a sermon on Isaiah 35.4-7, James 2.1-17, & Mark 7.24-37
September 9th, 2011 | @LCMontheHILL
One of my heroes growing up was CBS Evening News anchor, Dan Rather. I grew up in rural North Carolina, far enough away from town that we didn't have access to cable television. Of the 2.5 television stations we did receive, the only one we could get with any semblance of regularity and without project funding from NASA was CBS. So, every week night at 6:30pm my family would, like clockwork, tune into the CBS Evening News with Dan Rather.
Over time, after years of watching him every night, Mr. Rather become someone whom I greatly admired. I loved what he gave me. He was my connection with the mystery of all that was happening beyond the borders of the neighboring soybean fields, all that lie outside the reach of our rural county. He took all the world’s events, wrestled out the truth, and gave it to me.
I became such a fan that at some point in elementary school I acquired a series of videocassettes CBS had produced that were essentially the greatest hits of the evening news. I watched Rather on the convention room floor in Chicago. I saw Cronkite reporting on the assassination of President Kennedy and the civil rights movement. There was Murrow taking on McCarthy. Watching, rewinding, and re-watching those videos until the tape gave out, I came to see Mr. Rather as one in a long line of the ones called to the holy vocation of news anchor, called to be society’s designated arbiters of truth.
With this week’s readings, I could use a Rather or a Murrow, someone to ferret out the truth. The reading from Isaiah sounds like it could just as easily be bouncing off the walls of the arenas in Charlotte or Tampa as the walls of a sanctuary. Isaiah promises that God will come and save you, that the blind shall see, the deaf, hear, and the tongues of the speechless shall sing for joy, as streams burst forth into the desert. Like a good campaign promise, it sounds incredible, like the stuff of dreams. But when we can’t see or hear or find ourselves stuck in the desert these marvelous words lie a bit beyond belief.
And that, it seems, is the place James is coming from. His words call Isaiah to the carpet. James claims these words of promise, no matter how dramatic or hopefu,l don’t make much of a difference when they are divorced from reality. He declares that “If a brother or sister is naked and lacks food, and one of you says to them, ‘Go in peace; keep warm and eat your fill,’ what good does it do if they’re not actually fed. James rebuts Isaiah with the assertion that his promises are not fulfilled until the river actually starts rolling in the desert. Caught in the midst of this debate, I find myself yearning for a good newsman to step in and moderate, to help us get to the bottom of what the truth of God’s promises and love actually looks like.
In the search for a moderator, if Dan Rather happens to be unavailable, it is probably best if we also avoid the selection of a Lutheran newsman. I’m just not sure they could provide an unbiased opinion. Lutherans, and Luther himself, have struggled with James’ understanding of the role of faith and works. In particular, Lutherans have squirmed a bit under his assertion that “Faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead.”
I’ll leave the argument of faith versus works another day, another debate, because I think what's really interesting about this verse is not the perspective it provides on the relationship between faith and works. Rather the idea that faith can and does die is incredibly fascinating. For James, faith is not like a set of car keys, an object we posses. It’s not something we can simply misplace or forget where we put it last. But what James is saying is that faith is a living, breathing, active thing that can and does die.
At this juncture in Mark’s gospel we’ve developed some expectations of Jesus. His ministry has been particularly expansive. He’s fed thousands, he’s done the work of healing on the sabbath, on days set aside for rest even from miraculous works. As we discussed in the Thursday morning book group, Jesus’ ministry has been marked by a revolutionary way of rethinking the role of women, considering their health, protection, and dignity.
With these expectations, I read this morning’s gospel and my jaw drops. A women with a possessed daughter approaches Jesus. She bows at his feet in the hope that he might be able to bring healing, as he had done so many times before. I expect this to be a textbook case of Jesus’ healing. It’s a woman and her daughter and she’s Syrophoenician, a Gentile and outsider, just the kind of people whom Jesus’ ministry has been among. And yet, rather than telling the woman to go in peace, that your faith has made you well. Jesus tells her ‘Let the children be fed first, for it is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.’ He calls her a dog.
That moment is like the moment when we first learn that our heroes’ beliefs don’t always match their actions. It is a moment when faith dies. We have great expectations for what is supposed to happen, for healing to occur, for the blind to see, for a river to roll through the desert and carry us home. And yet...it doesn’t.
What happens next is a miracle because it turns out that the good newsman I’ve been looking for this morning is actually a good newswoman, a good Syrophoenician newswoman. She doesn’t let Jesus off the hook with his cruel remark. She presses him, reminds of the promises that he and God have made with a clever reply that any good politico could appreciate, “Even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs.”
Faced with this strong rebuttal, Jesus changes his mind and his actions. He turns and tells her to go, that the demon has left her daughter.
If faith is a living thing, an active, moving thing that lives and dies, then faith is also a thing that can be and is resurrected. The incredibly good news today is that God resurrects the dead. Later in Mark, Jesus shall be raised. In John, Lazarus rises. But tonight it is faith that God brings back from the dead. In the disappointment of Jesus’ initial response, faith dies. But then he heals the woman’s daughter and faith is restored and resurrected as he gets rolling again, quickly pumping out miracles and healing, making the deaf to hear and the mute to speak.
Faith, the faith of which James writes, the faith that clothes and feeds a sister or brother, the faith that will carry you through the end of this semester is always resurrected faith. Not faith that is weak or strong, but the faith that shapes our lives is faith that is always living and dying and rising again. The salvation it brings lies in the miracle of the ordinary; engaged in the works of the world, open to disappointment, but also to new life beyond our hopes. This faith lies in a simple encounter between a Jewish man and Gentile woman, in conversation, in having Jesus or a Syrophoenician Dan Rather or a friend, put their fingers into our ears, so that we can hear the truth of the gospel in the world, so that we can hear God calling us in works, in faith, in life and death into the future and the promises God holds for us. Amen.
So very good!
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