Thankful Memorial, Chattanooga
September 5, 2021
Year B, 15 Pentecost, Proper 18

Proverbs 22:1-2, 8-9, 22-23
Psalm 125
James 2:1-17
Mark 7:24-37

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.

In the portion of Mark we read this morning, we see the humanity of our Lord Jesus.  We see in his responses to others’ needs that Jesus himself is stretched to grow and tired out by the work before him; we hear his sigh of exhaustion and his near-rejection of a woman because she is a Gentile. 

That Jesus calls the Syrophoenician woman a dog during their interchange seems particularly poignant for us today.  The racism and racially-motivated violence in our country has escalated over the past years to a crisis point.  But, society was divided in Jesus’s day, too, and the rhetoric then was just as violent as it often becomes now. For Jesus and his contemporaries, those who did not belong to the ethnic group of Judeans would have been labeled as “Gentiles” and thought of as less than fully human, as “dogs.”  50 years ago in this country, Black Americans were labeled the same way.  They and other minorities are still treated as such by some today.  Who among us will be like that ancient mother and persist in faith until such treatment of our sons and daughters, brothers and sisters is forever changed? 

But as my imagination conjures up the picture of the Syrophoenician woman kneeling at the feet of Jesus, persistent in faith, pleading for her child, other images rise up alongside the image of Black America.  I imagine this woman is like so many Afghan women this past week, pleading for their families’ lives at the gates of the Kabul airport.  And I think of those so devastatingly affected by climate disasters in Haiti, Louisiana and the American west coast, calling on the international community to care enough about their plight on this planet.  And I feel my own desperate anxiety – like so many parents of young kids– about my children’s well-being as the delta variant rages and whole swaths of the adults in our communities fail to do the right thing to protect the most vulnerable.  How many people today can understand the Syrophoenician woman’s pleas?  How many of us find ourselves in the position of reaching out, at all costs, despite all risks, desperate for help from those they know have the power to save?

Now, I’ll grant that these analogies are not perfect.  But as I read the gospel for this morning alongside the news headlines this week, I couldn’t help but see the comparisons.  For the desperation, the heartbreak, the need for justice, the racial and ethnic inequalities, the cries for salvation are so similar in the Gospel’s ancient story and our present-day ones that they must be named. 

Unfortunately, though, I can do little more than name them – whether we’re talking about the current crisis in Afghanistan or the racial injustice that happens on our own doorsteps, we have no answers, no quick fixes, no political schemes or practical steps we could take to make the world a better place.  All I can offer in regard to these bleak circumstances is the hope we have in the Gospel, the good news of Christ. 

Because, as we just heard, the Syrophoenician mother’s persistent faith is, in the end, enough.  Abundantly enough.  Her faith in the healing power of Christ overcomes all odds, all prejudices, all obstacles, even Jesus’ own sense of national superiority.  Jesus sees her desperation and deep need, and the abiding hope and faith she has in him, and acts according to that faith: he saves, heals and restores. 

So how do we seek out ways to be that anxious mother for those around us in need of Christ’s restorative power?  How can we show persistent faith in Him on behalf of the littlest ones?  It may seem overly simple, but the smallest acts of faith we do in our own lives, among our neighbors, colleagues and friends, in partnership with organizations like MetMin and others, all small acts of faith embody our prayers and stand as signs of the persistent hope we have in the restorative power of Christ Jesus. 

“What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if you say you have faith but do not have works?” asks the writer in the letter of James.  We must not separate the concepts of faith and works.  The work we do is our faith, the outward and visible sign of what we know to be true: that Christ Jesus lives and that if we persist in our faith, in even the smallest ways, we will be the means by which his restorative and life-giving grace can reach others. 

But these small acts of faith aren’t necessarily easy.  Take the example of the covid crisis.  Some things we do, like wearing a mask in public, are both small and easy signs of our discipleship.  Other actions, like getting the vaccine when you’re worried about side-effects, might, for some, require a greater leap of faith.  Additional behaviors, like continuing to listen with compassion to those who are hesitant about vaccination, take the kind of faithful persistence that the Syrophoenician woman showed – clinging tenaciously to her trust in the power of Christ to reconcile and restore us all. 

Whenever we help enact Christ’s healing grace in the world, even in small ways, it comes at a personal cost.  At the very least, to care about others, to remain compassionate towards another’s pain, requires our emotional and mental energy – and it can be exhausting.  But even in that exhaustion, we are not alone.  Immediately after his encounter with the Syrophoenician woman, Jesus meets a deaf man, one who would have been cut off from his community because of his disability.  Reaching out to heal the man, Jesus looked up to heaven and “sighed.”  He sighed.  I hear all of Jesus’ exhaustion – all of our exhaustion – in that sigh. 

In these past two years, like Jesus, we have been stretched, and pushed to grow, and challenged by the world around us and confronted with so much need and pain – both from others and within ourselves.  Sometimes it feels too much, that continuing to face all that desperation is impossible.  And in those moments, Jesus shows us the way.  We, too, are invited to look up to heaven with our deepest sighs and murmur our prayer of persistent hope: “Be opened.” 

Despite the pain of recent months, in the face of the horrors of our headlines, we cling to faith as did the Syrophoenician woman, we remain open to God’s good creation, with all its suffering and sorrow and all its wonder and joys, and we find our hope in the knowledge of God’s abundant grace.   “Grant us, O Lord, to trust in you with all our hearts; for… you never forsake those who make their boast of your mercy.”  Amen.