Sermon for September 5, 2021 - The Fifteenth Sunday After Pentecost, Year B, The Ven. Pat Zifcak
There are two points of interest for me in the readings this morning. One is how clear it is to me that our scriptures are a living, breathing text that interacts with us from the ancient past and in the present moment. The other is how hard it is for us to accept that our heroes are flawed. That is hard enough when our heroes are superstar athletes, movie stars, our favorite singer or heads of government. How much more unsettling when it is Jesus! Jesus, always full of compassion and mercy, is exhausted and has gone away from the crowds and entered a home where he hoped no one would find him at least for a time. But a woman desperate with fear for her daughter does find him. That she is Syrophoenician is critical to our understanding of the story. So is the startling fact of Jesus’ rudeness. There are those who make excuses for Jesus, there are those who suggest that his words have been misunderstood. The fact is he is without compassion and rude! He whose message is always one of hospitality, justice and mercy is none of those things in this moment.
The woman is a gentile from a region where Jews and gentiles live. She has heard of Jesus and has come to beg him to make her daughter well. She does not cower before Jesus but challenges him to do what he says he has come to do: to heal.
The hidden text here is that Jesus has come to minister to the chosen of Israel not yet to the gentiles. This woman is forcing him to think beyond himself and his mission to God’s mission which has always been universal redemption and salvation. That is why God sent Jesus- to bring a message of love to all people. This woman, whose faith knows no boundaries and whose love for her daughter overcomes fear, has moved Jesus to remember who he is and whose he is. Her courage changes Jesus’ mission. In response, Jesus sends her home, assuring her that she will find her daughter well.
As we read further in the gospel this morning, we learn that Jesus has gone to the region of the Decapolis, an area of chiefly but not only gentiles and immediately he heals a deaf and mute man. He looks to Heaven, sighs, lays his hand upon him, and heals him. He may still be exhausted but he does not hesitate. The Syrophoenician woman’s faith and reason, persistence, hope and trust have changed Jesus and have reconnected him to his ministry. And soon after this, we hear the story of the feeding of the 4,000 who were not only Jews but also many in the surrounding area- Jews and gentiles. A woman without a seat at the table, outside the inner circle has prophesied to Jesus and moved his mission forward.
Although I have read this text again and again, it has come to me differently because I have heard it in relation to the text from James who we rarely read on a Sunday morning. James exhorts us to remember that there are no barriers between God and us and, because of that, there should be no barriers between us and others. We are all children of God and God does not distinguish us one from another by any human quality we might value. Why then do we create distinctions where God sees none?
Remember that impairment in the ancient world was a sign of sin. Healing was not only personal but also a reconciling of community. To be healed was to be welcomed home. Science has left no room for this ancient belief but, in its place, we create other barriers that have the power to separate us from one another when, in God’s eyes, we are all the same. As James asks, “Have you not made distinctions among yourselves, and become judges…?” Fulfill the royal law: love your neighbor as yourself. “For judgement will be without mercy to anyone who has shown no mercy.”
God, in God’s infinite wisdom, understands our human frailty and gives us a new day filled with opportunities to begin again, to do better, to turn toward one another instead of away, to build a true community, to set a table where all are welcome. Jesus, in his humanity, withheld the one thing that another needed. Through the Syrophoenician woman’s persistence and her boldness, his ears were opened, his tongue released. Ephphatha! Be opened. There is power in the word to change us, too. Who do we speak for? Who do we pray for? In both healing stories, it was someone other than the one who needed healing who came to Jesus. The faith of their companions surely moved Jesus. We know the power of prayer to change lives or we would not dare to pray, to come boldly before God, to beg God’s ears be opened to our need. That God invites us to pray is a sign of God’s presence among us.
Fulfill the royal law. Love one another. One Sunday, early in my outdoor ministry, I stopped to offer food to two men sitting together on a curb. One of them laughed and said, “ this guy is a Harvard
Professor.” I laughed, too, and then said that it was more important to offer food to someone who didn’t need it than to skip someone who did. Love one another. For Jesus, loving one another meant extending ourselves to offer hospitality to strangers, a place in the community, a seat at the table. Where some eat and some do not, the Kingdom of God cannot exist. Where barriers of any kind separate us, where pride of place matters more than community, when we measure our worth by the size of our gift, the effort we have made, or our place at the banquet, we must remember that in the Kingdom of Heaven, God is always the host.
The woman who confronted Jesus expected him to do what he said he came to do. Should he not expect the same of us? Tomorrow holds the gift of a new beginning. May our eyes and ears be open to the needs of others, may we offer a seat at the table to anyone we meet, may we speak boldly for justice, and live the commandment of Jesus faithfully.