Sharing the liberating love of Jesus
Proper 18B | Mark 7:24-37
This week we get a couple of stunning stories of grace that sound different from what came before. The evangelist we know as Mark is famous for his punchy prose, its sense of urgency and pace (everything is suddenly and then), but most of all, its brevity. Mark’s is the shortest gospel. By a lot.
This evangelist is a master, however, which belies the oft-label of its lowly word choice in the original Greek. This is particularly profound against John’s labored poetic style. But Mark offers what writers call concision, which is to say, he makes the point concisely. And he does this by setting up his stories for maximum effect.
Most of the time in this gospel, healings take place after the story or between the stories. A narrator is telling you about all of the people who were healed as a matter of volume. To give these two stories this much real estate is remarkable—meaning we ought to remark on it!
These two healing stories also run counter to the experience from the previous chapter, when the crowds are following Jesus and the disciples and fame is spreading like crazy and all of these people are coming out to be healed and here Jesus is clearly trying to get away from that. A big mass movement of people and its supposed leader wants nothing to do with it.
Remember, Tradition.
These moments also occur right after an engagement with Jesus’s critics about his response to tradition. Particularly, the washing of hands, which we recall is the stand-in for purity, which is a stand-in for righteousness, which is a stand-in for the whole divine project.
And Jesus stands up to their expectation with urgency and incredulity because this divine project is not supported by the question of whether they wash their hands. God’s work in the world is not dependent on one person following a single rule. But it is dependent on our proclivity to love other people.
Jesus is messing with tradition. There is no question. But he is embracing the heart of tradition.
And to get at what that means, we need to muck about in the nature of our rules.
Dogma and Doctrine
Now, what people of faith have been doing for thousands of years is to employ two sets of rules. In old church thinking, these two are called dogma and doctrine. Dogma is the immutable, universally-agreed upon stuff. So think of the Nicene Creed. Doctrine is the additional sets of rules that we accumulate throughout history in an attempt to keep the more central rules.
These other rules, doctrine are not dogma. They interpret dogma. And because we don’t all agree on all of them, we can have a set of doctrine for every denomination.
This is what Jesus is messaging with when the Pharisees and Scribes criticize him for not following the rules: he bisects the two sets of rules, separating them and offers his hearers three main points.
- He isn’t breaking the central rules from God.
- He only breaks the human rules (not from God).
- And does so when a human rule violates the central rules.
This was his argument about the Sabbath back in chapters two and three—the disciples aren’t violating God’s command—but the established human interpretation of that command violates the command. He does the same with handwashing.
What we are invited to see in this is the limitation, not of God, but of how our ancestors saw God. And what our participation in that formal tradition does for people now.
Are we embodying the grace of God? That’s the central question. Another way to say this is Do we love? And Do we look/act/sound like love?
Jesus Learns, too
We need all of this background to name what happens in these two stories of Jesus sneaking around, stumbling into two people who ask for his help, and how he responds. Because his response, given what he has preached, is shocking.
Jesus rejects the woman’s request for healing her daughter, seeming to argue that he is the Messiah of the Hebrew people, not the Gentiles—and does so in about the most derogatory way possible. Jesus is insulting and withholds grace from a person who asks for it. Why? Tradition.
We often remark on the woman’s persistence. She argues back with Jesus. But what is it that she is implying?
He says:
“Let the children be fed first, for it is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.”
which is to say that she is not even human. She is less than the children of Israel. And the offering of grace to her would deprive the precious children of their food.
Take note: Yes, Jesus is calling her a dog. And that is beyond crazy. But look, also at what he is offering her: scarcity thinking. Mr. Abundance. Mr. Grace of God continues forever is suggesting to this woman that there isn’t enough grace to go a round.
This could be a test, perhaps, and this whole exchange is witty repartee. But I suspect it is something more like a blindspot in Jesus’s own thinking who is bumping up against his inherited tradition.
So when she responds by saying
“Sir, even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs.”
she is reminding Jesus that God is abundant and would never deny grace to even the lowliest of creation.
And because she said that, it unlocks the puzzle for Jesus and her child is saved. Because he couldn’t see it, but she could and that’s the point!
The Fall Out
So now that Jesus acknowledges that the grace of God extends beyond the Hebrew people, he is bound up in an ever-expanding tradition that is more controversial than ever.
Getting caught healing on the Sabbath and not obeying purity laws is problem enough. Consorting with outsiders can get him killed.
And what happens? An outsider is brought to him who is deaf and mute and Jesus heals him.
He warns them not to say anything about it. And yet they can’t not talk about it. This is life-saving. It is Gentiles discovering grace, Sabbath, love, justice, and peace: shalom in the form of Jesus. He is Good News to all people. And that news is going to spread.
So what is the fall out for us?
We’ve got boundaries. And we get punished for transgressing them. Our biggest one is class. But there’s race, ability, gender, nationality, too. There’s political affiliation, of course. And occupation.
But here’s the thing. What is something we saw in last week’s gospel that informed our present? People using doctrine today often side with Jesus’s critics in opposition to the gospel when it comes to widening tradition. When it comes to grace and liberation.
So our hearts for liberation, filled with the Holy Spirit and the love of Jesus sometimes get in trouble for seeking the liberation of others. They see us feeding people, so they make it illegal to feed people. They see us offering water so they make it illegal to offer water. They see us educating children so they ban books, fire teachers, and gut our schools. What are people so afraid of? Actual freedom from hunger, ignorance, injustice?
And yet what are we called to proclaim? The Good News of Jesus Christ. It is freeing to share the love of God, my friends. To love.
Jesus himself couldn’t silence their love. The man he healed and the people he met. They couldn’t stop talking about it. He saved a man’s life—no, he gave life to him. And all of that gratitude and thankfulness was exciting and healing. Like catharsis. Like transformation. Like their lives were just as changed as his. Like they would give anything to show their gratitude. That is what comes of it.
Jesus can’t shut them up. That’s the consequence of new life. Of turning. This is John the Baptizer stuff: repent! They are! Oh boy, are they turning. Because of what Jesus did. These people didn’t see it happen, but they saw what happened to someone they love. And they are the ones spreading the good news everywhere.
This summer we feasted. This fall, keep feasting, preferably with other people, but open your eyes to the joy. To the love of Christ in these moments. Find those places and moments and glimpses and store them in your minds and write about them in your journals and keep them and collect them like Pokemon cards or napkins in the glovebox. You never know when you’re going to need it.
Collect God sightings and rejoice. Because we are love ambassadors and we need our spirits up to the task. So let us open our eyes, our hearts, our souls to receive and radiate the love of Christ everywhere.