Amen.
Did you ever go away on a vacation, wanting to get away from it all, from work from kids, from responsibility, and you hadn't any more than got your bag unpacked when the phone rang, and it was somebody wanting you to do something? Apparently that's what happened to Jesus in this text. He had been with the crowds of people in Galilee, had been teaching in the synagogues and countryside, and he needed to get away for a while; so he went over to the seacoast on the Mediterranean and retired to a little house to rest.
The disciples were probably as glad to be there as he was, for they, too, were tired. We might imagine, Peter and James and John walking along the seacoast, wanting to see what kind of fishing gear the men used who sailed on the big sea. Perhaps Philip and Andrew followed the fun-loving Bartholomew down to the village market, where they fell to talking with the old men who sat under the palm trees. How natural it would be for them to talk about their remarkable Master, the rabbi from Galilee who had made blind people see again and healed lepers. Before you could say "Shema, o Israel", the whole town was talking about the miracle worker who was staying in the house of old Michael the fishmonger, down by the wharf.
This woman, a nameless Greek woman from the
coastal region of Syrophoenicia who was shopping in the market,
heard about it. The minute she did, her eyes narrowed with intensity
and her brain began to work. Her little daughter, whom she loved
with all her heart, was lying in bed in their home on the edge
of town, terribly sick with a high, high fever. Her mind filled
with resolve. She went straight to old Michael's house and asked
Matthew, who was sitting on the doorstoop whittling, if he was
the miracle worker. No, he wasn't, said Matthew; the Master was
asleep in the house.
"Then wake him up," said the woman. "I have something
for him to do."
I don't know if Jesus sighed when Matthew woke him up, or if he
muttered something about being left alone. Maybe the woman didn't
even wait outside. From what we know of her, she might well have
barged in after Matthew and stood insistently in the Master's
presence as he twisted his neck and rubbed his eyes to get fully
awake.
Her daughter was extremely sick, she said. She needed a miracle.
Jesus was reluctant.
"Let the children first be fed,"
he said, "for it is not right to take the children's bread
and throw it to the dogs."
He was talking about the Jews; they were the children of God.
His ministry had been spent entirely among the Jewish people.
To this point, his mission was to be for them. Whatever strength
he had, whatever powers to work miracles, should be theirs. She
was Greek, not Jewish. Her daughter had no right to what was ordained
for the Jews.
But she was clever; and she was persistent.
"Yes, Lord," she said; "yet even the dogs under
the table eat the children's crumbs."
Maybe there was a little dog lying under the
table in the room where they talked, and she pointed to it as
she spoke. What harm was there in letting the little dogs eat
the crumbs that fell from the table? Surely with the abundance
of Jesus compassion and mercy even the crumbs would be enough.
So Jesus, apparently pleased with her spirit, granted what she
had come for.
"For this saying," he said, "you may go your way;
the demon has left your daughter."
She went home and found the fever broken and her daughter lying
quietly in bed.
A perplexing story, seemingly so unlike the
Jesus we have come to know and love and yet there is something
important, something essential here. We have to see the story
in its fuller context in the Gospel and see how the writer intended
it. If we turn back to the sixth chapter of Mark, verses 30 to
44, we find the famous story of Jesus' feeding of an immense crowd
in the wilderness--five thousand people in all--with a few loaves
of bread and two fish. It is a mind-boggling story, really, all
that food for so many people, and twelve baskets full of food
left over when they had eaten. But it was a very important story
to the early Christians, for they doubtless saw references in
it to the Lord's Supper and how Jesus was always bringing refreshment
and sustenance to his people in wilderness places. Then if we
turn the other way, over to the eighth chapter of Mark, there
is another story of a feeding miracle. This time, Jesus feeds
four thousand people in a wilderness setting, and again there
is much food left over--seven baskets full, in fact. But there
is another significant difference, aside from the sizes of the
crowds and the amount of food left over. In the second feeding,
Jesus is in the region of the Decapolis. This was a territory
that lay southeast of Galilee, adjacent to the area of Samaria
that was settled largely by non-Jews. The first feeding had been
in Galilee--Jewish territory. The second was in the Decapolis--Gentile
territory. Jesus had moved, in other words, from a ministry to
the Jews to a ministry among the gentiles; and his encounter with
the Greek mother in the region of Tyre and Sidon, where he was
vacationing, or attempting to, was the pivotal move from one to
the other. In the understanding of Mark, the Gospel writer, the
meeting with this mother marked Jesus mission to broaden the scope
of his activities and include the gentiles in his work of teaching
and healing.
I once heard a missionary speak. She was trying
to explain what it is that being a missionary is about. She defined
it as "a person who crosses boundaries to share the gospel."
We generally think about that as geographic boundaries, missionaries
who are sent to other countries but in truth there are all kinds
of boundaries to be crossed.
We get a newsletter from a very interesting ministry in the uptown
area of Chicago. They call themselves "The Night Ministry".
They cross the boundary of time to work with and minister to people
who are out on the streets when the rest of us are asleep. They
are missionaries in a very real sense. But so are grandparents
who volunteer in Sunday School classrooms when they cross the
generational boundaries to share the gospel with children. We
follow Jesus example whenever we cross the boundaries of economics,
ethnicity or race to share the good news. I don't think it's accidental
that this story is paired with another healing, for in the second
story of our lesson Jesus crosses another significant boundary;
that of disability. Together these stories announce that, in Jesus'
eyes, no persons are unclean, no persons are outsiders. He is
available to all persons. The kingdom of God is open to all who
respond to his ministry. Jesus' ministry to the Syrophoenician
woman and to the deaf man in the Decapolis clearly point to the
universal nature of his mission.
Henri Nouwen, the Dutch priest who died in
the fall of 1996 after spending about thirty years lecturing at
the University of Notre Dame, Yale and Harvard, spent the last
few years of his life as a pastoral assistant at Daybreak, the
largest L'Arche community near Toronto. These communities are
devoted to recognizing and nurturing the dignity of the disabled,
the mentally, emotionally and physically handicapped in our societies.
He discovered that each member of the community was supported
in a network of relations that has been described as a "mutuality
of care." He acknowledged that he himself was mysteriously
nourished in the presence of men and women whose bodies were physically
broken but whose spirits revealed a rich humanity so often obscured
by the modern emphasis on beauty, fitness, competitiveness and
consumerism. In attending to the brokenness of others, Nouwen
discovered that his own inner experience of fragmentation and
brokenness was in fact healed. The daily dependence on others,
which the handicapped must experience, becomes a symbol of the
universal brokenness, which places all human beings in a relationship
of utter dependence on the loving compassion and healing power
of God. If I understand it correctly, we have opportunity today
to be missionaries. The organizers of the Buddy Walk are trying
to help us cross the barrier of Down's syndrome. To come to appreciate
and respect those who are differently abled.
Our world seems to get smaller and smaller as communications and
distance become easier but I wonder if those things that separate
and divide us, those barriers that we build ourselves don't become
more entrenched. Jesus leads us in our lessons today to break
down those divisions and barriers and to recognize and value the
dignity of all persons. Let's all be missionaries.
Amen.