Thomas J Parlette
“Talkin’ Back to Jesus”
Mark 7: 24-37
9/5/21
You may have heard the old joke about the pastor who was giving the children’s sermon on Sunday. He was talking about the beauty of the fall season and going back to school. Near the end of the children’s time he asked, “What is brown and furry and scampers around your yard gathering nuts for the winter?”
After a short pause, one of the more talkative youngsters answered, “Well it sounds like a squirrel, but I know the answer has to be Jesus.”
When we come to church, we expect the answer to be Jesus. And when we read the stories of the Bible, we expect a certain Jesus to emerge. We expect a Jesus who is kind and welcoming and generous with his time. We expect a Jesus who is anxious to serve others, ready and willing to heal our minds and our bodies and meet our every need. That’s what we expect. And that’s usually what we get. But not today.
Today we meet a Jesus who is having a bad day. He is trying to get away for a bit, relax, regroup. Jesus wanted to find a place where he could be alone, a place where no one would know him, where no one would bother him, or ask anything of him. Jesus was looking for a vacation, a Sabbath, if you will.
But of course, he couldn’t be hidden. Jesus has just come from another confrontation with the Pharisees and scribes, he is tired, perhaps maybe even a little irritable. And then in walks the first of two people who are in desperate need.
Today we have two stories about people who talk back to Jesus.
In the first story, we meet the Syro-phonecian woman whose daughter has a demon. After Jesus initially refuses to do anything, she talks back to Jesus, he changes his mind and she gets what she wants – her daughter is healed.
In the second story, we hear about a deaf man who also cannot speak. His friends bring him to see Jesus, and because of their faith, Jesus heals him, and he gets what he wants – he is able for the first time in his life to actually talk back to Jesus, and it is a miracle.
These stories are unusual for a variety of reasons. To start with, they take place in the north, along the Mediterranean Sea, in a predominantly Gentile area. This is the first time Jesus has ventured beyond his Jewish homeland. He is outside his usual territory. In his first encounter, with the Syro-phonecian woman, there are a number of unusual elements. First of all, there is the fact that she is a woman talking to a man – something that just wasn’t done in that time. And to top it off, she was a gentile woman, she wasn’t even Jewish. In fact, this is only the second time Jesus talks to anyone who isn’t a Jew, and it’s only the second time he talks with a woman. And then there’s what he says to her. First, he refuses to do much of anything, and then he calls her a “dog” – a very cutting insult. For years, scholars have tried to soften Jesus’ words here, saying that ‘dog’ was a commonly used expression, a term of endearment, so it wasn’t that offensive. Or that Jesus said it with a smile and just wanted to see the woman’s reaction, whether her faith was strong enough to offer a comeback. Whether that was the case or not, it is still a shocking thing to say, something we would never expect Jesus to say.
The woman responds with a very cheeky reply – “even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs.” This would have been an unexpected turn of events – women did not talk back to men. But this woman does. And it works. Jesus changes his mind and heals the woman’s daughter.
And, take note that Jesus doesn’t go to see his patient. This is one of the few times when Jesus heals from a distance. Usually Jesus goes to the sick person’s house and lays hands on them, or at least meets them first. But not this time. This time he simply says, “The demon has left your daughter.” Very unusual.
Moving to the second story, it’s very interesting that this is such a physical story. Jesus puts his fingers in the man’s ears, uses a bit of saliva, and even uses what sounds like an incantation in his healing. In fact, when Matthew and Luke tell the story of the Syro-phonecian woman, they actually leave out the story of the healing of the blind man completely. Scholars have guessed that perhaps they did so because this story is so different from Jesus’ other healings and it sounds so similar to the way so-called “magicians” healed people. So Matthew and Luke possibly skipped this story because they didn’t want people to get the impression that Jesus was just a magician, or some sort of magical healer.
They are unusual stories indeed. But they do have some things in common. First, both stories drive home the idea that Jesus comes to break down barriers that divide us. Geographic boundaries, racial ethnic boundaries, gender boundaries – Jesus crosses them all in order to bring healing to these two desperate people. The Gospel cannot be contained by any kind of barrier that we try to impose upon it. As disciples of Christ, we are called to reach across dividing lines and offer healing to all God’s children. We are called to tear down the walls that divide us.
Consider the story of a fourth grade teacher named Miss Thompson. One year, she taught a boy named Teddy Stallard. Teddy was a slow, unkempt student, kind of a loner, shunned by his classmates. The previous year, his mother had passed away, and what little motivation for school he might have had simply disappeared. Miss Thompson didn’t particularly care for Teddy either – he was sometimes a difficult student and hardly ever did his homework. But at Christmas time, he brought her a little gift. A gaudy rhinestone bracelet and a cheap bottle of perfume, wrapped in a brown paper bag. The other children snickered, but Miss Thompson saw the importance of the moment. She splashed on some perfume and made a big show of how much she liked the bracelet, pretending that Teddy had given her something very special.
At the end of the day, Teddy worked up enough courage to say, “Miss Thompson, you smell just like my mother… and her bracelet looks real pretty on you too. I’m glad you like my presents.”
Miss Thompson worked extra hard with Teddy, and the other kids that were a little slower than average, and by the end of the year, he had caught up with most of the other students.
Miss Thompson didn’t hear from Teddy for a long time after that fourth grade year. But then one day, she received this note: “Dear Miss Thompson, I wanted you to be the first to know. I will be graduating this year second in my class. Love, Teddy Stallard.”
Four years went by, and another note came in the mail: “Dear Miss Thompson, I just found out that I will be graduating first in my class from the University. I wanted you to be the first to know. It hasn’t always been easy, but I’ve learned a lot. Love, Teddy Stallard.”
Four more years went by, and another note arrived: “Dear Miss Thompson, as of today, I am Theodore Stallard, M.D. How about that! I wanted you to be the first to know. I am getting married next month and I would like you to come and sit where my mother would have sat if she was still alive. You are the closest thing to family I have now. Dad passed away last year. Love, Teddy Stallard.”
Miss Thompson went to the wedding and she sat where Teddy’s mother would have sat – all because she reached across the barriers and offered a word of love and healing to a struggling fourth grade boy. Jesus came to show us how to do the same thing – how to reach out and break down walls that divide us and offer healing to a broken world.
Another important thing this text shows us is the communal nature of our faith. Notice in these two stories that other people intervene and bring the ones in need of healing to Jesus’ attention. The Syro-phonecian woman goes on her daughter’s behalf. Jesus never meets her daughter; it is by the mother’s faith that she is healed.
What about the blind man who can’t speak? – his friends bring him to Jesus, just as the paralytic’s friends lowered him through a roof to get to Jesus. It is by the faith of his friends that the man is healed.
Both these stories show us that faith is not strictly an individual thing. Sometimes we must rely on the faith of our community, the faith of our friends and family to bring us the healing we need.
We don’t often think of faith that way. We tend to be rugged individuals in America. Faith is more of a private concern and there are many people out there who think that they really don’t need to go to church, they don’t need a community of faith, because they consider themselves to be spiritual and can read the Bible and pray at home just as well as at church.
But I think these stories show us something different. Reading and praying on your own is a great discipline – but it doesn’t take the place of being a part of a faith community. Sometimes we all need to be carried, sometimes we all need someone to go to Jesus on our behalf and ask for the healing we desire.
George Gallup, famous for conducting polls and public opinion research, is also a devout Christian and has done a great deal of research on the American spiritual life. In one poll, he found that the number one spiritual need that people had was to believe that life was meaningful and had purpose.
The number two need was for a sense of community and relationship. From there, the next four spiritual needs were to be appreciated and respected; to be listened to and heard; to feel that one is growing in faith; and to receive practical help in developing a mature faith.
Where else does all that happen, where else can that happen but in a community of faith. It is impossible to meet our spiritual needs in isolation. We can’t do it by ourselves. We’ve all felt that component missing throughout these pandemic days. We did our best to stay connected – but it wasn’t easy, and it wasn’t quite the same. But to truly be a disciple of Christ, you must be an active part of a community of faith. It is only by acknowledging the communal nature of our faith that real healing can take place.
These stories about two desperate people in need of healing who end up talking back to Jesus – they are unusual. It’s not the same old story this morning. We don’t meet the Jesus we might expect. But we do meet a Jesus who shows us that there are no barriers, no limits to God’s love and blessing. We also see that sometimes we need a little help from our friends to bring about the healing we desire.
May God be praised. Amen.
