For Sunday
Proper 18B
Collect
Grant us, O Lord, to trust in you with all our hearts; for, as you always resist the proud who confide in their own strength, so you never forsake those who make their boast of your mercy; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. **
Amen.
Reading
Reflection
These two encounters don’t seem like much. A woman looking for help and the healing of a man. Jesus has made much more miraculous work than this already. But what is notable is how grounded these two moments are. Particularly grounded in people outside the faith.
And before we go any further, let us take in the thematic growth in this moment. We’ve gone from literally feeding thousands of people, healing people by the hundreds and thousands. That is the scope of chapter six. And when we come to this moment, an intimate moment with a Syrophoenician woman and man who is mute and deaf, we come here after all of the amazing stuff. Sequentially, we are invited to see this as further escalation of Jesus’s power. That’s what the entire gospel of Mark has led us to, after all. We are building more and more on Jesus exposing more of himself—his power and place in the cosmos.
So why are these two moments a big deal? Because these are not Hebrew people. And Jesus healing them, serving them in this way is a bigger deal than feeding five thousand or stilling a storm.
Most Christians take this for granted, I suspect. Serving the other is famously seen as a Christian response. And in a real way, we think of walking on water, for instance, as a bigger deal. But this is the bigger deal. And I suppose we still have a lot to learn from that fact.
Jesus breaks a boundary here he was taught to never break. And even does so reluctantly, showing just how significant it is. Where then are our boundaries? There are easy ones we can name, like poverty and class, political and denominational. But what particular moments and individuals, have caused you to question the rules you were taught? When have you bravely changed your mind?