A Sermon by Sydney V. (Skip) Jackson — August 9, 2009
Indianola Presbyterian Church, Columbus, Ohio
Text:  Mark 7:14 – 8:21

Jesus said to his disciples, “Then do you also

fail to understand?”—Mark 7:18

And Jesus said to his disciples,

“Do you not yet understand?”—Mark 8:21

I noted last week how Jesus keeps taking his disciples into foreign territories, places they are in the minority, aliens on unfamiliar ground. I cited the admonition in Leviticus that is so very like the one we know so well to “love your neighbor as yourself,” but going way further to command in Leviticus 19:34, “You shall love the alien as yourself.”  Leviticus follows with the reason for this command: “…for you yourselves were aliens in the land of Egypt.”  Jesus is giving his followers a repeated crash course on what it is like to be an alien in the minority.  He does this in between visits back home to Galilee where they are part of the cultural majority.  Back and forth they go.  He is opening their eyes, raising their consciousness, teaching them empathy and compassion.  “For you yourselves were aliens…”

 

Jesus and his disciples travel back and forth across the Sea of Galilee several times—the western shore being home ground and the eastern shore a strange land where strange people do odd things like raising herds of pigs (Mark 5:11ff).  In the readings this morning they start on that eastern shore, cross back to Galilee, and then proceed northeast all the way to the Syrophoenician port city of Tyre on the Mediterranean coast.  Here Jesus is confronted by an unnamed Gentile woman.  From Tyre they circle around the Sea of Galilee and head southeast to the region of ten Roman-built cities called the Decapolis, where he astounds everyone by healing a deaf man and feeding 4000 people on seven loaves and a few small fish.  From there they go back home to Galilee, where the powers-that-be once again come to argue with him, asking for a sign from heaven, as if his words and actions weren’t already enough.  Finally they get back in the boats to sail once more into foreign territory.  Twice before there were great storms, no storm this time except for the storm within the disciples as they are struggling to understand what is going on (and maybe we readers are struggling as well).

Why doesn’t Jesus (or Mark) come right out and tell us directly what is going on and what it all means?  Well, sometimes Mark does—like when Jesus is in the middle of explaining his parable: “There is nothing outside a person that by going in can defile, but the things that come out are what defile.”  The disciples are clueless, so Jesus explains that food goes to the stomach, bypassing the heart, and so does not defile.  At this point, Mark jumps in with a direct comment: “Thus Jesus declared all foods clean.”  Direct and clear, yes, but I think he has missed Jesus’ main point, which follows—namely, how the evil intentions that arise in people’s hearts are what really defile them. 

The Bible does offer a great many direct admonitions, rules, laws, commandments.  But they’re not the most effective tools for teaching and learning.  “Love your neighbor as yourself” and “you shall not covet” are pretty clear, yet very few people ever seem to learn and do them “by heart.”  Personal experience is a better teacher.  It’s how I learned not to reach out and touch a hot stove.  I’m sure all of you have learned valuable lessons “the hard way.”  Stories and object lessons stay with us longer and are far more effective in the long run than any rulebook.  In addition, good stories are much more flexible over time precisely because they are not reducible to simple, absolute rules.  So the disciples learn by doing and by listening to Jesus tell stories.  Bit by bit they make progress.  And we learn by following the stories of their missteps and mistakes as well as their insights and triumphs.

The disciples are learning empathy and compassion, both from Jesus’ example and by experiencing first hand what it is like to be a stranger in a strange land.  In our world, this last continues to be a hard thing for us to do.  I remember being in tenth grade and reading an amazing book called Black Like Me by John Howard Griffin.  Griffin was a white man who, in 1959, artificially darkened his skin and traveled for six weeks through the segregated states of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Georgia passing as a black man and experiencing first-hand the difficulties that black people lived through every day.  He reported that among other things he became accustomed to what he called the “hate stare” he received from whites.  His experiences transformed him into a leading advocate for the Civil Rights Movement, but also resulted in him receiving many death threats.  He was hanged in effigy in his hometown of Mansfield, Texas.

Reading the book was an eye-opening experience for me as a naive teenager who had never actually met a black person.  I’ve had more experience since, but I find I still struggle to grasp what black people experience in a culture that would like to see itself as color-blind.  It’s hard for me and, I think, for anyone who is white to really know the experience of an elderly black professor confronted by a white police officer demanding that he to come out of his own home.  Or of a group of black children at a summer camp, who recently were told not to return after the first of several swim outings they had arranged and paid for at a private swim club in Pennsylvania.  Or of a black pastor I heard at a B.R.E.A.D. meeting tell of how he’d been pulled over by the police multiple times when he first came to Columbus, all seemingly because he was a black man driving a nice car.  It’s called DWB—driving while black.  I’ve been in Columbus nearly nine years and have never been pulled over by a police officer.

The other lesson the disciples are learning first hand is that this kingdom of God that Jesus is going around proclaiming is really for all people.  Jesus teaches and heals all alike—men and women, Jews and Gentiles, Galileans and foreigners.  There are no exceptions.  The daughter of a synagogue leader—healed.  A wild man in the country of the Gerasenes possessed by a legion of demons—healed.  A Jewish woman with a hemorrhage—healed.  A deaf man in the Decapolis—healed.  The daughter of a Syrophoenician Gentile woman—healed.  All those in need healed—no exceptions.  This is a kingdom for all.

This last healing is especially telling for all of the usual cultural boundaries that are violated.  An unnamed woman approaches Jesus directly.  She has a daughter with an unclean spirit.  Where is her husband?  Perhaps she’s a widow.  In any event, this is just not done.  At least the Jewish woman with a hemorrhage was discrete, reaching out to touch the hem of Jesus’ cloak trying not to be noticed.  Here Jesus is trying to get away for a little private time with his disciples when this Gentile woman of Syrophoenician origin enters begging him to heal her daughter.  Two more things against her—she’s a pagan and a foreigner.  Syrophoenicians were frequent enemies of the Jews.  And then comes the real kicker.

We don’t know why Jesus says what he says when he rebuffs her at first—“Let the children be fed first, for it is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.”  Did he just insult her by calling her a dog?  Why would Jesus say such a thing?  Bible scholars offer all sorts of explanations, many of which sound like excuses.  Examples:  (1) This is Jesus being truly human.  It’s been a tough day.  Who among us has not said something regrettable, totally out of character, in a time of stress or frustration?    (2) Here is Jesus learning compassion from a foreigner—again a reflection of his humanity or perhaps modeling for his disciples the sort of learning he is putting his them through.  (3) Maybe this is Jesus’ way of testing the woman, just as rabbis rebuke and test their followers not to harm but to teach them.  Hence Jesus deals with her as he would one of his followers, effectively granting her equal status with the twelve.  There are numerous other explanations.  But whatever the reason for Jesus’ words, the woman’s response is a surprising twist almost beyond belief.  Given Jesus’ verbal mastery over all opponents among the powers-that-be that confront him, how can he be bested in argument by a foreign, Gentile women?  But she wins.  Jesus heals her daughter, not because of her faith.  We don’t hear the usual “your faith has made you well,” but rather the reason is that she said what she said.  She has given voice to the need of those at the very bottom for justice and for the liberating power of the kingdom of God.

The kingdom of God is for all.  That’s the lesson the disciples keep struggling with.  And once again they fail to understand as they sit in a boat in the middle of the Sea of Galilee, midway between home and foreign land, worried that they’ve only brought one loaf of bread.  They have participated in two miraculous meals where they witnessed Jesus’ great compassion at work.  First in Galilee, 5000 men (plus uncounted women and children) were fed with five loaves and two fish.  Then somewhere in the Decapolis 4000 people were fed with seven loaves and a few small fish.  But the disciples fail to understand.  All they can think about is that they only have one loaf, and it’s not enough.

“Do you not remember?” asks Jesus.  “When I broke the five loaves for the five thousand, how many baskets full of broken pieces did you collect?”  They said to him, “Twelve.”  “And the seven for the four thousand, how many baskets full of broken pieces did you collect?”  And they said to him, “Seven.”  Then he said to them, “Do you not yet understand?” 

The clues are in the numbers and in two specific words—although this is one of those places where the translators have let us down yet again.  There are two different words for “baskets” here, which most translations fail to distinguish.  In the first case the word is kophinos—the Hebrew word for basket transliterated into Greek.  In the second case the word is sphyris—the common Greek (or Gentile) word for basket.  With these clues we might recall that numbers in scripture very often carry meaning on their own.  The Hebrew word kophinos as well as the numbers 5 (5 loaves, 5000 men, 5 books of the Torah) and 12 (12 baskets, 12 tribes of Israel) reference the Jewish world.  The Greek word sphyris and the numbers 4 (4000 people, 4 cardinal directions) and 7 (7 baskets, 7 days of creation) all belong to the Greek world.  In both worlds, the Jewish and the Gentile, the kingdom of God is at hand.  It is for all and provides enough for everyone, Jew or Gentile, with leftovers to spare.  The one loaf in the boat is all the disciples need.  It is enough for all, because the kingdom is for all people, east and west, north and south, rich and poor, male and female.  For everyone.  Even you.  Even me.  Alleluia and amen.