Sermon preached at Christ Church
Greenwich, Connecticut
September 9, 2018 / 16th Sunday after Pentecost (Year B)
James 2:1-17
Mark 7:24-37
The story of Jesus and the Syrophoenician woman raises a question for me, every time I hear it: Was Jesus annoyed?
This question arises almost inevitably in response to Jesus’ rather sharp words to the Syrophoenician woman. Jesus, who evidently was after some peace and quiet, “entered a house and did not want anyone to know he was there.” Yet, as St Mark puts it, “he could not escape notice.”[1]
And so when a woman – a Gentile, an outsider to God’s covenant with Israel – comes to him, begging him to heal her daughter, Jesus rebuffs her, saying: “it is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.” In other words, Lady, who do you think you are?
The woman persists, however, and Jesus does heal the daughter, and the whole episode tells us something important: it tells us that God’s promises of redemption and salvation – made manifest in Jesus, the Messiah – may be extended beyond the nation of Israel to Gentiles as well. As the woman rightly says, “Sir, even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs.”
But the initial question persists: Was Jesus annoyed?
When I was a teenager, I spent some time worrying about the commandment that said that I was to “love my neighbor as myself.” This command seemed to be a real problem, both for the commandment and for me. It seemed impossible that, by an act of will, I could decide to find everyone I knew equally likable, when it was the plain truth that not everyone I knew was equally likable. The same problem presented itself when I heard Jesus’ saying that I was supposed love my enemies. Was I therefore supposed to feel a rosy glow for tormentors and cheaters? The whole business seemed disqualifying of the Christian project, or at least it seemed disqualifying of my place in it. If loving your neighbor meant singing kumbaya together, well, I just didn’t have what it took.
Imagine my relief, then, when I came upon the following passage from C.S. Lewis’ Mere Christianity. He writes,
“I pointed out in the chapter on Forgiveness that our love for ourselves does not mean that we like ourselves. It means that we wish our own good. In the same way Christian Love (or Charity) for our neighbors is quite a different thing from liking or affection. We ‘like’ or are ‘fond of’ some people, and not of others. It is important to understand that this natural ‘liking’ is neither a sin nor a virtue, any more than your likes and dislikes in food are a sin or a virtue. It is just a fact. But, of course, what we do about it is either sinful or virtuous.”[2]
Jesus might have been annoyed. He was, as the letter to the Hebrews puts it, tempted in every way as we are, but he was also without sin.[3] And so we may see that what he did was up to the mark, regardless of how he may have felt.
What did he do? He healed the woman’s daughter, this Gentile woman who was beyond the pale and yet was absolutely convinced “that it [was] from Jesus, the Jewish Messiah, that salvation [was] to be obtained.”[4]
It is tempting here to make a point of how inclusive Jesus was, but the reality is that Scripture gives little support for such a statement. “The fact seems to be that Jesus accepted a fairly sharp distinction between Jew and Gentile as part of God’s plan, and regarded his commission, and that of his disciples, as being limited to Israel. But he seems to have shared the old Jewish hope that when – through his work as Jewish Messiah – the final salvation arrived, large numbers of Gentiles would be called to share in it.”[5]
As Christians, we are not an “in” crowd, who welcome outsiders behind the hedgerow.
Rather, we are all beggars, we are all Syrophoenician women, and we come in hope to the one person who can drive out the demons of arrogance, callousness, fear by which we are all – in our turns – possessed. Jesus said, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick; I came not to call the righteous, but sinners.”[6] It is why the first step in the life of Christian faith is a 180-degree turn away from self-absorption, and toward Christ; why at Baptism, we are asked – in this order – whether we renounce Satan, evil, and sin, and turn to Jesus Christ and accept him as our savior.
It is why St James, an excerpt of whose letter we heard as our first lesson this morning, puts a fine point on the matter: “Do you,” he asks, “with your acts of favoritism really believe in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ?”[7] In other words, Who do you think you are? The task is to love your neighbor as yourself, he writes, and not to show partiality according to the standards of this world, which – in his time as well as ours – have a lot to do with gold rings and fine clothes. Our neighbor may not be loveable, but, as C.S. Lewis rightly pointed out, the same may be true of us. The good news is that in Christ, the pecking order of the world we live in has been collapsed, and we are justified before God not by anything we have done, or will do, or can ever do, but by Jesus Christ, standing beside us.
Next week, we will kick off the season at Christ Church with the Great Fall Gathering. The theme is “Welcome to the Neighborhood,” taking as our cue the fine example of Mr. Rogers and his neighborhood.
When I got home from England at the beginning of August, on the stack of unread mail was one envelope and one pamphlet, on each of which was printed, “Welcome to the Neighborhood,” in bold letters. Were they from Christ Church? No. Were they promotional materials for the Great Fall Gathering? No. One was from Geico, the other from Whole Foods. I bet you could tell me exactly what they were offering me.
As Christians, we are offering something distinctly different, and to any whom we may meet, whether that person comes to us in gold rings or in rags. We offer no product, and our invitation is not to membership in a club; it is to a Way out of darkness into light, a Way out of bonded servitude to sin and the prisons of our own making and into the liberty of what John Donne called “that blessed dependancy” that is life in Jesus Christ.[8] The welcome – and the welcomer – is Christ himself, the One who may have been annoyed, but who showed mercy; the One “who for us… and for our Salvation, came down from heaven;”[9] the One over whom not even death, our final enemy, can be victorious.
AMEN.
[1] Mark 7:24-25
[2] C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (New York: HarperCollins, 2001), 129-30.
[3] Hebrews 4:15, para.
[4] D.E. Nineham, Saint Mark (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1977), 199.
[5] Ibid.
[6] Mark 2:17
[7] James 2:1
[8] John Donne, “Death’s Duell,” February 25, 1631.
[9] Nicene Creed
That Holy Fellowship 