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Sermon for September 6, 2009
Pastor Sara Kay Olson-Smith
Fourteenth Sunday after Pentecost
Texts: Isaiah 35:4-7a; Psalm 146; James 2:1-17; Mark 7: 24-37
Grace to you and peace, from God our creator and from Christ Jesus, who responds to our deepest cries.
Earlier this summer, we spent a week in Colorado with our dearest friends from seminary. This year the circle has expanded and includes two baby girls, our goddaughters, Lydia and Katie. While the addition of kids has definitely made our nights a little shorter and quieter, they have blessed our little community. What I loved about our time with them – and certainly what kept their parents from sleeping – was their communicating their needs. When they needed something, they demanded it. There was no polite asking or waiting patiently until their parent or a loving “uncle or aunt” was finished with their scrabble game. They just cried and demanded to be cared for, for their needs to be met, to be loved and fed, changed or rocked to sleep, or sometimes just to be held by someone who loved them. And – by God’s good grace – and the seemingly miraculous patience and love of their parents, each time they cried, those little ones were answered, held, and loved.
We hear in our readings today about the ways that God’s people call out to God with the same persistence and trust that a baby calls out to their parent. We hear in these readings the ways that God, a loving and powerful parent, responds to the cries of God’s beloved children.
Our readings begin with Isaiah’s prophetic words to be the people Israel who continue in exile. The community, has been driven from their homes. They have watched their temple destroyed. They lived in daily fear for their families and their faith. They, a bit like us, wondered what their future would look like and what God had in store for them. And as they cried out, in fear and in desperate need, the prophet Isaiah spoke these words of promise, like a loving godparent speaking to a crying child of their parent’s promise soon coming. “Be strong and do not fear, for God is coming and will save you...” and then he describes the ways that God will prepare for their return from exile, bringing forth pools of water in the desert path, turning the sand that burns their feet cool, and bringing healing and wholeness to those who long for it. God’s people cry out, and like a loving parent God responds.
I love the people who come to Jesus in our gospel reading, with persistent demand for healing and for the blessing. Jesus – like a parent who is just plain tired – goes to some friends house for some well deserved rest and renewal, but people find him nonetheless, including a Syrophoenician woman, a gentile, an outsider and a stranger. For this reason, and because she was a woman, her coming to Jesus would have seemed completely out of line. This woman, for countless reasons, does not belong in Jesus’ company. And yet, despite all this, she knows and trusts that he is the only one who will be able to heal her daughter. Somehow she has come to hear and to believe that Jesus is the one to whom she can turn with her deepest most heartfelt desire. She knows, somehow, that it is this man, Jesus, will hear her cries and respond. Therefore, she goes to him, begging for his healing power for her daughter.
Then comes this strange debate between Jesus and this woman. Does Jesus really think that the healing power, the goodness and grace of God is limited and can only be for the chosen people of his birth? Or is Jesus just playing the devil’s advocate? Is he testing her faith? Is he making a point to those who surround him and are listening in? I don’t really know. I struggle with this little bit of Jesus’ words and I imagine there was much more to this exchange than we hear recorded in Mark’s gospel. What we hear however, is the deep faithfulness and persistence of this woman. We hear of this woman who refuses to stop crying, and of her utter dependence on Jesus.
In bold and courage faith and confidence in Jesus and God’s power through him, she says, “I don't need a lot... just crumbs of grace will do it for us... just a little bit of your tremendous and powerful goodness will make all the difference.” Jesus hears her cries and, with love that breaks through boundaries of gender and religion and culture and all that separates, Jesus heals the Syrophoenician woman’s daughter. Nothing can stop Jesus from responding to the needs of God’s people, all of them.
The same cries come from the friends of the deaf and speechless man. With hope and trust, they bring their dear friend to Jesus, sure that he will be able to help. The man himself could not speak for himself, could only make indiscernible sounds, but his friends helped make his cries known. Jesus heard, heard both the cries of the mute man and his friends, and Jesus, with the healing power of his saliva and his hands and his deep sighs to heaven, spoke, “ephphatha... be opened...” and his ears were opened and his tongue was freed. The man, whose cries could only be understood by his Savior, was suddenly able to sing out his praise and joy in songs that could be understood by everyone. “This man - Jesus, does everything well....”
Our good and gracious God hears the cries of God’s people – cries from a community in struggle and exile, fear and despair, cries that are spoken with boldness and persistence and as well argued as the Syrophoenician woman, cries that are hardly understandable like the grunts and cries and sounds of the mute man, cries from friends who long for the healing of those whom they love. God hears our cries and responds. This, dear ones, is the hope and promise which we are given.
These witnesses from scripture help us to answer the question, whom do you trust? Who is your hope? We often put our trust in our own strength, in our savings account, in whatever worldly power we are given, in our educations and wit, or we put all our trust in human organizations and systems which by their very humanness will let us down. The witnesses of scripture share with us the joy, the healing and the hope that comes in turning to God with all that we are, all that we fear, all that we celebrate, our whole selves.
However, we hear today that our God, made known in Jesus, is one in whom we can put our trust. Today we hear that our God is our hope, even in the midst of all the loss we face - here as a community and as individuals and families, even in our fear and despair. Today we hear that our God is trustworthy with all that we are and all that we face, with our most inward fears and struggles, with our deepest worries and our hidden joys, with our most heartfelt longings. Like the exiles, the Syrophoenician woman, the mute and deaf man and his friends,we are, each one of us, in desperate and persistent need of the goodness and grace and blessing which God so lovingly gives to us. There is nothing too big or too inconsequential, too deeply painful or joyful, there is nothing that God isn’t ready to hear and respond to.
Today, yet again, we put our trust and our hope in our Savior Jesus. We put our whole selves before him. In trust, we, who are closed up, deaf and blind to the needs of the world and unable to speak words of love, are forgiven. Jesus says to us “ephphatha, be opened to love and be loved.” Having heard God’s saving word, we, with the boldness and courage of the Syrophoenician woman, come to this altar, our hands open, and we say, “Jesus I don't need a lot... just crumbs of grace will do it for us... just a little bit of your tremendous and powerful goodness will make all the difference.” With a tiny bit of bread, just a morsel, we are given enough to fill us, to give us hope and to heal us. We cry out, in joy and grief, in sorrow and fear, in hope and courage, and like a loving parent, God comes rushing to us, encircling us with goodness, peace, healing, and never-ending love!
Thanks be to God,
Amen.
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