First Sunday Service of Fall Term

By the Rev. Matthew Ichihashi Potts, Ph.D ’13
Plummer Professor of Christian Morals in the Faculty of Divinity
Pusey Minister in the Memorial Church

(The following is a transcript of the service audio, Sept. 8, 2024)

Welcome again everyone. We've got a week of class under our belt here at the university, so hopefully the jitters have subsided a little bit. It's good to see you all. I'd like to reiterate what Calvon said in the announcements, please do come introduce yourself to us. If you're new to the church, we would be grateful to meet you. And a special plug for students who are here. If you'd like to come over to my house on Thursday, Thursdays at 4:00, my family who's up front here and our dog, if you're missing your dog back home, come see us at 4:00 on Thursdays. You get free coffee, free snacks, come join us.

So I teach here in addition to this, and this semester I'm teaching a preaching class. We had our first class this week. And in that preaching class we talked about how to preach. And one of the things I said is that preaching is an act of faith, especially if you are using scripture lessons which are given to you rather than ones that you choose yourself. We don't choose these lessons. We're sharing these lessons with other churches. When the lesson is given to you, you approach that lesson just with some faith that it is going to say something meaningful to us in this moment.

And so when we come to these lessons today, especially the lesson from the Gospel of Mark, that's the faith that at least I am trying to bring to it. How does this lesson speak to us in our world? I went home after church last Sunday and saw the news about the hostages who had been killed. And, of course, those deaths are in the context of wider and awful and ongoing and relentless violence against innocent people in Gaza, that war widening into the West Bank, other massacres this week in Nigeria, the shooting in Georgia. What do these old stories have to do with any of this?

Because in the first part of the story from Mark this morning, we have Jesus basically insulting a woman who comes to him for help. And in the second he helps this person, but he hides, and he does it secretly, and he doesn't want anybody to know about it. And in both cases, the answer to these challenges is a miracle. Wouldn't that be nice? We could use some miracles. What do miracles say to us? These miracles, which I believe in science, these miracles which are hard for us to believe. At the very least I can't perform miracles. What are these miracles supposed to say to us about the awful things that arise around us in the world?

I want to frame it a little bit differently. The word miracle is not actually used in the Gospels, not in the Gospel of Mark. Whenever something miraculous happens in the Gospel of Mark, the word that's used in Greek actually just means a deed of power. Jesus did something powerful. And this is important because the mind of ancient peoples was not a scientific mind. These things that were happening were unlikely, but not impossible in the way that we who have scientific minds might regard them as impossible. There were stories of other people who raised the dead and healed the sick and gave sight to the blind. It was a rare thing. And to do something like this would show that you had great power. And so the question, what's at stake in these events, in these happenings, in these miracles is not their impossibility, it's the powerfulness that they demonstrate.

The Gospels are saying something about power, about Jesus's power and about what Jesus does with his power. And by implication, I think they're also asking us to think about power and what we do with it. And, indeed, power is what's unsettling about this exchange between Jesus and the Syro-Phoenician woman, right? She comes, she begs him to heal her daughter. He is a Jew. She's a Gentile. She says, "I know you can. Please heal my daughter." She has an unclean demon. This person is a person that Jesus should not associate with given the social context of the time. And Jesus says so in an upsettingly cruel way. He says, "We should not give what belongs to the children, to dogs."

Before I talk about that, let's widen the angle a little bit. Why is Jesus in Tyre, this Gentile city? We're about halfway through the Gospel of Mark, and through the first half of the Gospel of Mark, Jesus has worked almost exclusively in his home region of Galilee, a Jewish region. There was one moment when He was trying to get away from some people, and He went across the lake, but then He came right back. So He's been working exclusively in Galilee, and things have not been going well in Galilee the last couple of chapters. He's been getting into a lot of arguments with people.

He went to his hometown, and they didn't like Him. They didn't believe in Him. And it says He could do no deeds of power there. He had no power there. Just now, He had a run-in with some authorities who came up from Jerusalem, religious authorities, people with religious power, and they came and scolded Jesus, argued with Jesus. And then we also just heard that John the Baptist has been killed. His friend by some accounts, his cousin, a person he shared his ministry with in many ways. This person who preached a very similar message has just been killed.

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So He leaves Galilee and goes someplace else. He's getting out of dodge, it's too hot in Galilee. He has to go someplace else. And He goes to the region next door, which is Tyre. Whatever else you think about the power of Jesus now is not the time. He is not meant for whatever's going to happen to happen now. So He goes to this adjoining area, Tyre, which is filled with Gentiles. It's a Gentile region. The Jewish historian, the contemporaneous historian, Josephus alive at the same time as Jesus said that the fiercest enemies of the Jewish people lived in Tyre, not just a Gentile town, an enemy town. And He goes there, and He's in somebody's house, and someone from among his people's fiercest enemies comes to Him. And He doesn't want to draw attention. Just go away, no attention. And He goes to Decapolis, another Gentile area, and the deaf man asks for healing and He hides. He doesn't want to draw attention.

I think this explains some of Jesus's behavior. It doesn't excuse Jesus's behavior. So what happens? This woman, the Syro-Phoenician woman, she comes to Jesus. She says her daughter has an unclean spirit. She asks Him to heal her, and He says, "I didn't come for you and I didn't come for her." And then she says in a word, "Whatever you think of me, and whatever you think of my daughter, we deserve healing too." And Jesus says, "You're right, you do." The translation here doesn't capture it. It says because you have said that, and the Greek literally says, because you have said that word, but the word word in Greek can also mean reason. So what He's actually saying is because of the reason you have given, because of your sound argument, because you are right and I was wrong, your daughter is healed.

And that leads Him to go to the Decapolis, and He sees another Gentile, this other man whose death is a Gentile. Sin at the time regrettably was understood, disability was understood as a sign of sin. And so this man was a Gentile sinner. And Jesus touches his tongue with His fingers, puts his fingers in his ears, the most intimate and inappropriate things at this time between people of these different ethnicities. And Jesus approaches him and does it. And then He keeps doing it again and again and again. He keeps going for the rest of the Gospel of Mark. This woman, the Syro-Phoenician woman, calls Jesus out, literally calls him beyond his ministry in Galilee and expands His ministry to other people, to all people.

I preached on this passage three years ago, and there's a distinction here that I brought up then and I want to bring up again. When Jesus says to her, "We do not give what belongs to the children, to dogs," the word that he uses for children is the Greek word “teknon,” which means descendants or offspring of any age. The heirs. We don't give to the heirs what belongs to dogs. When she comes back to him and talks about children, she uses the word Paideon, which means infants, children who are young and totally dependable and vulnerable.

And Jesus hears her say this word, and He goes to the man of the Decapolis, and then He keeps going, keeps serving people. And in chapter nine, He says, "Whoever does not welcome a child, does not welcome me." And the word he uses is her word, “paideon.” And then He says in chapter 10, "Only a child will enter the Kingdom of God." And in chapter 10, He uses her word, paideon. She calls him out, and he hears and he does what she says. And starting in chapter 10 through the rest of the gospel, He performs no more miracles. First half of the gospel, He's calming storms and walking on water. And then she calls him out, and He starts healing other people, and He gives all his power away and heads to Jerusalem and goes up to the cross for this woman, for this man, for you, for me.

So what's the miracle here? Especially if the word miracle actually has to do in the gospel with power? What is the unbelievable act of power that happens in this passage? The unbelievable act of power is that Jesus, the most powerful one, is challenged by His enemy to act with justice, to give up His power for the sake of the good. And miraculously He does. Interestingly afterwards He tells the one, "Go, just go." He tells the man, the deaf man, "Be quiet. Don't tell anybody." Jesus is not looking for followers. He's not looking for converts. He's not raising an army or building an empire. He's not even trying to build a religious movement with these folks. He heals them just because they're in need, just because they deserve it, just because God made them and loves them, just as the Syro-Phoenician woman told him.

The Kingdom of God is unlike any kingdom we know, and Jesus is unlike any king. The Kingdom of God is not about accruing power, but about shedding it. Not stealing power, but sharing it. This is the paradox. This is the paradox of God's kingdom, the one that we only enter as a child. It doesn't belong to us. We only belong to it when we give it away. We build it up by letting it go. We reveal its power by giving up power, by seeing and recognizing who is vulnerable and then doing our best to care for them. Caring for their vulnerable. That's it. Now, that doesn't answer all our hard questions. Rather, it raises the hardest questions, but it raises those hard questions in the right way.

Because vulnerability is complicated and multiple and affects each of us in unequal ways, and making this Christian commitment to serve those who are vulnerable will mean falling afoul of the tidy antagonisms that organize our world and fuel our conflicts. Siding with the vulnerable, lending them our aid will mean, for example, siding with both Israeli hostages and with innocents in Gaza. It would mean honoring, fearful, grieving, and rightfully angry families on either side of these and other borders. It would mean recognizing the dignity and the dread and the suffering of those on either side of this and many other issues.

Vulnerability affects us unequally. I'm not saying we should be silent. The Syro-Phoenician woman is not silent before Jesus. She demands healing because she deserves healing. But when we cry out for justice, we ought to do so in a way that blesses both friends and enemies. Siding with the vulnerable, serving the vulnerable means serving anyone Jesus might have risked His safety or ceded His power or given His life to save. In other words, it means everybody. In other words, it means loving God's world as much as God loves this world. It means giving ourselves to the world as Christ has done. Wouldn't that be a miracle?

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