“Jesus’s very, very bad day”
Highlands Presbyterian Church
September 9, 2012
I want to
tell you a story of Jesus’s very, very bad day, a true story from the 7th
chapter of the Gospel of Mark and the 15th chapter of Matthew. I will be reading from the Bibles and Beer translation of the Gospels.
Once upon
a time…a group of scriptural scholars approached Jesus. They saw his disciples
eating without washing their hands, something they themselves would never do.
These
scholars confronted Jesus, “Why,” they demanded, “why are your followers not
following our traditions?” Jesus looked at them and said, “Amazing!” With all
the problems in the world…wars, hunger, poverty, racism, homelessness…you worry
yourselves with whether those who follow me wash their hands before a meal?”
A crowd
had gathered to listen to the argument. Jesus turned to them and said, “There
is nothing that can go into your mouth that will defile you. But what comes out
of your mouth can.”
Then Jesus
walked away. When he and his disciples were alone, his disciples started asking
him questions, trying to figure out what he meant. He shook his head, closed
his eyes and said, “I am surrounded by dimwits. Do I have to draw you a
picture?”
And then
he carefully explained that food comes into the body through the mouth, passes
through the stomach and comes out through the outhouse. It is what passes
through our hearts and comes out of our mouths that causes troubles; things
like envy, prejudice, arrogance, deceit, and a lack of good sense.
Tired and
frustrated, Jesus walked away, seeking some down time to himself, a chance to
eat alone and to rest. Jesus was walking through the village of Tyre. He was
dreadfully tired. He didn’t want anyone to know he was there…as though that
were even remotely possible. There was a woman who heard he was in the village.
She was a Syrophonecian woman, that is she was a Phoenician woman from Syria,
not a Jew, but a gentile.
As he ate
alone, she approached him, begging that he help her daughter, crying loudly,
"Have mercy on me, O Lord, Son of David; my daughter is severely possessed
by a demon." Jesus ignored her and his disciples begged him, saying,
"Send her away, for she is making a scene of her self."
This was the
last straw. Jesus looked at the woman and realizing she was a Canaanite reacted
abruptly. He said, “The food I bring is for the children, not the dogs!”
Now…she had
been treated badly by so-called religious folks before. She thought this one
would be different. Still she was ready and would not be put off. The life of
her daughter was at stake. Calmly she said, “Perhaps the dogs could eat the
crumbs that fall from the table onto the floor.”
Jesus was moved;
he looked at her again, this time with compassion. Then he said to her, “For
saying that, you may go—the demon has left your daughter.” So she went home,
found the child lying on the bed, and the demon was gone.
True
story…you can read it yourself in Mark chapter 7 and in the 15th
chapter of Matthew. I have combined the stories paraphrased them somewhat but
without changing the facts. The fact is that even Jesus has very bad days.
You
know…when you study the Gospels…sometimes you have a hard time reconciling what
you read with what you’ve been told by others. I read stories like today’s and
I wonder whether Jesus would see himself in what Marilyn Monroe said about
herself.
“I've
never fooled anyone,” she once said. I've let people fool themselves. They didn't
bother to find out who and what I was. Instead they would invent a character
for me. I wouldn't argue with them. They were obviously loving somebody I
wasn't.”
Did
you hear that? “They didn't bother to find out who and what I was. Instead they
would invent a character for me. They were obviously loving somebody I wasn't.”
If
you want to be an actress, you’d do well to study Marilyn Monroe. If you want
to be a Christian, you’d do well to study Jesus. But often we invent a
character for Jesus or allow others to do so and we end up loving somebody that
he was not.
Take
today’s story for example. You don’t hear many stories or sermons where Jesus
calls his closest friends “dimwits” and uses what amount to racial slurs to
ward off those who seek him. So let’s be honest…Jesus had a very bad day and
the Gospel writers put the story in the Bible for a reason.
What
are we to learn from this troubling story…about Jesus and about ourselves? Let’s
take a look at the characters in this story. There is, of course, Jesus. There are
the scholars who know the scripture and all the proper social conventions
coming from its interpretation. There are the disciples who have followed Jesus
around Galilee, hearing him preach and teach who don’t get it, have to have
everything explained in basic elementary terms and then try to run off a poor
woman trying to get help for her ailing daughter.
And
then there is this woman. All we are told about her is (1) her gender; (2) her
race, she is a Canaanite, in other words someone on the margins of life in a
community mostly dominated by people of other cultures and religion; and (3)
she has a sick daughter for whom she is desperate to find help. Oh yeah…one
other thing…she has heard about this faith healer who seems to be a different
sort from the others she has encountered.
Throughout
the first two scenes of this play…Jesus is the teacher. Jesus first teaches the
scholars that their social conventions do not serve God as they might think.
Then he teaches the disciples that it is not what goes in but what comes out of
our mouths that matter to God.
In
the third scene Jesus tries to teach the Syrophonecian woman a lesson…a hard
lesson about her place in the pecking order of the community. And of all his
encounters that day…with the scholars, then with his dimwitted disciples…Jesus
reserves the harshest language of all for this marginalized Canaanite woman.
What
happens next is one of the greatest miracles in the Bible. The teacher suddenly
becomes the student. He who is weary from teaching others all day…is taught the
most important lesson of the day. And his teacher is someone to whom no one
else has ever listened. Jesus not only listens. He hears. And he learns…he
learns something about who he is and who he was called to serve. Jesus is
changed.
This
is a moment every bit as big as the day he was baptized or the day he was
transfigured. This was the day of his transformation…and the day he taught us
what being baptized, transfigured and transformed is all about.
You
see…each Sunday morning we light two Christ candles…two because Jesus has two
natures…one is divine…the other is human…and that day at Tyre when this woman
boldly approached him and presumed to challenge him…Jesus was human and was
taught a lesson about becoming more divine.
Jesus
learned that we all have a lot to learn about love from those who have not been
loved. We all have a lot to learn about ourselves from those we think most
unlike ourselves. We have a lot to learn about how God calls us to live when we
live among those with whom God calls us to live.
Think
for a minute how different Jesus would have been if the woman had walked off
quietly after being chastised by Jesus. It would have been easy. There in the
presence of all these judgmental men, Jesus called her a dog, said she was
unworthy of his help. How many of us would have had the courage to remain in
his presence much less challenge his cruel assertion.
And
yet the character invented by many of us who claim to follow Jesus is the one
created as though the story ends there with Jesus saying, “The food I bring is for the
children, not the dogs!”
But
the story doesn’t end there with judgment and rejection. The story is allowed
to continue until it can teach a very important lesson…and the story continues
because this woman is permitted to speak and Jesus teaches us to listen even to
her.
In
the end…this story about Jesus and the Syrophonecian woman is a story about us.
Whose stories do we not hear? Who do we stay away from and keep from us? Who do
we judge as unworthy even though we have never heard their voice, never known
their story? This story of Jesus’ very bad day is in the Bible because God
wants us to know that unless you are willing to learn, you will never be able
to teach. AMEN
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