Be Opened
Scripture Reading: Mark 7:24-37
After coffee hour today I’m going to New Hempstead Presbyterian Church to lead their congregational meeting, at which they will vote to call their new pastor, Angela Maddalone, who is currently serving as their interim pastor. I’m not moonlighting. It’s just that everything must be done the Presbyterian way, which is to say decently and in order, per the good book. And by “good book,” I mean of course the PC(USA) Book of Order, which makes clear that an interim pastor cannot lead a meeting at which she is being called as an installed pastor.
Now, I’m sure that you would like nothing more than to hear an entire sermon filled with the finer points of Presbyterian polity, but as exciting as that would be, my reason for bringing up Angela’s call to serve at New Hempstead is not about polity, at least not directly. There was a time, not that long ago—within the lifetime of many here—when a female pastor serving a Presbyterian church would have been impossible because there were no female pastors. Women were not ordained to the pastorate.
The United Presbyterian Church in the United States of America—the predecessor to the PC(USA)—ordained its first female pastor in 1956. For some perspective, in 1956 Eisenhower was president, “Heartbreak Hotel” was the year’s best-selling single, and I Love Lucy was airing first-run episodes. Given the accelerated pace at which we live today, 68 years ago may seem like prehistoric times, but within the 2,000-year history of the church, it barely registers and still qualifies as a recent innovation.
The history of the church is one in which the Holy Spirit continually confounds and even scandalizes those within by showing just how wide the mercy of God is…
The history of the church is one in which the Holy Spirit continually confounds and even scandalizes those within by showing just how wide the mercy of God is, throwing open the doors to those who had been on the outside. We see Jesus working in such a way in both stories before us today. Both the Syrophoenician woman who begs Jesus to heal her daughter and the deaf man whose friends plead for Jesus show him mercy, would have been regarded as “other” by those on the inside. Gentiles were outside the scope of God’s covenant with Israel, and illness and infirmity were regarded as punishment for sin. Yet Jesus draws no distinction between insider and outsider, showing mercy and compassion to both.
I debated with myself whether to preach from this passage because a year ago around this time we read Matthew’s version. In some ways Matthew’s account is more interesting than Mark’s. Matthew ratchets up the tension by having the disciples urge Jesus to send the woman away because they’re annoyed by her shouting, while in Mark the disciples are silent. Plus, Matthew highlights the woman’s otherness even further by referring to her not as Syrophoenician but as a Canaanite, which plays on an ancient Jewish fear and hatred of the people who once lived on the land that became Israel.
While Matthew’s account is more interesting, I thought that we should hear this story from Mark’s perspective for two reasons. First, in both Matthew and Mark Jesus’ dismissive attitude toward the woman is so provocative and out of character with how we expect Jesus to act that it begs for an explanation. Beyond being dismissive of the woman, Jesus appears contemptuous toward her. As a follower of Christ, I want to know what that’s about.
Second, Mark does something interesting that Matthew doesn’t. In Matthew, after Jesus heals the woman’s daughter, the next passage tells of the many miraculous healings that Jesus performs as streams of people are brought to him. Jesus heals people suffering from all manner of illness and infirmity, yet no one healing is highlighted.
Mark, on the other hand, gets specific, focusing in on this one man who cannot hear or speak. And by placing these two stories of outsiders back to back, it’s as if Mark is inviting us to read them together, i.e., to see each one in light of the other, which is what we’re going to do.
“From there he set out and went away to the region of Tyre.” Tyre was a coastal city north of Israel, in what today would be Lebanon. Despite the fact that Jesus is on foreign soil, the people of Tyre know of him. He enters a private house, perhaps that of a Jew living abroad. He’s trying to stay out of sight and not draw a crowd. Still, there are murmurings and whispers about this stranger from Galilee. Soon word of his arrival reaches the ear of a local woman whose daughter suffers from an unclean spirit that controls her.
Breaking all sense of propriety, both as a woman approaching a man she doesn’t know, and as a Gentile approaching a Jew, she enters the house where Jesus is staying and bows at his feet. She begs him to cast the demon from her daughter. Jesus, deeply moved by her entreaty, says, “Of course, I will heal your daughter.”
I’m just kidding. He basically calls her a dog. “Let the children be fed first,” he says, “for it is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.” By “children,” Jesus is referring to the Jews, of which he is one. The “dogs,” then, would be the Gentiles, including the woman and her daughter.
Most Jews, including Jesus’ twelve disciples, who are silent witnesses in this passage, would not have been shocked to hear Gentiles spoken of in this way. In fact, they would have agreed with it. God’s covenant with the people of Israel on Mount Sinai set them apart as God’s chosen people. The deal was that the Lord would be their God, and they, by heeding God’s law, would be his people. By its very nature the covenant created two groups of people—insiders and outsiders. Jews were insiders and Gentiles were outsiders.
Ironically, no one understands that better than this female outsider who bows before Jesus, begging this Jewish man to heal her daughter. “Sir,” she says, “even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs.”
It’s a brilliant and moving response. In fact, in many churches today there will be sermons preached about how this Gentile woman’s remarkable show of faith teaches Jesus that his mission extends beyond the Jews, and that Gentiles are included in God’s plan of salvation. Some will even go so far as to say that Jesus’ “dog” comment shows a prejudice against Gentiles, of which this Gentile woman gently rebukes him. Jesus, humbled by the deep faith of this Gentile woman, has his eyes opened and sees for the first time that God’s grace extends to Gentile as well as Jew, and heals her daughter.
This is a view that has gained traction in recent years, and to it I say…hogwash! Nonsense! BS! Humbug! Jesus does not need his eyes opened to God’s plan of salvation for all people. He is God’s plan of salvation for all people.
This is not even his first foray into Gentile territory. It’s not as if Jesus has been confining his ministry within Israel’s borders. A few weeks back we heard Mark tell how Jesus took the disciples across the Sea of Galilee into a Gentile land to heal a demon-possessed man. And now he has brought them to Tyre, another Gentile land. In a moment we will hear of him taking his disciples in the opposite direction from Tyre to yet another Gentile land where he will encounter a deaf man.
For someone whose attitude toward Gentiles is supposedly “Israel First,” as some essentially argue, Jesus sure spends an awful lot of time among Gentiles. So perhaps there’s more to this story than Jesus’ coming to terms with the scope of his mission. Perhaps Jesus isn’t the one who needs his eyes opened. Maybe the disciples do. Maybe we are the ones whose hearts and minds are closed to the truth of God’s extravagant grace for all people, including those whom we regard as outsiders. Maybe we, the church, are the ones whose eyes and ears need to be opened.
After Jesus and the disciples leave Tyre they travel to the Decapolis. The fact that the name is Greek (meaning “ten cities”) tells us that this too is Gentile territory. First Tyre and now the Decapolis. It’s almost as if Jesus is trying to underscore for his disciples just how wide the mercy of God is.
No sooner does Jesus arrive than people bring to him a man who cannot hear or speak. They beg him to lay his hands upon him and heal him. I mentioned earlier that in the Ancient Near East of Jesus’ day, illness and infirmity were considered the result of sin. Think of the story of the blind man whom Jesus encounters in the Gospel of John. The disciples ask him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents that he was born blind?” (John 9:2).
“Be opened.” Jesus says this not only to the deaf man but also to the disciples, who have not been able to hear what Jesus has been trying to teach them about the radical inclusiveness of God’s grace…
That is the unspoken context here in Mark’s Gospel for this man who is deaf and mute. He is suffering the just punishment for his or his parents’ sin. Yet Jesus shows no hesitation toward him. Respecting the man’s dignity, he takes him aside in private, puts his fingers in the man’s ears, spits, and touches the man’s tongue. This is an intensely personal and tactile encounter. Jesus then looks up, sighs, and says, “Be opened,” and with that the man’s ears are opened and his tongue is freed to speak clearly for the first time.
“Be opened.” Jesus says this not only to the deaf man but also to the disciples, who have not been able to hear what Jesus has been trying to teach them about the radical inclusiveness of God’s grace, a grace that reaches beyond the borders of Israel and up to Tyre and down to the Decapolis and across the Sea of Galilee.
To a church that would close its doors to those regarded as outsiders, Jesus says, “Be opened.” To all of us whose hearts are closed to our neighbor or a former friend or family member we no longer speak to, Jesus says, “Be opened.” To a church that frets about declining numbers in the pews and relevance in the world, Jesus says, “Be opened.”
Not “Be open,” mind you, but “Be opened.” There is a big difference. “Be open” is the voice of the law. You may as well hear it as “Thou shalt be open.” The responsibility lies with us. We are the subject. We are tasked with doing what the law commands. But if the law teaches us anything, it’s that we’re no good at following it. Just look at the end of this passage. Jesus orders the people who’ve witnessed the miraculous healing to tell no one. But what do they do? “The more he ordered them,” Mark writes, “the more zealously they proclaimed it.” So much for the law!
But “Be opened” is a word of grace. Jesus is the subject and we are the object. “Be opened” is Jesus acting upon us, opening our eyes to see the glory of God in unexpected places and faces and opening our ears to hear the Word of God in unfamiliar voices, accents, and melodies. To a church whose future in many ways seems closed off, Jesus declares, “Be opened.”