Fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost, Year B, 2015 – Proverbs 22:1-2, 8-9, 22-23; Psalm 125; James 2:1-17; Mark 7:24-37
This week I, like many other students in our city, will be preparing to return to school. September is always a mix of emotions: mourning the end of summer, relieved to be settling back into a routine, and feeling nervous about starting something new. It marks a fresh start to get things right.
At the beginning of our Wycliffe courses we are given a syllabus for each class, outlining the expectations of that particular professor. They detail the difference between excelling in a course and failing to meet the minimum requirements. I am so appreciative of these documents, referring back to them often throughout the year. When you truly want to do well, it is so important to understand what the expectations are.
Our lessons for today clearly set out the Lord’s expectations for living a life of true faith. The reading from Proverbs reminds us of this:
Whoever sows injustice will reap calamity, and the rod of anger will fail.
Those who are generous are blessed, for they share their bread with the poor.
Do not crush the poor because they are poor, or crush the afflicted at the gate; for the Lord pleads their cause and despoils of life those who despoil them.
In our hearing we recognize that these are important rules to live by. The reminder to love the poor, sharing our bread and seeking justice for them, stirs up our hearts to act. It is not unclear that our love is to be active, rather than sentimental.
The Lord’s expectations for living a life of faith are further set out in our second lesson, where James reminds of this: “You do well if you really fulfill the royal law according to the Scripture: You shall love your neighbor as yourself”. He cautions the faithful whom he addresses against empty and insincere declarations of love: “If a brother or sister is naked and lacks daily food, and one of you says to them, ‘Go in peace; keep warm and eat your fill,’ and yet you do not supply their bodily needs, what is the good of that? So faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead.”
Wishing for the needs of the poor to be supplied is not enough; we must supply their needs.
The naked and hungry of whom he speaks are to be regarded as brothers and sisters. This is significant as in the ancient world family was the only sphere in which benefits did not come with a corresponding obligation attached. In other words, we are to take care of the poor like they are our family, without expecting anything in return for what we give. This is mercy. Failing to do this is a symptom of dead faith.
These are challenging words for us to hear, probably because we are keenly aware of how often we fail to get this right: to love our neigbours and show mercy. Our desire is not to be hard-hearted or self-interested. We long for our lives to demonstrate our faith, glorifying the name of the Lord. So why do these simple precepts become so difficult to live out?
Maybe we feel helpless. We want to love our neighbour, but we do nothing because we don’t know what to do.
People are complex, their situations messy, so helping becomes a not-so-simple task. Not wanting to get things wrong, to complicate matters further, or unsure where to begin, we choke up and do nothing.
Maybe we feel like we don’t have enough to give. The problems of our brothers and sisters seem too big to handle, too costly to address, and we are struggling to get by as it is. We have people who rely on us already, and to take anything else on would be unfair.
As I have meditated on this question of why these simple precepts become complicated for us I have not been able to do so without thinking about the refugee crisis that we are facing. The afflicted are at the gate. We hear of the death and suffering of our brothers and sisters and more than anything we want to help. We want to do something, but what? In our anger, frustration and feelings of helplessness, we start to point to each other and assign blame for things left undone. Yes, this a problem that is too difficult for us to handle in our own strength, so with attitudes of humility we should look to the lordship and example of Christ.
The first story in our Gospel reading from today is about a Syrophoenician woman who seeks out Jesus to heal her daughter. We read that he has set out and went away to the region of Tyre, northwest of the Galilee in present-day Lebanon. From our Gospel reading last week we know that Jesus is coming from Gennesaret where some Pharisees and scribes from Jerusalem had gathered around and questioned him about clean and unclean things. He teaches them that unclean, evil things come from within, from the human heart, rather than from outside. It is these sins of the heart that defile a person. This is a significant lesson to keep in mind, as Tyre was a largely Gentile city, so those in it , such as this woman, were considered unclean.
Jesus does not want people to know about his presence in the house where he is staying, but the woman immediately hears that he is there and seeks him out.
An important detail lies implicitly in this narration: this woman has already heard of Jesus prior to his arrival in Tyre and she believes that his authority will allow him to expel the demon from her daughter.
How she has come to know of Jesus is a mystery. Unlike the Pharisee and scribes in the previous story who look like they have things together on the outside, like they belong, Mark emphasizes her “otherness”, that she is a Greek of Syrophoenician origin. As the Greeks divided all people into Greeks and barbarians, the Jews divided all people into Jews and non-Jews, for which “Greek” was a synonym; this meant not only “Gentile”, but also “polytheist”, “idolater”, “unclean”. So, “Greek” serves to label her religious heritage. Her syrophoenician origin indicates that she was from the southern part of the Roman province of Syria. Therefore, she is clearly not an Israelite, not a daughter of Abraham, and not an heir to the Law. Yet, she comes to Jesus, bowing down at his feet, believing that he will help her child.
His response to her plea is confusing and harsh-sounding: “Let the children be fed first, for it is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs”. Making reference to her as a dog, and her daughter by extension, sounds unkind and discriminatory. Yet Jesus speaks of fairness, which the image of the child and the dog serves to illustrate. And is fairness not a virtue that we often use to justify our own choices about who we are able to help and not help? We know that loving and showing mercy costs us something; so, perhaps we justify our reluctance to give by considering those who we have a commitment to care for. Our responsibility to our families, friends, and loved ones take priority over helping strangers, and certainly over helping our enemies. Jesus, our Lord incarnate, has come to redeem His chosen people Israel.
It is good and right to honour our commitments to care for those who we love; this story does not suggest otherwise. But the Syrophoenician woman, like Moses and the psalmists before her, pleads her case at the feet of the Lord, with a clear understanding of the One whom she has come before. Her response to him, “Sir, even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs”, indicate her understanding of this: the Lord is a God of justice, not fairness. This means that everyone’s needs are supplied so that they have enough, rather than everyone receiving the same thing.
In faith she believes that the ‘crumbs’ are more than enough to satisfy; that the overflow of the gifts of the Lord are abundant.
This is not to say that we should be satisfied in giving our crumbs to those in need. Quite the opposite. We should be generous in our works of love, trusting as the syrophoenician woman does in the One who provides every good gift. Jesus responds: “For saying that, you may go—the demon has left your daughter”. Believing in his word, she goes.
We are right in thinking that we do not have enough time or resources to love our brothers and sisters as we ought to. The life of faith, evidenced in our works, is rooted in our trust that Christ supplies enough; that even the crumbs are sufficient. Knowing our Lord with this assurance allows us to love in freedom.
Reminded of this, hear these proverbs once again:
Whoever sows injustice will reap calamity, and the rod of anger will fail.
Those who are generous are blessed, for they share their bread with the poor.
Do not crush the poor because they are poor, or crush the afflicted at the gate; for the Lord pleads their cause and despoils of life those who despoil them.
In ancient Israel the afflicted would go to the city gates to have their case heard. Who are at our gates now? How can we best love?
In a few moments we will pray together a prayer of confession, asking God to forgive us for that which we have done, and for that which we have left undone. From this place of repentance, acknowledging that we have failed to live our faith in action, our hearts may be purified to go forth to try again. Let us boldly ask in faith what the Lord would have us do now. Amen.
