8 September 2024 Pentecost 16

Proverbs 22.1-2, 8-9, 22-23 Psalm 125 James 2.1-10, 14-17 Mark 7.24-37

Today, we have two healing stories running together.  Jesus has gone out of the Jewish territory into ‘Gentile’ territory controlled by the Greek authorities.  And the first healing is the daughter of a woman of Greek origin – a Syrophoenician woman whose child is said to have a demon. And this woman risks everything to come to Jesus.  Firstly, she is a woman, therefore she should not be approaching a man, especially a man she does not know.  She is a Gentile, and Jesus is a Jew, and Gentiles were considered ‘unclean’ by the Jews.  And her daughter has a demon, which makes her doubly unclean.

But despite all these barriers, she comes and asks Jesus to heal her child.  But the response from Jesus, to us, seems very ‘out of character’ and ‘unfair’.  Some commentators tell us that conversation in the time of Jesus, especially between people of unequal status or background, or between people who do not know each other, was often a game of ‘banter’ where each person throws out a saying or line which has little actual meaning, and the last person to speak is the winner.  So Jesus’ response about it not being fair to give the children’s food to the dogs, is more like saying, ‘I am here for the Jews first, and you are not ‘one of us’.’  And her response is a remarkable example of someone who is not going to give up easily.  She is telling Jesus, she is not asking for a big show, she is not taking anything that ‘belongs’ to the Jews, she is just asking for some scraps, for something ‘left over’.  And Jesus rewards her courage and ‘hutzpah’ and tells her the child is healed.

Jesus then continues to travel through these Gentile areas and he is asked to heal a man who is deaf and cannot speak clearly.  Now Jesus does something which breaks a number of rules.  He takes the man away to a private area, sticks his fingers in his ears, then spits on his fingers and wipes it on the man’s tongue.  Eew yuk.   Saliva, or spit, in the times of Jesus was also considered ‘unclean’, and to touch a person’s tongue would have sent the ‘clean police’ into overdrive.

But the man’s tongue is released, his ears are opened, and he can now hear and speak clearly.

Both these healings demonstrate that Jesus’ mission reaches not just Jews, but Gentiles as well, it was not just for the ‘clean’ but also for the ‘unclean’, and it was particularly for the marginalised.

And the challenge this reading has for us today is – where are the marginalised voices in our communities.  Sometimes, when we see ‘voiceless’ people in society we are tempted to speak out on behalf of them, but often that only disempowers them more.  In this gospel passage we see Jesus willing to listen to, and also learn from those who are excluded and marginalised.  These stories show how Jesus heard the voices of the marginalised.  He allows his ministry to be transformed by the plea of the Syrophoenician woman.  He is challenged by her reply.  And Jesus gives the man ‘without a voice’ a voice, he extends the realm of God to the least noticed, those forced onto the margins of society.  And this extension of God’s kingdom to those on the margins serves as a challenge to us today.

We often see our role as drawing people ‘from the margins’ and bringing them into ‘the centre’, figuring they just need to be ‘more like us’.  But these stories challenge us to see Jesus’ travels into Gentile territory through a different lens.  The ask us to question ‘are we participating in systems that push the poor, the earth, and its creatures to the margins’, do we continue to generate scarcities, dehumanise people and destroy the community of all creation?

Is Jesus challenging us to also be challenged and transformed, is he inviting us to participate in the work of healing, not from the centre but out on the margins.  We respond well when we hear of natural disasters, some of us also support developmental projects assisting people to adapt to climate change, but, we also need to challenge the root causes of climate change and environmental degradation.  We need to re-activate the prophetic voice of the church, and we need to be willing to have the voices of the marginalised convert and transform us.

Archbishop Desmond Tuto said ‘if you are being neutral in the situation of injustice, you have already chosen the side of the oppressor’.  Are we being called out to a new promised land – the land located in the margins.