When I was a seminarian, the
church I worked at listed the staff in its bulletins every week in a way that
made a statement. The first person listed was the sexton (Episcopal speak for
grounds keeper). The last person listed was the rector (or the pastor of the
church). In other words, the name of the person with the least amount of power
within the church structure appeared at the top of the staff list. And the
person with the most amount of power within this structure was the last name
listed. It’s not very often that I see organizational personnel schemas laid
out with way, but when I do stumble upon such a layout it makes me stop…and
usually smile…because this sort of inverted hierarchical thinking signals an
awareness of power dynamics and an embrace of what Jesus teaches us this
morning.
Today we greet Jesus in his home of Capernaum. His disciples are with him and he is trying –in vain—to teach them his countercultural ways. As usual, the disciples aren’t grasping his ideas. This becomes clear in today’s passage when Jesus asks his disciples what they were arguing about on the way to Capernaum. An awkward silence follows this question because we learn that instead of talking about the idea of servant-hood, the disciples had been arguing about their place in the kingdom and who among them will be the “greatest.”
Jesus’ response? He stops. He sits down. And then gives his disciples what has come to be a well- known pearl of wisdom: “Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all.” Then he takes a child and says to them “Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me and whoever welcomes me welcomes not me but the one who sent me.” So to follow Jesus – to follow this path of Christianity, we learn that we must strive to break out of the hierarchical schemas of success that dominate perhaps every other area of our life. When Jesus takes that child into his harms and says to his disciples – “you must welcome one such child in my name” – he is saying--within his cultural context--you must welcome the lowly, the powerless, the outcasts. Children in Jesus’ culture were considered to be at the bottom rung of society. So, in this statement, the child symbolizes those at this bottom rung – the people who were the hardest for society to welcome and to embrace.
Given the way our world is ordered, it’s not easy to enact what Jesus teaches us this morning. It seems that wherever we look, hierarchical models of success dominate – the church replicates this pattern, the university system is built on it, so many of our work places don’t embrace the kind of counter cultural thinking Jesus lays out this lesson. So how do we begin to internalize this teaching and model our lives on it?
There is an apocryphal story about a man engaging Mother Teresa in conversation on precisely these sorts of challenges.
The story goes like this…
An obviously
well-fed businessman, “dripping with gold and diamonds, came one day to visit
Mother Teresa, fell at her feet, and proclaimed, ‘Oh my God, you are the
holiest of the Holy! You are the super-holy one! You have given up everything!
I cannot even give up one samosa for breakfast! Not one single chapatti for
lunch can I give up!’ (Remember they are in India – maybe we would say we can
not even give up one latte for breakfast or one In-N-Out Burger for lunch).
Well, Mother Teresa started to laugh so hard her attendant nuns were concerned.
She was in her mid-80s and frail from two recent heart attacks.
Eventually, she stopped laughing and, wiping her eyes with one hand, she leaned forward to help her adorer to his feet. ‘So you say I have given up everything?’ she said quietly. The businessman nodded enthusiastically. Mother Teresa smiled. ‘Oh, my dear man,’ she said, ‘you are so wrong. It isn't I who have given up everything; it is you. You have given up the supreme sacred joy of life, the source of all lasting happiness, the joy of giving your life away to other beings, to serve the Divine in them with compassion. It is you – you have given up everything.’”
It is within us, this capacity relate to others, to give our life to others and to “serve the Divine in them with compassion.” But often, we don’t recognize this capacity within ourselves until with meet people whose own way of being in the world inspires us and helps us to uncover our own gifts and sense of servant ministry.
Historically, the church and people within the church have engaged in impressive examples of the kind of servant ministry Jesus tries to get at this morning. We need only look to the history of the church in our own country to see evidence of schools and hospitals and other institutions that engaged in a kind of servant ministry that enabled generations of people to better their lives. Today’s Episcopal Church in the United States does less direct social service work, but the tradition of being on the front line of education and healthcare is a major part of the indigenous Episcopal/Anglican churches’ work developing countries like Haiti, Palestine or South Africa. That said, the Episcopal Church in the United States is still very much involved in the timeless work of the church around serving the needs of people’s souls and the nurture of their spiritual lives. Sometimes students – and others ask me – “what’s the point – why attend church?” That’s when I say – “because when you participate in a church community, you are opening yourself and your soul up to being grounded in challenging countercultural lessons not necessarily taught elsewhere that will shape and mark you in profound ways. Religious tradition provides incredibly rich material and content that takes us a lifetime and more to internalize and enact. The church provides us a community to keep us accountable and help us to wrestle with the big questions of life and the difficult lessons Jesus puts before us.
Yesterday I attended an all day meeting in LA with the six candidates who will stand for election in December for two suffragan (or assistant bishop) positions in our Diocese. In the interview group I belonged to, a particular man was obsessed with asking the bishop candidates a question about the nature of humility. He felt that there wasn’t enough humility in the world and wanted to know their thoughts on humility, in addition to looking for evidence of humility in each candidate. The candidate about which I turned out to be most excited, spoke, interestingly enough, on this idea that within the church, we need to remember to function in accordance to the inverted hierarchical scheme Jesus talks about today. That’s to say, we are to do ministry – all of us, out of this idea of servant-hood. And the deacons and priests –the people farther up the traditional hierarchical scale--are to be the servants to the servants. The bishops—the people traditionally at the top of this scale—are to be the servants to the servants to the servants. Ironically and sadly, the church often gets far too caught up in its own sense of hierarchy. It too needs to be reminded of its imperfection and a large sense of purpose sometimes. And that’s why we come back to the teachings of Jesus over and over and over again.
It’s my hope that St. Michael’s – as imperfect as it can be at times – is a place where we can nurture in our selves and help to nurture in one another a sense of servant-hood and servant ministry. Here, amidst yet also apart from the hierarchies of the university and the rest of the world, we are called to meet one another as equals and to “serve the Divine in others with compassion.”
As the old hymn goes “Won’t you let me be your servant, let me be as Christ to you? Pray that I may have the grace to let you be my servant too.”
The Rev. Nicole Janelle
After a restful vacation, there’s nothing like getting back into the preaching rotation with a Gospel passage like the one we hear this morning. The story of the Syrophoenician woman, as it is known in the Gospel of Mark. In the Gospel of Mathew this woman is known as the Canaanite woman. Historically, people have found this story profoundly uncomfortable. I admit to it making me squirm a bit – how about you? Let’s unpack the details and see what we can make of this surprising encounter between Jesus and the unnamed Gentile woman and what this dialog might be telling us.
In the opening scene of today’s Gospel, we encounter a Jesus who is hoping for a bit of an escape from his work. He’s just come from feeding a large crowd, performing healings and miracles among Jews and educating people about the importance of the heart when it comes to dealing with purity issues. So we can surmise that Jesus might be feeling a bit tired, a bit cranky and he’s seeking out respite that will allow him some perspective on his own people and an opportunity to recharge. In other words, Jesus is looking for his own Labor Day rest. Unfortunately, things don’t work out as he might have liked. He enters this house in Tyre – a region known for its extreme paganism – and he encounters a woman who does not let him fade into the background. Instead, she corners him, bowing down at his feet. This woman, we learn, is at her wits end. Her daughter is sick --- afflicted with a demon she says. We can assume that this woman has tried to seek help within her own culture and community, but to no avail. And so in her desperation she reaches out to Jesus, a man she might have heard works miracles and might just be able to heal her daughter. What ensues in the dialog between Jesus and the Syrophoenician woman is shocking. She begs him to cast the demon out of her daughter and he replies with this statement that suggests he is only willing to heal some and not others. In other words, Jesus flat out REFUSES to heal her child. The woman doesn’t miss a beat. She calls Jesus on his problematic, hypocritical position and offers him another way – a path that invites generosity, abundance, inclusive compassion. “Yet even the dogs under the table eat the children's crumbs,” she says. In response to her retort – her invitation – Jesus heals her daughter.
Interestingly enough, Jesus goes on in the following pericope (or piece of scripture that we read) to heal a deaf man. And in the process of this healing act, he utters this word “ephphata” – translated as “be opened.” It is perhaps an example of Jesus not only instructing others, but self correcting his own behavior. In this healing story, Jesus puts into practice what the Syrophoenician woman teaches him – that the old categories of clean and unclean need not exist, that one is to trust in God’s abundance, that there is enough for all.
The story of Jesus and Syrophoenician woman can be uncomfortable to us because it takes Jesus out of the boxes we so often put him in. You may know the boxes I am talking about:
- The box that highlights his divinity over his humanity.
- The box that keeps us thinking that Jesus is there solely to comfort and never to challenge us.
- The box that tells us that Jesus is always right, rather than a human being who like us, has limits, prejudices and flaws.
We should rightly wonder as one preacher has: “Who is this Jesus who is scornful of other nationalities and religions? What kind of savior doesn't want to heal a young girl simply because of who her family is? What are we to do with such an indifferent and despising Christ?” (Karen Keeley, The Witness) The encounter between Jesus and this foreign woman exposes Jesus’ humanity in way we are not accustomed to seeing. It’s kind of like those family secrets that can remain buried for decades or even a lifetime before being exposed. Upon learning the truth or in this case, reading about the truth, our response may range from discomfort and disgust to solace and comfort in knowing that we are bound to a God who himself struggles with the bumps in the road on the journey towards wholeness.
In the human tendency to avoid, rather than to wrestle with the troubling aspects of this passage, generations of preachers have encouraged a domesticated or sweetened version of this story. They prefer to point out for example that the dogs in this passage really refer to “small dogs.” The point this out, rather than grapple with the implications of Jesus’ behavior. But to borrow and redirect a great quote of our time, “Jesus came among us to both comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable,” so too must we apply this destabilizing spirit to our reading of this encounter and our reading of the Bible as a whole.
The exchange between Jesus and this woman most likely destabilizes the usual ways we think about Jesus. While it may not be readily apparent to us living in today’s world, the mere encounter between Jesus and the Syrophoenician woman destabilized the customs of that day – that Jews were not to associate with Gentiles, that men were not to associate with women, that women were not to speak to men with the authority this woman does, that one who was clean was not to touch one who was unclean.
The destabilization of our faith or any aspect of our lives for that matter, may not feel particularly comfortable, but it can be an opportunity for new growth to emerge. When we tidily box up God, we risk limiting ourselves to the fullness that relationship has to offer. “Trust in abundance and generosity; trust that there is enough,” the Syrophoenician woman tells us. “Ephphata” – be opened, Jesus implores us.
Each of us knows the places our in ourselves where we need to “be opened.” The parts of ourselves that feel tight – parts of ourselves that might benefit from being less anxious and more generous or compassionate.
The Syrophoenician woman points out to Jesus what we enact every Sunday – and that is, that we all gather around the same table to eat of the same food. The kid, the dog, the adult – we’re all there seeking nourishment, no one being excluded at the table. And as Jesus knows from his feedings of thousands of people, that we all need the same sustenance and that when we share, there is enough to go around.
We can be comforted by the fact that in times of fear, anxiety or simple exhaustion opening ourselves up to others is something Jesus knew the difficulties of all too well. That’s why we need God, the untidy texts of the Bible and one another to jolt us into a different posture when we have grown too comfortable or too closed off. As noted preacher Barbara Brown Taylor writes: “Jesus knows the truth about us and our judgments about one another, especially when we place some of God's children on the other side of a line that we draw…The danger is not out there, with the people who frighten and disturb us. The danger is in here, in the part of us that wants to cut ourselves off from them. There is actual evil in the world, no doubt about it, but until we meet up with the evil in ourselves, we cannot do battle. We cannot fight the shadow we will not own. Will our own hearts and minds, then, be opened up to receive God's abundant, overflowing grace?”
This week as we celebrate the
ending of summer, the anticipation of another school year and the fruit of our
labor, may we strive to “be opened” in new ways by God and the people around
us.
The Rev. Nicole Janelle
