September 6, 2009

Mark 7:24-37

We are the generation that stands between the fires:. . . It is our task to make from fire not an all-consuming blaze but the light in which we see each other fully. All of us different, all of us bearing One Spark. We light these fires to see more clearly that the Earth and all who live as part of it are not for burning. We light these fires to see more clearly the rainbow in our many-colored faces. Blessed is the One within the many; blessed are the Many who make one. (Arthur Waskow)

There are two Christs in this story from the gospel of Mark: one, the Christ who knows who she is and why she has been placed on this planet. She will bring healing to those closest to her heart… and to those who are far off. She sees the image of God in the face of every human soul, and is not afraid to bring that image forth; whether from the spirit of her sick child or from the grasp of a demon, or a man.

The other Christ? A man who, having for a season lost his own purpose and his chosen way, is challenged and changed. Repenting, he recovers his soul, and rises above human failing and human flaw to become a better man. Forgiven, he remembers who he is, a son of God—healed, he returns to his life’s work, a light shining in darkness , that darkness can never extinguish.

There are two essential questions that each one of us, a person made in the image of God, ought to be able to answer. The answer to the first is the spark of divinity within us; the answer to the second, the Christ light that guides us along our daily path. Here they are:

Why are you on this planet?

What values and principles do you choose to practice as you fulfill this purpose?

Of the two Christs in this story of Jesus and the Syrophoenician woman, it can be said that one shines with the clear light of faith and purpose while the other, shadowed by stress and sorrow, has, for a season, forgotten.

There is good reason for Jesus to have been experiencing compassion fatigue. If Mark intends in any way for us to read the Jesus story chronologically, Jesus had learned of the death of his friend, John, fled to a far place only to feed the five thousand, taught both disciples and the crowds, faced down the challenges of the scribes and Pharisees and healed the sick (when he was supposed to be resting). He is sick and tired, burnt out and bound up. All the giving and the healing, the challenges and the opposition—the very work he loved and came to do, have used up his reserves and left him running on empty.

We all know how he feels… we all have felt that way before. And we can understand that when the story tells us Jesus arose and went away from there to the region of Tyre and Sidon, and entered a house and would have no one know it, what Mark is trying to say is that Jesus had booked a vacation villa in a foreign country and he was done.

But Jesus is not the only Christ in this story—God has sent another One to Jesus to care and to confront, to hound and to heal. The unlikely Christ in this story of upsetting surprises is a foreigner, a woman, and a mother with a demon possessed daughter –she is once, twice, three times not a lady, but deeply, disturbingly Unclean. Oh, and one more thing: she is the only one in the room who remembers why she’s on this planet, and what values light her way toward fulfilling her life’s purpose.

But immediately a woman, a Gentile, Syrophoenician by birth, whose little daughter was possessed by an unclean spirit, came to Jesus and fell at his feet, begging him to cast the demon out of her daughter.

What Would Jesus Do? We think we know the answer, because after all, Jesus is God. Jesus may be a little tired, but we know he will dig down, reach out, love, touch and heal… because that is his mission, it is what he came to do. Jesus Saves!

But Jesus is not himself—indeed, when the woman enters the room he cannot even find enough of himself to be the Christ he knows he should be. And in this brave and shocking story of a Lord gone lousy with pain, Jesus snaps, breaching his integrity in a shameful, demeaning way . . .And Jesus said to her, ‘let the children first be fed, for it is not right to take the children’s bread and throw it to the dogs.’

What did he just say? In its way, it was like the N-word, a racial slur used by men like him of people like her, insulting and vicious. It was, in the setting, as unwelcome and upsetting as the form sent out by the Broward County Schools this week which asked families to label themselves and their children as caucasians, hispanics, negroes. What?

Biblical scholars down the years have strained and struggled over the meaning behind Jesus’ uncharacteristic and unconscionable insult. They suggest he might have been testing the woman’s faith, or teasing her. And though Jews of Jesus’ day didn’t keep dogs as pets because they considered them unclean, commentaries would ask us to believe he called this woman ‘s dying child a puppy, as if Jesus were some metrosexual with a Prada bag, toting his teacup Pomeranian around the countryside, unable to tell the difference between a woman suffering with fear for the life of her child and a house pet.

The commentaries want us to swallow this story because they believe that responsibility for sustaining the mythic perfection of Jesus of Nazareth lies squarely on the shoulders of the church established in his name. But we know better. We know we are not responsible for the words or actions of Jesus, but only for our own words and actions.

We know that good people, Christ-ly people, even, can reach the breaking point of spiritual pain or long-suffering and make serious mistakes, wounding themelves and others. We know it could have happened to the man Jesus, because it happens to us.

And I think we need to know that even Jesus himself could break down and breach his own mission, his own values… and still remain the Christ of God; with a capacity to repent and be healed, forgiven, and restored to his life of peace, purpose and joy.

Because if he could, so can we.

Called out by the integrity and love of the Syrophoenician woman, Jesus responded, and the Christ within showed up. Restored to himself, Jesus found not just enough healing power to save the woman’s daughter… but more than enough to save himself, and to begin to heal the harsh divide between the woman’s people, and his own.

Jesus no longer needed a vacation, he did not even need to return home to his old work and his own people! Instead, filled with compassion and joy, he went farther and deeper than he imagined he could, broadening his ministry to include the Greek cities and the people in them, feeding four thousand Gentiles with the same generous magic that once before had fed five thousand of his own people. . . and rejoicing to learn that there was still enough left over to feed a thousand more.

After all, the story’s ending is the oldest and best of all: they lived happily ever after. The woman went home, and found her child in bed, and the demon gone. All of the demons, gone as simply as that: gone from the child, gone from the fears of the mother, gone from the sting of bitter words exchanged between enemies, gone from the tired soul of Jesus the Christ.

In the crucible of compassion fatigue, accepting his weakness, embracing pain as a pathway to peace, Jesus found his holy self, his Christ, and became wholly what God intended him to be—what God intends all of us to be: Christs without borders, light-bearers whose flame, always burning brightly, need never go out.

God, grant us the serenity to accept the things we cannot change, the courage to change the things we can, and the wisdom to know the difference; taking, as Jesus did, this poor world as it is, not as we would have it; accepting pain as a pathway to peace, so that we may be reasonably happy in this world and supremely happy in the next.