Bible Text: Mark 7. 24-37 | Preacher: Peter Haddad

“For this is our Lord’s will – that our prayer and our trust be alike, large.”               (Julian of Norwich)
A homily for the 16th Sunday after Pentecost – 9 September 2018
In today’s gospel reading we meet some extraordinary and inspirational people.  There is Jesus, of course, but also a remarkable woman.  We are reminded too, that there are many people in society who are overlooked and who exist on the margins of our communities.

Jesus has been active teaching and preaching in Galilee, but there comes a time when he needs a break, needs solitude, needs, as we say, some space.  He leaves Gennesaret, and crosses the border into the Province of Syria, and the region of Tyre.  This is a pagan or Gentile area, not a Jewish one.  Here, surely, he will be unknown.

But his fame has spread before him, and a pagan woman, a Syro-Phoenician approaches him.  She is carrying a heavy burden.  Her daughter has an unclean spirit.  This woman has heard of Jesus.  She believes in his compassion and his power to heal.  She has faith.  She is also remarkably courageous.  She is a woman approaching a group of men, a Gentile approaching a Jewish rabbi.  Perhaps her desperation and concern for her daughter have made her so.  She is willing to beg on behalf of her child.

Jesus, however, seems to rebuff her, almost to insult her.  He replies, rather rudely, “Let the children be fed first, for it is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.”  We see a Jesus very conscious that his mission was to the Jews, and only to the Jews, the covenant people of God.  He had previously told his disciples setting out on mission “Go nowhere among the Gentiles, and enter no town of the Samaritans, but rather go to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.”

It could have been a crushing rejection.  But Jesus is dealing here with a woman of feistiness as well as faith.  Rather than being offended, she enters into the parable with a sharp and witty saying of her own “Sir, even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs.”

It is the foreigner, the outsider in gender, race and religion that provides a model of profound faith.  We are reminded of the Roman centurion who appealed to Jesus for healing on behalf of another, and the response of Jesus, “Truly I tell you, in no one in Israel have I found such faith.”  It is the foreigner, the outsider who lays before Jesus the full extent of God’s mission and the radical extent of the kingdom.

Then there is the second healing, that of the deaf man who had an impediment in his speech.  He is another outsider because of his physical condition, excluded and on the edge of society.  Again, it is his friends who bring him and ask on his behalf.  And again, Jesus responds generously, and cures both his deafness and his speech.

Martin Luther, the great German reformer and Bible teacher found in this gospel story of the Syro-Phoenician woman an outstanding example of faith.

The woman, according to Luther, has heard the news about Jesus.  She believes in his power and compassion, and so, holding to that word, she goes to him beseeching healing for her daughter.  He rejects her outright; he has been sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.  She is an outsider and thus has no claim upon him.  Indeed, it is not right to take bread from the children to throw it to dogs.  She responds, “Yes, Lord, but even the dogs eat the crumbs from under the master’s table.”  Luther concludes with relish that the woman has bested Jesus, caught him in his own word of promise so that he marvels at her faith and helps her.  As she believes him to be, so she finds him.  Luther offers this woman as a model for all Christians: they must hold to the Word, the proclamation of the merciful Savior Jesus Christ, in the midst of all contrary appearances, even the crushing suspicion that God has abandoned them and that the Word is a lie.[i]

Not only are they stories of faith, they are stories of outsiders, people on the edge, people who exercised faith on behalf of others.  Does it not only point to the importance of faith, but also to the fact that we find our true selves most fully and completely when our faith is exercised in community?  And does it not also serve to remind us that those who are overlooked, those on the margins, and those who are left out have much to teach us about that longed for renewal in mission and energy and spirit?

The Lord be with you.

[i] Jane E. Strohl. “Luther’s spiritual journey” in The Cambridge Companion to Martin Luther. Edited by Donald K. McKim. P. 152.