Vacations

September 10, 2006, Proper 18B

I pulled out one of my many Bibles last night – you may be like me and have far too many Bibles – or you may have only one – but if your Bible is pristine, clean as a whistle – then it’s probably not doing you much good; and I found, written in the margin of the first page of the gospel of Mark – “Mark uses “little people” to utter profound truths.

A leper tells Jesus, “If you are willing, you can make me clean.”

The Syrophoenician woman tells Jesus, “Even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from the table.”

The father of a young boy, “I do believe, help my unbelief.”

The centurion at the foot of the cross, “Surely this man was the son of God.”

Last week we saw Jesus being attacked (verbally) by the scribes and Pharisees simply because his disciples did not wash their hands before eating. And so Jesus began to talk about what defiles a person, not what goes into a person, but what comes out of a person is what defiles a person. He was actually talking about being clean or unclean. Remember that cleanliness is very important to the Jews. And Jesus basically tells the scribes and Pharisees and everyone else in earshot that all food is clean – “Nothing by going into the body can defile it. What is implied here is that there is no unclean food.

Those kinds of debates or attacks wear you out, run you down, deplete your resources. So we see Jesus going up to Tyre. You’ve seen Tyre on the news lately. It’s in Lebanon – it’s one of the cities that got bombed. It is not in Palestine and it mostly does not contain Jews.

Basically, Jesus is on vacation – he’s left the country. They are traveling through Gentile territory – and Gentiles are considered unclean. He’s gone with his disciples up to the local B & B (Bed and breakfast) for a few days rest. No Jews there means that Jesus doesn’t have to do any work. Just kick back and watch the waves roll in off the Mediterranean, maybe do a little fishing, shop at the market – oh, wait a minute, that’s a girl thing – maybe he wanted to pick up a little something for his mother.

And while he is there, a woman comes up. She’s not Jewish and she probably doesn’t know much about the God of the Jews. But, she’s heard rumors around town about this rabbi – that he’s a miracle worker from Galilee who has come to town – that he has magic healing powers in his hands. She comes to him and dares to ask him to heal her daughter who has an unclean spirit.

Now I’ll be honest with you, there are a number of different interpretations of this exchange between Jesus and this Syrophoenician woman. And I’m going to talk about two different aspects of this encounter.

First of all, in going to Jesus, she has committed at least three social blunders. She is a gentile/a pagan approaching a Jew. She is a woman approaching a man she is not related to. She is an uninvited guest at the house where Jesus is staying.

Tom Wright, Bishop of Durham in England calls the exchange between them, light-hearted banter or teasing and I have a tendency to agree somewhat with him. I think we often take what we read, especially with Jesus’ stories, as these great deep truths – which they are really – but Jesus tells them in a light-hearted manner. I still claim, and you’ll hear it over and over from me that the parables are very similar to jokes.

Do you really want to plan a bush in your vegetable garden that is going to attract all the birds in the neighborhood to come and nest. Of course not, you won’t have any garden left. We’ve heard the stories too many times, we no longer hear the humor in them.

Are any of you familiar with Ann Rice and her latest book, Christ the Lord? For years, Ann has written vampire books. She has a large following of readers of all ages. She was raised Catholic and has recently rediscovered her Christian roots. She wrote about vampires in an attempt to find immortal life – to find power that goes far beyond human existence. She came back to find that what she was looking for had been there all along in Jesus Christ – immortality and power.

Ann’s book picks up Jesus at the age of seven and follows Jesus, Mary and Joseph with their extended family as they travel back from Egypt to Jerusalem and on to Nazareth. During the trip, Joseph and other adults tell the children the stories of Israel and there is a lot of laughter because the children understand the humor in the stories.

And I think that’s how Jesus learned to tell stories. Two men died and went heaven… - it’s a joke, the man that was supposed to go to heaven went to hell, and the one who had not been blessed on earth went to heaven. Jesus used humor.

This gentile/pagan woman has the audacity to show up and ask Jesus to heal her daughter. And he sort of shakes his head and half seriously says, “I was sent to the Jews. Am I supposed to take the food of the children and give it to dogs?”

I was raised as an only child… My parents loved me very much, but Dad wasn’t home much and Mom wasn’t the kind of person who teased anyone – so I didn’t grow up knowing how to react to teasing. But this woman did – she didn’t miss a beat – her retort was just as flip – “Even the dogs eat the scraps under the table.”

I’m sure Jesus started – raised back and looked at the woman – nodded his head and told her to “go in peace, your daughter is well.”

What this encounter has done is to bring to Jesus’ attention that there are others out there who believe and who need his ministry. Now our scripture says that he leave Tyre and goes by way of Sidon toward the Sea of Galilee – to the region of the Decapolis. First of all, if you look at a map, you will find that Sidon is not on the way to Galilee – it’s the opposite direction.

So for whatever reason, Jesus takes a detour going back to Galilee – he takes a side trip. He ends up in the region of the Decapolis – the Ten Cities – Gentile cities – and there he heals a man who is a deaf-mute. Because of where Jesus was, we have to assume that this man was a gentile also. So we see Jesus beginning to reach out to non-Jews.

In the very next chapter, we find Jesus once again attracting a crowd, still in the area of the Decapolis, a gentile crowd and he feed four thousand people. He is opening his ministry up to those who are not Jews. He is inviting in those who have always been considered unclean.

He reminds us not to take ourselves too seriously, but to take seriously the way in which we respond to others.

Please feel free to email me with any comments or questions at nan@doerrworks.com