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Encounter

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A Sermon for 9 September 2018

A reading from the gospel of Mark 7:24-37.  And to put this reading in context, it’s important to know that Jesus just had come from a pretty rocky confrontation with some Pharisees and scribes who traveled from Jerusalem to Galilee.  Likely they were there to check out what was going on around one gaining fame.  For everywhere Jesus went, he was being begged by the people to be healed.  Certainly, rumors had reached Jerusalem of the one in Galilee who was gathering followers, healing outcasts, and sharing his mission by sending out those learning from him.  When curious Pharisees and scribes find Jesus, they are not at all happy that the disciples of Jesus blatantly disregard the traditions of the elders.  The wise ones of Judaism had declared that food from the market must be washed.  Hands too.  But Jesus’ disciples were eating out in the open – without washing their hands.  The concerned leaders from Jerusalem had to think that if this sacred tradition was so easily being disregarded, what other ways might Jesus and his gang go on to the rock the boat?  Incensed, Jesus lets these Pharisees and scribes have it!  Quoting Isaiah against them, Jesus proclaims them hypocrites.  He charges that they stick to human traditions while abandoning the commands of God (Mark 7:6-8).  Jesus turns to the crowd, likely with these Pharisees and scribes still standing there offended.  He tells them that it is that which comes from the inside out that defiles – not the other way around.  Explaining to his followers in private he says:  “For it is from within, from the human heart, that evil intentions come . . . and they (are what) defile a person” (Mark 7:23).  Whether Jesus intentionally leaves that place with his disciples to give them a concrete lesson, or if he just has to get away for a bit for a break; next we hear this.  Listen for God’s word to us in a reading of Mark 7:24-37.

“From there Jesus set out and went away to the region of Tyre.  He entered a house and did not want anyone to know he was there.  Yet he could not escape notice, 25 but a woman whose little daughter had an unclean spirit immediately heard about him, and she came and bowed down at his feet.  26 Now the woman was a Gentile, of Syrophoenician origin.  She begged him to cast the demon out of her daughter.  27 He said to her, “Let the children be fed first, for it is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.”  28 But she answered him, “Sir, even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs.”  29 Then he said to her, “For saying that, you may go—the demon has left your daughter.”  30 So she went home, found the child lying on the bed, and the demon gone.  31 Then he returned from the region of Tyre, and went by way of Sidon towards the Sea of Galilee, in the region of the Decapolis.  32 They brought to him a deaf man who had an impediment in his speech; and they begged him to lay his hand on him.  33 Jesus took him aside in private, away from the crowd, and put his fingers into his ears, and he spat and touched his tongue.  34 Then looking up to heaven, he sighed and said to him, “Ephphatha,” that is, “Be opened.”  35 And immediately his ears were opened, his tongue was released, and he spoke plainly.  36 Then Jesus ordered them to tell no one; but the more he ordered them, the more zealously they proclaimed it.  37 They were astounded beyond measure, saying, “He has done everything well; he even makes the deaf to hear and the mute to speak.’”

This is the word of God for the people of God.  Thanks be to God!

 

In the book The Word Before the Powers:  An Ethic of Preaching, homiletics professor Dr. Charles Campbell writes this chilling challenge:  “The church is called intentionally and habitually to move out of the places of security and comfort into those ‘unclean’ places where Jesus suffers ‘outside the gate of the sacred compounds,’ whether those compounds are shaped by religion or class or race or culture.”  Campbell continues, “Through such dislocation, privileged Christians cross the boundaries that keep the privileged and oppressed apart and take a first step toward solidarity with the poor, which, in a consumer culture, is one way of radically contesting the Domination System” (pp. 153-154).  . . .  So, in 2005 while I was doing specialized ministry with children and their families in a large, upper-class congregation that was 99.8% filled with white-skinned people; I decided to test Campbell’s theory.  We created a ministry opportunity for fifth and sixth graders called the Practice of Encounter:  Kids Connected in Christ.  I might have mentioned this before.  We explained to parents and children what they were getting themselves into – a qualitative research project for a Doctor of Ministry degree in Gospel and Culture.  The gist of it was that once a month for a full school year, the children of the church where I was serving would go across the river to a church near the Martha O’Bryan Center – which, at the time of the Practice of Encounter in 2005 (just four years after 9/11), was in the center of Nashville’s largest, most economically disadvantaged housing project, the James A. Cayce Homes.  One Thursday afternoon a month, a small group from a Green Hills congregation and a small group from a Cayce Homes congregation simply came together.  As children do:  we played games, talked about school, and got to know one another.  This continued once a month – fifth and sixth graders from different sides of our city – merely encountering one another to see what we might find.

For what do we find when we truly encounter one another?  Especially when the ones we encounter are perceived others?  . . .  After a year of the children encountering each other and keeping a journal to write about their experiences, here’s what Practice of Encounter participants said they learned about encountering others.  One pre-teen of the church near the Cayce Homes said:  “even though we are different, we still can have fun together!”  Another said that “everybody has more things in common than people think.”  One child from the Green Hills congregation proclaimed:  “I understand now (after the Practice of Encounter) that we can’t survive without each other.”  At the close of the year in a formal group interview held to discover what the children learned, another from the Green Hills church reported that before the Practice of Encounter, I thought that “neighbors were people next to me; now everyone is my neighbor.”  This was the same child that wrote in a Sunday School class that when she was on the other side of the city with the children there, she “felt really connected to God” (Jule M. Nyhuis in Nurturing Faith in a Bifurcated Generation:  A Practice of Dislocation for Children to Resist the Forces of the Domination System; 2007; p. 31.  Copy available at Columbia Theological Seminary Library; Decatur, GA).

I think about that year-long Practice of Encounter every time we bump into the story of Jesus’ intentional dislocation to Tyre.  All sorts of strangers reside in Tyre.  Certainly, Jesus knew that.  Tyre is a city of Gentiles on the eastern coast of the Mediterranean Sea – filled with Greeks and Romans of the Empire, who in the days of Jesus were despised as outsiders.  Others.  Those most good, God-fearing Jews would steer clear of, as the inherited human traditions had taught.  It kinda makes you wonder if Jesus had some concrete learning lessons in mind as he and his disciples traveled to encounter others.  As if tongue-in-cheek, Jesus calls the woman he would meet in Tyre a dog just to see the reaction he’d get from his disciples—like to see if they got what he really was about?  Maybe wondering if those who already have read the first six chapters of the gospel of Mark would take as much offense to Jesus’ outright refusal of the pleas of that scared Syrophoenician momma, as the Jewish keepers of the law took offense to being called hypocrites by some itinerant Galilean healer who was willing to hold up a mirror to their souls.

So much has been written of these stories taking place outside the sacred compound – beyond the borders of ancient Palestine.  Tyre being in modern-day Lebanon and the ten cities of the Decapolis, north and east of the Sea of Galilee lying mainly in modern-day Syria and Jordan.  Even one way up in the Golan Heights where to this day, day and night, Israeli tanks are aimed across the border to ensure their neighboring nations stay out!  Commentators have wondered if this text shows Jesus’ own cultural biases of Jews sticking to their own tribe for purity and protection sake.  Some feminist biblical scholars decry the Jesus pictured in the encounter with the Syrophoenician woman as a man bested verbally by a woman – her hutzpah as a momma-bear-kind-of-woman fearlessly backing down from no one.  Not even God in human flesh.  Those who need to cling to a high view of Christ’s divinity have trouble with the story of an encounter that seems to broaden Jesus’ understanding of just who he is and how wide is the inclusive welcome of the God he embodies in flesh.  While others see in this story the divinity of Christ as something the human Jesus discovered along the way, like an evolving process – an understanding strongly supported according to the earliest written gospel, which is Mark.  The gospel where a man named Jesus from Nazareth shows up to be baptized, hears his name as the Beloved of God, and is driven into the wilderness to wrestle until he emerges with a call to proclaim the good news of God.  The gospel of Mark putting on Jesus’ lips the words:  “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe the good news!” (Mark 1:15).  . . .  The more I listen to Jesus’ encounter with the mother, the more I hear a wisdom exchange.  Almost as if Jesus is a wise sage speaking a mysterious riddle to the woman.  Who calmer than one trained for the non-violent protests of the lunch counter sit-ins, simply stands in her truth unflappable.  To remind the wise old teacher that the table of grace is large enough, and potent enough, and enough for those, who some consider dogs – fit only to be under the table, to find also all that they need.  Honestly, I don’t know the best way to navigate what some consider to be one of the most difficult stories about Jesus.

But the text makes clear this:  Jesus intentionally takes a route out of Galilee – away from the ground he’d daily been covering.  He dis-locates himself and his followers to encounter others.  And what he finds there is faith.  Deep faith.  A mother willing to take just a crumb if it means her own child could be healed.  A woman who understands she’s dealing with a God of enough.  A “dog” so absolutely centered in her worthiness so that no other words will crack her trust in the One who can heal – the One who binds us all.  For that’s what happens in encounter.  We learn a bit more of what God’s up to in the lives of others.  The little boxes of the truth we’ve come to know from our lives get opened up bigger – perhaps obliterated all together so that at last we stand in humility before the One who will not be contained.  We bow before the Mystery which is Love itself.  Knowing at last that we all need each other to survive – to thrive!

However we make sense of the story of Jesus’ encounters outside; what’s left to decide is:  will we, the church of Jesus Christ today, intentionally and habitually move out of our places of security – outside the gates of our sacred compounds – open to encounter.  Ready to be humbled by all we will find.

In the name of the life-giving Father, the life-redeeming Son, and the life-sustaining Spirit, Amen.

© Copyright JMN – 2018  (All rights reserved.)

Outside

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A Sermon for 20 August 2017

A reading from the gospel of Matthew 15:10-28.  Listen for God’s word to us.

“Then Jesus called the crowd to him and said to them, “Listen and understand:  11it is not what goes into the mouth that defiles a person, but it is what comes out of the mouth that defiles.”  12Then the disciples approached and said to him, “Do you know that the Pharisees took offense when they heard what you said?”  13Jesus answered, “Every plant that my heavenly Father has not planted will be uprooted.  14Let them alone; they are blind guides of the blind.  And if one blind person guides another, both will fall into a pit.”  15But Peter said to him, “Explain this parable to us.”  16Then Jesus said, “Are you also still without understanding?  17Do you not see that whatever goes into the mouth enters the stomach, and goes out into the sewer?  18But what comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart, and this is what defiles.  19For out of the heart come evil intentions, murder, adultery, fornication, theft, false witness, slander.  20These are what defile a person, but to eat with unwashed hands does not defile.”  21Jesus left that place and went away to the district of Tyre and Sidon.  22Just then a Canaanite woman from that region came out and started shouting, “Have mercy on me, Lord, Son of David; my daughter is tormented by a demon.”  23But Jesus did not answer her at all.  And his disciples came and urged him, saying, “Send her away, for she keeps shouting after us.”  24Jesus answered, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.”  25But she came and knelt before him, saying, “Lord, help me.”  26He answered, “It is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.”  27She said, “Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters’ table.”  28Then Jesus answered her, “Woman, great is your faith!  Let it be done for you as you wish.”  And her daughter was healed instantly.”

This is the word of God for the people of God.  Thanks be to God.

 

Fifteen years ago, right after the beginning of the 21st Century, Charles Campbell – then preaching professor at Columbia Theological Seminary and now at Duke Divinity School – wrote these words:  “The church is called intentionally and habitually to move out of the places of security and comfort into those ‘unclean’ places where Jesus suffers ‘outside the gate of the sacred compounds,’ whether those compounds are shaped by religion or class or race or culture.  . . .  Through dislocation, privileged Christians cross the boundaries that keep the privileged and oppressed apart and take a first step toward solidarity . . . which, in a consumer culture, is one way of radically contesting the Domination System” (Charles L. Campbell, The Word before the Powers:  An Ethic of Preaching, WJKP, 2002).  . . .  “The church,” he urged, “intentionally and habitually” is to move outside.  Beyond itself.  Beyond the gates of safety in the land of the known.  Outside to where we will encounter the outsider.  Not just for their benefit, but for the mutual benefit of us all.

What happens when we venture forth outside – outside the familiarity of our typical circle?  Outside the comfort of being among people whom we perceive to be like us?  Outside – beyond the boundaries we tend to keep between ourselves and those who are unknown?  . . .

Look what happened with Jesus.  . . .  Before us today is a timely text.  Religious leaders come from Jerusalem to Jesus in Galilee.  They’re concerned he’s letting his disciples break the traditions of their elders.  Stepping outside the norms of their people as they fail to wash their hands before they eat.  Whether their violation has to do with the act of washing hands before the weekly Sabbath meal, or unclean hands passing out bread and fish to 5,000 men plus women and children at Tabgha; it’s clear.  Tension is building over who does what to show all they are insiders and who does not.

I realize hand washing may seem minute to us today, but the traditions of the elders of Jesus’ people were in place for good reason.  Such rituals were practiced as a part of their culture – the acts that defined them as a people, which was especially important to them when not everyone living around the land was Jewish.  Beside them now were gentiles of Rome, soldiers and supporters who were not of their own kind.  We know there were Samaritans smack dab between Galilee and Jerusalem with whom ancient feuds festered.  And, as we learn in the story of Matthew before us today, not far from their beloved land still lived Canaanites, the original folks dwelling in the land whom their ancestors had driven out.

It’s interesting that the gospel of Matthew describes the woman Jesus soon will encounter as a Canaanite, whereas the gospel of Mark refers to the same woman as a Syrophoenician (Mark 7:26).  You might remember that when God promised the land west of the Jordan River to the Israelites who had been forty years in the wilderness, the people were afraid.  The spies of Israel came back to tell Moses and the people that the land of Canaan was abundant in luscious fruit.  But the inhabitants of the land were fierce, large people.  Not one Israelite had courage enough to enter the land of Canaan because they felt like insignificant “grasshoppers” next to such strong inhabitants (Numbers 13:23-33).  Listeners to Matthew’s telling of the story likely were aware this son of the great King David would be up against a giant as fierce as the one David was up against in Goliath.  A Canaanite woman who was not about to back down was coming after Jesus.  Likely the encounter would not be easy – not even for our Lord.

He went their anyway.  Intentionally.  He dislocated himself and his disciples out of the safety of their known land of Galilee to Tyre and Sidon, where non-Israelites lived.  Roman port cities on the eastern Mediterranean in Jesus’ day, Jesus may have known of the great spiritual hunger in the people of that land.  According to the gospel of Mark (3:8) and the gospel of Luke (6:17); early in his ministry, people from Tyre and Sidon came to Jesus for healing.  Traveling now to them, seemingly intentionally after friction between him and Jerusalem’s religious leaders; it could not have been possible that Jesus believed he’d go unnoticed.  . . .  Silence is his first response to the fierce mother calling out for her daughter’s life.  His disciples definitely do not want to get involved.  It’s hard to reconcile the racially charged exchanges here in this story.  Though he’s intentionally traveled outside, Jesus tells his disciples he’s been sent only for those lost in the house of Israel (Mt. 15:24).  Was he trying to set up a powerful object lesson for his listeners?  Or was Jesus really not yet clear that there was food enough for those outside of their own house as well?  The text never really clarifies.  What we do learn is that encounter matters.  When that momma, whose daughter has been tormented, throws herself at Jesus’ feet, her request cannot be denied.  When she will not allow her need to go unnoticed, Jesus sees past any outward appearance into a heart that firmly trusts that grace is big enough to include her too.  It is as if the encounter leaves all understanding that something deeper binds us.  Pain is pain.  Tears are tears.  Furious mother love is furious mother love whoever you are.  No matter the language you speak.  The race with which you identify.  Or the land from where you come.  Something deeper binds us one to another.  O for a world in which we all finally would see.

In a meditation taken from A New Way of Seeing, A New Way of Being:  Jesus and Paul, Richard Rohr writes:  “It is an openness to the other – as other – that frees us . . . It is always an encounter with otherness that changes me.  If I am not open to the beyond-me, I’m in trouble.  Without the other, we are all trapped in a perpetual hall of mirrors that only validates and deepens our limited and already existing worldviews.  When there is the encounter with the other, when there is mutuality, when there is presence, when there is giving and receiving, and both are changed in that encounter; that is the moment when you can begin to move toward transformation . . . – to ‘change forms.’  When you allow other people or events to change you, you look back at life with new and different eyes.  That is the only real meaning of human growth.”  Rohr goes on by writing:  “One could say that the central theme of the biblical revelation is to call people to encounters with otherness:  the alien, the sinner, the Samaritan, the Gentile, the hidden and denied self, angels unaware.  And all of these are perhaps in preparation and training for hopeful meetings with the Absolute Other (with God).  We need practice in moving outside of our comfort zones.  It is never a natural or easy response” (Richard Rohr’s Daily Meditation:  “Intimate with Otherness;” from Center for Action & Contemplation; 14 August 2014).

It certainly doesn’t seem an easy encounter for Jesus and his disciples.  It won’t always be for us either.  And yet we go.  We dis-locate ourselves outside ourselves to encounter whoever we might meet.  We go, trusting the Absolute Other to bless us all.

In the name of the Life-giving Father, the Life-redeeming Son, and the Life-sustaining Spirit, Amen.

© Copyright JMN – 2017  (all rights reserved.)