Rev. Dr. Rebecca L. Kiser
JESUS WAS A DOER
Sept 9, 2018 Pentecost 16-B James 2:1- 10, 14-17 & Mark 7:24-37
The Mark text this morning contains a remarkable story of Jesus and this Gentile woman, unnamed except as ‘the Syro-phonecian’ woman whose daughter is suffering. Jesus doesn’t sound like Jesus in the story - he sounds abrupt and short, even rude. Jesus is often pictured as addressing the true and deepest need s of people, but he’s different here.
Y’know, Jesus is not just fully God - Jesus is also fully human. That’s been part of Christian theology since the early days of this thing called Christianity. Its difficult to understand, yet believers in each generation since haven’t felt it right or complete to leave out one side or the other. I’ve tended to think of Jesus as almost glowing with divinity, way above all the rest of us, perfectly responsive and full of Godly compassion. I know the Scriptures say he is like us and was tempted in every way as we humans are, but then it adds, “yet without sin.” So to me that kind of takes him out of our league. I imagine him walking on earth while knowing the names of the millions of stars, and the details of everyone’s lives as he walks by them. I don’t think of Jesus as having the troubles I do; despite the fact that he was born, he eats and drinks and walks. (Makes him sound like a doll.) Yet when his friends Lazarus died, Jesus feels it in his gut, and he weeps. And when he saw people doing crooked business and fleecing the poor in the Jerusalem Temple, he gets angry. Maybe he has some the other urges humans do, too. You know, its only the hymn Silent Night that says baby Jesus never cried - I bet he did. And had Terrible Twos, too. And I bet his voice cracked when it changed, too. So he probably gets tired and weary.
The text starts out saying Jesus went to this house in Tyre and didn’t want anyone to know he was there. Tyre is a Gentile area, and the Decapolis in the next story is, too. So Jesus has left the mainly Jewish areas and gone to hide out in Gentile country, where he wants to be alone. Evidently he needs a break, he needs some down time after all the crowds clamoring around him seeking miracles. As I thought about it, it came to me that maybe Jesus has what we call ‘compassion fatigue.’ He sees all the needs, he sees all the injustices of his people being a minority group, and he sees the trouble even in his own people between the uber-religious and the normal folks. Its gotta break his heart. How much can one person do?
Chaplains and hospice workers get compassion fatigue. I talked with a hospice group about their chaplains, and discovered that they’ve learned the stress of being caring all the time, from the burn-out and turnover of chaplains and nurses; so full time was reduced to 34 hours. That leaves their people extra time for self-care, recreation, and renewal of energy. Hospital nurses mostly now work 3 12-hr shifts, ie 36 hr weeks - yes, they put in extra at shift changes. I didn’t think I’d like 12 hr shifts, so I asked a good many nurses at Conway about it - what they like is more time to defuse, and defuse more completely.
Advocates for child services, advocates for other-abled persons, advocates for more justice in agencies serving the poor or needy - they burn out, too. As do pastors. Self-care and renewal are necessary for those who care for others. Our Board of Pensions, which also holds the pastors’ health care plan, began awarding $100 as an incentive for pastors to get an annual physical, because many pastors are often the kind of person who puts off their own problems and don’t take the time for self-care. And problems aren’t found until they are are severe enough to really make him or her notice. Now they’ve devised an online program of healthy things that give us point - and with enough points, we get a reduction on our annual deductible. The program includes preventative care, exercise, diet, stress-relief, and more. Smart congregations make sure their pastor takes both Continuing Ed time and vacation time.
In my very first call in upstate WI, there was a woman whose husband was in nursing care, whom she visited daily despite the fact that he no longer knew her. She talked to him, helped feed him, and cared for him in many ways. One morning I answered the phone to hear that the Mrs. Brown had died of a heart attack overnight. I said, “Oh you mean MR. Brown - he’s the one who’s been ill for so long.” No, they meant MRS. Brown - the stress and care for him had worn her out. He lived another year or two.
It makes sense to me that Jesus went away from the crowds for a break, although crowds found him again anyway. This Gentile woman finds this miracle worker, this healer, and wants him to heal her daughter; and I think its compassion fatigue that makes him curt, and even rude when he says that thing about not taking the children’s food and giving it to dogs. He is sent to Israel, God’s historically chosen people that God has been working with for centuries already. Not Gentiles, not everybody. That would be even more overwhelming. He can only do so much, and he’s tired. Israel are ‘the children.’ Other people are the ‘dogs.’ Some commentators think he was quoting a proverb of the day. Nevertheless, he could have said it better.
The surprise is that this feisty mom has a comeback - she gets him back by using his own words - ‘even dogs get the crumbs from the table.’ The kids in my former neighborhood would have said, “Toasted!” And, surprise, surprise, Jesus realizes he’s been bested, he’s been challenged to enlarge his perspective - and he heals her daughter. And when he goes on to the Decapolis and a suffering Gentile man approaches him, he responds without needing the spur.
Jesus changed. Jesus learned. Jesus broadened the scope of his ministry right there. He went outside his own group. Not very often, but he did. Its a kind of foreshadowing of how, after his death, Peter has his vision of the gospel going to the Gentile family of the Roman Cornelius, and Paul pretty much focuses his ministry on Gentiles and fights for their right to be accepted as followers of Christ along with Jewish believers.
The text from James is kind of a corollary, chiding believers for discriminating between rich and poor in showing the grace of God. Its so easy to draw lines, isn’t it? Its so easy to follow the cultural norms of our day, and consider some people in, and others out. To show preference for the more rich, the more pretty, the more talented, the more influential. Good-looking people have an advantage, as do those in the higher social level. People we admire - people we want to emulate - people we want to hang around with so we’ll be thought better of by others. I had one church whose Elders had embraced the concept of stewardship more as fund-raising, and looked at their congregation as ‘giving units.’ I know that concept has some credibility, and I understand it in terms of budgeting and so on. HOWEVER, people are not giving units. One Elder said in Session that the church needed more giving units, so our budget could be met with less difficulty. I replied that that was not what God meant as a reason for evangelism - go out there and get more giving units. Another Elder made a comment about yes, we’d had some people join, but they weren’t well-off enough to give much - we needed people to join that were more well-off. So the poorer folks’ salvation was a lesser thing because they brought less wealth with them? We can’t help but think in terms of other groups we belong to about belonging or dues or fund-raising; or how we might think at work about money and wealth management. But church isn’t another group - church is the gathering of people God has called, whoever they are; and we use the gifts God brings us for ministry in God’s name. Its a different frame for the church gathering altogether.
Friends, when we start evaluating the worth of a person to God and to our community based on their economic level or any other level, we have missed the point of church and faith altogether. More wealth doesn’t necessarily mean better character; more wealth doesn’t necessarily mean more gifted; more wealth doesn’t necessarily mean a more faithful relationship to God in prayer. Maybe this is the way our businesses work; but the church of God is not a business. Maybe this is the way we make a name in the community - but the church of God is not after cultural status. We are a new community of those God has brought together in faith, and our citizenship is in the kindom of God, where the standards are different from what they are here. Our goals are not empire-building or wealth-building or getting ahead - our goals are transformed lives, and the common good of all because all are important to our God. And our call is to show this kindom of right-relatedness to the world, to call people into it because God wants them, and to learn to live as those kinds of people even now on earth.
Discrimination in not a word that should be in our vocabulary or behavior. I mean, we’re the Gentiles that the gospel opened to - we’re here because some far-seeing folks acknowledged that their vision was too small. So who are WE to keep others out, others who want to know the love of Jesus, others in whom the Spirit is obviously working? Who are we to want to keep our worship with only those like us? Who are we to want to limit our good deeds to only our own kind? Its easier to see the needs in our own kind, because we know the difficulties from the inside - we may even share them. And its not that doing good within our own group is wrong. But our call, like Jesus hinted and like the apostles Peter and Paul did, is to go outside our group for the sake of the gospel. We may not know what other people need, what support they might need - so we have to ask, and to listen. All our neighbors here in Williamsburg County are also our neighbors in a Biblical sense - their hurts are our hurts, their needs are the needs of our larger family.
Back in Norfolk, I supported a group whose motto was, “All children are our children.” All the children here are going to grow up and affect the lives of everyone else. All children, educated or uneducated, loved or abused, are going to grow up and enter the world as workers, neighbors, parents, business owners, welfare recipients, bosses and perhaps criminals. If we want to make a difference in the future, all children need the stability, the education, the nutrition for healthy bodies, the love, the safety - all those things we want for our own children. All the things that help form a person who can thrive, who can play well with others, who is honest, who can make good decisions for the community. All children are our children, because we must all live together, and we each make a difference. As Christians, we realize that just who is our family is a broad concept; just who is our neighbor takes in a large circle.
I think that for the Christian church to survive in the coming years, we who are here now need to enlarge our vision, and get out of our walls, get out of our group, get out of our old ways of thinking about church and about our mission. Mission is about our character and our caring - how we live in this world. How we individually let our lives be formed by the Spirit, yes - and also how we corporately show God’s compassion for all, to all. Starting with Hemingway, or Lake City, or Johnsonville, whatever town we’re in. Starting with Williamsburg County and its needs. Talking to community leaders about the problems, and how our resources can be used. Listening to the nudges of the Spirit as our hearts are moved when we see certain plights. Listening to what our neighbors say.
So the challenge of the gospel to us today is the challenge of looking out at what Jesus called the fields ready for harvest. The gospel calls us to push outside our group, to be open to being challenged by new people and new ideas. The gospel calls us to be “doers of the Word and not hearers only,” as James wrote so long ago. May the church her and around the world heed this call and seek to indeed be the hands and feet of Christ in this world today. AMEN.
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