Date: 6th September 2009
Preacher: Chris
Green
Churches: Draycott
Readings:
Isaiah 35: 4-7a
James 2: 1-10 & 14-17
Mark 7, 24 - 37
Sermon for Trinity 13
I wonder how many of you have been
to foreign countries on your holidays?
There is a lot we love about
seeing the way that other people do things, as well as seeing other landscapes-
and perhaps getting more sun! But I wonder if you have ever thought of living
abroad- to enter that foreign-ness permanently, so to speak? There are those
who settle abroad for their retirement, and with this weather, who can blame
them. But many end up feeling like exiles, and return here for their last days-
even criminals like Ronnie Biggs.
Exile in a strange land has been
part of the Jewish identity at least until 1948. Their nation’s birth was in
their wandering in the desert, when Moses led them out of slavery in Egypt and
- not quite - to the promised land. Then there was their exile to Babylon in
about 600 BC. Many of their scriptures were written then, as they attempted to
preserve their identity in a strange land. The book of Isaiah comes from this
period. Our reading today is spoken out of the longing of the exile for his
homeland, although like all true poetry it transcends its particular situation
and speaks to all ages. In Jesus time it had come to stand for hopes of the
Messiah, God’s anointed, who would rescue Israel from her enemies.
Our Gospel this morning has been
chosen to go together with the prophecy of Isaiah. The prophecy speaks of the
ears of the deaf being unstopped and the tongue of the speechless singing for
joy; in the Gospel we have the deaf and dumb man being healed. (Though we are
told more prosaically that he ‘spoke plainly’). Jesus is God’s anointed
prophesied of old, who is come to bring his people home. In this gospel we are
being shown Jesus as the fulfilment of Jewish hopes for a Messiah (although not
in a way they ultimately recognise). In the previous chapter, we find the
feeding of the five thousand. Jesus is seen there in the guise of the new
Moses, feeding his people in the desert.
But what of the Syro-Phoenician
woman? It is another healing, true, but one in which Jesus is cast in a
strangely unsympathetic light. The woman asks him to heal her sick daughter,
but is met at first with an insult- although Jesus does perform the healing in
the end.
But if we see this from a Jewish
perspective, it is the impropriety, the cheek, of the pagan woman that
would have stood out in this story. If this was indeed the Messiah, he was for
the Jews. What right had a Gentile to ask anything of him? Imagine
perhaps in this country an illegal immigrant trying to get some treatment on
the NHS- we would say, they have no entitlement, let the doctor first treat
British people who have paid their taxes! This is how shocked his disciples
would have been.
But if you look at the way that
St. Mark has placed this story in his Gospel, you begin to appreciate better
what he is doing with it.
Right at the start of our present
story, we are told that Jesus crosses to the region of Tyre. This is Gentile
territory, and this is where he encounters the Syro-Phoenician woman. And the
later healings are done in the territory of the Decapolis - also Gentile.
And then in the next chapter we
have another mass feeding- the feeding of the four thousand. I wonder if
you have been puzzled by the stories of two mass feedings in this short
Gospel- is this the same story circulating in two different forms? Or two
stories of remarkably similar events? But now many scholars agree that the
significance of this second feeding is that it is for the Gentiles. And
this means that it has a huge symbolic importance when put after the earlier
feeding of the five thousand. Not only is Jesus the Messiah for the Jews- but
for the Gentiles as well.
So now we can see the story of the
Syro-Phoenician woman is the pivot in this Gospel, at the point where Jesus
crosses from Jewish to Gentile territory- literally and figuratively. It
introduces the idea that Jesus’ mission cannot stop with the Jews, but must
include the Gentiles too.
This was a terribly important
message to the early Church- for whom the gospels were written in the first
place. The earliest Christian writings, the letters of St. Paul, show that one
of the most fraught topics for them was whether Gentile Christians needed to be
circumcised. That is, did they have to become Jews before they could become
Christians?
Well Jesus does not ask the
Gentile woman to become a Jew before he heals her daughter. There are no
reports of a mass circumcision before the feeding of the 4000 men (I am sure we
would have been told…). From now on the new Israel can be emancipated from the
letter of the Jewish Law, although guided by its spirit.
For us there is an equally
important lesson, and it is this. We cannot appropriate God for our own
tradition. It is terribly easy for a Church to become like a club, for the
benefit of its own - just as the Messiah was supposed to be for the Jews. But
to quote William Temple “The Church is the only society that exists for the
benefit of those who are not its members”.
And similarly, we have a terrible
tendency to ‘domesticate’ God- to decide how he should be correctly approached,
addressed, worshiped. We can end up identifying God with the familiar,
the traditional. I am reminded of two memorable book titles (both wonderful
books by the way)- ‘God of Surprises’ by Gerard Hughes, and ‘The Strangeness of
God’ by Elizabeth Templeton. You could say, we must be prepared to be surprised
by the strangeness of God.
Part of what we need to do is what
Melvyn Matthews calls ‘re-enchanting’ our worship of God; breaking the spell of
the familiar, the predictable. This is why we are having a different service
this morning, and will try to vary the first service of the month. I know it
may seem like change for change’s sake- but sometimes, new words will make new
connections for us.
And we need to be aware of God
speaking to us from the strange and the foreign. The pre-Easter Jesus heals the
foreigner, touches the untouchables, associates with outcasts. The risen Jesus
meets the disciples on the Emmaus road in the guise of a stranger- they do not
recognise him, although they are moved by his words. Jesus seems to say to us-
I am your brother; but I am also the stranger, the foreigner, the
outcast, the political prisoner, the famine victim.
God crosses all boundaries. So
must we.