Pentecost 16
We sing this: “Open my eyes, open my ears, open my mouth and open my heart”. Christ commands: “Ephphatha. Be opened.” I think this is the essential message in our readings today.
We sure need to open our minds to understand how Jesus is acting when he is dealing with this Syrophoenician woman! Jesus has walked for three days, all the way to the region of Tyre, a Gentile area. A woman whose daughter is possessed of an unclean spirit begs him for help. To those early followers of Jesus hearing this story, this woman is the ultimate outsider. She is a Syrophoenician Gentile, meaning that her ancestors were Canaanites and Moabites – historic enemies of the Jewish people. She could be wearing a sign that shouts: OUTSIDER.
Up to this point, Jesus has primarily been focused on preaching to Jewish people. In Matthew 15:22 he says, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” Jewish people.
But today, this Gentile outsider kneels at his feet and begs him to heal her daughter. He replies: “Let the children be fed first”. He is referring to the children of Israel, the Jews. Then our sweet, loving Lord gets nasty when he continues: “it is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.” He calls this woman a dog. What kind of man calls a woman a dog?!
When she answers his nasty dog remark, she calls him ‘sir’, or ‘lord’ – she is the only person in the whole gospel of Mark who calls him lord. She begs: “Lord, even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs.” Well, she’s got Jesus there and he likes this quick answer. He changes his mind and decides to heal her daughter. Now think about this: Jesus argues with brilliant rabbis and scribes and Pharisees and Herodians and he has never lost an argument but today, he loses this argument to a gentile woman.
There are many ways this gospel is preached, usually desperately trying to obscure Christ’s rudeness. Some preachers say that Jesus is calling her a little dog, a puppy. That’s kind of cute, isn’t it? But in those days, dogs were mostly flea bitten, mangy scavengers, not our beloved fur babies of today. Sorry, calling her a dog is nasty.
Another whitewashing interpretation of this gospel is that he is being a jerk to test her faith. The trouble with this is there is no mention of testing in the story, like we get in Job, nothing else like it appears anywhere else in the gospel of Mark, and this paints such a cold-hearted picture of Jesus, who would test this poor woman in her moment of greatest need. I don’t think he is testing her. Jesus is being a jerk.
Jerk or not, the good thing he does is actually listen to this mom. Encountering this outsider opens Jesus up and changes him, indeed, changes his whole mission on earth. Our very human Lord realizes that he is here for everyone, not just the Jewish people. David Lose says that “Jesus had not yet realized the full extent of God’s mission or the radical nature of the kingdom he proclaimed.”
We worship a fully human and fully divine Jesus. He is not some holy icon floating above everything, he gets angry and makes mistakes. This fully human/fully divine man can change his mind and realize that his mission is to bring about a kingdom, not just for Jews but for everyone, no exceptions.
Barbara Brown Taylor describes the moment this way: “You can almost hear the huge wheel of history turning as Jesus comes to a new understanding of who he is and what he has been called to do.” This Syrophoenician woman teaches him that God’s purpose for him “is bigger than he had imagined and that there is enough of him to go around.”
We have another outsider story today, the story of the deaf man. Remember that in those days, if you were deaf, or had a speech impediment, indeed if anything was wrong with you, it was thought that you were being punished by God for your sins or the sins of your parents, or you were inhabited by an evil spirit.
Jesus takes this deaf man away to a quiet place, puts his fingers into his ears, then spits and touches his tongue. Then He looks up to heaven, heaves a great sigh and says, “Ephphatha.” “Be opened.” And just like that, the deaf man’s ears are opened, his tongue is released, and he speaks plainly. Ironically, now that he can speak, Jesus orders him to keep his mouth shut. Thanks Jesus!
Our reading from James calls us to open our churches, our minds and our hearts to outsiders with no partiality to anyone, rich or poor.
What is it like for us to follow Jesus, a fully human God who opens his heart to a poor outsider, a Gentile woman and then allows his mind to be changed by her? In this vulnerable moment, he teaches us the value of opening our hearts to outsiders. Christ’s loving message is for everyone, including people who don’t look, behave, vote, or worship like we do.
One of the many things I don’t like about getting old is the tendency to be more closed up, more set in my ways. I know my own mind – I don’t need to listen to opposing opinions. I want to work on this: if Jesus can be open to changing his mind, then maybe I can too. If Jesus can be open to the workings of the Holy Spirit, coming to him in this woman he calls a dog, then maybe we can all be more open to the workings of the Holy Spirit in our lives!
Debi Thomas writes: “Be opened. Be opened to the truth that God isn’t done with you yet. Be opened to the destabilizing wisdom of people who are nothing like you. Be opened to the widening of the table. Be opened to Good News that stretches your capacity to love. Be opened.”
Please pray with me:
Lord, help us to be open to you, as you come to us daily in so many ways. Help us to see the workings of the Spirit in our lives. Help us to see the extraordinary beauty of the world you made for us. Help us to search for the good in others, especially the outsiders amongst us. Help us to love each other as you love us. Amen.