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THE FOURTEENTH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST

Strangers in the Day

Mark 7:24-37

In her book, An Altar in the World, Barbara Brown Taylor talks about spiritual practices in everyday life, practices that can be part of your life as it is right now.  Among my favorite chapters is the one on, “The Practice of Encountering Others.”  She writes this:

            Like the practices of paying attention, wearing skin, walking on the earth, and getting lost, this spiritual practice requires no special setting, no personal trainer, no expensive equipment.  It can be done anywhere, by anyone who resolves to do it.  A good way to warm up is to focus on one of the human beings who usually sneak right past you because they are performing some mundane service such as taking your order or handing you your change.  The next time you go to the grocery store, try engaging the cashier.  You do not have to invite her home for lunch or anything, but take a look at her face while she is trying to find “arugula” on her laminated list of produce.

            Here is someone who exists even when she is not ringing up your groceries, as hard as that may be for you to imagine.  She is someone’s daughter, maybe someone’s mother as well.  She has a home she returns to when she hangs up her apron here, a kitchen that smells of last night’s supper, a bed where she occasionally lies awake wrestling with her own demons and angels.  Do not go too far with this or you risk turning her into a character in your own novel, which is a large part of her problem already.  It is enough for you to acknowledge her when she hands you your change.

            “You saved eleven dollars and six cents by shopping at Winn Dixie today,” she says, looking right at you.  All that is required of you is to look back.  Just meet her eyes for a moment when you say, “Thanks.”  Sometimes that is all another person needs to know that she has been seen – not the cashier but the person – but even if she does not seem to notice, the encounter has occurred.  You noticed, and because you did, neither of you will be quite the same again.   (pp. 94-95)

            Is that what happened with Jesus and the Syro-Phoenician woman?  Did their eyes meet?  Did he meet this Gentile woman and see her – really see her – for the first time?  Were his the eyes which were opened?

            Jesus has just been arguing with the Pharisees about unwashed hands.  While washing hands may be part of the law, may be important in honoring God, may even be important in protecting what goes into our bodies, what is more important, Jesus says, is what comes out of our hearts. 

            Jesus, it seems, is OK with unwashed hands.  Now, however, Jesus meets an unwashed person.  She is not a Jew; she is a Gentile.  She stands outside the covenant that God has made with Israel , outside the chosen people.  According to the law, she is spiritually unclean.  Jesus seems less comfortable now.  He has just done battle with the powerful Pharisees.  He stood toe-to-toe with them, but he seems less willing to take this Gentile woman on.

            At first he dismisses her – and with a put-down, no less.  When she pleads for her daughter, he tells her, “It is not right to take what is intended for children and throw it to the dogs.”

            She, however, is undaunted.  “Sir, even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from the children’s table.”  He is amazed at her faith and so grants her request.

            Perhaps Jesus is doing this, as some suggest, as a lesson for the disciples.  But I like to think that God is open to new things, open to change – change that happens through an encounter with another human being.

            Whether that truly happens with God, I can’t say.  I only know it can and does happen to us.  And that is God’s desire for us.

            Jonathan Sacks, the chief rabbi of Great Britain , points out that the Hebrew Bible has only one verse commanding love of neighbor, but no fewer than 36 commands to love the stranger.  This is in part because the Jews were strangers in Egypt .  So, special provision is made in the law of Moses for the treatment of strangers.

It is also because the stranger can show you God.  There were three strangers who visited the tent of Abraham and Sarah and told them that would be parents to a son, even in their old age, just as God had promised.  There was the stranger whom Jacob wrestled and received a blessing, the night before he was reunited with his estranged brother, Esau. 

The supreme religious challenge, Sacks says, (quoted in An Altar in the World), “is to see God’s image in one who is not in our image.”  (p. 100)

            The biblical scholar and preacher, Fred Craddock, tells the story of a missionary sent to preach the gospel in India near the end of World War II.  After many months, the time came for a furlough back home.

            His church wired him the money to book passage on a steamer, but when he got to the port city, he discovered a boat load of Jews had just been allowed to land temporarily.  These were the days when European Jews were sailing all over the world, literally looking for a place to live.  These particular Jews were now staying in attics and warehouses and basements all over the port city.

            It happened to be Christmas and, on Christmas morning, this missionary went to one of the attics where scores of Jews were staying. He walked in and said, “Merry Christmas.”

            The people looked at him as if he were crazy and said, “We’re Jews.”

            “I know that,” he responded.  “What would you like for Christmas?”

            In utter amazement, the Jews responded, “Why, we’d like pastries, good pastries, like the ones we used to have in Germany .”

            So the missionary went out and used the money for his ticket home to buy pastries for all the Jews he could find staying in the port.

            Of course, then he had to wire home asking for more money to book his passage to the States.

            As you might expect, his superiors wired back asking what had happened to the money they had already sent.

            He wired that he had used it to buy Christmas pastries for the Jews.

            His superiors wired back, “Why did you do that?  They don’t even believe in Jesus.”

            To which he responded, “But I do.”

            Encountering others is a spiritual practice.  It is a way of seeking change in ourselves, in the way we understand ourselves, because it can spring us from the prison of our own self-understanding.  It is a way of connecting with others and, through them, connecting with God, since they are also made in the image of God.  It is a way of experiencing the mystery of God, the power of God, the grace of God, and the love of God – the love of God that crosses all boundaries, in Jesus.