“How Big is Our Tent?” Mark 9:38-50 Lawrence Jackman
When I was a kid, I was something of a geek. Oh, OK not something—a totally geeky little kid with interests that ranged from the esoteric to the just plain idiosyncratic and sometimes crossed the line to weird. ( I am much older now.) So, one of my kid interests was in raising and breeding Guppies. I wanted an easy task, that was the breeding part. But I also wanted color patterns and behavioral characteristics – that was the highly geeky part. So I got lots of observation time in with my silent little friends. And something that I discovered very quickly is a principle that I have never forgotten about animal behavior (including humans) is what I call the “Guppies in the fish bowl” lesson.
Essentially the population of Guppies in any container will expand to fill the capacity of the container. Then they will self limit. At a certain point the population will level out and no more expansion of population will happen unless there is contraction. If I took out a couple of dozen fish to give to a friend, they would be replaced rather quickly. If I did not take any out, no more would come along. This was a fascinating reality to a geeky little kid. And it fascinates me yet.
There is a lot of church organizational issues that parallel the issue of “Guppies in the fishbowl”. For instance, in some organizationally subconscious way we appear to develop as congregations a notion of appropriate size for our colony of faithful. We max out at that level and will exchange positions, but not really grow. If we loose a few families we will work to replace them, if not we will work to limit the population of our bowl. This is true of church congregations across the board. It is just something that churches do.
It is easier to see in others than it is in ourselves. I had a friend who was a Southern Baptist Lay Preacher before I helped him see the Presbyterian Light. David and I were observing a very successful Baptist group in our town. “Watch”, he said, “in another few months they will have a fight and then split into two groups. It is the way Baptists do it.” While one denomination may manage their bowls differently—every group seems to, again on a subconscious level, manage the size of their bowls.
Further, different congregations elect different sizes to “top out” at. Some of our congregations cap population at a couple of dozen worshiping persons. Some go to 100 as a top number; some cap things at higher numbers, etc.
Now all that is just a fact of life. It is no fault and if any of it fits this congregation, you need to know that it fits almost every congregation in every denomination. There ends up being a sort of a dynamic tension between inclusion and exclusion of others.
The passage from Mark discusses both the issue of inclusion and of exclusion of others. It is Jesus himself making some incredibly inclusive statements about who belongs in the tent or in the bowl as it were. But then, it turns 180 degrees and in the next sentence Mark sees Jesus saying some of the more powerfully exclusive statements of the New Testament. Which is true? Or are they both true in a sort of continuum or tension?
A couple of things about the passage. For more reasons than one the two parts do not seem to have originally been said together. The first part, the one that is so very inclusive seems more primitive and quite a bit more straightforward. The second part is one that is exclusive. It is symbolic in nature, more sophisticated in language, and implies a much more developed sense of the church than simply the disciples group with Jesus.
These two stories being made into one is an indication that as early as there was church history, there was a push and pull between being radically inclusive and being intentionally exclusive. It is almost like Mark spun these two stories together to explain and expand the first story itself.
The first one is pretty straight forward. The disciples have been out on a short mission and Jesus has stayed behind. They come back, find him and make a report that has little to do with their mission. “Teacher, we saw a man casting out demons in your name. We took care of that and told him not to do it.” “Aren’t you proud of us?”
“Oh, come on friends”, says Jesus, “if this man is not against us, he is for us. He is doing something good in my name. How bad can he be? And, even if he is bad and we have no evidence of that, how long can he stay that way doing good things and using my good name?” “Leave him alone.”
That is three of this baker’s dozen verses. Now the other nine seem to spin a different story. First this is symbolic talk according to most people. If the church is the body of Christ, then this talk of parts of the body become symbols for members of the church. This part of the passage becomes a discussion of excommunication at its earliest level in the church. A foot, a hand or an eye are individual members of a body. Causing the church to stumble is the sin of consequence, according to the passage. The lesson is this, if a member causes the whole system to go down—kick them out. Better to amputate a piece of the body than to have the whole thing go down.
That is exclusive!
(I have a felt obligation to say one more time: this is symbol language. It is not meant to suggest that people go around performing self amputations on their own bodies. It never was that and is not now. This is about the body of Christ—the church.)
That said, this is exclusive stuff. So how does the tension work out between radical inclusive and powerful exclusion?
It may not seem it, but this is quite practical stuff. Suppose that a group of people who come to worship here sometimes begins to sense some ownership in the ministry of this place. They open up a web site to host a “Friends of Fairlawn” page teaching some biblical content, offering prayers for others, and promoting service missions in the community. Remember that this group is using the church’s name but is completely outside of the church. The session has no control, not even on a theoretical level over what the group does or says. How would we respond to that issue, keeping in mind Jesus’ directive to, “Leave them alone!”
That, by the way, is an issue before our Presbytery in precisely parallel fashion about the Presbytery and not a congregation. What is the biblical way to respond ? No surprise to you, perhaps, my impression is that we should run with the biblical imperative, “If they ain’t agin us, they are for us.” Let them run without a leash.
Now my perspective is jaded with the benefit of things like being old. After all, how far are they going to run on my watch? I believe that the tent ought to be monstrous in size. Can a church have half a dozen adulterers, three or four shady business people, a gossip or two, and a partridge in a pear tree? I have seen churches with more of every group except the partridge in the pear tree. (I’ve never seen one of those anywhere.) The question is not are bad behaviors present, but rather are those behaviors ones that either lead the innocent astray or cause the body to stumble.
It isn’t that those defects aren’t present that is important. It is rather that those defects in some, do not lead others astray. That they do not cause others to stumble.
The trick becomes determination of what is truly against. The assumption being, if it is not against us, it must be for us. Secondly the evaluation that is necessary is discerning that which “makes the body stumble” or “leads a little one astray”.
If someone’s defect, or sin, or life leads innocent people astray, then it is a problem. If it causes other people to stumble it is a problem. If my bad behavior truly leads others to fail in coming into Christian life, that is a serious problem and someone needs to leave or straighten up immediately.
Back in 1983 Presbyterians were involved in a massive effort to reunite the northern and southern churches. Like we do everything else, this was great committee, commission and Assembly wide processing and debate. A powerful and persuasive leader in the southern branch of the church kept us focused on framing the constitution of the church in a way that served a particular political purpose. The two entire denominations were literally stumbling over themselves to accommodate this clergyman.
All Andy Jumper did in that whole process was keep us stumbling on the road to reunion. I kept feeling and saying, “He is not our friend. He is going to leave anyway. Why are we doing what he says?” “Let’s put our backs to the wall and tell him NO!”
Well we didn’t do that. We continued to frame who we were and would become based on trying to appease this man. He did leave anyway, shortly after we took our last stumbling steps toward reunion. We should have done better and recognized our stumbling. That is the stumbling side of the issue.
Based in risk, there is a valid position for exclusion.
If, on the other hand, my sins (or yours) cause the church to be embarrassed – big deal. It is time for the church to get over itself.
My belief is that our tent is supposed to be big—great big. It needs to include almost everyone and nearly every group. We need not artificially identify some conditions for correction and others for benign neglect UNLESS this is about stumbling or leading astray.
There is a story about Pope John XXXIII. He was the revolutionary old man who lead the way into Vatican II. John was elected because they could not find a successor who enough people would agree on. John was old and somewhat frail. The logic was he would be an interim pope for a year or so because he would not live long. He lived for five years and changed the world.
So when he was first feeling his oats as pope, he was in the Vatican and a Cardinal was trying to talk some sense into him. “Holy Father”, he intoned, “what are we doing to the church?” John went over to one of the windows—the stained glass kind that you can’t see through—opened it and declared, “We are letting in a little fresh air.”
Time for us to do the same. Let our tent be an open one and big enough for all.
Sunday, September 27, 2009
Sunday, September 13, 2009
September 20, 2009 Sermon
Who Is This Jesus? Mark 8:27-38 Lawrence Jackman
Mark 8:27-38
27Jesus went on with his disciples to the villages of Caesarea Philippi; and on the way he asked his disciples, "Who do people say that I am?" 28And they answered him, "John the Baptist; and others, Elijah; and still others, one of the prophets." 29He asked them, "But who do you say that I am?" Peter answered him, "You are the Messiah." 30And he sternly ordered them not to tell anyone about him.
31Then he began to teach them that the Son of Man must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again. 32He said all this quite openly. And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. 33But turning and looking at his disciples, he rebuked Peter and said, "Get behind me, Satan! For you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things."
34He called the crowd with his disciples, and said to them, "If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. 35For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it. 36For what will it profit them to gain the whole world and forfeit their life? 37Indeed, what can they give in return for their life? 38Those who are ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of them the Son of Man will also be ashamed when he comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels."
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Seminary students are taught somewhere very early on about what is called the Messianic secret in the Gospel of Mark. The story is this. For the first half of the Gospel of Mark there is a consistent emphasis on Jesus being the “undercover” Savior. He is the Son of God as he sees it, and for that matter, as the devil sees it and the spirits of the world see it. Jesus just does not seem to want any people to know this secret.
Jesus admonishes spirits that he casts out to be silent. He charges those whom he has healed to be quiet about what has happened to them. Of course, these efforts meet with mixed success. Sometimes the persons who have been healed go out immediately and
tell the story to others. Some of the healings are actually potent enough that they point to the secret identity of Jesus.
All this secret stuff builds through the first half of the Gospel. You remember perhaps that the Gospel is only 16 chapters long. So, half way through, in Chapter 8 comes time for the secret to be revealed. From this point on the identity of Jesus is more and more revealed and clear. The mighty mission becomes the march to Jerusalem. So the first half the gospel is a secret being kept and the second half is a secret being revealed.
The initial opening up of the secret is this fascinating dialogue between Jesus and Simon Peter. They are walking along and Jesus turns to the close followers. “What are people saying about me? Who do they think I am?” The followers reply, “Well some folks are saying John the Baptist, others Elijah, maybe one of the other prophets.” That’s a pretty impressive array of identities, but Jesus isn’t quite satisfied.
“OK guys, who do you think I am?” Silence. Then it is Peter who makes the revealing statement, “You are the Christ.” It is on that three word confession that the entire story of salvation pivots. This Gospel is a teeter totter balanced across these three words of Peter. “You are the Christ”. From that watershed everything else flows toward the confrontation in Jerusalem.
Seminary students were taught that this was an editorial device. That a way to tell the story was to grab this secret/revelation theme and to spin the story about that single issue. Maybe so, but there is a deeper thing here. Why did Mark choose this theme? And the simple answer to that is; for the writer of the Gospel of Mark the single critical issue of spiritual life was in answering the question, “Who is this Jesus?”
Now I find that to be a fitting theme for the day when, in this church, we christen the educational efforts for a new program year. For it is in those efforts to provide Christian education that we, in this place, deal most fundamentally with the issue of “who is this Jesus?”
Several points in the total scriptural story of the day seem to me to mandate features for the base for real educational ministry. They are these: 1) scripturally the question is a real one and not an editorial device, 2) the answer to the question represents a kind of foundational base for a process, and 3) the answer immediately began to evolve and continues to evolve—it is not static.
I believe that the process of religious education (done rightly) follows that pattern.
1) Ask the question. 2) Formulate an answer. 3) Repeat steps one and two.
Step one, ask the question. I use to have a need to explain Presbyterianism to dozens of people every year. They were new employees in the programs of our church related social service/mental health agency. They pretty well always came from Christian backgrounds. So I would start by saying, “there are two kinds of Christian groups. In one you are told, this is what you think. In the other you are asked what do you think. Presbyterians are a ‘What do you think?’ religion.”
I believe that is pretty much accurate. At our best, we are more about the questions than rigid answers. That is our strength. It makes everything else more complicated, but it makes everything else more real. Life, the faith, our tradition is about process much more than specific content. Asking the question is critical the specific answer is not.
The question in the case of the Gospel reading is asked in a interesting place. Jesus and his friends have traveled north outside of Galilee they have come to a region called Caesarea Philippi. What an incredible context for the original question. It was a pagan place. It was around the base of Mount Hermon one of the water sources for the river Jordan. This place had been a place of worship of many gods and spirits. The Roman and Greek gods were worshipped here. The lush green of the mountain sides had lent themselves to the worship of gods of nature.
So Jesus takes his friends to a pagan place to ask the most important question of life, “who am I?” The great question and the great answer are not from a safe and known place. They do not happen in the comfy context of padded pews or familiar chants—they occur in the middle of life and in the middle of all sorts of secular mix.
In our old neighborhood in Saint Louis there was a street that was pretty eclectic religiously. At the base of a hill there was a Masque. A few hundred yards away was a fairly large Catholic church. The street then became lined for quite a little way with both a county park where nature lovers frequented. Then there were McMansions, lots of them. Finally near the top of the hill there was the most beautiful Hindu Temple you could imagine. Over the top of the hill you stand nearly on the grounds of the most prestigious Christian Science academy and that was just down the street from a synagogue. Weidman Road was Caesarea Philippi. Picture the local Baptist pastor taking his flock over to that road to talk about religion. If you can do that you should have a picture of Jesus and the disciples that day. It was not the safe and predictable place.
Our questions are not developed or answered on familiar turf and safe places. That is a lesson for us as we teach. Go into the world—the real world—to ask the questions. The context of the faith for us is the middle of life. Out there where greed and avarice are the gods of the day; Out there where self help books and new age philosophy abound; out there where science and soul struggle to meet; that is the place of our real religious questioning.
Now about the answers to our questions—let them be bold. Peter’s confession is incredible when you stop to think of it. He has walked with Jesus. He has watched the teacher sweat, eat, sleep, become fatigued, get angry, maybe get the stomach flu and everything else that is human. It is in the middle of that when he makes his affirmation: you are the Christ. Think about how bold an affirmation that is.
And while the answer is, for a moment, perfect. This is the formulae of all Christianity that we confess Jesus as Lord. And in half a minute it is rebuked as satanic. Jesus begins to talk with the disciples about what the affirmation means—he begins to spell out the implications. Peter immediately takes him aside and says, “No way Jesus! That is not what being the Christ means.” And Jesus rebukes saying, “Get to my backside Satan”.
Now here is the point of that. The answers, no matter how great they may be, are in a state of evolution. They are always such or they are not real answers. This is taking the results of questioning and answering around the turn and having it become a new level of questioning and answering. We are never done with the process. There is no “faith once and for all delivered to the saints”. That is baloney. There is a way to put your hand in the hand of the man from Galilee, of continuing to walk through the very pluralistic world asking questions, answering questions and evolving our answers through a continuation of that process.
That is the business of the faith. It is the business of education within the church. It is our business and our responsibility to our own souls.
Who is this Jesus? I’ll tell you what the answer is today. And if he is alive to me, then I will not fear that the answer will grow throughout the day into a new one tomorrow.
Amen
Mark 8:27-38
27Jesus went on with his disciples to the villages of Caesarea Philippi; and on the way he asked his disciples, "Who do people say that I am?" 28And they answered him, "John the Baptist; and others, Elijah; and still others, one of the prophets." 29He asked them, "But who do you say that I am?" Peter answered him, "You are the Messiah." 30And he sternly ordered them not to tell anyone about him.
31Then he began to teach them that the Son of Man must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again. 32He said all this quite openly. And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. 33But turning and looking at his disciples, he rebuked Peter and said, "Get behind me, Satan! For you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things."
34He called the crowd with his disciples, and said to them, "If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. 35For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it. 36For what will it profit them to gain the whole world and forfeit their life? 37Indeed, what can they give in return for their life? 38Those who are ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of them the Son of Man will also be ashamed when he comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels."
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Seminary students are taught somewhere very early on about what is called the Messianic secret in the Gospel of Mark. The story is this. For the first half of the Gospel of Mark there is a consistent emphasis on Jesus being the “undercover” Savior. He is the Son of God as he sees it, and for that matter, as the devil sees it and the spirits of the world see it. Jesus just does not seem to want any people to know this secret.
Jesus admonishes spirits that he casts out to be silent. He charges those whom he has healed to be quiet about what has happened to them. Of course, these efforts meet with mixed success. Sometimes the persons who have been healed go out immediately and
tell the story to others. Some of the healings are actually potent enough that they point to the secret identity of Jesus.
All this secret stuff builds through the first half of the Gospel. You remember perhaps that the Gospel is only 16 chapters long. So, half way through, in Chapter 8 comes time for the secret to be revealed. From this point on the identity of Jesus is more and more revealed and clear. The mighty mission becomes the march to Jerusalem. So the first half the gospel is a secret being kept and the second half is a secret being revealed.
The initial opening up of the secret is this fascinating dialogue between Jesus and Simon Peter. They are walking along and Jesus turns to the close followers. “What are people saying about me? Who do they think I am?” The followers reply, “Well some folks are saying John the Baptist, others Elijah, maybe one of the other prophets.” That’s a pretty impressive array of identities, but Jesus isn’t quite satisfied.
“OK guys, who do you think I am?” Silence. Then it is Peter who makes the revealing statement, “You are the Christ.” It is on that three word confession that the entire story of salvation pivots. This Gospel is a teeter totter balanced across these three words of Peter. “You are the Christ”. From that watershed everything else flows toward the confrontation in Jerusalem.
Seminary students were taught that this was an editorial device. That a way to tell the story was to grab this secret/revelation theme and to spin the story about that single issue. Maybe so, but there is a deeper thing here. Why did Mark choose this theme? And the simple answer to that is; for the writer of the Gospel of Mark the single critical issue of spiritual life was in answering the question, “Who is this Jesus?”
Now I find that to be a fitting theme for the day when, in this church, we christen the educational efforts for a new program year. For it is in those efforts to provide Christian education that we, in this place, deal most fundamentally with the issue of “who is this Jesus?”
Several points in the total scriptural story of the day seem to me to mandate features for the base for real educational ministry. They are these: 1) scripturally the question is a real one and not an editorial device, 2) the answer to the question represents a kind of foundational base for a process, and 3) the answer immediately began to evolve and continues to evolve—it is not static.
I believe that the process of religious education (done rightly) follows that pattern.
1) Ask the question. 2) Formulate an answer. 3) Repeat steps one and two.
Step one, ask the question. I use to have a need to explain Presbyterianism to dozens of people every year. They were new employees in the programs of our church related social service/mental health agency. They pretty well always came from Christian backgrounds. So I would start by saying, “there are two kinds of Christian groups. In one you are told, this is what you think. In the other you are asked what do you think. Presbyterians are a ‘What do you think?’ religion.”
I believe that is pretty much accurate. At our best, we are more about the questions than rigid answers. That is our strength. It makes everything else more complicated, but it makes everything else more real. Life, the faith, our tradition is about process much more than specific content. Asking the question is critical the specific answer is not.
The question in the case of the Gospel reading is asked in a interesting place. Jesus and his friends have traveled north outside of Galilee they have come to a region called Caesarea Philippi. What an incredible context for the original question. It was a pagan place. It was around the base of Mount Hermon one of the water sources for the river Jordan. This place had been a place of worship of many gods and spirits. The Roman and Greek gods were worshipped here. The lush green of the mountain sides had lent themselves to the worship of gods of nature.
So Jesus takes his friends to a pagan place to ask the most important question of life, “who am I?” The great question and the great answer are not from a safe and known place. They do not happen in the comfy context of padded pews or familiar chants—they occur in the middle of life and in the middle of all sorts of secular mix.
In our old neighborhood in Saint Louis there was a street that was pretty eclectic religiously. At the base of a hill there was a Masque. A few hundred yards away was a fairly large Catholic church. The street then became lined for quite a little way with both a county park where nature lovers frequented. Then there were McMansions, lots of them. Finally near the top of the hill there was the most beautiful Hindu Temple you could imagine. Over the top of the hill you stand nearly on the grounds of the most prestigious Christian Science academy and that was just down the street from a synagogue. Weidman Road was Caesarea Philippi. Picture the local Baptist pastor taking his flock over to that road to talk about religion. If you can do that you should have a picture of Jesus and the disciples that day. It was not the safe and predictable place.
Our questions are not developed or answered on familiar turf and safe places. That is a lesson for us as we teach. Go into the world—the real world—to ask the questions. The context of the faith for us is the middle of life. Out there where greed and avarice are the gods of the day; Out there where self help books and new age philosophy abound; out there where science and soul struggle to meet; that is the place of our real religious questioning.
Now about the answers to our questions—let them be bold. Peter’s confession is incredible when you stop to think of it. He has walked with Jesus. He has watched the teacher sweat, eat, sleep, become fatigued, get angry, maybe get the stomach flu and everything else that is human. It is in the middle of that when he makes his affirmation: you are the Christ. Think about how bold an affirmation that is.
And while the answer is, for a moment, perfect. This is the formulae of all Christianity that we confess Jesus as Lord. And in half a minute it is rebuked as satanic. Jesus begins to talk with the disciples about what the affirmation means—he begins to spell out the implications. Peter immediately takes him aside and says, “No way Jesus! That is not what being the Christ means.” And Jesus rebukes saying, “Get to my backside Satan”.
Now here is the point of that. The answers, no matter how great they may be, are in a state of evolution. They are always such or they are not real answers. This is taking the results of questioning and answering around the turn and having it become a new level of questioning and answering. We are never done with the process. There is no “faith once and for all delivered to the saints”. That is baloney. There is a way to put your hand in the hand of the man from Galilee, of continuing to walk through the very pluralistic world asking questions, answering questions and evolving our answers through a continuation of that process.
That is the business of the faith. It is the business of education within the church. It is our business and our responsibility to our own souls.
Who is this Jesus? I’ll tell you what the answer is today. And if he is alive to me, then I will not fear that the answer will grow throughout the day into a new one tomorrow.
Amen
Sunday, September 6, 2009
September 6, 2009 Sermon
“Healing” Mark 7:24-37 Lawrence Jackman
From there he 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, but a woman whose little daughter had an unclean spirit immediately heard about him, and she came and bowed down at his feet. Now the woman was a Gentile, of Syrophoenician origin. She begged him to cast the demon out of her daughter. He 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." But she answered him, "Sir, even the dogs under the table eat the children's crumbs." Then he said to her, "For saying that, you may go-the demon has left your daughter." So she went home, found the child lying on the bed, and the demon gone.
Then he returned from the region of Tyre, and went by way of Sidon towards the Sea of Galilee, in the region of the Decapolis. They brought to him a deaf man who had an impediment in his speech; and they begged him to lay his hand on him. He took him aside in private, away from the crowd, and put his fingers into his ears, and he spat and touched his tongue. Then looking up to heaven, he sighed and said to him, "Ephphatha," that is, "Be opened." And immediately his ears were opened, his tongue was released, and he spoke plainly. Then Jesus ordered them to tell no one; but the more he ordered them, the more zealously they proclaimed it. They were astounded beyond measure, saying, "He has done everything well; he even makes the deaf to hear and the mute to speak."
There is probably no concept in Christian life more complicated and more difficult to balance and rationalize that that of healing. The Gospels are filled with stories about Jesus working miracle healings of all sorts of people. The Gospel reading today is a strong example. In our daily lives, when something happens that was good and we did not expect it, we say, “Thank God” or proclaim “God healed in this situation”. Now we are all creatures of logic. The logical corollary to those statements is that when something terrible happens, then, at least, God has failed us in that situation.
Because we always give God praise for the good things, many of us are at severe odds with God when the bad happens. In crude terms, if God always gets the credit, who gets the blame?
You and I both know these are not theoretical or entirely philosophical in nature. This THE theological discussion of everyday life. I had an email yesterday morning. It was about beloved friends in Saint Louis. Like Deb and me, they are grandparents. The two grandsons in the family are both victims of a terribly rare blood disease which is genetic in nature. Andrew was two years and two months old exactly yesterday morning when he died. Our friends are so Christian. They have been praying for miracles for two years of this child’s life. They have elicited the prayers of a wonderful, caring and loving Church. They had my buddy Carol praying for them. On a personal level Carol is someone I call when I want. It doesn’t sound real clergy like, but I believe that if God listens to anyone it is Carol.
None of that seemed to matter yesterday morning. Cindy and Vince, the grandparents, Justin and Kristin, the parents, are left in the very non theoretical place of contradiction between how we respond to bad and how we react to that which is good.
Complicate that one more level with the fact that, since we do not understand at all, we Christians and especially our clergy make up stuff. Period. We make it up. And the inventions of our little logical brains are even more insulting than the horrific binds we find ourselves in trying to figure out life.
I remember a speaker in the basement of First Pres, Alton, Illinois. This was way back and he was a chaplain in the Air Force stationed at Scott AFB. He had become somewhat charismatic and was completely sold on the idea of divine healing. He stood talking and pontificating about how it was assured for people who had enough faith—they would get divine healing. If it didn’t happen, in this speaker’s mind, it was a failure on the part of the person asking.
As this “holy person” spoke, I looked across the back rows to see a wonderful elderly woman with tears streaming down her face. She had lost her husband a month earlier from disease. Mildred was a completely righteous person and I know that she prayed for Eldon every day of their life together whether he was sick or well. And now this clergy was telling her that she just didn’t believe enough of it would have been fixed. I resisted the impulse to slap the snot out of him. As I think back on it, I am not sure that was a good choice. Someone did need to help him understand how insulting to the faith he was being.
Focus on the Gospel reading. The story of the Syrophonecian woman is, according to most scholars, one of the single earliest tales told of Jesus. Very early, before much of anything was written down there began to be both stories that were told and repeated from on listener to another. And just as the news about Jesus was being written in the very first formats there were stories like this one and also there were “sayings”. They sort of amounted to “The Sayings of Chairman Jesus”.
Just like the experiences of life that I cited, here is an unvarnished account. It has no polish or sanding to make it more smooth. This is about a close to the actual words that one first century person told another as you can get. Here is a raw story or two about Jesus and healing.
First, I want you to consider that there is no mention of anything like a miracle in either of these stories. Both stories assume power and strength in Jesus, but neither story actually calls what happened a supernatural miracle. There are really two points to the stories. One is that Jesus’ compassion does not stop at human boundaries. The second is that the healing capacity is an indicator of goodness and strength, but does not prove anything else.
The Syrophoenician woman was Greek. That was her ethnic identity and her place of origin was Syria occupied Phoenicia. She was a citizen of the world in a way that no one in Jesus’ company could even be expected to appreciate. Definitely she was not a Hoosier Presbyterian—or even a Jew. So this sophisticant comes begging an intervention from the Jewish shaman. The story says he blew her off. “The children eat first. Why would I do a favor for a non Jew? That would be like feeding the dogs before your own children.” Well the lady is not going to be discouraged with the slap and she argues back in his own words. “The dogs get to eat whatever is dropped from the table.” “OK”, says Jesus, “let it be done”. The daughter is healed of demon possession. There is no faith issue in the story, no if you believe enough question, and no if you think the right thing issue. It is simply an exercise of real power but not necessarily seen as Godly power.
Then comes the next healing right on the heels of this one. Walking down through some border country between Galilee and Samaria he comes to the area called “Ten Towns”. This is El Paso, Texas or Tijuana, Mexico in our world. This is border country in every sense of the words. Identity of an individual in this area as to specific race, religion, or faith is impossible. These folks are the “mutts” of the world. And a man is brought out to Jesus who is hearing impaired and has a speech impediment. Again there is some very physical talk here. Jesus spits on his fingers and places them physically in the man’s ears. It sounds more like a medicine man behavior than our general picture of Jesus. But, hey it works. The man speaks and hears. And the people are impressed. Again, not because it is a miracle, but rather because it is effective display of power. They say, “he has done very well”, not, “Surely he is God”.
So maybe all that is one clue. The healings of the New Testament are seen in historical context as being somewhat within the norms. They are not from some other world, but rather consistent with the order we experience here. They were as comfortable watching and appreciating these events as we are watching a hospital staff helping someone through an illness. Healing? “Yes” both cases. Grateful to God? “Of course” both cases.
But not on our part or on first century mindset do we see this as a change in the order of things. It is consistent with the way things happen. There is still one death per customer in this world. That is not a happy reality, but a reality nonetheless. Anyone in the room who can tell me the two times that was not true in the biblical record will get extra credit at the end of the semester. Faith, belief, trust has nothing to do with the ultimate outcome or our exit from this plane of existence. Sad but true.
The simple lesson of these two healing stories in the Gospel today has only incidentally to do with healing. The lesson is that boundaries do not matter. The Greek woman born in Syria was not worthy of much to any Jewish person in the first century. Doing her a favor seemed like an insult to the faithful Jewish people. Yet, since for God boundaries are not so terribly important, the intervention happens through the natural strength that belongs to the good man, Jesus. He may be more than that, we acknowledge that he is, but that is not about the healing part.
Likewise the whole story of the deaf man. The boundary and the border nature of his life did not matter. Power was there to be accessed. Again, only the acknowledgement that this was “Well done” nothing about a miracle. And if this power is within the norms, let me suggest to you a new place to focus our energy and attention.
You and I are “normal people”. Well at least I understand that you are—not so sure about me. If we are normal and healing is a normal thing. Are we not called to be healers? I think we are.
You got to step over boundaries and you have to be willing to risk touching the unfortunate citizens of this planet. When looking at news footage of the troubles of the world; when reading the painful stories of children, women and men; when considering the violence, illness and despair; don’t you hear the call. God is saying, “Who will we send and who will go for us?”
And the biblical answer to that question is pretty clear, “I am over here God. Send me. Let me be a healer in a broken world”. Maybe the world’s craziness would make more sense if we were able not just to pray for healing, but also to pray to be healers.
A few years ago Deb, a friend and I were traveling through Italy and Greece. Along the roadsides in Italy (where we went first) were these thousands of little shrine memorials. They were much more ornate and complex than the crosses we see beside the road where someone died in an auto accident, but they were the same sort of thing.
In Greece there were even more of them. Up in the mountains in a little town I was talking to a shopkeeper. Between us we shared enough bad Greek, poor English and pathetic German to handle a conversation. She told me the difference between Italy and Greece on the issue of the shrines. “Here it is not just the place where something bad happened. It is also places where something didn’t happen: or maybe where a good thing happened.”
The Greek people are still building their little shrines. In the middle of bad events, in the context of risk when threat was escaped, and in the middle of good things: they are building little shrines which say “God was with me here”.
That more holistic celebration of God’s presence is what we need also.
We need to refuse to see boundaries.
We need to pray for healing while we pray to be healers.
We need to celebrate God’s presence in all of life.
Amen.
From there he 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, but a woman whose little daughter had an unclean spirit immediately heard about him, and she came and bowed down at his feet. Now the woman was a Gentile, of Syrophoenician origin. She begged him to cast the demon out of her daughter. He 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." But she answered him, "Sir, even the dogs under the table eat the children's crumbs." Then he said to her, "For saying that, you may go-the demon has left your daughter." So she went home, found the child lying on the bed, and the demon gone.
Then he returned from the region of Tyre, and went by way of Sidon towards the Sea of Galilee, in the region of the Decapolis. They brought to him a deaf man who had an impediment in his speech; and they begged him to lay his hand on him. He took him aside in private, away from the crowd, and put his fingers into his ears, and he spat and touched his tongue. Then looking up to heaven, he sighed and said to him, "Ephphatha," that is, "Be opened." And immediately his ears were opened, his tongue was released, and he spoke plainly. Then Jesus ordered them to tell no one; but the more he ordered them, the more zealously they proclaimed it. They were astounded beyond measure, saying, "He has done everything well; he even makes the deaf to hear and the mute to speak."
There is probably no concept in Christian life more complicated and more difficult to balance and rationalize that that of healing. The Gospels are filled with stories about Jesus working miracle healings of all sorts of people. The Gospel reading today is a strong example. In our daily lives, when something happens that was good and we did not expect it, we say, “Thank God” or proclaim “God healed in this situation”. Now we are all creatures of logic. The logical corollary to those statements is that when something terrible happens, then, at least, God has failed us in that situation.
Because we always give God praise for the good things, many of us are at severe odds with God when the bad happens. In crude terms, if God always gets the credit, who gets the blame?
You and I both know these are not theoretical or entirely philosophical in nature. This THE theological discussion of everyday life. I had an email yesterday morning. It was about beloved friends in Saint Louis. Like Deb and me, they are grandparents. The two grandsons in the family are both victims of a terribly rare blood disease which is genetic in nature. Andrew was two years and two months old exactly yesterday morning when he died. Our friends are so Christian. They have been praying for miracles for two years of this child’s life. They have elicited the prayers of a wonderful, caring and loving Church. They had my buddy Carol praying for them. On a personal level Carol is someone I call when I want. It doesn’t sound real clergy like, but I believe that if God listens to anyone it is Carol.
None of that seemed to matter yesterday morning. Cindy and Vince, the grandparents, Justin and Kristin, the parents, are left in the very non theoretical place of contradiction between how we respond to bad and how we react to that which is good.
Complicate that one more level with the fact that, since we do not understand at all, we Christians and especially our clergy make up stuff. Period. We make it up. And the inventions of our little logical brains are even more insulting than the horrific binds we find ourselves in trying to figure out life.
I remember a speaker in the basement of First Pres, Alton, Illinois. This was way back and he was a chaplain in the Air Force stationed at Scott AFB. He had become somewhat charismatic and was completely sold on the idea of divine healing. He stood talking and pontificating about how it was assured for people who had enough faith—they would get divine healing. If it didn’t happen, in this speaker’s mind, it was a failure on the part of the person asking.
As this “holy person” spoke, I looked across the back rows to see a wonderful elderly woman with tears streaming down her face. She had lost her husband a month earlier from disease. Mildred was a completely righteous person and I know that she prayed for Eldon every day of their life together whether he was sick or well. And now this clergy was telling her that she just didn’t believe enough of it would have been fixed. I resisted the impulse to slap the snot out of him. As I think back on it, I am not sure that was a good choice. Someone did need to help him understand how insulting to the faith he was being.
Focus on the Gospel reading. The story of the Syrophonecian woman is, according to most scholars, one of the single earliest tales told of Jesus. Very early, before much of anything was written down there began to be both stories that were told and repeated from on listener to another. And just as the news about Jesus was being written in the very first formats there were stories like this one and also there were “sayings”. They sort of amounted to “The Sayings of Chairman Jesus”.
Just like the experiences of life that I cited, here is an unvarnished account. It has no polish or sanding to make it more smooth. This is about a close to the actual words that one first century person told another as you can get. Here is a raw story or two about Jesus and healing.
First, I want you to consider that there is no mention of anything like a miracle in either of these stories. Both stories assume power and strength in Jesus, but neither story actually calls what happened a supernatural miracle. There are really two points to the stories. One is that Jesus’ compassion does not stop at human boundaries. The second is that the healing capacity is an indicator of goodness and strength, but does not prove anything else.
The Syrophoenician woman was Greek. That was her ethnic identity and her place of origin was Syria occupied Phoenicia. She was a citizen of the world in a way that no one in Jesus’ company could even be expected to appreciate. Definitely she was not a Hoosier Presbyterian—or even a Jew. So this sophisticant comes begging an intervention from the Jewish shaman. The story says he blew her off. “The children eat first. Why would I do a favor for a non Jew? That would be like feeding the dogs before your own children.” Well the lady is not going to be discouraged with the slap and she argues back in his own words. “The dogs get to eat whatever is dropped from the table.” “OK”, says Jesus, “let it be done”. The daughter is healed of demon possession. There is no faith issue in the story, no if you believe enough question, and no if you think the right thing issue. It is simply an exercise of real power but not necessarily seen as Godly power.
Then comes the next healing right on the heels of this one. Walking down through some border country between Galilee and Samaria he comes to the area called “Ten Towns”. This is El Paso, Texas or Tijuana, Mexico in our world. This is border country in every sense of the words. Identity of an individual in this area as to specific race, religion, or faith is impossible. These folks are the “mutts” of the world. And a man is brought out to Jesus who is hearing impaired and has a speech impediment. Again there is some very physical talk here. Jesus spits on his fingers and places them physically in the man’s ears. It sounds more like a medicine man behavior than our general picture of Jesus. But, hey it works. The man speaks and hears. And the people are impressed. Again, not because it is a miracle, but rather because it is effective display of power. They say, “he has done very well”, not, “Surely he is God”.
So maybe all that is one clue. The healings of the New Testament are seen in historical context as being somewhat within the norms. They are not from some other world, but rather consistent with the order we experience here. They were as comfortable watching and appreciating these events as we are watching a hospital staff helping someone through an illness. Healing? “Yes” both cases. Grateful to God? “Of course” both cases.
But not on our part or on first century mindset do we see this as a change in the order of things. It is consistent with the way things happen. There is still one death per customer in this world. That is not a happy reality, but a reality nonetheless. Anyone in the room who can tell me the two times that was not true in the biblical record will get extra credit at the end of the semester. Faith, belief, trust has nothing to do with the ultimate outcome or our exit from this plane of existence. Sad but true.
The simple lesson of these two healing stories in the Gospel today has only incidentally to do with healing. The lesson is that boundaries do not matter. The Greek woman born in Syria was not worthy of much to any Jewish person in the first century. Doing her a favor seemed like an insult to the faithful Jewish people. Yet, since for God boundaries are not so terribly important, the intervention happens through the natural strength that belongs to the good man, Jesus. He may be more than that, we acknowledge that he is, but that is not about the healing part.
Likewise the whole story of the deaf man. The boundary and the border nature of his life did not matter. Power was there to be accessed. Again, only the acknowledgement that this was “Well done” nothing about a miracle. And if this power is within the norms, let me suggest to you a new place to focus our energy and attention.
You and I are “normal people”. Well at least I understand that you are—not so sure about me. If we are normal and healing is a normal thing. Are we not called to be healers? I think we are.
You got to step over boundaries and you have to be willing to risk touching the unfortunate citizens of this planet. When looking at news footage of the troubles of the world; when reading the painful stories of children, women and men; when considering the violence, illness and despair; don’t you hear the call. God is saying, “Who will we send and who will go for us?”
And the biblical answer to that question is pretty clear, “I am over here God. Send me. Let me be a healer in a broken world”. Maybe the world’s craziness would make more sense if we were able not just to pray for healing, but also to pray to be healers.
A few years ago Deb, a friend and I were traveling through Italy and Greece. Along the roadsides in Italy (where we went first) were these thousands of little shrine memorials. They were much more ornate and complex than the crosses we see beside the road where someone died in an auto accident, but they were the same sort of thing.
In Greece there were even more of them. Up in the mountains in a little town I was talking to a shopkeeper. Between us we shared enough bad Greek, poor English and pathetic German to handle a conversation. She told me the difference between Italy and Greece on the issue of the shrines. “Here it is not just the place where something bad happened. It is also places where something didn’t happen: or maybe where a good thing happened.”
The Greek people are still building their little shrines. In the middle of bad events, in the context of risk when threat was escaped, and in the middle of good things: they are building little shrines which say “God was with me here”.
That more holistic celebration of God’s presence is what we need also.
We need to refuse to see boundaries.
We need to pray for healing while we pray to be healers.
We need to celebrate God’s presence in all of life.
Amen.
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