Scripture:          Mark 7:24-37

Sermon:            “Out of Bounds”

            This morning we are going to hear two stories of Jesus’ healing from Mark’s gospel.  Turn with me to the 7^th chapter where we’ll read verses 24 through 37.  That’s on page 58 of the New Testament in the pew Bible.

            I want you to get in mind that Jesus is on the other side of the tracks, here.  You know what I mean?  Jesus and his disciples have made their way into a neighborhood where folks weren’t very much like them.  Tyre, and Sidon, and the region of the Decapolis that we’ll read about—you weren’t going to find many Jews living around there.  Different languages.  Different skin colors, maybe.  Different religions if they had a religion at all.  Just different.

            So, when this Gentile woman is trying to get Jesus to heal her little daughter, they start making references to children and dogs.  Now, I love dogs.  I love my dog.  But, calling somebody a dog isn’t a compliment in the least.  Sure wasn’t a compliment then in that part of the world.  You might say that Jesus called this woman the “d” word.

            We’ll start with that story, which has a very interesting ending.

            But, then we’ll move onto the next story.  And Jesus is still on the wrong side of the tracks as he goes to the Decapolis.  See?  It even sounds Greek, doesn’t it?  Decapolis.  And when he heals a man there, he holds the man’s face right in his hands and touches his tongue.  All of that is very intimate for two men from different neighborhoods, isn’t it?

            It might tell you something about how far Jesus will go to find those who are hurting or in need.  That’d be a sermon in itself, and one that I might preach on a different day.  What I’m interested in, however, is how Jesus is dealing with the ways in which all of us see one another.  This is the word of the Lord…

            From there he set out and went away to the region of Tyre.  He entered a house and did not want anyone to know he was there.  Yet he could not escape notice, but a woman whose little daughter had an unclean spirit immediately heard about him, and she came and bowed down at his feet.  Now the woman was a Gentile, of Syrophoenician origin.  She begged him to cast the demon out of her daughter.  He said to her, “Let the children be fed first, for it is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.”  But she answered him, “Sir, even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs.”  Then he said to her, “For saying that, you may go—the demon has left your daughter.”  So she went home, found the child lying on the bed, and the demon gone.

            Then he returned from the region of Tyre, and went by way of Sidon towards the Sea of Galilee, in the region of the Decapolis.  They brought to him a deaf man who had an impediment in his speech; and they begged him to lay his hands on him.  He took him aside in private, away from the crowd, and put his fingers into his ears, and he spat and touched his tongue.  Then looking up to heaven, he sighed and said to him, “Ephphatha,” that is, “Be opened.”  And immediately his ears were opened, his tongue was released, and he spoke plainly.  Then Jesus ordered them to tell no one; but the more he ordered them, the more zealously they proclaimed it.  They were astounded beyond measure, saying, “He has done everything well; he even makes the deaf to hear and the mute to speak.”

            Have you ever been a complete outsider?  Have you ever walked into a room only to discover that you are the only woman there?  Intimidating, huh?  Maybe you were the only kid in your school who couldn’t afford all of the latest fashions on the first day.  That’s what being an outsider feels like.  Maybe you’re the only person with light-colored skin in a restaurant.  Then you know how the rest of those folks feel most of the rest of their lives.  You walk in and suddenly it is as if every conversation has stopped.  You can hear a pin drop.  And people all around you are just looking at you as you make your way to a table.  Maybe you find that you are the only one that speaks English in a store filled with folks that speak Spanish.  That was me a few years ago.

            We Disciples have a mission church on the Yakama Indian Reservation up in the state of Washington.  In the shadows of Mt. Rainier, there is this open expanse of land that is the designated home of the Yakama Nation.  It’s mostly farmland.  Gorgeous country.

           My wife took me there.  She’d spent some time up there before and wanted me to see it.

            Now, you might have an image in your mind of what a reservation looks like.  I did.  But, I was wrong.  At least on this land, there is quite a large population of Mexican immigrants who work on the land.

            There is a little grocery store in the middle of the reservation.  Julie had told me all about it.  In the back of the store was a kitchen where you could order the most amazing burritos you’ve ever eaten.  We just had to go back to that store and get one.  There was one catch, however.  Julie told me that no one in the store spoke English.  We’d have to order in Spanish.

           Well, for weeks I brushed up on the Spanish that I learned in high school.  I wanted one of those burritos.  And I wanted whoever was in that window to be impressed.  He’d think to himself, what a nice man.  Spanish ain’t too bad, either.

There was going to be four of us including Julie’s parents.  So I rehearsed over and over again. Quatro burritos con pollo, por favor.  (Four chicken burritos, please.)

           The day came and the four of us entered the little grocery store.  On the way to the window in the back, Julie’s mother declared that she wanted a chicken quesadilla instead of a burrito.  I maintained my composure.  With confidence, I stepped up to the window.  A young woman was working in the kitchen.  I began to order.  Tres burritos con pollo y una quesadilla con pollo, por favor.

            I was right proud of myself.  That is until this woman cocked her head back at me and said with a blank stare, “you want just one quesadilla, honey?”

            Those were the words that she used.  But, what I heard her saying was, “look here, you presumptuous white man, life ain’t too easy around here and the likes of you aren’t welcome.”  I was an outsider.  No two ways about it.  And I could feel the eyes of everyone else in the store looking at me.  It must be how those folks feel when they go into a store with a bunch of white folks.

            The reason I bring this up and want you to imagine yourself as an outsider at some point in your life is that these stories of Jesus are just full of those feelings.  It’s not quite as obvious to us.  We aren’t Jews living among Arabs, Greeks, and Romans.  But, you read those stories.  It’s all there.  All those uneasy feelings.  Those suspicions.  Those odd encounters.  Those things that your parents and grandparents said about those people.  The jokes you’ve heard and told.  It’s all there.

            Mark says that Jesus went to Tyre to get away from things for a while.  He’s preached out, prayed out, and peopled out, as one commentator puts it (John Rottman).  He’s headed north and holed up in a safe house.  Across the border he attempts to conceal himself.  In other words, he’s in foreign territory.  On the other side of the tracks as I heard it growing up.

            I want to read this story to you from a different version.  It comes from Clarence Jordan.  Clarence Jordan was a southern preacher that founded a place called Koinonia Farm near Americus, Georgia in 1942.  And you can imagine what Georgia was like back then with black folks and white folks.  This farm was to be a Christian home to both.  It later became the place where Habitat for Humanity was formed.  Quite a legacy in faith, I’d say.

           Clarence Jordan also translated much of the New Testament into the language of the South.  It’s called the Cotton Patch Gospel.  Let me read to you his version of today’s story.  It will give you an idea of just what is going on.

            Jesus left there and arrived in the region of Dalton and Calhoun.  Then a black woman from those parts came up and started pleading with him, “Please, sir, help me!  My daughter is badly demon possessed.”  But he didn’t answer her a word.  Then his students came along and advised him, “Tell her to scram, because she’s making too much noise!”  He replied, “I was sent only to needy white people.”  But she came and humbled herself before him and said, “Sir, please help me!”  He answered, “It isn’t right to take the bread from the children and throw it to the puppies.”  She said, “Yes, but even so, sir, the puppies do get the scraps from their masters’ table.”  Then Jesus said to her, “Ma’am, you’ve got a lot of faith.  You may have whatever you want.”  And her daughter was healed from that instant.

            Do you see what’s going on here?  Jesus is in and among those other people up in Tyre and over in Decapolis.  He’s an outsider.  Or they are outsiders.  Either way, it’s not a comfortable thing.

            Everybody’s watching.  Everyone sees what’s going on.  Here’s a Jew and a Gentile.

            Now, I can’t say for sure that Jesus didn’t mean what he said.  “Let the children be fed first.  It isn’t right to take their food and throw it to the dogs.”  I can’t be so sure that he didn’t mean it.  He was human after all.  But, I can’t help but think that maybe he was just saying what was already on everybody else’s mind.  All the disciples were there.  They were watching.  I tend to think that he was saying what was on their mind so as to make a point.

            It really does sound an awful lot like “I was sent only to needy white people.”  “Let the children be fed first.”  And I just can’t reconcile that with the Jesus that I am familiar with, even if he was tired and cranky.

            I think that he was making a point.  These two peoples probably did think of one another as dogs.  They had quite a history together, you know?  Living there in that little piece of land as Jews and Gentiles.  It didn’t work very well.

            And I’ll tell you, that woman was something else.  She needed Jesus.  She needed him, and she wasn’t gonna quit.  He called her a dog, if you’ll remember.  And she just looked him square in the eye and said, “even us dogs will eat the crumbs that fall under the table.”

            Oh, he liked her.  I think he was going to heal her daughter one way or another.  But, she was great.  She pierced right through his words, and right through the souls of everyone watching.  And in that instant, every single person there had to see—not a Syropheonician woman, not one of those people—but a loving mother who’d do anything to help her daughter.  They saw someone who was just as much flesh and blood and heart and soul and in need of God’s healing as themselves.

           So, I’ll ask you.  Who was really healed that day?  That woman’s daughter?  Or Jesus’ disciples?

           To make the point a little more emphatically, Jesus continues on through the regions where those people live.  Up towards Sidon.  And over towards the Decapolis where the Greeks and Romans had set up some nice places.  You know they didn’t even worship Israel’s God in those parts.  And Jesus healed a man who couldn’t hear and couldn’t speak very well.

            He was, for all practical purposes, over on the wrong side of town.  And he took this man’s face in his hands.  That’s up close and personal.  He placed his fingers in the ears.  He touched the man’s tongue.  Talk about breaking some taboos.  And just like all those folks back home, Jesus healed him.

            This is ministry that’s out of bounds, my friends.  It’s out of bounds because it’s not right here in the front yard with the neighbors and relatives.  It’s not with folks that we know.  It’s not with folks that we have a great deal in common with.  It’s out there in the places we don’t want to know much about.  It’s out there where we’d feel much better if the doors were locked when we drive through.  It’s out there with folks that we just don’t have a lot of experience with.  And, you know, that’s pretty uncomfortable stuff.

            I’ve got a feeling that Jesus wanted us to see something.  This good news of God’s salvation can absolutely change lives and change the world.  It can bring healing to the hurting.  It can give hope to the overwhelmed and downtrodden.  It can awaken in you purpose and meaning.  But, in order for any of that to happen, the good news has to be brought to those who are hurting, and those who are overwhelmed and downtrodden.  It’s got to be shared with folks who’ve given up on life.  If it’s going to have any effect on any one, the good news has to go to where they are.  And that means ministry that’s out of bounds.

            Church, are you with me?  There’s a hurting world out there.  And we’ve got a loving God.

Rev. David James Brown

Park Christian Church (Disciples of Christ)