Pentecost/Proper 18
The Rev. Nigel Taber-Hamilton, Rector
Isaiah 35:4-7a; Psalm 146; James 1:17-27; Mark 7:24-37
Today is best summed up in numbers: 1, 2, 3, 4, 7, 10, 12! And particularly the last one: 12. I'm going to ask you to think in religious terms - for example, when I say "one" you would say "one stands for God." When I say "two" you'd say "Old and New Testament".
"Three" (The Trinity). "Four" (four gospels). Seven (Seven days of creation). What about ten? (Ten Commandments). How about twelve? (The Twelve Disciples AND the twelve tribes of Israel).
Welcome to the ancient world. Numbers mattered - mattered deeply. For instance, in great Hero myths the number three was really important. Later writers claimed you could have predicted that Alexander (as in "The Great") would be a great hero and conqueror - was, in fact, a god - because of the three portents preceding his birth: His father and mother both had dreams interpreted as foretelling Alexander's greatness, and on the day he was born the Temple of Artemis at Ephesus burned down!
Jews of the first century were not only not exempt from a fascination with numbers, they actively indulged that fascination - they saw numbers as conveying profound meaning - way beyond the common contemporary fears of the number 13.
Now I'm sure you're all wondering why I'm telling you this! It's because Mark wrote his gospel for a Jewish audience, who would have counted. And in the case of his gospel, what are there lots of? Healing stories. We have two today, don't we?! The Syrophoenician woman's daughter, and the deaf man with a speech impediment.
So what do you suppose Mark's readers would have done as soon as they noticed there were a lot of healing stories? They would have counted, to make sure that the number of stories was a good number - that it reflected something important in their faith - Seven would be good. Ten, too. Twelve would be especially appropriate.
Anyone know how many healing stories there are in Mark's gospel? Thirteen. That's one too many. There's a message present in that number, therefore: what is the odd-one-out? Which healing story is different from all the others? I'll give you a hint - it's one of the two we have today.
It's the Syrophoenician woman's daughter. Why is it the odd-one-out? Because she's not Jewish!
Mark's point in doing this is to say: this healing story is particularly important, pay attention to it. So let's do just that! What's different about this story? The main characters - the Syrophoenician woman and her daughter are not Jewish! If you look at all the other twelve healing stories they're all about Jews.
Mark is making a claim here, a claim he wants his readers to pay attention to, in addition to the claim he makes in the other healing stories.
And that claim? Jesus came for everyone. He wasn't the Messiah - the Chosen One - of the Jews, he was God's gift to all of us.
Now about that other claim. Look at who it is - in Mark's gospel - that Jesus heals. Jesus heals women, children, lepers, beggars, the blind, the deaf, the lame the mentally deranged. Every single one of them is, because of their gender, age, or infirmity, an outcast, not even a second-class citizen but no citizen; each is a 'non-person', ritually impure, because Jews believed that illness and deformity were caused by some ethical or moral lapse. So, they reasoned, each of these individuals had been condemned by God, and each should therefore be pushed outside the community of faith - marginalized through no fault of their own.
All very interesting. But so what? Does this matter to us, today?
I suppose if it doesn't matter to us then I'd have to ask why we're all here!! Today's gospel - and, for that matter, the piece from the Letter of James - invite us to place ourselves within this story told about Jesus, and to emulate his responses: if we are the hands of Jesus for today our ministry is to seek to do what he did.
And what was that? For each of these people Jesus' actions restores them to wholeness, returns them from all of those different sorts of exile that they're experiencing: from those they love, from their health, from the lostness of mental dysfunction, from being treated as disposable. He restores them: back into places of relationship, back to being members of a community, back to fullness of life, back to being fully human.
The only thing he doesn't restore is that which they never lost: their status - in God's eyes - as children of God.
I'll bet every one of you can name at least one person you know who is in some way exiled - it could even be you. The invitation of this passage from Mark is that we who are now the hands of Jesus should work to bring the exiles among us back home, should work to help restore those who are broken back to wholeness, should work to restore those who are lost back to community, should work to restore those who are only partly living back to fullness of life.
Mark's Gospel is a reminder of God's will that suffering should no longer be the common condition of humankind, that we can be restored to full humanity and reconciled with ourselves, each other, and God. The letter of James reminds us that we have an essential share in exactly the same work as Jesus. In a sense, when we accept our calling and engage the ministry of Jesus, we actually become Jesus for our world - we live incarnational lives - and the Kingdom of Heaven is once more brought near - every time, and in every loving, care-filled, compassionate action.
May it be so for all of us: may we see this as our identity and ministry as followers of Jesus. Amen.
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