Proper 18, Year B
Proverbs 22:1-2, 8-9, 22-23
Psalm 125
James 2:1-10, [11-13], 14-17
Mark 7:24-37
I don't usually have the children come
forward for the sermon, but today, I need their help. [To gathered children:] I need you to act out something for the
grown-ups today. Show us with your bodies what it looks like to be closed up.
When you're closed up, you could be like a roly-poly bug, all
rolled up on itself. You could be like a turtle, all withdrawn
into its shell. Or a person, hunched over her cell phone, ears blocked by
headphones, in a room full of friends. When you're completely closed up, you can't see, or hear,
or speak clearly to other people. When you're closed up, you're like a
locked door, or a box that no one can open. It's a dark, lonely thing to be
closed-up, but it also feels safe, doesn't it? The soft, fragile, treasured
parts are hidden away, and all that people can see is the hard, silent outside.
Whole groups of people, too, can be
closed up. They can be turned inward, with their backs to the rest of the
world. Children, show us now a closed-up group.
Groups can close themselves in with thick walls and tall fences with locked
gates. They can put up barbed wire to keep others out, or shoot at them with
weapons. Or they can simply make up a special language that you have to know to
get in, or special rules that you have to follow to be part of the group. They
can divide people up into categories--rich and poor, educated and uneducated,
black and white, foreigner and native, male and female, Christian and
non-Christian, Democrat and Republican, baby-boomer and millennial--and they
can only let people like themselves into their huddle. Closed-up groups can
feel safe, too, can't they? They feel comfortable, and easy. Differences can be
hard to deal with. Helping people to get along takes work.
What God wants for us, though, is not
to live closed-up lives. God wants us to be open: open to the richness in
diversity, open to God's love, open to mercy and forgiveness, open to new life,
open to learning new things, open to healing, open to taking risks, open to
growth, open to grace. In today's
Gospel, Jesus goes up to the man whose ears and mouth are closed. He takes hold
of the man and he cries, "Ephphatha," or "Be opened!" And
immediately, the man's ears are opened to hear, and his mouth is opened to speak with others.
So children, when I cry, "Ephphatha," I want you to show us what it
looks like to be opened up. Show us what it looks like with your body when you go
from tense and closed up to relaxed and open to God and to one another.[Thank children and tell them they can sit
back down for now, but that I'll need them again later].
In
today's Gospel, even Jesus experiences what it is like to be opened. When Jesus first travels from Israel into strange
Gentile country, he is closed up within the culture into which he has been born
in human flesh. For Jesus, Scripture is clear that the Children of Israel are
God’s chosen people. Of course, God also cares for the Gentiles: the Greeks,
the foreigners, those who don't know the Law. But Jesus has been taught that
the Jews must be saved first, and then, through them, the rest of the world
will be fed with the bread of life. When the Syrophoenecian woman begs him to
heal her daughter, Jesus' response echoes coldly from out of the closed box in
which he finds himself: He refuses to help a woman who is "other,"
who is not one of us, who is outside of the Law, outside of his own limited mission.
This
woman, however, surprises him. Instead of slinking away, she rattles his box
with a clever retort and the powerful love of a brave "tiger-mom" defending
her child. That love breaks down the box around Jesus, and he changes his mind.
The divine love and healing power within Jesus throw open his closed-up notions
and, joining with the mother's great love for her daughter, bring wholeness and
healing to the child. Jesus is then empowered to go forward with a new mission—one
that is open to the healing of the whole world. "Be opened," he cries
to the suffering Gentile man, closed in a silent, lonely world. "Be opened,"
he cries out to us today—we who are more lonely and divided than ever before.
Here
at St. Andrew's, as we begin the program year today with a new commitment to
God and to one another, I wonder if we will let Jesus heal us with a risky new openness?
There's a great story about medieval knights who used to hold their sword-hand
up out of the baptismal waters so that they could continue to use it to fight
and kill. They were willing to open up their lives to Christ, just not the hand
that kept them safe and powerful. The truth of that story always makes me smile
in self-recognition. We all close up parts of ourselves to keep God from
meddling with them. For some of us, it might be our wallet that we lock safely away
from God's wild generosity. For some of us, it might be our prized sense of
superiority that we close up from God's abundant love for every human being. For
some of us, it might be our treasured stability and safety that we bundle away
from the risks of an encounter with God's life-changing Spirit. I wonder what
would change if we opened up our whole selves to Christ and his all-inclusive
mission of love?
Years
ago, in a hospital in the deep South, there was an elderly white man who was
very ill. He was as ornery as could be, and none of the nurses enjoyed caring
for him. One nurse, a black man, was a constant recipient of the old man's
meanness and racist remarks. He made the nurse's life a living hell every time
this nurse came into his room. Soon, the old man was dying. Strangely, it was the
African American nurse who volunteered to perform the increasing care that the
sick man needed. Amidst a barrage of insults, he would soothe his patient's
pain, again and again. This nurse's courageous and deliberate choice did not
escape the notice of one of the doctors in the hospital. The concerned doctor offered
the nurse a chance to trade off this difficult patient with another staff
member, but he turned down the offer, saying that he wanted to care for the old
man. Finally, the old man died of his disease. When the doctor came into the
room, he saw the nurse bent lovingly over the old man's body, caressing his pale
forehead and shedding real tears of grief and love at the man's death. The
doctor, who had always been much too busy to pray and much too worldly-wise to
contribute to the life of a church, suddenly saw the transforming power of Jesus
ripping open the constructs of hatred and pride right before his eyes. In the
nurse's Christ-like action, the doctor saw the astounding grace and love of God
out in the open for the first time in his life. The doctor's heart was broken open
by what he saw. He couldn't stop thinking about it. Before he knew it, the
doctor sought out the rector at the church he had been too busy to attend, and he handed her a
considerable check. He told her the story of the loving nurse and the old racist, and
he explained that he just had to respond somehow to the miracle of grace that
he saw in that room. He had to thank God somehow for a love like that in the
world.
At
different times, we might be the old man, the nurse, or the doctor in this
story. Whoever we are, though, we are redeemed by God's self-giving love. When
we ask you to give to St. Andrew's, either of your skills, or your money, or
your presence with us, we are not asking for you to give it only so that we can
balance our budget, or so that we can make a comfortable, closed-in clubhouse
for our parish family. That would be to shut ourselves, and God's Church, in a
box that is much too small. Instead, we are asking you to give out of
thanksgiving—out of amazement—over the divine healing, freeing power that
transforms our lives every day. God's love is incredible, when our eyes are
open to see it. God's grace is earth-shattering, when our hearts are open to
feel it.
That's
why we need the children to come forward again and help us. [Wait for them to come up.] Children, I
want you to go quickly up and down and around the aisles, and to cry out,
"Be Opened!" to everyone in the pews. Wave your arms, make noise, be
like Jesus, full of God's power and determination. And the rest of us, as the
children bless us with Jesus' transforming words, let's feel those heavy walls
come down from inside us and from around us. Let's feel our hearts float free.
Let's be opened to God's powerful, life-changing love as it flows in and out of
our whole selves, from me to you, and from you to me, from us to others and
from others to us. I think we will be surprised at the miracles we see.
