Fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost Yr B Proper 18 Sept 5 2021

Fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost Yr B Proper 18 Sept 5 2021

Proverbs 22:1-2, 8-9, 22-23, Psalm 125, James 2:1-10, [11-13], 14-17, Mark 7:24-37

 

I grew up in a wonderful community, where kids ran around and rode their bikes, played outside until their moms called them in, there were no streetlights to go on to tell us it was time to go inside, I ran into the homes of my neighbors to eat sweet treats. My memories are nostalgic, innocent, maybe even naïve. What I never knew in those days was the extent to which people who were not like us were kept out. Looking around me I could see that everyone was like me, but only in the last twenty years did I know the extent of that reality. 

 

Historically, one of the most pernicious practices in communities like mine was the widescale adoption of so-called “restrictive covenants” by housing developers. Compacts like these barred BIPOC (Black, Indigenous and people of color) and non-Christian families from living in many Edina homes – originally or at any point in the future. Covenant clauses leave little room for ambiguity. A representative buyer’s agreement from the Country Club District in the 1920s read “No lot shall ever be sold, conveyed, leased or rented to any person other than of the white or Caucasian race.” This practice not only kept people unlike me out, but it also kept them from building wealth, it kept them from good schools, it kept them away.

 

I do not say these things to make us feel bad, I say these things because I believe that when we know better, we do better. I say these things because I believe following Jesus is doing just that, knowing better and doing better, and nowhere is that clearer than in this story from Mark. I’ll tell you why. 

 

Remember, a huge theme in Mark is boundary breaking. Mark shows us that the reign of God is all about breaking boundaries, and like our hymn today teaches us that “in Christ there is no east or west, join hands, then, people of the faith, whate’er your race may be. All children of the living God are surely kin to me.” In Mark’s gospel, Jesus learns to break boundaries and calls us to that work as well.

 

Mark breaks boundaries with bread. In Mark’s gospel, Jesus makes available to the Gentiles the bread he gives to the people of Israel. First Jesus feeds five thousand people in Jewish territory, and then Jesus feeds four thousand people on Gentile soil and then immediately fights with the Pharisees over his authority to do such a thing. However, nowhere is this point clearer that when Jesus compares the healing of the Syrophoenician woman’s daughter to the sharing of the children’s bread with Gentile dogs. Bread, in other words, is a boundary-breaking symbol. 

 

Throughout Mark, the contrasts between insiders and outsiders are vast. We see and hear that in the conversations between Jesus and the Jewish authorities, the Pharisees. The lines of purity are so clear so that you are able to identify who is a Jew and who is a Gentile just by observing what they do, what they eat, how they wash. But what Mark wants his readers to know, both Jesus and Gentiles, is that food laws no longer determine relationship with God’s reign; it’s not what you eat but how you live your life that matters. 

 

Jesus is now wiping out those distinctions and shattering the boundary the distinctions had imposed. So listen to this. If Jews could eat any kind of food without becoming unclean, that meant that when Gentiles ate those foods they were no longer defiled by them. The bottom line is that Jews and Gentiles could now eat together. And that gets us to this boundary breaking story about this Syrophoenician woman, absolutely not Jewish, asking Jesus to heal her daughter from an unclean spirit. 

 

Let’s take a look. Jesus went away to a region in Tyre to get away from everyone. Maybe he’d been walking all day, his feet were dirty and sore, his back was killing him, all he wanted to do was find a comfortable bed and take it easy for a while. While he was imagining the wonderful foot wash and nap he was going to have, a woman approaches him. Not a Jewish woman, but a Gentile woman, a Syrophoenician at that, a woman so very far outside of Jesus' neighborhood. 

 

Now this woman who in her time and place had no right to speak to Jesus asks Jesus to heal her daughter. She must have been desperate. She must have been at the end of her rope. Not unlike the woman who touched Jesus’ cloak, not unlike the woman at the well. Women, who just want to be well, to have their children well, who want to be seen. 

 

But Jesus is tired, there’s no excuse for it, and Jesus barks back at her. “Let the children be fed first, for it is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.” The children in this story are the people of Israel, the Jews. She retorts, and reminds him that even the dogs under the table get the children’s bread crumbs. The dogs in this story are the Gentiles. What is astounding in this is that this woman has stood up to Jesus when Jesus is at his very worst, there really is no excuse for his words and behaviors here, and she claims that Jesus’ mission is not only to the Jews but everyone else as well. This is huge, the bread that Jesus breaks is for Jews as well as Gentiles. The boundaries are broken.

 

This woman shows us that Jesus’ boundary breaking mission is for all people. Where the traditions of the elders and the religious law could see only an outcast, Jesus sees the woman’s heart of faith. Jesus heals her child. Jesus does not hold his saving power in reserve but expands the circle of God’s mercy to include those once considered outsiders. Jesus welcomes all who put their faith in him. It is at this very point that Love wins because Love crosses boundaries. Love crosses the walls that we have erected. Love pushes against long held prejudices and practices that keep people apart. When we know better, we do better. 

 

Following Jesus is about breaking down boundaries. Following Jesus is about participating in systems that welcome all God’s beloveds and divesting ourselves of systems that continue to exclude and divide. When you have more than you need, you build a bigger table, not a thicker wall.  

 

Jesus is the bread that feeds us, all of us. God’s reign includes every one of us, there are no boundaries separating Jew from Greek, black from white from indigenous or alien, gay or straight or both or none. When we know better, we go out and do better. We go out and with this Syrophoenician woman we change the systems that keep us divided. We call out the systems that continue to oppress. And we always offer the bread of life to each and every person. Amen.