Gloria Dei Lutheran Church

Mark 7:24-37

Jesus is in the vacation city Tyre and trying to take a little break. But you know how that goes. It’s hard to keep that much Life under wraps. It leaks out and spills over and fills cups unintentionally.

Which it’s why it’s not surprising when a desperate mom hears that Jesus is in town and she takes off running toward him. She was Gentile. So, that’s different for Jesus. She’s a she, so that’s different. She’s a foreigner, so that’s different.

All of those things are true—and paint a picture of someone likely living on the edge of multiple margins. And, she’s a mom with a really sick daughter.

It doesn’t matter if you are a cat person or a dog person or a human person, this woman has an exchange with Jesus that sends us all spinning just a bit. It’s hard to figure out if Jesus had his mind changed or was super cranky. I think we can say with confidence

that it’s hard to get behind a story that compares people with dogs. Particularly a woman. It’s problematic language in ancient times, it’s problematic today.

But I still think there is a word for us here. I’m moved by this woman’s ability to not get lost in the offense. When I am offended, all of my energy is spent reeling from the offense. But not her. She stays on course. Also, Jesus is kind of offensive. He heals on the sabbath, says you don’t have to wash your hands before eating, talks to women, touches sick and dead people, touches a woman who is bleeding.

Whatever discomfort we have to work through in order to get to the main thing—the miracle of healing—the discomfort is worth it because keep in mind that the woman in the Gospel asked for a crumb and Jesus lays out a banquet for her.

In the second story, Jesus heals a man with his own spit. Which is also offensive and problematic in a different way because “ew.”

Jesus puts his fingers in this man’s ear—which sounds like a wet willy to me which, if you happen to be extra physical sensitive is about the worst thing ever.

But that’s not even enough. Jesus spit on him and yells, two other things I don’t care for.

But no matter the means, the main thing is that all this spit and ear poking and yelling ultimately leads to healing. A feast.

The main thing is the healing. This Gospel is ripe with potential ditches we might fall in. Ableism, racism, sexism seem at the top of the list. I’m not sure that we can ask this story from the 1st century to solve those things. That’s our work to do here in 2024. But we can acknowledge our awareness of those problems as we hear these stories. But the main story is of this Gospel is that people who needed healing are healed. It required a bit of spit and yelling in another language. It took the persistence of a mother with a sick child.

Jesus heals with just a word and sometimes spit and mud. It’s not a formula, it’s God coming to us incarnationally, with all of our particulars. Who among us doesn’t need something?

Everyone has a thing that makes life hard—some you can see, some are hidden. It might be a demon possessed daughter or not being able to speak or hear and you’d like to be able to. It might be whole season of fighting off a sense of dread, or a full blown eating disorder or the stress that comes from being buried in debt. Most of these things we do not know about each other but I can assure you, everyone has something.

Healing stories can be tender and maybe even hard to hear if you are suffering. Because why not me? Why not for this situation or ailment or person or thing? I don’t know the magic formula of who and when and how Jesus heals. Sometimes we receive healing but not from the thing we asked for or it happens for something else but not us.

We tell these stories of healing happening for someone else—for an unnamed woman’s daughter and an unnamed man in the Gospel of Mark because it’s good for our souls, it heals something for us, too. Hope is so powerful.

It’s not just individuals who have a thing. Whole communities need healing, too. One of my preacher colleagues said the church he is serving no longer has any children. They see this as a sign of their slow death. Church communities who have been around for 100 years are wondering if these old bones of a church can survive on crumbs.

At my previous church, that wasn’t our issue, we were teaming with the wonderful sounds of children and life overflowing— and we wondered if we can survive financially on crumbs.

Here at Gloria Dei, with so many children and abundant resources, we don’t worry about either of those. But here is the beginning of September, we wonder if we will have enough people to do all the things that God is calling us to do? Can we survive on crumbs?

God’s kingdom, the world that God is knitting together, is not a math problem. It’s not “well maybe if we each have a crumb and we put enough of them together we will maybe be satisfied.” Even if we didn’t have crumbs! If we had nothing. Jesus still shows up and says I’m good at working with perceived lack, with all the old worries you are caught in.

This is a potentially disastrous thing to say on Kick-off Sunday—which is leading us to a year brimming with good things here at Gloria Dei—but I’m going to say it anyway. I think we might need to lower of expectations of one another. The truth is that most folks are barely hanging on. 4 years after our first pandemic-which is still messing with us and thwarting plans, where we didn’t really cross a finish line and celebrate and rest and reflect. We kind of all just kept going. That plus all the other things in our lives has made our world a bit thread bare.

Which in an invitation to set down expectations and meet one another where we are. God meets us as we are, let’s follow her lead. Jesus is present in every single encounter we have with another human. The Holy Spirit will lead us where we need to go.

My friend told me about a lady that came to her yoga class, rolled out a rug and went into Child’s Pose—where she stayed the entire hour. Not just one yoga class—but week after week after week. It wasn’t even something I witnessed but when my friend told me the story, it mystified me. It took up way too much of my headspace.

Every yoga class I went to—I’d think about that woman and wonder: Why? Why the rug? Why show up only to do Child’s Pose for an entire hour? Yoga feels expensive to me—why would you pay all that money to…um…not really do it?

You can hear all of my judgements and expectations, right? Of a stranger I will never meet.

And then one day, I made the leap from her to my life in church. And I could feel my heart expand. Maybe this woman needed to be around other people. Maybe her body wouldn’t allow anything beyond Child’s Pose. Maybe she had practiced for ten years to be able to get into Child’s Pose. Maybe she was mentally or emotionally in a hard season. Maybe she needed didn’t need yoga but she needed to be part of a group—all facing the same direction. Even if she wasn’t ready or willing or able to move with them. Maybe she doesn’t even believe in yoga. Maybe she needed the gentle, encouraging words of the instructor. Or the calm music.

Suddenly, she became my favorite. She embodies grace, grace, grace.

What if Jesus is saying to all of us shhhhhhhhhhhhhh. Take it in. Look, see! Miracles, healing, feasts. God provides a way. A way through the sea. Through the desert. Through the hard times. Through the anxiety. Through the grief. Through the ambiguity. 

Even here, healing.
Even here, mercy.
Even here, life.
Even here, joy.

Jesus says, “Survive? You will thrive.” Just and see what I do with crumbs.