Be Opened!

Proper 18B; Isaiah 35:4-8; Mark 7:24-37; St. Paul’s, 9/9/2018

Jim Melnyk, “Be Opened!”

Some of you may remember hearing this meaningful tale once told in the tradition of Hasidic Judaism: “Once upon a time a rabbi sat with his followers.  He asked them a question: ‘How can you tell when the night has ended and the day begun?’  One student replied, ‘Is it when look at a tree in the distance and can tell whether it’s an olive tree or a fig tree?’  The rabbi shook his head, no.  Another student asked, ‘Is it when you look at an animal at a distance and can tell whether it’s a sheep or a dog?’  The rabbi replied, ‘No.’

‘Then tell us plainly,’ they demanded.  ‘How can one tell the night has ended and the day begun?’  After a few moments of silence the rabbi answered, ‘When you can look into the eyes of another human being and know that person to be your sister or your brother.  Until you can do that, it is still night’ (The Tales of the Hasidim, edited by Martin Buber).    

Throughout his ministry, Jesus sought to bring his fellow human beings into the brightness of a new dawn.  In a world struggling with political corruption and intrigue, with Roman oppression and religious apathy, Jesus comes upon the scene with fire in his eyes and the love of God in his heart.  He challenges the systems controlled by people who cannot, or will not, look into the eyes of their fellow human beings and see a sister or brother looking back at them.  Is today any different from then?  Perhaps the actors have changed – but all too many of the same parts are still in the play. 

In a move that would have been scandalous to many, Jesus travels to places like Tyre and Sidon, or to the Decapolis – havens of Greek culture on the edge of a Jewish world – and he brings healing and hope to the people he meets.  Today we might suggest places with different names – names like Compton, or Little Havana, or Hell’s Kitchen or simply just the wrong side of the tracks.        

Which brings us to the second half of today’s gospel lesson.  Returning from the region of Tyre – where, incidentally, Jesus was bested by a Gentile woman in a theological debate we read about just a few verses earlier – Jesus is approached by several people from the region.  They have a friend with them who is deaf and who cannot speak clearly – most likely because of his hearing problem.  Having heard about Jesus and the many ways he has brought healing and wholeness in people’s lives, they bring their friend and beg Jesus to heal him. 

Now, we have no real way of knowing if the young man in need of healing is a Gentile or a Jew, but Mark goes out of his way to remind us they are still in the Decapolis – a center of Greco-Roman culture in the area that is modern day Syria and Jordan.  The inference can be made rather easily that Jesus has been presented with a second Gentile in need of his aid.  I believe we’re also meant to infer that the debate between Jesus and the Syrophoenician woman shaped his resolve to the point that he is willing to aid this young man without any debate.  Apparently Jesus has rethought his mission on the fly – and the bold faith statement by this young man’s friends is quite enough to move Jesus to action.

My guess is that it’s as much about the friends’ willingness to put themselves at risk – socially, politically, and religiously – as anything else that speaks to Jesus about their faith.  The rest of the story would be a trending topic on Social Media today: “Faith Healer Spits!  Opens Deaf Man’s Ears!”

But once again, my guess is that it’s more the words – more the prayer that Jesus utters – than anything else he does, that brings healing to the man who stands before him.  Take a moment and close your eyes and imagine the scene Mark sets before us.  Feel the warm sunshine on your face.  Smell the richness of the earth around you.  Listen to the breeze rustling through the nearby fields of grain.  Notice the hint of a late afternoon storm building on the horizon.  And imagine seeing Jesus standing before someone whom all his disciples see as a stranger – yet someone whom Jesus sees as a hopeful brother in dire need.  Jesus takes a deep breath and holds it in for a moment.  A long, emotion-filled sigh escapes his lips.  Jesus turns his eyes toward the heavens and then his eyes fall back upon the young man standing before him.  Ephphatha,” he prays.  “Be opened!”  And for everyone standing in that place, the world is changed forever.

Now, the easy part of this lesson – like the story about the young girl just before – is the healing story itself.  Healing stories were not uncommon early in the first century.  On one level I’m sure Mark and the early Church want us to know that Jesus has the ability to transcend the natural order in miraculous ways. 

Yet, on another level, this story is about the power of God to bring about healing through the witness and care of a faithful community.  This is an important promise for us as we gather together in this space every Sunday morning offering not only our praise for God but our healing prayers for one another as well.

And still, there is more to the lesson than one man’s gift of hearing, or the faithful action by a group of friends.  This story tells us about a call from Jesus to be opened – to open ourselves to the power and presence of God’s love as it breaks upon us in the person and work of Jesus Christ.  Ephphatha!  Be opened!  The Divine’s call to us from across the ages – God’s call to us today.

What an incredible challenge – to be open.  To risk hearing things we may not want to hear.  To risk seeing things we may not want to see.  To risk doing things that might turn our hearts and our worlds upside down and inside out.  And yet – and yet – isn’t that exactly what Jesus asks of us time and time again? To be open.  To be vulnerable.  To live on the edge of life where the mist and the shadows make it difficult for us to see one another as God has created us to be – sisters and brothers bearing the image and likeness of God in our hearts and on our brows?

How is God challenging you to be open today?  Challenging us?  Where is the deafness crying out in our lives?  How and when have we lost the ability to speak out on behalf of others – on behalf of our own selves?  What obstacles keep our hearts from being opened by the compassion and love of God in Christ?  Where in our lives are we still wrapped in the misty shadows of night?

How is God calling you – calling me – to be opened?  The truth is, there isn’t just one answer waiting out there for us somewhere – as much as we’d like that to be the case.  Each of us is being called by God to enter into the dawn of this new day – but there’s no magic formula to get us there.

Isaiah reminds us that God is always present to lead us out of our own exiles – another way of saying “ephphatha – be opened!”  Isaiah tells a nation in exile that their way home to Jerusalem will become a flowering highway in the desert – that the eyes of the blind will be opened, the ears of the deaf unstopped, that the lame will leap like a deer, and the tongues of the speechless will sing for joy!

Even more glorious than that – if we were to read one verse further in today’s lesson from Isaiah we would find a promise of universal grace offered up by the God who opens our hearts and souls with the power of love.  Our translation – the NRSV – gives us one option: “A highway shall be there, and it shall be called the Holy Way; the unclean shall not travel on it, but it shall be for God’s people, no traveler, not even fools, shall go astray.”  But many scholars, looking to the context and the Hebrew text, say something quite different. 

The verse may just as easily be read, “The unclean shall not pass it by!”  Like Jesus, God challenges Israel to live on the edge – to seek the Spirit of God’s redeeming love.

As God’s people we are called to live in the dawn of a new day – being open to God’s call to serve God’s people with compassion and grace – to risk the vulnerability that comes with being open to God’s presence in our lives and in this world.  And how do we know that this new day has dawned upon us?  It’s when we can look into the eyes of every human being we meet and see clearly each person as a fellow human being created in the image and likeness of God – see each person as a sister or a brother looking back at us.

Look Within

Proper 17B; Deut. 4:1-2, 6-9; Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23; St. Paul’s

9/2/18

Jim Melnyk: “Look Within”

 

On the surface, one would not think that today’s lessons deal with our partnership with God – on the surface.  Lessons about the Law – or the Torah Teaching – and laws about purification rites seem to have little to do with what it means to be in collaboration with God – on the surface.  But they do.

In his book, God Has a Dream, Desmond Tutu shares how both Torah and Gospel teaching share a word about how we work together with God.  Tutu reminds us that “God calls on us to be [God’s] partners to work for a new kind of society where people count; where people matter more than things, more than possessions; where human life is not just respected but positively revered.”  Tutu imagines a world where peace, gentleness and compassion will be the norm – what Tutu, and what Jesus, would call the Kingdom of God (Desmond Tutu, God Has A Dream, Doubleday, 2004, page 62). 

Partnership with God stems from the reality that we are each – in the fullness of our vast diversity – created in God’s image.  Tutu calls this “an incredible… staggering assertion about human beings” (ibid). In other places he names this, “The Rainbow People of God.”  He offers a story to underscore his assertion: “When I was rector of a small parish in Soweto,” Tutu writes, there was an older woman “whose white employer called her ‘Annie’ because her name was too difficult for him to bother trying to pronounce.  I would tell her: ‘Mama, as you walk the dusty streets of Soweto and they ask you who you are, you can say, “I am God’s partner, God’s representative, God’s viceroy – that’s who I am – because I am created in the image of God”'” (ibid).

In fact, not only does Tutu believe that how we treat one another must be based on our understanding that every single human being is created in God’s image – he believes that to treat anyone as less than the image of God is not simply wrong, or even possibly evil at times – rather he sees our treating anyone as less than the image of God as positively blasphemous.  He likens treating others as anything less than the image of God to “spitting in the face of God” (page 63).  That’s an image we might bear in mind when we debate issues like equal rights for all, affordable and fair housing and health care for all, capital punishment, or whether or not we each have enough money and enough stuff to be truly happy.

All this brings us to the whole debate in Mark’s Gospel about ritual purity, human traditions, and the Torah.  No doubt everyone hearing today’s Gospel lesson can pick up on the tension in the exchange between Jesus and the visiting Pharisees and Scribes.  Perhaps some sense of sarcasm comes across in the translation as well – at least I think it’s meant to be there.  Mark, is writing in the mid 60’s – in the midst of a Roman-Jewish war which will lead to the destruction of the Temple in the year 70 – and Mark is most likely transferring much of the Jewish-Christian tension of his day into the stories of Jesus’ arguments with the religious authorities of Jesus’ day. 

That’s worth repeating.  Tension was growing in Mark’s time between followers of The Way – a movement not yet called Christianity – and the leadership of mainstream Judaism.  And so the disagreement in chapter 7 of Mark is probably as much about the tension between Gentile Christians, Jewish Christians, and mainline Jews in Mark’s day as it was about the tension between Jesus and the Pharisees – perhaps even more so. 

Just how in the world do we find the ability to honor the image of God in one another when ancient teachings, when ancient customs, and new ways of living – all of which deal with questions of faith and fidelity and an understanding of who we are before God – how do we find the ability to honor the image of God in one another when all these things come into conflict?

“Your disciples refuse to wash their hands!”  And then Mark is quick to point out laws concerned about the washing of pots and cups and kettles.  Jesus fires back that his detractors care more about what goes into people’s mouths than what comes out.  Nothing about Mark’s opening narration, the Pharisees’ challenges, or the quick, shaming, rebuke of Jesus seem to have anything to do with honoring the image of God in each other. 

Now it is important to note that laws and customs like those dealing with purification rites were very important to the life of Israel – especially way back when the nation was in exile – or even in Jesus’ day while under Roman occupation, but those rites didn’t carry the moral implications of decrees like the Ten Commandments. The rules we read about in today’s Gospel lesson helped keep Israel from becoming culturally assimilated by the Assyrians, the Babylonians, the Persians, and now by the Romans.  They were a way of reminding one another that they were God’s people – loved and cared for by God, and called to be a light to the nations. 

But there have always been instances where adherence to faith seems to have more to do with drawing lines in the sand to differentiate between one group and another rather than embracing both the teachings of Torah and the teachings of the Gospels to love God and love one’s neighbor.  For thousands of years people of faith have used these rules, and ones like these, as ways of proving who is more holy – who is more righteous – who is closer to God – who bears the true image of God. 

When that happens, love of God and love for neighbor become secondary to our religious fervor – or worse yet – love of God and love for neighbor are forgotten and lost.  As one commentator puts it, “Jesus and James make clear that it is the attitude with which we approach one another and the world—pride or love, mercy or judgment, exclusion or acceptance—it is our attitude and actions that betray our true hearts” (Michaela Bruzzese, Sojourners, Preaching the Word, 9/2/18).

But Jesus, like the true Torah teachings of Judaism, will have nothing to do with drawing lines in the sand in an attempt to discount or exclude the other.  “It’s not what one puts in one’s mouth that defiles a person – it’s what comes out of the mouth – it’s what we say about one another – it’s how we treat one another – that matters.” *

The commandments referenced in today’s lesson from Deuteronomy refer back to the Ten Commandments given to Israel on Mount Horeb.  Those commandments are centered in love for God, love for our neighbor, and even love for the alien in our midst.  They are relational – they show care for one another in the midst of God’s presence – as a part of God’s hope and God’s dream for a humanity that reflects the grace and love of God – that expresses the compassion and justice of God – that lives out the mercy and promise of God in community. These commandments honor the image of God in every human being.        

The key commandments of Torah – which Jesus holds as absolute imperatives – are not about when to wash one’s hands, or how to prepare one’s food, nor are they about cups and kettles; they are not about whether we stand or kneel to pray, bow or cross ourselves at the right time, or support the right candidates based on their expressing the proper policies or the right faith.  The commandments of Torah, and the precepts of the Gospels, are about people – and about how we choose to honor the image of God in one another, and reflect the love God has for each of us.

The thirteenth century poet Rumi put it this way: “Look inside and find where a person loves from.  That’s the reality, not what they say” (Rumi: the Book of Love, Coleman Barks – quoted in Synthesis).  In other words, telling everyone how important it is to follow rules – or to be right with God – or to love God – or to love our neighbor – without actually carrying that love out in tangible ways is nothing more than religious misdirection – nothing more than theological and ideological smoke and mirrors. 

It’s as if Desmond Tutu had been reading today’s lessons while he put his thoughts on our partnership with God and his story of “Annie” down on the page.  We are created to see one another with the eyes of our hearts.  Remember, that person sitting next to you this morning, or near you, or in the car or on the street corner you passed on the way here, people who look just like one of us or who look different, people who vote red or vote blue – remember that they, like you, bear the image of God! They – you – we – are God’s beloved children.  They – you – we – bear the image of God. They – you – we – are God’s beloved partners.

* I had an addendum at the announcements.  "I realized as the sermon came to an end that I should have commented that living this way isn't easy.  I know my reaction when someone yells at me or calls me stupid or a fool.  I want to explode right back at them, and sometimes I do.  That's my confession.  I'm not sure if you find it difficult as well.  But perhaps that's why we have the Law, Moses, the Prophets, and as Christians, have Jesus.