Be Opened!

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 You could be like a turtle, all withdrawn into its shell.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.