The reach of Jesus (Mark 7.24-37)

Mark 7.24-37
“The reach of Jesus”
Ordinary 23B/September 9, 2018
Eastminster Presbyterian Church
Tom James
A few years ago, we were lucky enough to be able to have our kitchen remodeled. Part of the remodel was putting in new cabinets, and our contractor talked us into having the upper cabinets go all the way to the ceiling. It looks nice that way, she told us, and you get some extra storage. And those things are both true. The problem, of course, comes when you need to get things that you have put on the top shelves of those upper cabinets, right next to the ceiling. Michelle and I are both around average height—not tall enough to reach the top shelves very comfortably. So we have to find ways to extend our reach—usually by standing on a step stool or something like that.
If you’ve ever stretched to reach for something, you know it can be a little uncomfortable. Muscles and tendons, perhaps, aren’t used to be extended in that way. Maybe your back or your shoulder gets strained a little. Maybe you have to reach over something that is sharp or has a hard corner. Maybe you can’t see very well what you’re reaching for and so you aren’t exactly sure what you will get.
We may not realize it, but Jesus had to reach, too.
The gospel of Mark gives us, in many respects, a pretty realistic picture of Jesus. Here, he isn’t a barely concealed divine being, but very much human. He can get tired. He can get peopled-out, if you know what I mean, and really want some alone time. He can even be grumpy and down right rude. I don’t know about you, but I can relate to this Jesus!
Our text for this morning recounts two episodes in Jesus’ ministry, placed just after one of his controversies with the religious purists of his day. He has just finished arguing against an obsessive and servile fascination with purity rules, and we get the feeling he is interested more in developing relationships with people—perhaps with a wide variety of people, people who might in fact be outside the pale according to those who worry about who is pure and who isn’t.
Well, here Jesus gets put to test. I say that he has to reach, and that is because he finds himself straining into the darkness a little, trying to find his way out of the old obsessions and not quite sure how to get there. Both of the stories that are sandwiched together in our gospel reading occur in gentile territory. The people that Jesus comes across here are not Jews—they are not even Samaritans: they are not close cousins to the Jewish people and are not even believers in one god. They are quite foreign, and their beliefs as well as their habits and styles of life would have been repulsive in many ways to Jews, like Jesus. And do we need to remind ourselves that the woman who approaches him in the first story labors under the distinct disadvantage of being a woman in a society in which women were not only powerless but the objects of suspicion and disgust? We are still plagued today by the disease we call “misogyny” in our own society: all you have to do is look at women are treated in our media—how quickly they are criticized for their ambitions while men are celebrated for theirs. But imagine that multiplied many times over, together with a whole array of customs and laws designed to keep women away from property and from power—and you have a pretty good picture of how women were seen in Jesus’ time.
So, Jesus walks into Gentile territory. We don’t know why, exactly. I sometimes think it was just to get a break. Maybe people wouldn’t recognize him there. Maybe they would not expect him to do just one more miracle or teach any more or endure any more Q and A sessions with critics and antagonists. Maybe Jesus just wanted a few moments of anonymity. We’ve all been there, I’m sure. But you know how it goes when we get tired. Our social skills are a little dampened. We let our guard down a little. We may even forget ourselves. As I say, Jesus is tested. He’s stretched. He finds himself having to reach, and I’m not sure he likes it.
A woman comes to him. She’s a foreigner—a “Syrophoenician” woman, we are told. A pagan. Who knows what kinds of impurities she carries with her, or how many red flags Jesus’ Jewish mind detects as she approaches. What kind of purification rituals will he have to undergo, just for speaking with this woman? He has just been arguing with some purists that none of those things matter very much, but does he know what the implications of that are?
Of course, she’s not just a Syrophoenician woman: she’s one more human being coming to Jesus with a request for healing and wholeness—one more claim on his compassion, and one more opportunity for Jesus to throw open wide the arms of grace.
But he doesn’t. As I suggested a moment ago, maybe he’s tired, and doesn’t want to be stretched right now. Maybe he doesn’t have the energy for it. We’ve all been there. But the amazing thing is that this Syrophoenician woman sees something in Jesus—detects something of the implications of his gospel message—that even Jesus himself can’t quite see. Jesus tells her she is a dog. This is probably a typical ethnic slur. If God’s people are children, those who are outside the pale have to be knocked down a peg lower—they are pesky, needy animals. But I wonder if there isn’t truth to this particular slur—not a truth about Syrophoenicians or about other particular groups but about human beings in general. Aren’t we all, in some ways, pesky, needy animals?
The woman doesn’t deny being a dog—she only says that dogs are need of compassion, too. We should imagine that this was not a dog-loving culture, like ours, where there are hotels and salons for dogs—where they get their hair and nails done and are pampered with expensive treats. We have to imagine streets where dogs are running around everywhere, not especially valued by humans but, being dogs, wanted to be around them. Longing for homes but often finding themselves lost, craving companionship but sometimes rejected and abused, hungry but having to make do with little. One preacher posted a sermon about this text called “The Gospel Gone to the Dogs.” I think that’s pretty good, and if I may push the image a little farther, I suggest that the gospel is meant for dogs, and that this Syrophoenician woman, this impure, unclean pagan woman, plays the role of many other women in the gospel story—she clarifies what the gospel means. She announces it in a metaphor that is unmistakably authentic and powerful. Like the woman at the well who tells her fellow villagers that Jesus “told her all she ever did,” and like the women who ran from the empty tomb to tell Jesus’ doubtful disciples that he really had risen from the dead, this Syrophoenician woman finds a way to say what has to be said. Through her, we learn that the gospel is for us in so far as we experience ourselves as lost, or hungry, or powerless, or longing. In so far as we are dogs, outside the pale of purity and perfection, but still just as needy as ever. In other words, in so far as we are human beings.
The reach of Jesus. Even if Jesus gets tired of reaching, if you will. Still, inevitably, it reaches us. That’s the first thing, and the foundation of everything else in the Christian life. Jesus reaches us. No matter who we are. No matter how undervalued and unappreciated we might be. No matter who else may exclude us. Jesus reaches us.
But that also means that Jesus reaches far beyond us, too. Not just to us, but also to those that we, in turn, might consider outside the pale. That’s the comforting, but also challenging, truth of the gospel. Jesus’ reach reaches all. It certainly reaches us. It certainly reaches those we might want to exclude. Hopefully, we remember ourselves enough not to use ethnic or other kinds of slurs, but the clear message of the gospel is that Jesus reaches beyond the comfortable confines of his own people, and that if we are his body in the world, then we are enabled and, indeed, called to do the same.
In how many ways are we in Syrophoenician territory today? In how many ways does the world we live in bristle with the kinds of difference we find hard to relate to? Our churches were designed for comfortable similarities, where our neighbors looked like us and spoke our language, where tradition and history were things that united us rather than distinguished us from each other. Where most people shared some basic assumptions that religion is good and that church is an essential part of life. We mainstream protestants today find ourselves as strangers in a strange land, surrounded on all sides by people we don’t know how to relate to—people who seem more different from us than like us; people who don’t seem interested in what we have to offer; people who seem beyond our reach. And, yes, we’re tired of reaching.

But what Jesus discovered, as he was stretched into Syrophoenician territory, is that the Syrophoenician woman wasn’t simply different—she wasn’t simply a strange and alien “other.” In hearing her, in listening to her truth, Jesus found himself again. He understood anew and in a deeper way the truth that he had been preaching and living. The truth of the gospel is that we are all strangers, we are all strange, and that we find ourselves as we joined with other strangers in faith. And that means that those who are unlike us are actually our kin—they are our sisters and our brothers. They are our true community, ready to share their stories, their truth, with us, and we can’t be our true selves unless and until we cross the borders of our comfort, and recognize them as us. In the name of God, our creator and redeemer. Amen.
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