I Hate This Passage

Mark 8:27-38

by Daniel Harrell

Tonight’s look at the red-letters of Mark, the words spoken by Jesus, arrives at its climax. Since verse one of chapter one—where we as the readers were told that Jesus is the Son of God—tension has mounted as Jesus’ own disciples repeatedly fail to recognize his true identity. Despite a myriad of miracles and a ton of teaching, including last Sunday’s final exam on the significance of his feeding two multitudes with a few loaves of bread, the disciples still can’t see it. A crowd then brings a blind man to Jesus and begs Jesus to touch him. Jesus spits on him instead, saliva being a popular symbol of healing power. Except that Jesus’ saliva only manages a partial healing. Wiping the spit from his eyes, the blind man says, “I can see people, but they look like walking trees.” Whereas most healings in the Gospels occur instantaneously, this one happens in stages. Jesus has to put his hands on the man a second time and only then were “his eyes fully opened, his sight restored, and he saw everything clearly.”

Sometimes an object lesson is necessary to get the point, which is this: the movement from spiritual blindness to spiritual sight sometimes take time. So Jesus gives his disciples more time. The walk from Bethsaida where the healing occurred to Caesarea Philippi took several days, plenty of time to put it all together. Upon arriving in Caesarea Philippi, Jesus starts off with a softball (or maybe it was a spitball): “Who do people say that I am?” Having heard the scuttlebutt expressed back in chapter 6, the disciples relayed it to Jesus: “Some say John the Baptist; others say Elijah; and still others, one of the prophets.” Each of these designations belonged to recognized harbingers of the long-awaited Messiah, a savior who would come from God in Moses and King David fashion to rescue Israel from their miserable existence and re-establish them as a mighty nation. Messianic expectations ran high; so high that by Jesus’ day, the image of the Savior looked like Superman on steroids. This is chiefly why Jesus never referred to himself as “Messiah.” The term had become too politically and nationalistically loaded. Not that this mattered to the citizenry at large. By calling him John the Baptist and Elijah, it was clear that they only considered him the runner-up anyway. And why wouldn’t they? Despite the miracles and the teaching, he was still just a homely carpenter from Nazareth.

Now comes the second try. Jesus turns to his own disciples. “What about you?” he asks. “Who do you say that I am?” Peter steps up. “You are the Christ,” he blurts out (Christ being Greek for Messiah). In Matthew’s gospel, the crowd goes wild, or at least Jesus goes wild. “Well, hallelujah!” he says, “Good for you Simon! Flesh and blood has not revealed this to you but my Father in Heaven.” Jesus goes on to give Peter the Oscar for best disciple along with keys to heaven and his new name Rocky.

In Mark, however, Jesus tells Peter to keep quiet. On the one hand, Jesus remains concerned that people’s high expectations of a Messiah will derail his mission. On the other hand, tradition holds that Mark was Peter’s right hand man. Maybe Peter insisted that Mark leave out the congratulatory remarks given how bad Peter’s own expectations were going to screw things up in the next few verses.

Peter finally sees Jesus as Christ the King, only to have Jesus announce that being king means being crowned with thorns and strung up to die. Such news did not sit well. It would be like a franchise athlete announcing that he’s going to let the opposing team run up the score. Or like the acclaimed war hero surrendering to an enemy without a fight. Or like the candidate you worked so hard to elect pushing the opposing party’s legislation instead. Or like Batman telling the Joker where to find the Bat Cave. How can Israel be saved if its Savior surrenders? How can a Messiah win if he loses? Peter pulls Jesus aside to straighten him out. He tells him to knock off the death talk. He’s scaring the other disciples. Did Peter not catch the line in verse 31 about Jesus “rising again after three days”? It doesn’t matter. Real messiahs don’t rise from the dead―real messiahs don’t die in the first place.

Jesus covers his ears and yells at Peter to get out of his face. Worse, he calls Peter Satan! Satan? Here you were thinking yourself to be Jesus’ BFF. Just trying to help. Looking after his best interests. Offer some friendly advice. Help him succeed as Savior. And how does he thank you? He calls you Satan! Are you kidding? Why would he do that? Peter’s words swept Jesus back to that desert experience following his baptism; where the devil first tried to divert him from the cross and onto the path of power, celebrity and fame. Isn’t this how any normal superstar Messiah would do it? C’mon, you can control the weather, walk on water and make dinner appear out of thin air. The armies of heaven are at your beckon call. Why limit your power, especially with all that’s wrong with the world? Satan had a point. And Jesus was tempted by it. But he refuses to give in, and we’re told that “the devil left him until a more opportune time.” Here it is. True, Satan will do better using Judas, but he doesn’t do bad using Peter. He definitely gets to Jesus. Speaking as much to himself as to Peter, he says, “You do not have in mind the ways of God, but the ways of men!”

OK, so Jesus would have to die. He would have to deny himself and take up a cross. Bad enough. But then comes the surprising part. If you were going to follow him, you’d have to deny yourself and take up a cross too. What, everybody goes down together? “Whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me and for the gospel will save it,” he says. I hate this passage. Sure, I believe that Jesus died for my sins. I grew up being taught that that the paycheck for sin is death and that Jesus’ death takes care of my death so that now my paycheck is made out for eternal life. For some reason, nobody ever told me the part about having to die too. OK, I knew I was going to die, but deny myself? I thought Jesus died for me! One day I was just reading my Bible, minding my own business, when I stumbled upon this passage, “If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross.”

I knew what it meant for Jesus to deny himself and take up his cross. What was this about me having to take up mine? I asked around. “Oh that!” people said. That just means putting up with difficulties in life, you know, like not getting mad at obnoxious drivers. Somebody else was like, “that’s just Jesus’ way of saying don’t be selfish.” Others suggested how I was supposed to “work to fix my bad habits,” or “stop lusting and being greedy” or even “give up sweets for Lent.” But these were the crosses I had to bear, I thought none of them seemed to be so much about denying myself as about improving myself, which had nothing to do with denial at all. There is a tendency in America to reduce the gospel down to a set of principles, as if Jesus’ main mission is to make life easier.

I was telling you last Sunday about the Christian who bought an atheist’s soul on eBay and made him to go to church so that the Christian could get some fresh perspective on Christianity. In one church they attended together, the sermon basically went like this: “Go for stability. Being moody is a selfish way to live. Nobody likes moody people, including God. Your will is stronger than your emotions. Don’t be moody and your life will be easier, praise the Lord.” (Seriously) Afterwards, the Christian turned to the atheist and how asked how anybody could find this objectionable. The atheist agreed, “It’d be like disliking the taste of water. It’s so bland, how can it offend? By the same token, how can it inspire? Be stable? Did Jesus say that?”

This story sent me to the writings of the 19th century Christian existentialist Søren Kierkegaard. I pull out Kierkegaard out whenever I’m having a bad day—just to make sure I milk it for everything it’s worth. After detecting how fellow philosophers devoted themselves to making people’s lives easier, Kierkegaard subsequently dedicated himself to making people’s lives harder (which he did in part by publishing only in Danish). In regard to Jesus’ words, he wrote, “The matter is quite simple. The Bible is very easy to understand. But we Christians are a bunch of scheming swindlers. We pretend to be unable to understand it because we know very well that the minute we understand we are obliged to act accordingly. Take any words in the New Testament and forget everything except pledging yourself to act accordingly. My God, you will say, if I do that my whole life will be ruined. Herein lies the real place of Christian scholarship. Christian scholarship is the Church’s prodigious invention to defend itself against the Bible, to ensure that we can continue to be good Christians without the Bible coming too close. Dreadful it is to fall into the hands of the living God. Yes, it is even dreadful to be alone with the New Testament.”

For the earliest Christians, “taking up a cross” meant being strung up on one too. And yet for Christians in America taking up a cross is sort of like taking up cross-country skiing. In theory it can kill you, I guess, but you’d have to be a real doofus. Mostly, nobody cares. Now, I don’t want to sound ungrateful. I’m relieved most days that being a Christian in America (even a Christian minister) means that I’m generally considered irrelevant and harmless. I mean I could live in Pakistan where police recently opened fire on a Christian gathering. Or in Indonesia, where three children’s workers were detained for running a Christian church camp. Or in Saudi Arabia, where two Indian Christian workers remain imprisoned on charges of sharing their faith.

Whenever I read about such Christians, it’s always with a request to pray for their release or rescue—a request with which I’m sometimes reluctant to comply. The history of the church has shown over and over again how persecution only surfaces whenever Christian communities genuinely follow Jesus, publicly living out his countercultural commandments to pursue peace and justice, fight for the poor, love enemies, speak truth and refuse to worship the idols of prosperity. Jesus wasn’t saying that you have to die to follow him; but rather, following him could get you killed.

Of course the alternative was worse. Verse 38: “If anyone is ashamed of me and my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, the Son of Man will be ashamed of him when he comes in his Father's glory with the holy angels.” In other words, “follow me or you’re doomed.” Most people conclude that Jesus is talking about hell here: There was a day when the threat of hell was enough to make a person come to Jesus. These days people wonder what kind of God would ever send a person to hell and why would anybody worship a God who did that? But notice that Jesus says nothing here at least about anybody going to hell. He’s not addressing not so much unbelievers as his own disciples; believers who are embarrassed about what they believe. Imagine Jesus showing up with all the angels and opening wide the door to heaven, and overwhelmed by God’s grace as you walk in, only to have Jesus lean over and whispers, “I am so ashamed of you.” What a lousy way to spend eternity.

Another (more Biblical) picture that always comes to my mind is of Peter again, this time talking to the resurrected Jesus on the beach, after all the suffering and dying Jesus said would happen were done. Jesus gets right to the point: “Simon (reverting back to his pre-Rocky name), do you really love me?” Jesus asks it three times, obviously to match the three times Peter was ashamed of Jesus. Three times Peter denied ever knowing Jesus at the moment Jesus needed him most. Peter replies to Jesus each time, “Lord you know I love you,” the third time with deep grief, no doubt recalling his own shameful behavior. Jesus responds, “feed my lambs.” In other words, “show me.”

I don’t know how many of you had the chance to be here last night to hear Shane Claiborne, the author and activist known for his do-rag, dread locks and horn-rimmed glasses. He described his own Kierkegaardian encounter with the Bible which led him to wonder where the people lived who asked the question: “What if Jesus really meant the stuff he said?” His search led him to pick up the phone and call Mother Theresa. He tells a funny story about bugging nuns to get her number, and then calling it expecting a nice receptionist to answer saying “Sisters of Charity, how may we help you?” Instead, he got this gravelly “hullo” only to find out that he was talking to the Momma T herself. After his initial shock, he told her how he wanted to come to Calcutta and work with her, to which she said, “come on then.” Was it that easy? OK, but where will we stay and eat, do we need to arrange accommodations? To which Mother Theresa replied, “God takes care of the lilies and the sparrows and God will take care of you too. Just come.” So he did. He went on to describe the remarkable experience that was, and how it led to his returning to find his own Calcutta in North Philadelphia where he now lives in simple community with a group of other Christians among the poor, serving them with the best they have, since to serve the least is to serve Jesus himself. Many ask about all that he has given up to do what he does, to which he quickly replies that following Jesus has never been about all that he’s given up, but all that he’s found. “And I have found so much,” he said.

Framed in this fashion, this passage becomes hard to hate anymore. To “deny yourself” is not to deprive yourself, but to give yourself to God by giving yourself to others with love. Maybe the question for Ash Wednesday is not “what are you giving up for Lent” but “what are you giving out for Jesus?” “Do you really love me? Then feed my lambs,” he said, which I always admire for its simplicity. Mother Theresa was famous for saying, “We can do no great things, just small things with great love. It is not how much you do, but how much love you put into doing it.” Someone once remarked upon seeing Mother Theresa’s work, “I wouldn’t do what you do for a million dollars.” To which Mother Theresa replied, “neither would I.”

After Mother Theresa died in 1997, Shane Claiborne was asked whether her spirit would live on. He replied, “To be honest, Mother Theresa died a long time ago, when she gave her life to Christ.” May the same be said for all who follow Jesus.

Got Bread?

Mark 8:14-26

by Daniel Harrell

Red Sox pitchers and catchers report to Fort Myers this week, which means you’re stuck with me tonight. It was fun having Red Sox reliever Justin Masterson with us last Sunday, though, truth be told, none of us expected him to preach a whole sermon. I guess since his dad is a preacher, as well as his uncle and two cousins, the genes sort of took over. Given his preacher DNA, I asked whether his family was disappointed that he became a Major League baseball pitcher. He said he didn’t think so, especially given all the celebrity that has come his way. Not that celebrity guarantees family approval. Nobody was more famous than Jesus, and yet Mark reports how his own mother and brothers thought he was insane. Moreover, the leaders of his own religious community regarded him as a renegade. Nevertheless, given his DNA, Jesus persisted in his determination to shepherd the lost sheep of Israel back into right relationship with God. Of course, these sheep never could see Jesus as their shepherd. No matter how powerful his sermons or amazing his miracles, believing that somehow God had come in the flesh—or at least in the flesh of some run-of-the-mill carpenter out of Nazareth—was just too much of a stretch.

Interestingly, the only ones who did recognize Jesus as the Son of God were the demons. Given how Jesus was kicking them around it was hard for demons not to notice. And then the last time we were in Mark we read how a Gentile woman with a demon-possessed daughter (three strikes in first century Jewish religious culture) was the first human to call Jesus “Lord” (even though Jesus called her a poodle). There is a perspective that comes with being an outsider that makes it easier to see what’s authentic. I’m reading a book about this Christian and this atheist who go to church together so that the Christian can get some fresh perspective on Christianity. If I have the story straight, they met when the atheist auctioned his soul on eBay a couple of years ago, sort of as a joke, I guess. The Christian bought it for 500 dollars. But rather than make the atheist convert (if indeed that would have been possible), the Christian made the atheist go to church and give his honest feedback for this book the Christian was writing. Not only did they publish the book, but they went out on the seminar circuit speaking mostly to Christians about how they can do better about getting atheists to come to Jesus. Not that this atheist can ever come to Jesus himself—at this point salvation would completely ruin his income stream. Nevertheless, some of his insights are interesting to read. For instance, he was completely astonished by how he could go to one church to hear about the Bible, but then travel just a few miles down the road and hear something totally different about the same Bible. The atheist said to the Christian, “You all read the same book, but it feels like you’re not even close to being on the same page.”

OK, so maybe that’s not so interesting. It’s been like that for a long time. For the Pharisees in Jesus’ day, their read of the Bible taught them that salvation came through strict religious adherence. God’s grace was for those who followed the rules. For others, represented by the Roman puppet King Herod Antipas, their read of the Bible taught them that salvation would come as political and military power. God’s grace was applied with a big stick. Jesus shows up neither respecting religious tradition (he works on the Sabbath and fails to ceremonially wash his hands before dinner), nor displaying any indication of political power (he has no army, no weaponry, no money). He did have power, however. Not only did he heal disease and feed thousands with a few slices of bread, but he stopped storms and walked on water too. And yet none of these miracles were ever regarded as Messiah material. It was like the woman who mentioned how she enjoyed hearing Justin Masterson preach last Sunday, but then whispered how I needn’t worry about my job. Sure the guy can throw strikes, but his exegesis of Jeremiah hardly parsed out the implications of Israel’s exilic predicament rendering any immediate realization of prophetic expectation extremely problematic. I mean, c’mon.

What’s especially sad in Mark’s gospel is how badly Jesus’ own hand-picked disciples struggle to get what Jesus is talking about. Though he put everything in the simplest terms of farmers and seeds, he still had to take them aside over and over again to explain what he meant. I’ve been trying to do the same as I’ve walked us through Mark’s gospel, stopping on the red-letters that denote Jesus’ own words. I say “trying” because not only are the simple sayings still hard to understand, but Jesus’ explanations are too. I may label the disciple’s thickheadedness sad, but only because I can empathize with them. Though sometimes I wonder if it’s all just a smokescreen. For followers of Jesus who believe he’s God in the flesh, understanding what he says means you have to do something about it. One of the major critiques the atheist had of the churches he visited was that they all talked about believing in Jesus as if believing the right beliefs the right way was all that mattered. “Just believe” and you’re good to go. And that’s true. But Jesus also said that genuine belief always bears fruit. It’s not “get saved by grace” and then you can do whatever you please. Nor is it like the Pharisees back in chapter 7 who acted as if the behavior substituted for belief; that righteousness was merely a matter of proper menu and manners. Eat the right food the right way and you were covered. You’ll remember that Jesus labeled that logic a big pile of poo.

In verse 17 of tonight’s passage, an exasperated Jesus wonders aloud why his disciples’ hearts are so hard. They’d had everything explained and had seen everything too. They were in the boat when Jesus changed the weather. They were in the boat when Jesus walked on water. They were on the shore when he fed 5000 and on the shore again when he fed 4000 more. The Pharisees had seen most of this too but still want more proof. Frustrated, Jesus blows them off and gets back in his boat and heads back across the lake (no word as to why he didn’t just stomp back across the water). In the boat, he warns his disciples to beware the “yeast” of the Pharisees and Herod. Given the Jewish experience of unleavened bread as a symbol of God’s holiness, “yeast” was a metaphor for corruption and evil. Just a little bit of the Pharisees’ lust for privilege or Herod’s lust for power would corrupt everything Jesus was about. However the disciples hear “yeast” and think that Jesus is scolding them for not packing enough bread for their trip. Again, this comes just two paragraphs after feeding 4000 men with seven loaves. Astounding, really. Did they actually think Jesus was worried about bread?

For those of you here for the first time tonight, know that because I’ve been focusing mostly on what Jesus said in Mark’s gospel, I’ve skipped over most of the miracles, including this latest feeding of 4000. I also skipped Jesus feeding of 5000 back in chapter 6 since Jesus didn’t have a whole lot to say there either (although his actions clearly spoke volumes). If you’re unfamiliar with these stories, both basically have a celebrity Jesus engulfed by his fans with nary a concession stand in sight. Mark writes that Jesus had compassion on them because they were, as the Israelites of old, “like sheep without a shepherd” and so he teaches them about God. As his sermon runs on his disciples get worried about dinner, knowing that a hungry crowd can become an ornery crowd. Jesus suggests they feed everybody, which only freaks out the disciples since all they have is a few loaves and two fish and no money. Turns out that was more than enough for Jesus. He took what they had and miraculously stretched it to feed the whole throng with 12 baskets of food left over. I always wonder how he did it. Would the bread regenerate each time somebody pulled off a piece? Or did the whole loaf becomes some monster loaf of bread? Or did Jesus keep pulling it out of a basket like so many rabbits out of hat? Mark doesn’t say. He just says that everyone ate until full.

Whatever the mechanics of the event, the disciples had to be blown away. Bread from thin air? The only time they’d ever heard of anything like this would have been way back in Sunday (Sabbath) School where their rabbi would have taught them about the Israelites stuck in the desert being miraculously fed by God with bread from heaven. Hey, wait a minute. Hungry people in a deserted place with no food followed by a miraculous provision of bread, might there be some connection? Could Jesus be God in the flesh? Clearly the disciples weren’t willing to go that far since later in chapter 6 they were terrified to see Jesus walk on water. Mark writes that had they understood about the wonder bread they would have just shrugged since any God in the flesh should be able to walk on water too. But alas, a remedial lesson is required. Chapter 8. Another large crowd, 4000 this time, gathered with nothing to eat. Again, Jesus sets the table, only to have the disciples display the same remarkable density. They ask with no trace of sarcasm: “Where in this desolate place can anyone get enough bread to feed all these people?”

Even if it is possible for a man to witness 5000 people fed with five loaves of bread and forget that, what are the chances that twelve men all suffered similar dementia? Granted, we are talking about men here—remembering is not our strong suit, but still…. Some scholars suggest that the disciples didn’t want to impose on Jesus because performing miracles seemed to irritate him so. But it’s not feeding hungry people that irritates Jesus. What irritates Jesus is his disciples’ failure to put twelve and seven together. “You have eyes―can’t you see? You have ears―can’t you hear? Don't you remember anything at all?” He does the math all over again: “When I broke the five loaves for the five thousand, how many basketfuls of pieces did you pick up?” “Twelve,” they replied. “And when I broke the seven loaves for the four thousand, how many basketfuls of pieces did you pick up?” They answered, “Seven.” And he said to them, “Do you not yet understand?”

Understand what? Twelve plus five is nineteen? There are twelve of us, seven days a week? What? What?

The disciples didn’t forget. They just didn’t get it. I can empathize. Was it a smokescreen? For followers of Jesus who believe he’s God in the flesh, understanding what he says means you have to do something about it. But I’m not sure the disciples believe that Jesus is God in the flesh. That’s coming soon, but for now they still can’t see it. They remember the numbers, they know the facts, they just don’t understand what it all means. I can empathize with that too. There are plenty of things I know that I can’t understand. For instance, I know that there are more plastic flamingos in the US than real ones, but I don’t understand it. I know that Robert Downey Jr. is nominated as best supporting actor for his role in Tropic Thunder, but I don’t understand that either. I know that economists insist that the only way to get our country out of its financial quagmire is to dig a deeper hole of national debt, but I don’t understand it. Likewise, I know that in spite of my sinfulness, God loves me anyway, but I don’t understand it. I know I believe Jesus is God in the flesh, yet I fail to love others as God has loved me. I don’t understand it.

The atheist described how funny it was to go into churches where you’re are asked to greet the people seated around you (not sure which church he’s talking about there). “Why do you have to tell people to talk to each other? Shouldn’t Christians naturally care about each other enough to greet each other without being told?” Later he tells the story of a buddy of his strung out on cocaine who had a come to Jesus and got clean. All these Christian people surrounded him and loved him and got him involved in their church and were really looking after him. He told everybody how God cured him of his addiction. But then about six months down the line this same buddy started doing coke again, though he kept going to church and leading a 12-step group. The crazy part, the atheist said, was that his buddy came to him with his problems now because he felt he couldn’t talk about what was happening with any of his fellow churchgoers. He worried they’d go all judgmental on him for being such a hypocrite, as if grace had a statute of limitations. I can empathize. I’ll hesitate to confess my own screw-ups because I’m not sure forgiveness is really out there. Or maybe it’s because I can be so unforgiving myself. Even though God forgives me all the time.

How do we fix this? How do we see like we need to see? How do we finally understand? How do we finally understand enough that we do something about it? Verse 22. Jesus and the disciples arrived on shore and some people brought out a blind man and begged Jesus to touch him. So he took the blind man by the hand and then spit on his eyes. Saliva has historically been a common home remedy as well as a theme in ancient healing stories. It’s good for removing spots from your tie. When you cut your finger, you instinctively stick it in your mouth. The 4^th century church father Ambrose wrote that saliva was a prototype of baptism. True fact: the Greek word for spit is ptooey. Jesus spits in the blind man’s eyes and lays hands on him and then asks whether he can see anything. The man looked and said he saw people looking like trees walking.

What’s surprising here is that unlike most healings in the Gospels which occur instantaneously, this one happens in stages. Jesus puts his hands on the man a second time and then “his eyes were fully opened, his sight was restored, and he saw everything clearly.” Given the heavy emphasis on “not seeing” previously conversation in the boat, you would have to be particularly myopic yourself if you missed the significance of this one. In reality, the movement from spiritual blindness to full sight is often gradual. Furthermore, the movement from spiritual blindness to full sight is never something you can pull off on your own. You need Jesus to see Jesus. “Do you not yet understand?” Jesus asks. There remains a ring of hope in that dangling question. Do you not yet understand? Not yet? The question isn’t so much a rebuke as it is invitation. Let us ask Jesus to spit into our eyes too.

Table Scraps

Mark 7:24-30
by Daniel Harrell

It’s been a long haul for Jesus so far in Mark’s gospel. Hounding crowds who only seem to care that he can fix their sick bodies. Affronted religious leaders who only care that he’s not playing by the rules. Doofus disciples who never seem to get what he’s talking about even when it puts it in the most familiar of terms. No wonder verse 24 of tonight’s passage has Jesus heading for the coast. The man needs a vacation. As far as I can tell, he hasn’t had a day off since that one he took after creating the universe back in Genesis. Jesus books a beach house on the Mediterranean Sea, in the coastal community of Tyre, notable for its being nestled snugly within pagan Gentile territory. Even more notable was that the first century Jewish historian Josephus described Tyre as home to Israel’s bitterest enemies. Vacationing in Tyre would have been like a modern-day Israeli deciding to take a few days off in Gaza. Maybe this is another reason why Mark has Jesus not wanting anyone to know he was there.

Of course trying to keep his location a secret would be like President Obama trying to sneak off for a few days undetected after the Inauguration. It wasn’t going to happen. Jesus was as famous as people got back then. Mark mentioned in chapter 3 how news of Jesus’ knack for healing disease and exorcising demons spread throughout the known world, including Tyre. Not only that, Jesus drew attention from the otherworld too. Mark writes that whenever demons got a gander at Jesus, they’d fall to the ground shrieking, “You are the Son of God!” Jesus ordered them to keep their fangs shut since the last thing you need when you’re trying to get a world religion off the ground is a bunch of demons blowing your cover. But at least the demons recognized Jesus’ true identity. The chosen people of Israel, for whom Jesus specifically came, never could cotton Jesus as Messiah material no matter how many miracles he managed. How do you make a man your Messiah when he keeps making so many blunders? First he acts like he’s God—forgiving sins and working on the Sabbath. But then he eats with the very kind of people God despises――tax collectors and sinners! He touches lepers. He doesn’t fast. He doesn’t wash his hands. He breaks every kind of religious law, but then says that it’s the religious who need to repent. God’s kingdom was supposed to come cast in the mold of the glorious King David. The Messiah would ride in on clouds accompanied by an angelic army. But Jesus never gets his feet off the ground, walking wherever he goes with nothing but a little band of earthy fishermen and such types.

Still, the man could preach. The crowds who heard him expressed amazement at his words. They had such authority. Not only did his words change the heart, but they changed the weather too. Back in chapter 4 when he and his disciples were almost capsized by a storm blowing across the Sea of Galilee, Jesus told the squall to chill and it did. Yet what’s really unbelievable was how his disciples responded to their miraculous rescue. They stood there in the boat, dumb looks on their faces, and asked on another, “Who is this guy that even the wind and the sea obey him?” Hello? It’s not like Jesus hadn’t come out and told them already. In chapter 2, he called himself the “Son of Man,” blatant Messianic code for anybody who’d read the prophet Daniel. And for the few who hadn’t, he tacked on that bit about how the Son of Man had authority to forgive sins and do what he wanted to on the Sabbath, prerogatives that belonged only to the Lord himself. And yet, nobody in Mark (except the demons) call Jesus Lord. That is, not until he crosses over into Gentile territory. Leave it to a Gentile woman, the ultimate outsider, to finally get it right.

It’s no big secret that women were second-class citizens in first century Palestine. Tack on her Gentile credentials and Jesus had every reason (and requirement) to avoid her at all costs. Jewish law forbid contact with Gentiles on account that they were unclean. Even the demons that possessed them were unclean (that’s what verse 25 literally says, “her little daughter had an unclean spirit”). Jesus is just getting settled into his Mediterranean bungalow, when this pushy Gentile lady, passionate as would be any mom for her child, crashes through every social and religious taboo to crash Jesus’ vacation. She begs him to drive the demon out of his daughter. What’s a Messiah to do? Mark doesn’t tell us how the demon manifested itself, but if the account of a demon-possessed boy in chapter nine provides any clue, imagine the daughter foaming at the mouth, suffering seizures and throwing herself into fire or water. Her diagnosis may garner different terminology these days, but whether you call it a demonic or psychotic, the symptoms were unbearable for the daughter and her mother.

It’s a heart-wrenching scene. The distraught mother pleads for help, going so far as to throw herself at Jesus’ feet. To bow at another’s feet was recognized in that culture as a move of profound grief and respect—except that Jesus treats it as a move of bow-wowing. He calls her a dog. OK, he says it via a riddle, but the insinuation was unmistakable. He says to the woman, “You have to let the children be fed first. It’s not right to take their bread and throw it to dogs.” Ouch. What did Jesus mean? Jews would have understood children as another way to say chosen people. The people of Israel were God’s kids, the ones who were named in the will and due to inherit the kingdom. Dogs was an insulting way to say Gentiles. They were unclean and unsaved and unsavory. Good for Jesus for putting this pushy broad in her place.

Still, it is disturbing to have Jesus calling this poor woman names, even if she did disturb his day off. True, he called the Pharisees snakes and viper spawn, but they deserved it in ways that this woman did not. She only wanted help, they wanted Jesus dead. But rules are rules, which is why in Matthew’s rendition of this story, the disciples urge Jesus to kick the woman out of the house. Matthew even describes her as a Canaanite, which these days would be like describing her as a supporter of Hamas. As a faithful Jew, of course Jesus would call her a dog. “Hey,” he shrugged in Matthew, “I was only sent to the lost sheep of Israel.” (Which must have made some of the Jews present do a double take: “Who you calling lost sheep?”). You’ll be relieved to know that Jesus didn’t technically call the woman a dog, at least not in the insulting sense. What he called her more like―a poodle. The word in verse 27 literally means little dog and was the Greek term for household pets. Thus the riddle depicts not scraps being tossed into the garbage for street dogs to scavenge, but rather food from the dinner table that children eat first before any leftovers are fed to the pets. OK, it still sounds insulting, but Jesus is only being realistic. He came to feed the children first. The Gentiles would have to keep their paws off the table until afterwards. However, by using a riddle, Jesus does throw the woman a bone. Having kids of her own, she knows how they rarely make it through dinner without something falling, or getting thrown, to the floor for the pets to lick up. She’s cool with being the poodle in this scenario. She’s cool with just getting crumbs. She’s just not cool with having to wait. And as it turns out, she needn’t wait. She cleverly says to Jesus in verse 28, “even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs.”

And Jesus loved it! He replied, “For saying this, you may go; the demon has left your daughter.” Now I can imagine some who witnessed this scene going away thinking, “Great, now I have to be witty for Jesus to heal me?” I can also imagine Jews on the scene, including Jesus’ own disciples, being extremely troubled that Jesus helped a Gentile at all. But what’s a Messiah to do? I can’t imagine Jesus ever refusing to help anybody, at least not anybody who asked him in person on earth (an important proviso for we who struggle with unanswered prayers). Jesus never met a disease he didn’t heal or a demon he didn’t cast out. But if it was Jesus’ intention all along to drive the demon from this Gentile woman’s daughter, why does he go through the whole dog show to do it? Why not just get on with the exorcism so that he can get on with vacation?

As with every riddle Jesus told, deeper meanings lay beneath the surface. Children get seats at the table alright, but like most children, they turn their noses at what’s on their plate. It’s all Dawn and I can do to get our 1-year-old Violet to eat a vegetable. We resort to age-old ploys like making airplane noises with her spoon or taking gleeful bites of mushy peas ourselves. Of course even when we manage to get a pea in her mouth, more often than not she spits it out onto the floor, having no idea what’s good for her. No matter that it comes packed with vitamins and minerals, all necessary for strong bones and teeth, it still has no taste that she wants in her mouth. For the children of God, Jesus’ good news of Kingdom come was like a plate full of vegetables. They were hungry for a smorgasbord of sweet vengeance aimed at their Gentile enemies, but Jesus dishes up humble pie, inviting them to love their enemies and do good to them, even if it means suffering at the hands of their enemies to do it. “Take up your cross and follow me?” No way the kids were eating that.

For seven chapters now the children of God have rejected Jesus as the bringer of God’s kingdom, effectively spitting him out of their mouth, which they will continue to do all the way to the cross. But this poodle of a Gentile woman gobbles him up. Sure, Jesus loves that she got his riddle (his own disciples were always having to have all his parables explained to them). But I think what Jesus loved most was that she got who he was. What matters in this story is not that Jesus calls this Gentile woman a dog, but that this Gentile woman calls Jesus Lord. Now it is true that “Lord” sometimes means simply “sir” or “master”―an address of esteem. The New Revised Standard Version even translates it this way. But a cursory glance at Mark’s gospel shows that Lord never appears without reference to God. Up to this point, despite all his preaching and all of his miracles, only the demons got the point. But now of all people, a Gentile woman gets it too, which explains why she was so willing to settle for crumbs. She’ll take whatever she can get as long as she’s getting it from God himself.

She calls him Lord, and Jesus replies, “for saying this, you may go; the demon has left your daughter.” It’s the only miracle in Mark Jesus performed at a distance, providing further evidence that Jesus was who the woman believed him to be. The only other place in the gospels where long-distance healing occurs is in Matthew’s account where a Gentile Roman centurion, the worst of Israel’s enemies, asked Jesus to heal his sick servant. Jesus agreed to accompany the centurion home, to the shock of everyone, yet the centurion demurred, telling Jesus to just say the word and his servant would be healed. Now shocked himself, Jesus replied how he’d yet to come across anybody in Israel with so much faith. Dogs believe even when the children won’t.

The Gentile woman is the only one who bows to Jesus and confesses him as Lord here, but the Bible predicts a day when everyone else will join her. The Old Testament prophet Micah paints a picture of many nations flocking to the mountain of Zion, where God “will settle disputes for strong nations far and wide. They will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation will not take up sword against nation, nor will they train for war anymore, but rather sit under their own vines and fig trees with no one to make them afraid. We will walk in the name of the Lord forever.” The mention of Zion tempts us to view this future as solely meant for the children of God. But as we heard the apostle Paul, a former Pharisee himself, famously declare it last Sunday: “Now that faith has come [by which he meant faith in Jesus as Lord]…, you are all children of God. … There is no longer Jew and Gentile, there is no longer slave and free, there is no longer male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.”

Now I know it sounds terribly naïve and even exclusive to some for me to paint some pretty picture of all the world at peace just because everybody believes in Jesus (especially given the way that we Christians have yet to figure out how to live at peace with each other). But hey, it ain’t my picture. Turn to the end of the Bible, to the book of Revelation, and Mount Zion is no longer an earthly locale, but situated in heaven upon which the Lamb of God sits, shining the righteousness of the gospel down on every nation, tribe, language and people. Turn a few pages further and the picture has Zion descending from heaven as a bride married to Jesus, making it so that God lives with his redeemed people forever. It’s a picture toward which we are called to work and pray, like we heard the old reverend Joseph Lowery pray it before that vast array of languages and people on the Capitol Mall this past Tuesday: “With your hands of power and your heart of love, help us Lord, to work for that day when nations shall not lift up sword against nation, when tanks will be beaten into tractors, when every man and every woman shall sit under his or her own vine and fig tree and none shall be afraid, when justice will roll down like waters and righteousness as a mighty stream. Lord, in the memory of all the saints who from their labors rest, and in the joy of a new beginning, we ask you to help us work for that day when black will not be asked to get in back, when brown can stick around… when yellow will be mellow… when the red man can get ahead, man; when white will embrace what is right…” and, we might add, “when Hamas will say no mas, when Israel will be real, when the US will use less, and when every knee will bow and tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.” “May all those who do justice and love mercy say Amen.”

Ears to Hear

Mark 7:31-38

by Daniel Harrell

It’s a sweet coincidence that President-elect Obama’s inauguration occurs the day after we celebrate the birthday of Martin Luther King Jr. Sweeter still would have been having Dr. King live long enough to see it. Some insist he that did, at least prophetically speaking. On the night before his assassination, King famously said, “I just want to do God’s will. And He’s allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I’ve looked over, and I’ve seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people will get to the promised land. And I’m happy, tonight. I’m not worried about anything. I’m not fearing any man. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.” I was intrigued to read last week about how for many people in their 20s, the reality of a black president in America is no great shakes. Nursed on the Cosby Show, having admired Morgan Freeman as president as a comet plowed toward the earth, and most recently watching David Palmer manage the Oval Office so ably for five seasons on 24: what’s the big deal about Barack Obama being black?. Shoot, 24 has already moved on to elect a woman president.

However, for those of us over 20 years old, albeit barely, watching Barack Obama take the oath of office on Tuesday remains monumental. I was in seventh grade when forced busing came to my Southern, Klan-infested town. I vividly remember the fear and anger that fueled months of race-based violence. Though ironically, as bad as it was in my Southern town, it never got as bad as Boston in 1974. Clearly, the United States has come a long way. Thank God.

Given Tuesday’s historic occasion, especially in the face of a dire economic crisis and two wars, Obama’s renown oratorical skills, like King’s, have raised expectations high for his inaugural address. As a devotee of Abraham Lincoln, who more than any single President made this coming Tuesday possible, Obama would love to emulate the rhetorical power of Lincoln’s second inaugural address, arguably the greatest speech ever made by a president. Obama said that every time he reads that speech he feels intimidated; first because it’s short (just over 700 words), and secondly because there’s a genius to Lincoln that’s never going to be matched. As something of a Lincoln log myself, I used Lincoln’s Second Inaugural as the text for our ministerial staff devotionals this past week. In 1865, with the Civil War mercifully drawing to an end, Lincoln sought to articulate his understanding of the unparalleled bloodbath the war brought. Moving from the historical to the political to the theological, Lincoln ultimately attributed the war’s ferocity to God’s judgment on America for its 250 years of human slavery. Citing Jesus’ words from Matthew 18 (in King James), Lincoln said, “Woe unto the world because of offenses; for it must needs be that offenses come, but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh.” He then drew the following conclusion: “If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those offenses which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued through His appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and South this terrible war as the woe due to those by whom the offense came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to Him?”

We struggle to accept that God would ever will something as horrific as war, and yet to page through the Bible is to find war used as God’s judgment with alarming frequency. And yet, as Lincoln himself acknowledged, “if God wills that [war] continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman’s two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said ‘the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.’” Granted, skeptics will counter that the trickier question is why God ever allowed human slavery to begin with. It’s a question that immediately slips into that perennial conundrum of the existence of evil itself, a conundrum that often incorporates disease, natural disaster and disability too. However when it comes to disability, toward which our prayers and ministry moments are directed today, divine will takes on different meaning.

In the book of Exodus, God’s people had likewise endured 250 years of slavery in Egypt when the Lord called Moses to be his prophet and lead his people to the Promised Land. Yet unlike Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King, Jr. or Barack Obama, Moses was not an eloquent speaker. He pleaded his own disability in an attempt to get out of God’s plan for his life, describing himself as a man with a heavy tongue. However there’s no arguing with a burning bush. Rather than repairing Moses’ impediment, the Lord chastised him for trying to use it as an excuse. God said to Moses, “Who gave man his mouth? Who makes him deaf or mute? Who gives him sight or makes him blind? Is it not I, the LORD?”

God’s words to Moses apply to our passage tonight from Mark’s gospel, as I continue my red-letter series, stopping at those places in Mark where Jesus speaks. For those keeping track, I’ll return to Jesus’ encounter with the Syophoenician woman next Sunday. Tonight, Jesus encounters a man who is deaf and who has a speech impediment. The encounter occurs in the Decapolis region, significant in that the area was largely inhabited by Gentiles. If you heard last Sunday’s sermon, then you’ll remember how Jesus ripped the religious legal experts for misusing the law to discriminate against Gentiles, much like Southern Jim Crow laws segregated bathrooms and buses in the 1960s. Jesus labeled the whole thing a crock of doo-doo. Making matters worse, the Pharisees manipulated the law to oppress women and people with disabilities too. Although the book of Leviticus forbade “reviling the deaf or putting a stumbling block in front of the blind for fear of God,” by the time we get to Jesus, the religious interpretive tradition had managed to group the deaf, the blind and women with children, slaves and those regarded as “imbeciles” as people too ignorant to keep the law.

Of course if you’ve read rabbinic law, you might consider being labeled too ignorant to keep it as a welcome designation. Except that in first century Jewish society, the inability to keep the law put you at a severe social and religious disadvantage. Not only were you excluded from proper society, but you were excluded from proper worship. You weren’t allowed access to God. If the deaf man in this passage was also a Gentile (which was likely since Jesus spoke to him in Aramaic), he was doubly doomed. It is of no small consequence, then, that when the doubly excluded man was brought to Jesus, Jesus not only welcomed him, but granted him a private audience. On the one hand this could be interpreted as just another episode of a rebel Jesus trying to tick off the religious establishment. But by using the word Mark uses to describe the man’s condition, we recognize something else at work. The Greek word for the man’s speech disability shows up only here in the New Testament, and in only one other place in the entire Bible. Turn to Isaiah 35 in the Greek version of the Old Testament, and you read how “God is coming to save… the eyes of the blind will be opened and the ears of the deaf unstopped. The lame will leap like a deer, and the tongue of the speechless (here’s the word) will shout for joy.” Like much of Isaiah, this passage portends the arrival of the Christ, a new Moses who would bring with him a new creation. “Water will gush forth in the wilderness and streams in the desert. And a highway will be there; it will be called the Way of Holiness. …only the redeemed will walk there, the ransomed of the LORD will return. They will enter Zion with singing; everlasting joy will crown their heads. Gladness and joy will overtake them, and sorrow and sighing will flee away.”

Of course, if God is the one who makes people deaf and speechless, and all that God does is good, then Isaiah’s mention of giving sight to the blind and hearing to the deaf should be understood spiritually rather than somatically. But if that is the case, what is Jesus doing giving this deaf man his hearing? For an answer, turn back to chapter 2 and you’ll recall another group of friends lowering a paralytic buddy down through the roof of a house to meet Jesus. Jesus responded not by saying “get up and walk” but rather “your sins are forgiven,” the clear implication being that sin and not paralysis was the man’s problem. But the Pharisees had a fit about that, since nobody forgave sins but God. Jesus then reasoned that since nobody but God could make a paralyzed man walk either, if he could do one, he could also do the other. So Jesus told the paralyzed man to get up and walk so that everyone would now know that [quote] “the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins.” Presumably, had the friends had to carry their forgiven friend home on his mat, all would have been just as well.

Like the paralyzed man’s friends thought his paralysis to be the problem in chapter 2, so the deaf man’s friends thought his inability to hear and speak was the problem her in chapter 7. They begged Jesus to lay his hands on their friend and fix him. But as in chapter 2, Jesus responded in unexpected fashion. Rather than simply saying, “be healed!” and having the crowd applaud their approval, Jesus takes the deaf man off to the side and does this bit with his fingers and spit. Scholars assume that Jesus was using gestures common to miracle-workers of his day. First century societies associated curative powers with touch and saliva, not unlike the way we kiss boo-boos on babies to make them all better. But why would Jesus want to mimic so-called miracle workers, especially since they were likely to be frauds anyway? And not only that, he used his gestures in private for the deaf man only. Verse 33 literally says that Jesus “put his fingers in his ears… and touched his tongue” which could just as easily mean Jesus’ own ears and tongue. What if instead of using his fingers and spit to heal, Jesus used his fingers and spit to communicate? You know, like sign language? What if Jesus put his fingers in his ears and touched his tongue in order to give the deaf man heads up, or even ask permission for what he was going to do?

But wait a minute, if being deaf, like being paralyzed, is never a bad thing in God’s eyes, why make a deaf man hear or a paralytic walk? Perhaps, given the social segregation of people with disabilities from community and worship, perhaps Jesus’ reasons for giving this man his hearing were social rather than somatic. Unlike the rabbinic tradition that interpreted Isaiah for its own benefit, Isaiah himself grouped people without sight or hearing or mobility or speech alongside the redeemed who get to travel the holy highway. For Jesus, it was never the deaf who couldn’t hear or the blind who couldn’t see; but rather, it was those with ears to hear who never get it and those with eyes to see who never see what God is doing. What if new creation isn’t about getting a new and so-called perfect body, but perfect perception instead? Our ministers Toni and Walter Kim, whose daughter Naomi has Down’s Syndrome, say how they can’t imagine her ever being without it since then Naomi wouldn’t be Naomi. What if instead of seeing people as we think they should be, heaven is about seeing each other as God sees us—not according to the color of our skin or our cognitive capacities and physical abilities, but according to the content of our character――a character shaped by the death and resurrection of Jesus. After all, even Jesus keeps his scars in heaven.

Leslie Bodkin, who directs our Enable Boston work here at the church, pointed me to a blog posted by a couple who met here at Park Street and whose son, Noah, has retinoblastoma which has led to the removal of one of his eyes. The parents remark how they couldn’t help but recall Jesus’ words, “If your eye causes you to sin, pluck it out. It is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye, rather than having two eyes, to be cast into hell fire.” They write, “Noah’s eye is of course not causing him to sin (yet, lol) but this scripture does apply because it is better for Noah’s health to have the eye removed than to have two eyes but with a poorer prognosis. We’re thankful to God for all that He does for us and we trust Him. In the end, in this fallen world, all you can do is praise, fear, and love the Lord. In a way, Noah is unwittingly doing the Lord’s work even before he learns about the Lord. Noah has caused us to praise the Lord more, fear the Lord more, seek the Lord more and love the Lord more, and repent. This makes him, in our weird parental opinions, a little servant of God.”

In verse 34, Jesus looked up to heaven, a customary posture of prayer, and then sighed, a verb the Bible generally reserves for expressing frustration. Why the frustration? Because the man was deaf? No, God made him that way. Because it bothered Jesus that he was going to give him hearing? Maybe. Maybe Jesus sighed because nobody would receive the man as God received him—as God made him. Not the religious experts. Not society. Not even his friends who wanted him fixed. Jesus said to the deaf man, “Be opened,” but he may just as well have been talking to everybody. Besides, at the point Jesus said it, only those with ears to hear could have heard him say it. Mark writes that immediately afterwards the man could hear and speak, and immediately after that Jesus told him to keep his mouth shut (with everyone else). Curious isn’t it? I always wonder why instead of giving the one man his speech, Jesus didn’t just make everybody else mute. Why did Jesus want everyone to keep quiet? Most think it was because Jesus didn’t want to people to think he’d just come to fix people on earth. Jesus wasn’t running a body shop. Our bodies weren’t broken. It was our relationships that were broken――our relationships with God and each other.

Jesus did fix that. By the time we get to Paul, this former Pharisee is preaching how Jesus has done away with the law, by which he meant the rabbinic interpretation of the Torah with all of its added barriers and prejudices. Paul wrote to the Galatians, “Now that faith has come [by which he meant faith in Jesus]…, you are all children of God. … There is no longer Jew and Gentile, there is no longer slave and free, there is no longer male and female, [and I might add hearing and deaf, black and white, abled and disabled or whatever], for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” May God give us ears to hear it.