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.