Mark 7: 24-end; James 2: 1-10
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.
This morning we have two, perhaps bizarre to modern ears, accounts of healing of Jesus. But before we begin, it is best to shed any modern lenses we may have as we go through this passage,
The world in which Jesus preached, was very different from our own, and we do ourselves a disfavour when we try to interpret this passage through contemporary ideologies. So, let’s not do that, but rather let us see a bigger view of what God is saying to us today.
As St. Mark describes the scene, Jesus is far from home in the region of Tyre and Sidon in modern day Lebanon, on retreat perhaps. This whole trip may have taken several weeks or even months and as the text makes clear, he wants to be left alone. We don’t know for sure why he’s keeping to himself, but we can assume that some combination of physical and spiritual exhaustion has led him to seek solitude.
For days without respite he has fed the crowds, healed the sick and confronted the Pharisees — all while putting up with his clueless disciples. And he was certainly not there to preach. Indeed, he never preached among the Gentiles while he walked the earth. This was not a public appearance by Christ.
Yet, Jesus could not remain hidden, for his reputation had preceded him even that far from his homeland.
The middle section of a Gospel is often an important turning point in the story, and here as Jesus turns away from Jerusalem and the Jews, and into the borderlands of the pagan world - we see a hint of what’s to come, a hint of God’s saving work for all, Jews and Gentiles, slaves and free, men and women.
And these two stories, attentively brought together by our lectionary, offers us the whole picture of God’s saving work, both on the cosmic and wonderfully intimate scale.
My eldest son was born half deaf, you might have seen him run around this morning showing off his first ever hearing aid. He has learnt to listen very well (much to my delight) to the person speaking to him – and sometimes, especially in a busy environment, he may force the person talking to him to bend down and look at him in the eyes while they are speaking. And because of these coping strategies, it sometimes seems like he can hear better than someone with two functioning ears. He’s attentive to people in ways that I am not.
If we are to take the story of the Jesus healing the deaf man symbolically as well as literally, this man is Israel and with it the whole of the human race, that’s lost its ability through the fall to attend to that higher voice, that higher voice that was heard by Abraham and Moses and King David.
And what does Jesus do for this deaf man, he looked up to heaven with a sigh and said, ‘epthartha,’ be opened’. That word sigh, misses the point, it wasn’t Jesus looking up to heaven with disdain that he has to heal on his holiday, the word means breathed, Jesus is referring us back to creation, he is recreating this man, like he breathed life into Adam, creating new ears and a new tongue.
And immediately his man’s ears were opened, he could now attend to what Jesus was saying, to that higher voice. God’s intention is not just to heal but to put creation right.
So what’s going on with Jesus, rejecting this women and her daughter, seemingly only interested in feeding the house of Israel first. But she challenges him – with the best one liners in the bible, ‘even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs’. Here she is the one hinting at things to come, where all will be fed in abundance, even the pets of the household.
Over this past year, my first year as an ordained minister, as I have travelled with those going through deep pain and distress, it has been difficult to always find the right words of prayer especially when the situation seems hopeless and death of a loved one is inevitable
And doesn’t it feel like that sometimes? Something terrible happens or we are worried that something may happen, and we pray and yet it seems like God is rejecting us. And we keep praying, and we see other people’s prayers being answered. And sometimes fellow Christians treat us badly and we wonder where they were in our pain?
David Wilkinson, astrophysicist, and Methodist preacher, gives us a helpful insight into how God can respond to our prayer, in his excellent book ‘When I Pray, What Does God Do?’
First, David suggests, God sustains the structures and laws of the universe, second, God transforms this creation into new creation, third, God transforms the person who prays to collaborate in building the kingdom, and forth, God could work by transcending his normal ways of working for specific purposes.
And for those who have been on a journey of faith and prayer, I’m sure we can all give testimony to at least two of these responses.
But if the Syrophoenician woman teaches us anything in this passage, if Jesus teaches us anything in this passage, it is that faith is NOT about what Jesus does, but about who Jesus is.
Mature faith is when we can begin to pray without expectations. Because faith is not about getting what we ask for, but getting the one we are asking.
Faith is not about our needs, our wants, and our plan, but his needs, his wants, and his plan.
These two healing stories are part of a bigger narrative of who Jesus is, rather than just the needs of two individuals. It is difficult in prayer, especially when we are distressed, sometimes to remember this point and in the frustration of personal need and in the hope of release, we judge God’s response to our prayer in an isolated way, not allowing the possibility of the bigger story at work.
And perhaps we won’t fully understand prayer and miracles until we cross over into the next life, if we trust and love him, we will hear, “Well done, good and faithful servant.”
Amen.