James 2:1-10, 14-17; Mark
7:24-37
I
always love this first Sunday of our new program year each year because it’s so
nice to see everyone and have the choir back. Lots of energy! And let me just
say right now, I know you were away a lot over the summer and couldn't get to
church, you don’t have to apologize to me at the breakfast downstairs. Blanket
absolution for everyone. If you were away, I hope it was Sabbath time for you,
time to rest and reconnect with yourself and hopefully God as well in a
different way.
And now we’re back and what a set of readings to start
off with. The shapers of our lectionary must have a wicked sense of humor. We
have this letter from James, saying it’s just incompatible with Christian faith
to show partiality to treat different groups of people differently is simply
wrong, and then we have Jesus doing exactly that, refusing to heal this woman’s
daughter because they are not Jewish. What gives?
Let’s
start with the second reading, the letter from James. James tells a story about
something that maybe actually happened in some first century Christian
gathering. A visitor comes dressed like a well-to-do person, and the ushers,
the liturgy team, shows them to a very nice pew up front. A homeless person in
smelly clothes comes, and they are told to sit on the floor in the back, sorry
we ran out of chairs. James says, this is crazy! Are you people Christians or
not? That’s not what we do here.
It’s worth noting that James is not saying
the church should necessarily favor the poor over the rich, either. He’s pretty
clear we need to help our neighbors in need, but his message is to Show No Partiality.
Treat everyone as if they are the same – because, in fact, they are. To even
put people into two categories, rich or poor, is not a Godly way of looking at
the world. Rich, poor, black, white, young old, sick, healthy – these are all
false dichotomies, as irrelevant to who we are as the clothes we are wearing,
underneath which we are all children of God. (Synthesis, Trace Haythorn)
So why does Jesus seem to be doing just that?
First, let’s be clear. It’s OK for Jesus
to be wrong here. Jesus being wrong doesn’t mean the Bible is not true or
Christianity is all hogwash or anything. The Bible says, and the Christian
church has always said, that Jesus is both fully human and fully divine. If that’s so, then Jesus must have grown in his
faith and understanding of God’s mission for him. To say Jesus was always right
and always knew exactly what he was doing leads to the kind of thinking that he
only pretended to, say, talk baby talk when he was a baby. Of course not, Jesus
was truly human as well as truly divine and had to learn to talk from his human
family like anyone else. Likewise he had to grow in his understanding of his
mission and God’s call to him. (Sarah Dylan Breuer)
What happens here is Jesus is changed by his
encounter with this woman. He starts out thinking that he is called to bring
the message of change and renewal, of God’s kingdom close at hand, to his own
people. And here, in this story, he realizes that God’s plan is even bigger
than that, bigger than he imagined. This outsider, this person he isn’t even
supposed to be talking to given the social codes of the time, has a stronger
faith, a surer trust in God’s love for her, than his closest followers. If Jesus shows his divinity here, it’s by
allowing himself to be changed, to open up even wider to God’s unfolding plan. Even Jesus, even Jesus himself is not allowed to limit the spread of God’s
love and healing – God gives it to everyone, without exception. And for the
rest of Mark’s Gospel, Jesus ministers to more and more to Gentiles and outsiders,
until this ticks off the powers that be so much, or scares them so much, that
they decide to execute him.
What might they have been afraid of? What
does this story, and James’ harsh condemnation of those who show partiality,
those who talk about faith but don’t live it out, make us afraid of? When we
think about, say, our liturgy team welcoming someone in ragged clothes might be
that we’ll lose our safe space. This story in James’ letter reminds me that every
week, sometimes several times, someone comes by the church office looking for
financial help. We have a town wide interfaith voucher system to help them, so
I can give them a voucher and I always also invite them to church on Sunday. I
don’t think anyone has come yet. Perhaps I am not a very good inviter, but I
wonder if they worry about being judged, if the will be giving a nice pew or a
seat on the floor. I know you all well enough to know they don’t need to worry
-- if a stranger comes here in a wheelchair, I worry about people knocking each
other over in the race to be the one to help them with the elevator. But I also
wonder what kind of reputation Christianity, in this country, has developed in
the last few decades that churches in general are not seen as necessarily
welcoming places.
I heard someone say recently that churches
can be welcoming, but sometimes their way of welcoming is to be polite and
patient while the new person becomes more like us. That’s missing the point and
the opportunity, because God sends us people that we think are different from
us, to show us who we really are, how much we really have in common, that our
clothes or cars or education don’t really define us, are just part of those
false dichotomies. When we put people in those categories, rich, poor, black,
white, college degree or not, we’re kind of deciding not to really know them.
We can’t judge and understand at the same time, it’s like patting your stomach
and rubbing your head.
I was inspired and challenged about how I
usually react to those seeking vouchers from the church office by a recent TV
show I caught. I mentioned to a few of you, this summer I’ve been watching a
new British TV series on Hulu called Rev., about an inner city priest in London
and his parish. In one episode the priest, his name is Adam, faces the same
problem. And there’s one recurrent character, an addict named Mick who shows up
all the time and Adam generally blows him off, knowing he’ll spend any money on
drugs. But in this episode, Mick goes to AA and gets sober. Adam feels totally
caught short, he’s underestimated this guy, he’s thinking, I should have helped
him out, so he spends days working the phones and finds a bed for him at a
local shelter. Then he has to explain to his wife that the bed isn’t free for a
few days so Mick needs to stay at their house. Everyone thinks he’s crazy for
doing this, it’s way too risky, but Adam keeps saying, like James, are we
Christians or not? Isn’t this what we are supposed to be doing? There’s a great
scene where Adam and his wife are having dinner with Mick and Mick keeps
asking, do I eat the potatoes, then the broccoli, then the meat, or the meat
first, then the broccoli? And Adam keeps saying, you can eat them in any order,
it doesn’t matter, but it dawns on the viewer and Adam that Mick has never had
a meal with three different foods in it.
In the end, Mick isn’t changed. Or at least
his transformation is in his own hands, it’s not something someone else can impose
on him. But Adam is changed. He can never look at one of the people his church
serves in the same way again, he encounters everyone with more awareness of
God’s mysterious mercy and grace at work in them.
Welcoming someone strange into our lives,
whether it’s Jesus with the Syro-Phoenician woman, or Adam with Mick, is scary.
Scarier even still to ally ourselves with them, to take their side against
those we feel more in common with. Our secret fear can be that we ourselves
will somehow lose part of ourselves, lose part of our identity as one of the
tribe, as part of the categories which we think make ourselves up. And guess
what, that’s exactly right. We will. Our little safe self-construct will be
shaken, maybe even damaged. And God will say, yay, you are becoming a little
more yourself, a little more who I intended you to be.
God
works, is working, through other people to complete us, to change us, to make
us our fullest selves. God does this for Jesus in this woman, and God does this
for us, too. Without a willingness to change, a willingness Jesus shows us in
today’s Gospel, we have the dead faith that James refers to.
Who
will walk through our doors here at Redeemer this year, who will we go out to
meet, who we be this year, and who will God bring us to change us and make us
even more who we are? I can’t wait to find out.
Works consulted also included
“God’s Choice” by Stephen Fowl The Christian Century, September 5,
2006
Working
Preacher for September 9, 2012
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