey, and we are all travelling “the way”. It is risky a risky journey because we have no idea where God might take us. Whenever we gather here, whenever we pray, we risk being touched by him. When this happens we no longer remain deaf or blind or safely silent. Our being here waiting for the touch of Christ means our heart might well be changed, and we will leave this assembly opened and ready.
God needs us to be his living word incarnated in our hearts for others today. Someone will be waiting. Go then and be God’s word at home, at play, and in the marketplace.
