Eleven Years after Sept. 11

Pondering where we are as a country and as a people, eleven years after the events of September 11, 2001, I find myself going back to the sermon from Sunday, and thinking about how we so easily see the people we don’t like or disagree with as “dogs.”  Submitted for your consideration…

One of the greatest struggles any Christian might face is the slippery slope of becoming familiar with the Scriptures.  Now, that sounds like something that we should all strive for: To be more and more intimately connected to the Divine Epic that is our faith heritage.  In fact, our quickly upcoming Adult Education class will be undertaking this very endeavor.  But there is, on the other side of this coin, the possibility to become so familiar that the stories become…blase.  Familiar.  Un-engaging.  And if this is true for all Christians, sometimes it is even more so for those of us in “professional” ministry, who are tasked explicitly with spending as much time as possible with these familiar characters.  And sadly, every so often it becomes the reality that we read these stories without actually engaging them, that we allow the familiarity to stand in the way of being challenged and instructed

I confess that this has recently been my plight; and the past week has, at times, been rough enough that instead of taking comfort from the legacy of shared faith, I have viewed these heartening stories as nothing more than worn-out cliches.

Thank God for the stories of this Sunday, which chased me relentlessly, and would not let me be.  Thank you, Lord, for the examples provided not just to me, but all of us on this day.

We start off with an encounter that is somewhat perplexing, because, frankly, it is not what we expect of Jesus, who is our ideal model, our Messiah, our Lord and Savior and Divine Example of Infinite Grace and Mercy.  (How’s that for a title?)  We find Jesus in the region of Tyre, and there, he is approached by a Syrophoenician woman, beseeching his mercy and healing not for herself, but for her daughter.  And our first thought, as we recall all the healing Jesus has offered to others in need, as we think on Jesus who said, “Let the little children come to me,” is that this is a slam-dunk – of course Jesus will go heal this poor, young child!

But.

But that’s not what he does.  Instead, we hear him utter the following words, shocking words when we consider them, “It is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.”  Pardon me, but did our Most Divine Example of Infinite Mercy and Grace just refer to a young girl and her mother as “dogs?”

Yes.  Yes, he did.  The very one who, in the reading immediately prior taught us all that it is not what goes in to a person but rather what comes out – actions, attitudes, and words – that make a person clean or unclean, just referred to a mother and her sick daughter as “dogs.”

Perhaps a bit of back story is necessary at this point.

While Mark is not explicit about this, a bit of historical research will show us that the region of Tyre was not a purely Jewish area; it was a mix of Jews and Gentiles.  Furthermore, the Gentiles in the area were living in such a way that the Jewish people were not having an easy time of it.  Due to the exploits of Gentile landowners, many Jews in the region of Tyre experienced severe economic hardship.  Aware of this reality, Jesus may have had a hard time being merciful toward someone who was contributing to such an atmosphere.  Furthermore, popular speculation among scholars is that Jesus made this trip out of the familiar Jewish lands to try and get away, to find some peace, rest and relaxation.  Hence, staying in a house and not making his presence known.  So, despite wanting a nap and maybe a game of Cribbage with the disciples, his vacation is interrupted by this woman, this Gentile woman, who is part of a people that is creating hardship for Jesus’ own people.  What we see here is that Jesus truly is fully-human, because his response to her request is a very human response.

But this is also where we find the much-needed example for our own spiritual lives of faith.  This random, unnamed woman does not slink away at the rebuke, but instead does something extremely heroic: She stands up for herself, recognizing both the truth of who she is, and even more so, the Truth of God.  She owns this label that she is a dog, and perhaps worth no more consideration than that given to a dog, at least to Jewish eyes.  But instead just slinking away, she also shows an understanding of God that few Jewish people in our Gospels seem to be recognizing: that even as such, God loves her, cares about her and her daughter, and that in God’s eyes she is every bit the beloved child.  Carrying Jesus’ metaphor one step further, she turns his human understanding on it’s head and proclaims to him the very Divine grace he has been attempting to teach others.

And she could only do this if she was true to who she understood herself to be, not in anyone else’s eyes but God’s.  Her own self-understanding, and desire to be true to that not for her own sake but that of her daughter’s, brings about the healing that she was first asking for, but it also does more: It creates a bridge over human constructs, allowing us to see one another as God’s children.  In proclaiming her own understanding of what it is that Jesus has been teaching, even if it hasn’t been specifically to her people, she enables Jesus to move past the human needs for rest and the human capacity for segregation and again live more fully into realizing the Kingdom of God on earth.

Wow.

In such an exchange, and with such an outcome, how could any of us find this to be blase or commonplace?  How could any of us witnessing this not be challenged or engaged to do the same, to reach out to those we might normally think of deserving no more treatment than common dogs?

Our call is to create community, to reach out, to invite people to “taste and see that the Lord is good.”  How can we do this if we so easily fall prey to the human capacity to classify and degrade fellow humans?  How can we build community, true community, if we are afraid to share all of who we are with each other, fearful that doing so would not grant us grace but rather condemnation?  Because, if we’re honest with ourselves, even if only in the silent depths of our hearts, each of us all too easily falls into this human practice of seeing others as less than we are.  People who struggle with emotional or physical maladies are to be pitied, those who are not as well off financially are to be scorned, those who disagree with our perspectives are to be condemned.  And this attitude, conscious or not, leads each of us to push each other away, and leads us to act not as ourselves, but rather as we think we should to be accepted in the eyes of others.

When we are not true to our selves, we implicitly allow these realities, thinking that we are better than that, that we do not engage such practices or mentalities.  But we are all too human, and it is only by being true to this nature that we can fully move beyond it; if we cannot accept that this is a part of our human failings, then we will never be aware enough to move past it, overcoming it, striving for the community that is so much more.

Allow me an example.  I like beer.  In fact, I now have the hobby of making my own beer, and to be honest, I’m pretty good at it!  Many of you already know this, outright.  I would be surprised if the rest of you didn’t suspect it.  But we never talk about it, at least not in the context of being a Christian community.  I know that there are some of you with similar tastes, and that there are some of you who want nothing at all to do with alcohol.  And that’s fine.  I’m not talking about trying to get every single one of us on the same page in regards to this topic.  But because we have this difference of understanding, we never talk about such in the church setting; it’s almost viewed as taboo.  And yet, by not sharing that part of who I am with you out of fear that I will alienate, or be thought less of, or judged…well, then I’m not committing myself to the community of this congregation, and we all miss out.  By withholding some aspect of myself, by not being true to myself and my awareness of God’s presence in all of who I am because I am afraid of either judging or being judged, I implicitly inhibit God’s community in our congregation and beyond.  I don’t need you to put aside your perspective and embrace mine, but I do need to be willing to share all of my true self with all of your true self – this is where the full richness of community is realized.  This is where the unexpected and unlooked for blessings come out.  What are we missing out on by not being willing to share all of who we are with each other in love and grace, and recognizing God more fully in such community?

And if it is so easy for one of us to withhold something so minor as my hobby, imagine how much community we miss out on when we don’t share the bigger things in life?  The struggles?  When we portray a false reality that everything in life is wonderful and great and we couldn’t be better, even though that’s not the case?  We can’t put forth a false front and expect to have the full blessings of community.  We have to be real with each other, true with each other.  And this is what the disenfranchised world is waiting to see from us, so that they can join us and not be judged, but can share their lives with the Christian community in mutual blessing.

Earlier this week, I very much needed to hear this lesson.  And while I might have initially expected to hear it from Jesus, I instead heard it from an unnamed Syrophoenician woman who was truer to herself in not only the eyes of others, but more importantly in God’s eyes.  Her example led to unanticipated miracle, because even though her daughter was healed, perhaps the greater miracle is that she was seen not in human standards but as a child of God, and thus brought into the fullness of community, one which was not delineated by race or class or status or any other human construct, a Divinely-inspired community that has richer blessings than any other.

Following this example, we discover the gift of community we have to offer to each other, and to a world at large.  Our world is hungry for this kind of gift: to belong, to be accepted, to be loved without first having to prove that love.  If we are to proclaim the Good News of the Gospel, we must start by offering the truth of who we are, and helping others own the truth of they are: beloved children of God.  We are called to be such miracle workers, and we have the example today to prove it…Amen.

I would also submit the following video – a bit dated, perhaps, but nonetheless an important counter-point to the rhetoric of revenge and protecting national securities at all costs: