The Story of Esther
Ordinary Time
Elizabeth M. Deibert
About six weeks ago, we read the story of Daniel, a hero from the Hebrew Scriptures, the Old Testament, whose courageous faith empowered the Jewish faith in difficult times. Like Daniel, Esther is the story of a great heroine, whose courage kept the Jews alive in dangerous times.
Just as we did with the story of Daniel, we will read from the Children’s Everyday Bible, though in the case of this story, I added a crucial piece of the story that this Bible story book left out. It is great that we can hear the whole story, without reading ten long chapters of scripture, which would keep us here for a couple of extra hours. So children of God, young and old, I say to you, “Lend me your ears” and your eyes, so we can together, as one family of faith, hear this grand story of how God saved the Jews from horrible Haman, the Hitler of his day. The story of Esther can teach us that in difficult and dangerous times, we can find the courage to stand up for the dignity and protection of people, believing that God’s providence will prevail.
The story of Esther:
King Xerxes was the powerful ruler of the Persian empire. He was used to having his own way, especially in his own household. One day, he called for his wife, Queen Vashti. She was busy and refused to come. King Xerxes was furious and banished her forever from his presence. The king decided to find a new queen, so he rounded up all the suitable young women in the land. They gathered in the palace for the king to make his choice. Esther was an orphan from a Jewish family. She was gentle and kind, as well as beautiful. As soon as the king saw Esther, he decided to make her his new queen.
Esther was excited but also very nervous. She knew that, if she did wrong, she would be punished like Queen Vashti. Esther kept secret the fact that she was a Jew. This was probably good, because the king's chief minister, a man named Haman, hated the Jewish people. Haman especially hated Mordecai, Esther's cousin because every time Haman passed by, Mordecai refused to bow to him. Mordecai, as a good Jew, knew he should only bow to God.
Haman hatched an evil plot to murder every Jew in the empire. He went to see King Xerxes. "Your Majesty," he said, "I know of some trouble makers who always disobey your laws. They are the Jews. If you let me set a date to kill them all, I promise you a vast sum of money." The king agreed to this wicked plan.
Esther's cousin Mordecai worked at the palace. When he heard about Haman's plot, he sent a message to Esther. "Beg the king to save the lives of the Jewish people," he urged. Esther knew this would be a dangerous thing to do. She sent word back to her cousin. "It is against the law to go to the king uninvited," she said. "The punishment is death!" "If you don't go, you will die anyway, because you are a Jew," replied Mordecai. "Perhaps it was God's will for you to become queen, so you could rescue his people." So Esther pushed aside her fears and went to visit the king.
To Esther's great relief King Xerxes was pleased to see her. "What can I do for you?" He asked. "I would like to invite you and Haman to a banquet tomorrow," replied Esther nervously. Haman was delighted to be invited. He felt more important than ever.
Meanwhile, the king could not sleep that night, so he called Haman and asked him, "What should I do to honor someone who saved my life?" Haman, thinking he was the one, told the king he should dress that person in fine robes and let him ride the king's horse in front of all the people. So King Xerxes, much to Haman's shock and disgust, said, "Do those things to Mordecai, because he saved my life."
The next day Haman came to dinner with Queen Esther and King Xerxes. While they were eating, Esther finally dared to speak out. "There is a man who is plotting to kill my family and all my people," she said quietly. "Who is this scoundrel?!" Asked the king. Esther pointed across the table at Haman. The king exploded with rage. "He shall pay for this with his own life!" He cried.
Esther had saved her people from a terrible tragedy. (The Word of the Lord...)
They won the lottery. God’s people did. As the full story goes, Haman had cast lots to determine which day he would exterminate the Jewish people. Purim, a word that means “lots” is the Jewish celebration in February or March each year, of the deliverance of God’s people from the evil plot of Haman. As exiles in Persia and many other places, the Jews, needed to believe in the power of their God to overrule the bad luck of the dice. The book of Esther took the matter further: even when the dice had fallen, the Lord was powerful enough to reverse the bad, in order to deliver God’s people. (Joyce Baldwin)
The Book of Esther encourages us to see, like the Jewish people in the fifth century BC, the evidence of God working out our circumstances to the good, that even those events which seem to happen by luck or by chance come to by the providing hand of God. The fact that the real narrative of Esther does not mention the name of God has been seen as a problem by some people, but others say that it demonstrates the power of God at work, even in the ambiguities of life.
“The power of providence is our tentative belief in God at the outset of life-threatening events, when there is no clarity, not clear word or direction from God.” (Soards et al)
When you look at your life – do you see coincidence or providence? Can you speak of coincidence in such a way that it includes the providence of God? Some of us are programmed in our brains to see things more spiritually than others, but all of us can cultivate the ability to see our lives as well-nurtured by God.
On the other hand, if we work at it, we can deny the existence of God by finding events, which to our human eye and heart, appear random and unkind, thereby leaving us with the horrible predicament of choosing between an uninvolved God or an uncaring God. There are a number of atheists writing books these days, trying to prove the absence of God. They pit faith versus reason, but as Karen Armstrong points out in her new book, The Case for God, faith and reason are not mutually exclusive. Atheists take the fundamentalist notion of God and make that God look ridiculous but there are plenty of us Jews, Christians, and Muslims alike, who believe in a God very different from the God the atheists are trying to debunk. These atheists are leading people away from faith as easily as Haman led King Xerxes to think that the Jews should be killed.
We have a story to tell about a God, who works quietly in the coincidences of life, providing for us, and indeed caring for all of creation. We believe that providence prevails even when bad things happen to good people. When families like the Craigs and the Browns have a rough year with untimely deaths and accidents we can still affirm that God is bringing good. God is comforting. God is providing. When folks like Jo Allison, Jill, Richard, Chris, Tom, Barbie, Robin, just to name a few at Peace, have a bad luck with employment, we can still know that God is providing, and that good things – like extra time with family, extra time for reading, extra time for church are the unexpected blessings God is providing.
We Presbyterians are firm believers in the sovereignty of God. That is perhaps THE central theme of the Reformed Tradition – that we have not been left to chance, but “that Almighty God possesses the wisdom, the will, and the way to transform the bad luck of our suffering into joy.” (Richard Deibert) That not even death, the final enemy, gets the last word. Life, Resurrection life, does.
So when the storms and the evil plots of others get you down, look for the prevailing providence of God and listen for the groggers drowning out the death-dealing wishes of folks like Haman, whose lust for power demonizes them.
Ring those groggers against all whose lust for power would keep oppressed people silent and fearful. Ring those groggers against all whose lust for power would stand in the way of a fruitful dialogue about healthcare reform. Ring the groggers against nuclear weapons, which in any country are a threat to all countries. Ring those groggers against all who would keep any system or practice in place, which denies people the dignity God intends them to have. Ring the groggers and know that God has a plan to restore battered and bruised humanity because God is always especially concerned for those on the underside of life. Ring the groggers against all that is mean in this world and know that the providence of God will prevail.
Let us pray:
O God, make us wise and courageous like Mordecai and Esther, so that we may speak to powerful people like Xerxes and undermine the those who would threaten or harm others, people like Haman. Make us peacemakers, who dare to speak out about injustice. Give us faith to believe that, even in the darkest moments, your providence will prevail against all that destroys us, against all that leads us to despair.
Sunday, September 27, 2009
Sunday, September 20, 2009
True Greatness = Nurturing Service
Mark 9:30-37
Ordinary Time
Elizabeth M. Deibert
Every Sunday Jean Smith goes to eat lunch with my mom and brother. Every Christmas morning when I was growing up, when the family was just rising to enjoy Christmas breakfast and gift-giving, usually still in our pajamas, Jean would walk in uninvited but expected. She’d demand that we pose for every possible grouping of people while she snapped pictures. When we would see her in church on Sundays, she would hug us, not letting go. She’d beg us to come visit her. If we visited her, she would plead with us not to leave. If there was threat of a thunder storm, she would call, hoping to spend the night with us, even though we always said “no”.
The Faison Presbyterian Church has been Jean’s family for more than sixty years. Jean turned 80 recently and lives now in an ALF, so she’s not free to arrive unexpectedly anymore. But every Sunday she worships there and has her favorite meal of the week with my mom and brother. Being a friend to Jean is rarely a rewarding experience. She is a bottomless pit of neediness. Whatever you do is not enough. She is a difficult, childlike, self-absorbed person. My mother complains a lot about Jean, but in her sixty years of service to Jean’s need for love, she’s taught me about the greatness of humble service to the vulnerable. That’s what Jesus was trying to teach the disciples in our story from Mark.
Hear the word of the Lord:
On the way to Jerusalem, the place of his death, Jesus tells his disciples. “I am going to die.” Most human beings are not very adept at handling messages like that. Most change the subject or make insensitive comments, denying the pain of the one who said it. Jesus is graphic but they don’t understand. He says he’s going to be betrayed and killed, and raised from the dead. But the disciples are clueless and don’t even seem to have the inclination to figure out what in the world he’s talking about.
On to Capernaum they go, that’s lower Galilee, and on with regular life – jockeying for positions of importance. The disciples arguing over who is greatest are no different from middle schoolers choosing where to sit in the lunchroom and who to talk to on the way home from school. It’s all about the power of popularity. No different than high schoolers comparing their grades or flauting their physical prowess. They are no different from pastors comparing how many people they have in worship, teachers comparing their class’ test scores with other teachers, business people comparing net gains in their company’s value, and parents comparing their children’s excellence in extra-curricular activities. We all want to know how we measure up against others. Who is the greatest?
Magazines and websites are filled with the people we consider the greatest in sports and entertainment. They are there for a season, then replaced by another star. And while we idolize these stars, we seem just as interested in exposing their weaknesses as in admiring their strength. And Jesus says, “What are you talking about?” And we say, “Oh nothing” but we spend all kinds of time competing for greatness, and watching other flaunt their greatness. Have I said
how much I hate the chest-pounding arrogance of college and professional athletes? We spend hours measuring the greatness of celebrities with our pop idol votes and reality shows when we should be thinking of the greatness of people like Jeremy Gilley, whom Tricia told us about in the children’s sermon. We should be studying scripture, praying, and working to build in ourselves a compassionate, serving spirit. We should practice that service with those closest to us, as well as those far away.
Human beings are naturally competitive but Jesus wants to challenge us to think about greatness in different ways. The greatest is the loser, the last one, the one who serves the others best. These are not just the underdogs who rise to the top like the unranked Washington beating USC and the unattractive Susan Broyles with her amazing voice. No, the last and the servants do not necessarily ever get the attention of a Mother Teresa for their efforts. The greatest is the one who welcomes and embraces the weak ones, the ones who cannot move a person up to higher places on the power ladder.
Children rarely lived to age five in Jesus’ day. They were seen as vulnerable and expendable. They were last of all in social standing. They were not outcast, but almost non-persons. Until they reached adulthood, quite a feat when there were not antibiotics, they were not worth much. But Jesus shocked his twelve male disciples by saying that greatness is in welcoming children, the ones they might naturally ignore. Whoever welcomes these insignificant little people, welcomes me, and not just me, but the one who sent me. This reminds us of the parable of the sheep and the goats in Matthew 25. There Jesus says when we feed the hungry and visit the prisoner we do it to him. Greatness is serving those whom nobody deems worthy of our time and energy.
I think it is great that we have a dad serving as nursery coordinator and that he added the senior high boys to the rota. At Peace we can make a difference by teaching teens that greatness is in serving others, not in being served. We can make a tremendous difference in the lives of children and youth by taking them seriously and building authentic relationships with them, as we already are doing. By modeling humble service.
In Richard’s season of unemployment, he has taken over every area of service in our household from cleaning to cooking to laundry to assisting the kids with their schedules, all this while picking up more church work as a volunteer. I realized this week I was beginning to take him for granted. I was beginning to have an attitude, thinking that I, the busier one, was more important than he who was supporting me in everything. And just when I needed it, this scripture knocked me into my place. How could I be so blind, so ungrateful?
Whether we are using power to establish our own value or measuring other people by values of power, Jesus is challenging us to live in a new way. True greatness is not the use of power for anything except humble, nurturing service. “True greatness is to be like Jesus, a truly powerful person, who knew that his value was in doing the will of God and demonstrating the love of God, a lowly path to the cross. He is a king, but wearing a crown of thorns. He is the Christ, but broken on the cross.” (William Loader) He feeds us with his broken body and transforms us in his lowly, weak yet great, mysterious power.
When Jesus says the greatest position is to be the slave (9:35; 10:43,44), that is a shocking contrast to both his and our way of thinking. The use of the Greek word ‘diakonos’ as well as ‘doulos’, both words for slaves, helps us to see that the focus is not just the status of ‘slave’, but also the function of ‘serving’. Greatness is choosing to be a loving and serving person toward marginal people, people whom the world denies. Mark 10:45 makes that clear: ‘The Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve and to give his life a ransom for many’. (Loader)
I want to close with a story of a truly great man. He was in a hurry at the doctor’s office one day. The nurse noticed the older gentleman man was agitated. When she came to take his blood, she asked him if he was okay. He said, “Oh, I’m fine. I just need to make it on time to my daily appointment.” She said, ‘What’s that?” He said, “My wife has Alzheimer’s and I have lunch with her every day.” When the nurse inquired about the Alzheimer’s she learned that the man’s wife has no idea who he is. So she said to him, “Sir, if she doesn’t know you, why do you worry about getting there on time?” He said, “I go to take care of her. She may not know who I am, but I know who she is, and that’s all that matters.”
Oh that we all would live as servants like that, serving because it is the right thing, serving because it is the loving thing, serving because we want to shape our lives in the pattern of the sacrificial servant love of Jesus Christ our Lord, who says to every creature in the world, “You may not who I am, but I know who you are, and I’ll be there to take care of you every day, whether you know it or not.”
Ordinary Time
Elizabeth M. Deibert
Every Sunday Jean Smith goes to eat lunch with my mom and brother. Every Christmas morning when I was growing up, when the family was just rising to enjoy Christmas breakfast and gift-giving, usually still in our pajamas, Jean would walk in uninvited but expected. She’d demand that we pose for every possible grouping of people while she snapped pictures. When we would see her in church on Sundays, she would hug us, not letting go. She’d beg us to come visit her. If we visited her, she would plead with us not to leave. If there was threat of a thunder storm, she would call, hoping to spend the night with us, even though we always said “no”.
The Faison Presbyterian Church has been Jean’s family for more than sixty years. Jean turned 80 recently and lives now in an ALF, so she’s not free to arrive unexpectedly anymore. But every Sunday she worships there and has her favorite meal of the week with my mom and brother. Being a friend to Jean is rarely a rewarding experience. She is a bottomless pit of neediness. Whatever you do is not enough. She is a difficult, childlike, self-absorbed person. My mother complains a lot about Jean, but in her sixty years of service to Jean’s need for love, she’s taught me about the greatness of humble service to the vulnerable. That’s what Jesus was trying to teach the disciples in our story from Mark.
Hear the word of the Lord:
On the way to Jerusalem, the place of his death, Jesus tells his disciples. “I am going to die.” Most human beings are not very adept at handling messages like that. Most change the subject or make insensitive comments, denying the pain of the one who said it. Jesus is graphic but they don’t understand. He says he’s going to be betrayed and killed, and raised from the dead. But the disciples are clueless and don’t even seem to have the inclination to figure out what in the world he’s talking about.
On to Capernaum they go, that’s lower Galilee, and on with regular life – jockeying for positions of importance. The disciples arguing over who is greatest are no different from middle schoolers choosing where to sit in the lunchroom and who to talk to on the way home from school. It’s all about the power of popularity. No different than high schoolers comparing their grades or flauting their physical prowess. They are no different from pastors comparing how many people they have in worship, teachers comparing their class’ test scores with other teachers, business people comparing net gains in their company’s value, and parents comparing their children’s excellence in extra-curricular activities. We all want to know how we measure up against others. Who is the greatest?
Magazines and websites are filled with the people we consider the greatest in sports and entertainment. They are there for a season, then replaced by another star. And while we idolize these stars, we seem just as interested in exposing their weaknesses as in admiring their strength. And Jesus says, “What are you talking about?” And we say, “Oh nothing” but we spend all kinds of time competing for greatness, and watching other flaunt their greatness. Have I said
how much I hate the chest-pounding arrogance of college and professional athletes? We spend hours measuring the greatness of celebrities with our pop idol votes and reality shows when we should be thinking of the greatness of people like Jeremy Gilley, whom Tricia told us about in the children’s sermon. We should be studying scripture, praying, and working to build in ourselves a compassionate, serving spirit. We should practice that service with those closest to us, as well as those far away.
Human beings are naturally competitive but Jesus wants to challenge us to think about greatness in different ways. The greatest is the loser, the last one, the one who serves the others best. These are not just the underdogs who rise to the top like the unranked Washington beating USC and the unattractive Susan Broyles with her amazing voice. No, the last and the servants do not necessarily ever get the attention of a Mother Teresa for their efforts. The greatest is the one who welcomes and embraces the weak ones, the ones who cannot move a person up to higher places on the power ladder.
Children rarely lived to age five in Jesus’ day. They were seen as vulnerable and expendable. They were last of all in social standing. They were not outcast, but almost non-persons. Until they reached adulthood, quite a feat when there were not antibiotics, they were not worth much. But Jesus shocked his twelve male disciples by saying that greatness is in welcoming children, the ones they might naturally ignore. Whoever welcomes these insignificant little people, welcomes me, and not just me, but the one who sent me. This reminds us of the parable of the sheep and the goats in Matthew 25. There Jesus says when we feed the hungry and visit the prisoner we do it to him. Greatness is serving those whom nobody deems worthy of our time and energy.
I think it is great that we have a dad serving as nursery coordinator and that he added the senior high boys to the rota. At Peace we can make a difference by teaching teens that greatness is in serving others, not in being served. We can make a tremendous difference in the lives of children and youth by taking them seriously and building authentic relationships with them, as we already are doing. By modeling humble service.
In Richard’s season of unemployment, he has taken over every area of service in our household from cleaning to cooking to laundry to assisting the kids with their schedules, all this while picking up more church work as a volunteer. I realized this week I was beginning to take him for granted. I was beginning to have an attitude, thinking that I, the busier one, was more important than he who was supporting me in everything. And just when I needed it, this scripture knocked me into my place. How could I be so blind, so ungrateful?
Whether we are using power to establish our own value or measuring other people by values of power, Jesus is challenging us to live in a new way. True greatness is not the use of power for anything except humble, nurturing service. “True greatness is to be like Jesus, a truly powerful person, who knew that his value was in doing the will of God and demonstrating the love of God, a lowly path to the cross. He is a king, but wearing a crown of thorns. He is the Christ, but broken on the cross.” (William Loader) He feeds us with his broken body and transforms us in his lowly, weak yet great, mysterious power.
When Jesus says the greatest position is to be the slave (9:35; 10:43,44), that is a shocking contrast to both his and our way of thinking. The use of the Greek word ‘diakonos’ as well as ‘doulos’, both words for slaves, helps us to see that the focus is not just the status of ‘slave’, but also the function of ‘serving’. Greatness is choosing to be a loving and serving person toward marginal people, people whom the world denies. Mark 10:45 makes that clear: ‘The Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve and to give his life a ransom for many’. (Loader)
I want to close with a story of a truly great man. He was in a hurry at the doctor’s office one day. The nurse noticed the older gentleman man was agitated. When she came to take his blood, she asked him if he was okay. He said, “Oh, I’m fine. I just need to make it on time to my daily appointment.” She said, ‘What’s that?” He said, “My wife has Alzheimer’s and I have lunch with her every day.” When the nurse inquired about the Alzheimer’s she learned that the man’s wife has no idea who he is. So she said to him, “Sir, if she doesn’t know you, why do you worry about getting there on time?” He said, “I go to take care of her. She may not know who I am, but I know who she is, and that’s all that matters.”
Oh that we all would live as servants like that, serving because it is the right thing, serving because it is the loving thing, serving because we want to shape our lives in the pattern of the sacrificial servant love of Jesus Christ our Lord, who says to every creature in the world, “You may not who I am, but I know who you are, and I’ll be there to take care of you every day, whether you know it or not.”
Sunday, September 6, 2009
Begging for Help
Mark 7:24-37
Ordinary Time
Elizabeth M. Deibert
“Help me. Please. Please help.” One thing we learn as we grow up is not to beg wrong to beg for help. It irritates parents and teachers and friends. So we learn to be self-sufficient or at least appear so. That’s good, but it has a bad side. We have people with serious mental illness who find it very difficult to say “I need help. I’m suicidal today.” We have people raising children, who reach the end of their rope, and losing control, they damage young innocents’ lives, because they were afraid to admit to anyone they needed help. We have folks addicted to alcohol or internet porn or prescription drugs, who need help, but who wants to beg for help? Nobody. Nobody really wants to say, “I’m desperate over here. I’m hurting. My life is a mess.” When we’re having financial difficulties or marriage trouble, we often go to great lengths to pretend otherwise, so no one will think we less of us.
Perhaps we even become self-sufficient in our relationship with God. “Dear God, please help my sick child, if it be your will.” That’s a little different from the psalmist who says, “I cry aloud to God...My soul refuses to be comforted...Give ear to my prayer, O God. Do not hide yourself from my supplication. My heart is in anguish within me.”
Perhaps our discomfort with miracle stories is our disgust at the thought of admitting to anyone even God that any of us are as desperate as those who approached Jesus. Just because we don’t talk about our daughters being possessed by demons does not mean that we don’t know something about mental illness.
Just because we don’t necessarily have speech and hearing trouble like the man who was brought to Jesus doesn’t mean that we don’t know about disabilities. If you live long enough, you will know dis-ability. Dis-ability in memory. Disability in physical activity. Dis-ability in hearing and sight and even taste and smell. We lose it all, if we live long enough. We lose even our awareness of how much we have lost. But we are in denial about that. Watch the tv advertisements which are most of them trying to talk you into spending money to feel younger or look younger or seem younger, so you can forget your dis-abilities.
Hear now two stories about people who were honestly struggling with life and how Jesus, despite his desire to have some personal space from the crowds, was moved by their expression of need, their pleading for help. We don’t like to think that we should have to impress our needs upon Jesus, but in this story, we see that being honest, even to the point of pushiness, was part of the healing process.
NRS Mark 7:24 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, 25 but a woman whose little daughter had an unclean spirit immediately heard about him, and she came and bowed down at his feet.
26 Now the woman was a Gentile, of Syrophoenician origin. She begged him to cast the demon out of her daughter. 27 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." 28 But she answered him, "Sir, even the dogs under the table eat the children's crumbs." 29 Then he said to her, "For saying that, you may go-- the demon has left your daughter." 30 So she went home, found the child lying on the bed, and the demon gone. 31 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. 32 They brought to him a deaf man who had an impediment in his speech; and they begged him to lay his hand on him. 33 He took him aside in private, away from the crowd, and put his fingers into his ears, and he spat and touched his tongue. 34 Then looking up to heaven, he sighed and said to him, "Ephphatha," that is, "Be opened." 35 And immediately his ears were opened, his tongue was released, and he spoke plainly. 36 Then Jesus ordered them to tell no one; but the more he ordered them, the more zealously they proclaimed it. 37 They were astounded beyond measure, saying, "He has done everything well; he even makes the deaf to hear and the mute to speak."
The Word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.
I used to feel sorry for this woman. After all, it looks like Jesus is really insulting her. But I don’t feel so terribly sorry for her anymore. Instead I’m proud of her. She stood up against culture in her humble self-assertion. I might have just backed off, after getting reminded of my place in society. I might have just said, “Okay, yes, I know I’m not really worth your time, Powerful Healer. I’ll just go back and accept the situation as it is. But no, she fired back at him, “Even the dogs get a little crumbs.” This woman has some ovaries, I tell you, standing up to Jesus like that and insisting on getting a few crumbs of healing power for her daughter. And in this narrative, we see God’s desire to save and make whole all people, not just the chosen ones of God, the Jews, the children as they are called. No, God loves everyone, even the puppy dogs.
And we should equally be proud of women from countries (and even in this country of ours) who demand help for their children, who say I am worthy of your attention. And Jesus says, “Yes you are. For asserting yourself on her behalf, I am now healing your daughter.” We should remember Jesus’ positive response to the Syrophoenician woman every time we see a mother humbly asserting herself to beg for a few crumbs of health care, or a few crumbs of education, or a few crumbs of decent food and shelter. Because she loves her child, and she knows her child has worth.
Of course, we don’t have the same lines dividing human beings from one another. We know all human beings are created in the image of God, so we treat everyone exactly the same. Well, unless that someone is in poor dress and smelly, and approaches the door of a house in our neighborhood. We treat everyone the same, unless we just can’t, because the person has difficulty with the dominant language of the world, our language, English. We treat everyone the same, unless the mentally ill homeless person on the street tries to engage us in a real conversation. We just wanted to hand off something to alleviate our discomfort. We did not want a relationship. We treat everyone the same unless the dark-skinned male with a toboggan on his head, approaches us at night in an empty parking lot at night. Then we have a different set of rules for different people. How quickly we judge Jesus’ reaction to the woman, but he was just playing by the rules of his culture, saying what everyone expected, until he was moved by compassion to break those rules and show compassion.
Jesus could not escape needy people. His very presence on earth drew them toward him. With the deaf man, who was brought by friends or family members, Jesus sensed the need to get away, so he removed the man from the crowd and through touching his ears and then with his own saliva on the man’s tongue, Jesus utters a deep sigh, and heals him. I’d love to know what that sigh meant. With that sigh was Jesus taking into his own body, the pain of a man whose communication had been so limited. We get much more detail about the healing process in this story than in the story of the woman and her daughter..
But the most striking part of this story is not so much the encounter with the man, as it is the reaction of the people. Jesus says, “Don’t tell anyone” but the more insists, the more they tell. The Messianic secret: Jesus often says after a healing miracle, “Don’t tell.” Could it be that he wants people to hear his teaching and learn to trust him, without seeing amazing miracles?
I wonder if this has something to say to us about our worship. If we are actively trying to wow people with our worship, then we are not listening to Jesus, who says, “Don’t tell anyone.” Jesus doesn’t necessarily want people to be wowed into trust through miracles, through sensationalism. Jesus wants us to love the Lord our God with all our heart, mind, soul, and strength, and to love our neighbor as ourselves. There’s something very ordinary about that, but that is perhaps the greatest miracle of all – when that really happens.
Maybe the real miracles were not what Jesus did, because we know Jesus has the power to change lives. Maybe the miracles were the courageous love of that persistent mother begging for the health of her child, and the devoted love of those who brought the deaf man to Jesus and who were so pleased with his healing that they had to tell the world, despite explicit instructions not to tell anyone.
Jesus is always there to help those who call, though it seems that sometimes we must persist in asking. There is no shame in begging for help. Who knows Jesus may see in your persistent humble begging just the transformation in you that will inspire him to answer that prayer. There is no magic formula to prayer. There is only relationship with the Lord, and relationships are not always predictable, especially relationships with miracle-workers who rule the universe.
Ordinary Time
Elizabeth M. Deibert
“Help me. Please. Please help.” One thing we learn as we grow up is not to beg wrong to beg for help. It irritates parents and teachers and friends. So we learn to be self-sufficient or at least appear so. That’s good, but it has a bad side. We have people with serious mental illness who find it very difficult to say “I need help. I’m suicidal today.” We have people raising children, who reach the end of their rope, and losing control, they damage young innocents’ lives, because they were afraid to admit to anyone they needed help. We have folks addicted to alcohol or internet porn or prescription drugs, who need help, but who wants to beg for help? Nobody. Nobody really wants to say, “I’m desperate over here. I’m hurting. My life is a mess.” When we’re having financial difficulties or marriage trouble, we often go to great lengths to pretend otherwise, so no one will think we less of us.
Perhaps we even become self-sufficient in our relationship with God. “Dear God, please help my sick child, if it be your will.” That’s a little different from the psalmist who says, “I cry aloud to God...My soul refuses to be comforted...Give ear to my prayer, O God. Do not hide yourself from my supplication. My heart is in anguish within me.”
Perhaps our discomfort with miracle stories is our disgust at the thought of admitting to anyone even God that any of us are as desperate as those who approached Jesus. Just because we don’t talk about our daughters being possessed by demons does not mean that we don’t know something about mental illness.
Just because we don’t necessarily have speech and hearing trouble like the man who was brought to Jesus doesn’t mean that we don’t know about disabilities. If you live long enough, you will know dis-ability. Dis-ability in memory. Disability in physical activity. Dis-ability in hearing and sight and even taste and smell. We lose it all, if we live long enough. We lose even our awareness of how much we have lost. But we are in denial about that. Watch the tv advertisements which are most of them trying to talk you into spending money to feel younger or look younger or seem younger, so you can forget your dis-abilities.
Hear now two stories about people who were honestly struggling with life and how Jesus, despite his desire to have some personal space from the crowds, was moved by their expression of need, their pleading for help. We don’t like to think that we should have to impress our needs upon Jesus, but in this story, we see that being honest, even to the point of pushiness, was part of the healing process.
NRS Mark 7:24 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, 25 but a woman whose little daughter had an unclean spirit immediately heard about him, and she came and bowed down at his feet.
26 Now the woman was a Gentile, of Syrophoenician origin. She begged him to cast the demon out of her daughter. 27 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." 28 But she answered him, "Sir, even the dogs under the table eat the children's crumbs." 29 Then he said to her, "For saying that, you may go-- the demon has left your daughter." 30 So she went home, found the child lying on the bed, and the demon gone. 31 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. 32 They brought to him a deaf man who had an impediment in his speech; and they begged him to lay his hand on him. 33 He took him aside in private, away from the crowd, and put his fingers into his ears, and he spat and touched his tongue. 34 Then looking up to heaven, he sighed and said to him, "Ephphatha," that is, "Be opened." 35 And immediately his ears were opened, his tongue was released, and he spoke plainly. 36 Then Jesus ordered them to tell no one; but the more he ordered them, the more zealously they proclaimed it. 37 They were astounded beyond measure, saying, "He has done everything well; he even makes the deaf to hear and the mute to speak."
The Word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.
I used to feel sorry for this woman. After all, it looks like Jesus is really insulting her. But I don’t feel so terribly sorry for her anymore. Instead I’m proud of her. She stood up against culture in her humble self-assertion. I might have just backed off, after getting reminded of my place in society. I might have just said, “Okay, yes, I know I’m not really worth your time, Powerful Healer. I’ll just go back and accept the situation as it is. But no, she fired back at him, “Even the dogs get a little crumbs.” This woman has some ovaries, I tell you, standing up to Jesus like that and insisting on getting a few crumbs of healing power for her daughter. And in this narrative, we see God’s desire to save and make whole all people, not just the chosen ones of God, the Jews, the children as they are called. No, God loves everyone, even the puppy dogs.
And we should equally be proud of women from countries (and even in this country of ours) who demand help for their children, who say I am worthy of your attention. And Jesus says, “Yes you are. For asserting yourself on her behalf, I am now healing your daughter.” We should remember Jesus’ positive response to the Syrophoenician woman every time we see a mother humbly asserting herself to beg for a few crumbs of health care, or a few crumbs of education, or a few crumbs of decent food and shelter. Because she loves her child, and she knows her child has worth.
Of course, we don’t have the same lines dividing human beings from one another. We know all human beings are created in the image of God, so we treat everyone exactly the same. Well, unless that someone is in poor dress and smelly, and approaches the door of a house in our neighborhood. We treat everyone the same, unless we just can’t, because the person has difficulty with the dominant language of the world, our language, English. We treat everyone the same, unless the mentally ill homeless person on the street tries to engage us in a real conversation. We just wanted to hand off something to alleviate our discomfort. We did not want a relationship. We treat everyone the same unless the dark-skinned male with a toboggan on his head, approaches us at night in an empty parking lot at night. Then we have a different set of rules for different people. How quickly we judge Jesus’ reaction to the woman, but he was just playing by the rules of his culture, saying what everyone expected, until he was moved by compassion to break those rules and show compassion.
Jesus could not escape needy people. His very presence on earth drew them toward him. With the deaf man, who was brought by friends or family members, Jesus sensed the need to get away, so he removed the man from the crowd and through touching his ears and then with his own saliva on the man’s tongue, Jesus utters a deep sigh, and heals him. I’d love to know what that sigh meant. With that sigh was Jesus taking into his own body, the pain of a man whose communication had been so limited. We get much more detail about the healing process in this story than in the story of the woman and her daughter..
But the most striking part of this story is not so much the encounter with the man, as it is the reaction of the people. Jesus says, “Don’t tell anyone” but the more insists, the more they tell. The Messianic secret: Jesus often says after a healing miracle, “Don’t tell.” Could it be that he wants people to hear his teaching and learn to trust him, without seeing amazing miracles?
I wonder if this has something to say to us about our worship. If we are actively trying to wow people with our worship, then we are not listening to Jesus, who says, “Don’t tell anyone.” Jesus doesn’t necessarily want people to be wowed into trust through miracles, through sensationalism. Jesus wants us to love the Lord our God with all our heart, mind, soul, and strength, and to love our neighbor as ourselves. There’s something very ordinary about that, but that is perhaps the greatest miracle of all – when that really happens.
Maybe the real miracles were not what Jesus did, because we know Jesus has the power to change lives. Maybe the miracles were the courageous love of that persistent mother begging for the health of her child, and the devoted love of those who brought the deaf man to Jesus and who were so pleased with his healing that they had to tell the world, despite explicit instructions not to tell anyone.
Jesus is always there to help those who call, though it seems that sometimes we must persist in asking. There is no shame in begging for help. Who knows Jesus may see in your persistent humble begging just the transformation in you that will inspire him to answer that prayer. There is no magic formula to prayer. There is only relationship with the Lord, and relationships are not always predictable, especially relationships with miracle-workers who rule the universe.
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