CRUMBS - MORE THAN ENOUGH!
Pentecost 15b15, September 6, 2015, Labour Day (Mark 7:24-37)
Desperate people are often compelled to action.
Have you ever been desperate?
Like having your child being born in the back seat of your car, miles from any hospital or any kind of medical help?
Like losing your job with no prospects in sight and wondering how you and those who depend on you might survive?
Like having the doctor tell you that you have cancer and that there are some possible treatments – but there are no guarantees – and that you should be prepared?
Like people fleeing a nation caught in war – realizing that almost any place other than their own country offers more hope for them and their children?
Have you ever been desperate?
The woman in today's Gospel is desperate. Her daughter has, so Mark tells us, an "unclean spirit". It sounds like that has very little to do with us. Most of us may think or feel that we are far too sophisticated to accept an antiquated world view of "demons".
But know this. A "demon" then could refer to many different things: from an illness such as epilepsy or Tourette's Syndrome, to a skin condition or a congenital defect that caused a person to look or behave in ways that were different from the majority. Any of these could have serious ramifications.
The general population would regard people with such maladies, with such supposed "demons" as seriously ill and therefore 'different'. Such "seriously different" persons would then be forced to keep their distance from everyone else, the so-called normal people. Such "seriously different" people would even be separated from their own families.
So, when Mark tells us that this woman's daughter has a demon, we are being introduced to a girl is being cut off from her society. Depending upon the malady very physical life may be at risk. This mother desperately wants her daughter to be well, to be restored to wholeness personally, to be restored to larger society. I suspect that this mother may well have already pursued other avenues for her daughter to be made well - without success. This mother realizes that she needs help from beyond herself. She is desperate!
But this mother refuses to just feel sorry for herself or her daughter. She doesn't curl up in the corner to throw her own pity party. No!
Instead, she acts. Nor are her actions hindered by the limitations her society seeks to place upon her: those of a Gentile woman – limitations which may have even influenced her own self perception. The significant paralyzing power of such limitations are overcome by the mother's love for her daughter.
Her society told her that "Gentile women aren't to approach Jewish men". But when this mother hears that Jesus is coming into her locale, this one whose healing reputation precedes him, nothing can stop her from approaching him. In her desperate love for her daughter's well being, she places herself right at Jesus' feet. She begs him to help her daughter.
Surely Jesus will help her!
But . . . he doesn't.
Not only that, he throws a racial slur at her, calling her and even her sick daughter, "dogs" - or even something worse than that.
I am blown away – not in a good way but in an offended way. Jesus says this? Jesus does this? Jesus – fully God, but here - also fully human. We see Jesus in his full humanity – in Mark's Gospel influenced by the societal views he grew up with. "Gentiles"!?
Yet, this mother is not deterred by Jesus' words. She is desperate – desperate for her daughter's well being. Perhaps she buys into Jesus' view of herself and her people as "dogs". Nevertheless, she has faith. Hers is faith in the sense of trust and hope that someone, even this Jesus can and will help her daughter.
So, she responds to Jesus' racial slur in this way, (I paraphrase) "Jesus, I and my daughter may be dogs – but even the dogs get to eat the crumbs under the children's table". . .
Miraculously, now it is Jesus who is being changed. His mind is being opened by the faith of this woman, to the wideness of the kingdom of God that Jesus himself is about to usher in. Now, she is no longer a "dog". Now he sees and proclaims her as she is, a woman of faith. He replies, "For saying that , you may go – the demon has left your daughter." We hear that the daughter is at home in bed with the demon – vanished.
So it was. So it can be. The kingdom, this "rule" of God's mercy and love – resulting in new life for people and often creation is not just for the children of Israel – but for Syro-Phoenicians, even for you and me! This kingdom is open to and intended for all.
So I ask. Do you realize that there are demons around and within?
Powerful realities, both real and imagined, separate people – keep people from seeing, knowing and caring for each other. Powerful realities, within and without, real and imagined, keep us from having our eyes, minds and hearts fully opened to each other and to God.
Don't we see images of people's bodies, even a child's body floating up onto beaches because they have no place to go –no place that will welcome them? Yet if they were to remain where they were, certain death will follow, or even atrocities will be done to them that are worse than death. To be sure, we are horrified even by such "sights". But we are also afraid. Afraid to open our lives, "our" country in order to help them. Don't we see - to not help them is to be enslaved ourselves – to be controlled by fear instead of the love of God?
Sometimes it is those who are most desperate who open our eyes and minds to the truth of the power of the love and mercy of God.
An essential part of this reality is that desperate people are not afraid to speak the truth particularly to power. Such speaking is not without risk. Such speaking is not easy. But desperation and hope drive people to speak the truth anyway.
The Syro-Phoenician mother points us to an amazing and wonderful truth that transcends most of our mental capacity. Even the crumbs of God's love and mercy are more than enough – enough to bring new life to a young girl who has a demon and is therefore being shut out by others. The crumbs of God's love and mercy are more than enough to bring new life, new understandings, actions of mercy and justice to this world so desperately in need of all of that. The crumbs of God's love and mercy are more than enough to free us from the limitations of our own fear.
The crumbs of God's love and mercy in this suffering, dying and rising Jesus are enough to change our closed, made up minds, even our too frequently hardened hearts. We can imagine and live into new possibilities. We can be freed to love - God, others and ourselves.
May God help us to hear those who are desperate, to hear ourselves in our desperation.
The crumbs of God's love and mercy are more than enough. WE can know, experience and generously live off these crumbs – for Christ's sake and the sake of the w