James 2: 1-17 & Mark 7:24-37
In 2003, the Bishop of Rhode Island
took a sabbatical. She decided to leave
her home for a month; but she didn’t go far.
She went to the streets. She
became homeless for one month. She said
that because of her privileged position in life, she had lost touch. She wanted to get to know people in a
different way. She only told her
staff. No one else knew where she was
or what she was doing, nor did anyone recognize her despite the fact that she
saw clergy of her diocese and even visited different Episcopal churches in that
month. When asked about her visits to
Episcopal Churches she said that there were “Moments full of grace, and moments of deep disappointment.”[1] The moments of grace were when people
welcomed her and invited her to coffee hour and shared food without expecting
payment. The example she used as a
moment of deep disappointment was when she was in a church that would not allow
her to join them for breakfast because she did not have the $3 that they
required. I imagine that they had
treated her much differently when she made her official Bishop’s visit.
Our
second reading for today is from the Book of James. James is an interesting book and we will be
hearing parts of it for the next several weeks.
Unlike the letters of Paul, it is not addressed to a specific person or
community. However, he clearly had some
experiences in a community or several communities that he found rather
troublesome. He spoke of a time when two
people entered a worship space. One was
poor with dirty clothes. The other was
clearly well off. The rich person was
shown to a choice seat and the poor person was told to stand or even to sit at
their feet. James then challenged the
community to consider whether this was the way that they showed love for their
neighbor. Hadn’t Jesus loved the
poor? Hadn’t Jesus consistently shown
compassion for the people who were on the fringes of society?
We
do not have to look very far for the answer to that question. There are a multitude of examples in the
Gospels of Jesus’ treatment of the poor.
He fed them. He healed them. He encouraged others to do the same. He spoke passionately about the need to care
for the poor. Jesus lived among the poor
because he was born to a poor family.
God chose a poor girl to be the mother of his child. He could have chosen anyone, the daughter of an
emperor, a high priest, a wealthy land owner.
But he chose someone who was poor and marginalized.
Our Gospel
reading for today does not explicitly talk about the poor, but certainly the marginalized. First we hear of a woman who came to Jesus
begging him to cure her daughter. If a
woman was approaching a man on her own in this time period, it was because she
did not have a man to speak for her. And
if she did not have a man, it was unlikely that she had resources. It was not impossible, but unlikely. She was almost surely poor. The other person
in today’s story was a deaf man. In this
time period people who had any kind of disability were outsiders. Often it was assumed that they had sinned or
their parents had sinned and that was why they were disabled. So this man was most likely also among the
marginalized.
Yet
consider how Jesus cared for these people.
I have preached many sermons about the Syrophoenician woman and there
are many theories about why Jesus initially refused her. But the important point for today is that he
heard her. He heard her desperation and her pain and he cured her
daughter. He didn’t even have to go to
visit the daughter. He healed her in a moment. The second story is
different. He was face to face with the
man who needed healing. The man was deaf
and had a speech impediment. Jesus took
the man aside, put his fingers in his ears, spat, touched his tongue, looked to
heaven and then said, “Ephphatha.” The
first couple of times I read this I was struck by how different these two
healings were. The first was at a
distance without even a word. The second
seemed to be so much more involved. There was spitting and hands in ears and a
special word. It seemed so elaborate for
Jesus when you know he could have cured him just by thinking it.
Let
us not forget that Jesus knows us. Like
the Good Shepherd knows the sheep, Jesus knows us. He knows what we need and
how we need it. This man was deaf. Jesus
knew that for this to be a true healing of heart, body and mind, the man would
need to see what Jesus was doing. Jesus
healed him in a way that he knew that he would understand. That required that Jesus touch the ears that
were not functioning and the tongue that was not responding. Jesus wanted the man to know what was happening
so that when his ears were suddenly functioning, he would understand it. He
would be able to process it. Miracles
are well and good, but Jesus was more than a miracle worker who was interested
in showing off his powers and moving on.
He wanted people to know that he loved them and he loved them in their
joy and their pain, for their gifts and their needs. That is how he continues to love us.
In
one of the interviews, the Bishop was asked if Episcopalians deserve our
reputation for being the frozen chosen.
She responded, “We're not frozen. But for some reason we choose to see
whom we want to see.”[2] I don’t think the reason for our partial
vision is that difficult to understand.
We’re not cold. The people in
this church care. They care deeply. I have heard it when people have approached
me asking how they can help so and so. I
have seen it when people spend hours in the kitchen getting ready for our summer
lunch program. I have seen it in
donations people make to the discretionary account that is specifically for the
poor and needy. I have seen it in more
way that I can share now. But at some
point, we get overwhelmed and we acquire some degree of blindness or deafness
for self-preservation. Or we simply grow
weary of trying to help and not seeing any change or any improvement. I don’t know the answer. I really don’t.
But I think
our readings for the day give us a starting place. We can start by simply welcoming the people
in our midst. We have all kinds of
people visit St. John’s. But how do we
treat them? It’s easy to welcome the
young family with the adorable child.
It’s easy to welcome the person who knows the same people we know. But what about the homeless or just the
people who look a little beat up by life?
Do we make sure that they are welcome?
Do we smile and look them in the eye instead of averting their
gaze? That is a place where we can begin.
While Jesus
knows us all, we don’t know everyone who walks into our assembly. When we don’t know someone, we make
judgments, often solely based on how they look.
That is human nature. It’s going
to happen and we can’t beat ourselves up over that. But after that initial judgment, we can try
to consciously move past that judgment.
We can remind ourselves that there is one thing we know about this
person. Jesus loves them, just as much as he loves us. Jesus loves them and he wants us to see them
and to hear them, just as he sees and listens to each one of us. We are all blind and deaf in some way. There is a cure and that cure starts with a
word. After Jesus spat and stuck his
fingers in the man’s ears, touched his tongue and looked toward heaven, he
said, “Ephphatha.” Be opened. He did not say that for the deaf man. He said it for us. Open your heart, open your mind, open your
eyes and open your ears. Be opened.
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