Sunday 7 September 2003 - Pentecost 13
Eph 3:14-21
This is a long section with a vast range of preaching possibilities. One approach would be to see how each evangelist uses the story of the feeding of the multitude or the walking on the water. John shows Jesus to be clearly in charge, with full knowledge of what is going to happen. Both stories point to Jesus as the Christ. He is the focus of the accounts and the events are told in such a way as to leave no doubt as to his relationship with God.
Another approach is to look at the way John sees the disciples. Matthew uses the walking on the water as a chance for Peter to test his faith; both Mark and Matthew make it clear that Jesus is Lord of nature as well as the focus of the disciples’ faith. John simply recounts the event. It shows that in the presence of Jesus there is no need to be afraid.
Again, we could look at what we might think of as the “public reaction”. How do the bystanders feel about what is happening?
In order to offer a different way of thinking about the readings, the first Sunday will focus on the intention and response of those who were present. The second Sunday we will look at what the Evangelist intended to say to his particular community in the 2nd Century. On the third Sunday we will consider how 21st Century people might respond to the account. The final section will be a summary of the passage.
The first thing we notice is that the crowd is not attracted by the teaching of Jesus. They have followed him across the Lake because of the signs that he was doing. It is important to note the John never refers to “miracles” – they are always signs of who Jesus is, indicators of his relationship to the Father. This is a sign that Jesus is the Son, but we must wonder whether the people who followed Jesus saw him as anything other than a miracle worker. We need to remember that miracle workers were not uncommon. We tend to think of a miracle as proof of the fact that Jesus is the Messiah. The people on the hillside that day would not have made any such link.
Right at the start of the account John points to the sacramental possibilities of this meal. We need to remember that there is no account of the institution of the Lord’s Supper in John but there are meals where sacramental hints are given. In this case it is the words “Now the Passover, the festival of the Jews, was near.” Is John suggesting that in this shared meal where Jesus is the host we have a hint of the Eucharist? Yet those who were present could have no such idea. Even the disciples are treating this as a logistical and economic problem to be dealt with. The crowd is huge and Jesus poses the logistical question as a test for the disciples. Their response is economic. No one has that sort of money!
This all seems to have the purpose of pointing those watching in another direction. But misunderstandings abound -–in fact one might say the purpose of the story is to highlight misunderstandings. After the meal the audience see it as a sign that Jesus is the coming prophet – nearer the mark, but still not right. But the conclusion that he is the prophet leads them to want to make him king, thus turning a relatively minor misunderstanding into a very serious one.
One of the decisions the preacher must make is how he or she understands the event. The feeding can be taken as a nature miracle; Jesus producing food for the hungry crowd as a sign that he is the Son of God. At the opposite end of the scale it can be taken as a "miracle of sharing”. We notice that Jesus did not start with empty hands. Were there many people present who had food secreted away and were shamed by the generosity of the boy into sharing their own? We have no way of telling. In a sense it does not matter. John recounts the incident not so that we might be overwhelmed by this proof of who Jesus is or even so that we might be shamed into sharing our own food, but as a sign that Jesus is sent by God. If we want to make a point for modern people it would seem more relevant to say that the story is a sign that Jesus calls us to share than that he impressed his audience on that day by an extraordinary nature miracle.
When we focus on the understanding of the crowd, we immediately see the misunderstandings. John appears to tell the story in such a way that the focus is on how Jesus is misunderstood, even by those closest to him. It is clear that even the disciples do not expect Jesus to feed the people in the way he does. He also makes the excessive generosity of Jesus very clear. Jesus instructs the disciples to gather up the scraps. What started with five loaves and two fish ends up with a satisfied crowd and twelve baskets. One can only assume that the twelve represents the twelve tribes of Israel and the twelve apostles. In other words, there is in Jesus enough to satisfy the religious needs of all. Numbers in John are never accidental.
So the question for us is “how do we misunderstand Jesus?” The crowd on the hill that day saw him as the prophet and wanted to make him king. What an extraordinary misunderstanding! Prophets and kings stand on the opposite side of a huge gulf. But our own misunderstandings may be nearly as bad. Do we seek to use Jesus rather than follow him? Do we see him as either too divine or too human? Do we try to put him in a box of our own shape and making and not allow for the fact that others see him in a different light? Do we fail to see that he calls all people and feeds all people without question? These and other questions will come to the preacher considering this passage.
All shall be well
For the greening of trees
and the gentling of friends
we thank you, O God.
For the brightness of field
and the warmth of the sun
we thank you, O God.
For work to be done
and laughter to share
we thank you, O God.
We thank you and know
that through struggle and pain
in the slippery path of new birth
hope will be born
and all shall be well.
Kate McIlhagga
From “The Pattern of our Days”, Wild Goose Publications, 1996
Eph 4:1-16
This week we will first try to see what the evangelist was trying to say to his particular audience early in the 2nd century. We can assume, following most writers, that the Gospel was written before the Epistles and that the divisions apparent in the Epistles are already developing when the Gospel was set down. Here we have a Church which has taken a quite different path from the majority Church. They see Jesus as much more divine and much less human than other churches and are moving towards being less concerned by human actions than with spiritual matters. The writer of the Gospel and the Epistles is concerned to bring them back into a more mainline position.
The passage clearly follows on from the Feeding of the Fivethousand and is a commentary on that event. We find the crowd following Jesus and Jesus pointing out to them that they have come for the wrong reason. What they were meant to have seen was a sign pointing to Jesus as the Son of God; what they have seen was a free lunch. John is walking a fine line between the physical world and the spiritual world - a division that we might not be happy to make today. John is not taking a position against his audience but rather trying to steer them into a sound faith.
We notice that Jesus here speaks in ways that we never find in the other Gospels. There is no mistaking the voice of the Son of God in John’s Gospel. This is part of the very atmosphere of John’s Church and it remains a powerful part of the thinking of the Church today. Perhaps we need to remember that the other Gospels are much more cautious about these claims.
The question being asked at the heart of this passage comes out of John’s Church and echoes down the centuries: “What must we do to perform the works of God?” Every believer must ask this question. We in our turn go on asking and we hear a variety of answers. As we tease out the question, let us remember the background and setting.
In the first place, John’s Church was not big on social action. The problems they faced were internal and growing. In this they were not unlike some congregations today where strife over what style of worship and music, which theological path should be followed have caused an actual split. At the time of writing the Gospel, the evangelist was probably seeking to use general language that could be picked up by all followers of Christ. Maybe there is a lesson here for leaders of groups facing the same problem today!
Jesus’ answer to the question is absolutely right because any Christian action must arise out of belief. Furthermore, it must be clear to all that the reason for action is rooted in faith. It is very easy for a Church to follow the social action path while overlooking the reasons for this being an imperative. The very first work for the follower of Jesus is to believe. Eating and drinking in the Eucharist, actions in the world of whatever kind, are simply signs that we believe in the One whom God has sent. At their root there must be belief in Christ.
The dialogue, however, goes on. The crowd asks questions which we must assume come from within John’s Church. “What sign is Jesus offering? What work is he doing?” This seems a little incredible to us, for we have just seen the crowd fed! It helps us to remember that the question does not come from those eyewitnesses but from the early 2nd century Church. Jesus cuts through the question by pointing out that neither the bread which the crowd ate on the hillside nor the manna which the Israelites ate in the desert is truly life-giving. The true bread is Christ himself. Once again, we seem to have a thinly-veiled reference to the Eucharist. And so we are brought to that great statement: “I am the bread of life”. This is just as relevant today as it was to John’s Church.
What is very clear is that Jesus, the Bread of Life, is not to be compared with the manna that our ancestors ate in the desert. Here the line between spiritual and physical is clear, but the questioners go on assuming that this bread can be given and taken like ordinary loaves. We need to be much clearer in our proclamation that what Jesus offers, himself, the Bread of Life, comes to us through the work God requires of us, that is belief. For John, that which was spiritual was far more important than the physical and he is pushing his Church in that direction. They would have understood these words of Jesus . We need to take a step not taken by John - the work God requires is belief; that belief will feed us with the Bread of Life; when fed with this spiritual food, we are empowered to be God’s caring and loving agents in the physical world.
Christ came treading into our marketplaces, out temples, our homes – even into our private person –
Teaching in the templePreaching by the seaQuestioning religious customsBreaking the ceremonial lawRighting injusticesHealing the sickBeing joyful in the company of friendsCalling the childrenChiding good church membersCaring for unimportant peopleSeeking out the sinnersChrist came humbling himself,
Came loving the poor, the hungry, the lonely.
Christ came loving-
This Lord of Life
This living, loving Lord
O Lord, open our eyes to see the Pharisee within us.
Open our ears that we might hear the prophecy
Of the possibility of change.
Open our church doors that we might follow
Our living, loving Lord
Out into the marketplace.
Ann Weems, “Reaching for Rainbows”
The modern reader has little difficulty in connecting this passage with the sacrament of the Eucharist. We know well the idea of sharing in the life of Christ through eating the Bread of Life. Jesus gives himself for the life of the world. We also note that the “divine rebirth” idea is not present in this section. The essential element for eternal life is quite simply belief. We accept all too easily the assertions of some Christians that their concept of how one receives Christ is the only right one!
Note that v 41 starts off with reference to “the Jews”. John’s attitude to this group is the subject of much debate; probably the simplest thing to do is to regard them as the opponents of the new faith who have a Jewish background. They are regularly used to present the viewpoint of those who oppose Jesus, but it is probably a mistake to regard them as a coherent synagogue-based group. Here we note that they are seeing Jesus as an ordinary human being, and the contrast is set out very sharply. The basic question then as now is: who is Jesus? Is he the human son of Joseph and Mary, as “the Jews” claim, or is he what the Johannine Jesus claims, the One who comes from God and who has seen God. As I have noted earlier, this is a very “high” view of Jesus and is not reflected in the other Gospels. The decision of the Church at the Council of Chalcedon was the Jesus was fully divine with respect to his divinity and fully human with respect to his humanity. What we have here, then, does not reflect the position of mainstream Christianity, but of the Johannine Church. It is, however, a very widely held view amongst Christians today.
It might be appropriate, depending on the congregation, to reflect on the range of positions taken by the early Church and the conclusion reached and point out that this Johannine view is not what we are called upon to believe as mainstream Christian people. There needs to be a balance, and it is this lack of balance which led to the break-up of the church associated with this Gospel.
It seems to me that the question for us as we read this passage is “How far can we go with this Jesus?” For this is a different Jesus from the other Gospels – one whose words are very familiar but when we analyse those words we run into problems. How, then, do we deal with this in preaching?
It seems to me that we can provide a good balance by going to that prayer which we find in Matthew and Luke where we pray so often “Give us this day our daily bread”. Here we have no possible doubt that the bread is the regular sustenance that all human beings need. There is no question about the concern of the Synoptic Jesus for the physical well-being of his followers, and indeed, the whole world. It is right and proper to be concerned for the needs of people; Mahatma Gandhi was so taken by this petition that he said that the needs of the world were so great that to a large proportion of the world’s population, God could only appear to them as bread.
Furthermore, we use real, physical bread (albeit tiny cubes or unleavened wafers) to represent Christ in the Eucharist. The spiritual and the physical are united in this sacrament. The Christian must be concerned with the provision of adequate food for his or her own needs, the needs of the immediate family and then for the needs of the community and the world. This is a duty with a religious component to it, as witness the work of our social service agencies and the international agencies supported by the Church. The Christian cannot stand back and watch people die from hunger.
At the same time, in our land and in our communities, the greater danger we face is that of excess. Most of us eat too much and the prayer for “our daily bread” lacks real fervour. The real need in our society is more for the “Living Bread” that Christ offers, his own life. There is a real desire for spirituality in our community – a desire that the Church often fails to meet. Surely the task of the Church is to show how Jesus meets this hunger; a task which it often fails to accomplish.
The need can be seen in the way that “New Age” philosophies catch on, that Eastern religions gain devotees who will even dance in the streets to celebrate their faith (note the offence that the Hare Krishnas took at the “dancing butchers” television advertisement!) and that it is in order to commence a public meeting with a karakia but not with a prayer! We have failed to show that the Living Bread is free and on offer to all. Perhaps we need to look carefully at why this offer is not taken up.
No doubt we all have some answers of our own. I would suggest that the Church has been far better at saying “no” than at saying “yes”. We have been inward looking and irrelevant. We have failed to interpret our own scriptures to the community. Despite this, there are still many believers out there who are not belongers. Each faith community will have a different way of trying to communicate the Gospel – the important thing is that we look at how we might best do it. I have tried to show that the Gospel involves a balance between the physical and the spiritual – we overlook this at our peril.
As John reminds us, Christ is the Living Bread, the answer to the spiritual needs of the world. The other Gospels provide the balance to this very spiritualising statement. Our task is to identify the spiritual needs of our own community and to both show and tell how Jesus Christ, the Living Bread, meets those needs.
As you have been fed at this tablego to feed the hungry.As you have been set freego to set free the imprisoned.As you have received – give.As you have heard – proclaim.And the blessing you have received from Father, Son and Holy Spiritbe always with you.
Kathy Galloway “The Pattern of our Days”
In the previous three sections, we have tried to look at the passages from the perspective of, first, the contemporary audience, then the particular church John was writing for and finally the modern audience. You can judge for yourselves whether this has been in any way helpful. We will now go on with the next two sections from John to simply look at them from the point of view of the preacher today, always reserving the right to go back to the historical setting in order to understand them better.
This whole long passage follows on the feeding of the 5000. As we noted in that story, there were hints of the Eucharist in the feeding. As we come to the section for today, we are struck by the way these hints have been developed. Yet no where in John do we find anything like the institution of the Lord’s Supper that appears in the other Gospels and in Paul. There is little point in speculating what this implies about the practice of Holy Communion in the Johannine Church. The questions for us are what does the teaching mean in our life of faith.
We begin the section with our old friends, the Jews. Note that they are disputing among themselves. We are well aware of the difficulties posed to the early Church by the way they talked about the Lord’s Supper. Accusations of cannibalism were made but here the thrust seems more to be puzzlement. Jesus is long departed by the time this is written and we seem here to have the kind of curiosity that can be found today. But we are, in our tradition, not followers of the old Roman Catholic idea of trans-substantiation, the idea that the bread and the wine are miraculously transformed into the real body and real blood of our Lord. There would be few in the Reformed tradition who hold to anything like that idea. We must note, however, that this passage offers support to any who are inclined in that way.
In response to the mumblings of the Jews, Jesus reiterates what he has already been saying, and even adds to the offence. To find life, one must eat the flesh of Christ and (the new element) drink his blood. This is shocking to us but was probably even more shocking to John’s contemporaries. We know that accusations of cannibalism were made against the early Christians and it was this very kind of language that opened the way for such accusations.
It is notable that the very sharp way this is put is different to the way the Eucharist is described in the synoptic accounts of the Supper and by Paul in 1 Cor, where the symbolic nature of the meal is made very clear. Yet maybe this very sharp way of putting the matter can help us as we preach from the text.
The first point starts off as a technicality. To the Hebrews, blood was life. They knew perfectly well that when a living being is cut, it bleeds. If the injury is severe, the animal will bleed to death and at the point when it stops bleeding, we may well say that it is dead. Furthermore, a dead animal does not bleed. It was therefore logical to assume that the blood equalled life. No blood, no life – blood, then life. What is being said here is that the believer takes into themselves the very life of Jesus.
This understanding makes sense of a great deal of the language about being “saved by the blood of Jesus” or being “washed in the blood of the Lamb”. To many modern people, such language is difficult to accept or even repulsive, but if the concept of “life” is substituted for “blood”, then the expression is acceptable and helpful. The believer is cleansed by the life of Jesus – something which we would all agree with.
John, for reasons we do not understand, does not include the actual command of our Lord to remember him through a sacred meal of bread and wine. Instead, he uses the foot-washing at the last supper to represent the cleansing and acceptance offered by Christ. But, as we have seen, the Eucharist is not far from his thinking.
The other point I would use is the slogan that has become popular amongst those who follow particular diets. “You are what you eat”. If Jesus indeed was the possessor and the giver of eternal life, then those who partake of him will also share that life. The teaching here is an assertion that the believer becomes one with Christ through this eating and drinking.
That this is spiritual teaching is clear because the relationship between the believer and Christ is parallel to the relationship between the Father and the Son. It is this same mutual relationship which is clearly not identity. John moves so comfortably between the physical and the spiritual that we are sometimes fooled. But we can be certain that it is the spiritual which always takes precedence. This is reinforced by the statement that those who ate the manna in the desert, even though it was provided by God, surely died, but those who eat this new (spiritual) food will have eternal life.
O God of young faith and new beginnings
I remember the church of my childhood
where you first stepped into my life
and fed me with your life
Your life is a treasure
I have never stopped seeking.
It is a treasure
I have never stopped finding.
I remember the deep,ever-growing faith of my parentswho not only taught me to walkbut taught me to walk in your paths.
But now, in the middle of my yearsI need you O God of young faithand new beginningsFor the path my parents pointed out to me seems to be a paththat leads to a cross.and I hunger for a signa rainbowa sprouting seeda meal shared with lovea warm embraceto assure me that it really is the best path.O God of young faithand tired faithBreath into my life
A new beginning.
Macrina Wiederkehr “Seasons of your heart”
I wonder why the compilers of the lectionary went back to vv 56-58 when we had dealt with them last week? My guess is that they serve to introduce verse 60. We need to know what it was that Jesus said to puzzle the disciples so much. And certainly, those of us who have worked our way through this section are more than ready to agree with the grumbling disciples, despite the fact that we are much more familiar with the ideas than they were. They say the teaching is difficult. Perhaps we have made it more difficult for ourselves by examining it in some detail. We have shared something of the shock and felt the accusation of cannibalism a little more. We accept the usual words associated with Holy Communion more easily because of their familiarity. Perhaps we should be a little more shocked or perhaps awed by what we do in this symbolic way.
What seems to us a little unexpected is that in his next words Jesus moves on to a teaching which we almost take for granted but which he puts to them as even more disturbing. The idea of the Son of Man ascending to heaven is not one that takes us by surprise. We are familiar with it from the other Gospels where it provides a fitting conclusion to the earthly ministry of our Lord; here, however, it is more striking because there is no comparable Ascension in John. To John’s Church, this would have been something quite different and a demonstration of the triumph of the spiritual values that Jesus has been teaching. It would indeed show that the flesh was without value and the spirit is all.
This, in fact, qualifies and describes the teaching about eating the flesh of Jesus and drinking his blood. The teaching is spirit and life. Many of us today react against this sharp division of spiritual from physical, but this was the thought world in which the Johannine Church lived. We need to see that the Synoptic Gospels offer us a different thought world and maybe use one to modify the other. That is to say that we may need to remind ourselves that this exalted spiritual world is as much a biblical reality as the more earthy world of, say, Luke. We are not dealing with an “either/or” but with a “both/and”.
It is very interesting to note that so early in the Gospel we have a radical split amongst the followers of Jesus. Many disciples turned back. This split seems to foreshadow the division that we know so well from the First Letter of John. Such splits seem to have been part of Christianity from the earliest times. Once again we have the Jesus who knows not only those who believe and those who do not, but also the one who will betray him.
The way in which you handle this section will depend on the way you view this Gospel. Some will want to see it as confirmation of the Jesus they know as completely divine, knowing everything in advance and even as establishing the doctrine of predestination. “..no one can come to me unless it is granted by the Father.” I think we do better to see this section as coloured by the stresses that were already beginning to affect John’s Church. Once again, the key is belief in Christ. It is not about forms of worship or even points of theology. Those who believe are within the community – those who do not are outside. It is as simple as that. We are quite wrong if we use a section like this to define our own concept of Church as the only one acceptable to God. The criterion is belief in Jesus as the one who brings life. Even if the Johannine Church is taking this very hard line on who is acceptable as a member, we need to recall that the actual words here are open to more than one interpretation. “..no one can come to me unless it is granted by the Father” can mean that the granting is through the life of Christ and the Spirit that he brings. It seems to me unnecessarily stern to take this as meaning that it is foreordained for some to come to Christ and others to be prevented. In fact, this sentence seems to be tacked on to the rest of the teaching in a rather loose way.
The end result of this whole long section, starting with the Feeding of the Fivethousand, is a radical split in those following Jesus. But this apparent tragedy actually leads to affirmation. Two things happen. The Twelve are seen as faithful and Simon Peter makes that magnificent affirmation of faith on behalf of the Twelve. Where else are we to find the meaning and purpose for life that is given by Christ? Jesus is the one who has the words of eternal life and he is the Holy One of God. This is the heart of John’s Gospel. Note that Peter does not say that God has given them belief (see last para) but that they have come to believe. Being with Jesus has brought them to belief in him and to see that he is the Holy One of God. This is, I think, far more relevant to our experience of faith.
It seems to me that this rather unusual title for Jesus is an indication that we cannot press faith into a common mould. Different titles are used, different people respond to Christ in different ways. The experience that has led to this affirmation goes back to the feeding of the multitude and through the teaching of Jesus about the nature of spiritual food. We must ourselves be willing to appropriate this food through developing our spiritual lives in relationship with Christ, the One who brings eternal life.
Loaves and Fishes
The feeding of the five thousand
Is a little different these days,
With loaves and fishes changed in appearance.
But I believe that people are much the same,
And Christ’s presence among us is still miracle
Whether we recognise him or not.
For the wonder of Jesus is
that he always oversteps the narrowness
of the expectations we place upon him.
He turns up out of place and time
to bless and bless and bless yet again,
without leaving a business card
or an advertisement for the local church.
But we know that something has happened.
There is a transformation
in the sharing of food and lives,
in the laughter of children,
in the special mood which hangs over us,
unnamed and yet fragrant with love.
Some of us know who is present.
We look for him in the crowd, asking,
“Excuse me, are you the Christ? Is it you?
Or you? Are you the one?”
Gradually there is an awakening
to the truth of the loaves and fishes miracle.
Christ has so multiplied himself amongst us,
that he has made us all into Himself,
and we are sacrament to each other.
Joy Cowley “Aotearoa Psalms”
We suddenly seem to be in much more familiar territory here! This immediately forces us to note the geographical situation, which is a little remarkable. The setting is Galilee and Mark makes a point of telling us that it is a group of Jerusalem leaders who have come to see Jesus. They have come a long way and we seem to have here something of Mark’s way of thinking of Galilee as a safe, good place for Jesus and Jerusalem as dangerous. Although they are not said to come with the intention of attacking Jesus, they waste little time in noticing something to criticise. It is worth noting that the Pharisees were a lay group and that there would have been local Pharisees. They are not dependent on the Temple.
The second thing to remember is that, although the Pharisees get a consistently bad press in the New Testament, their intention was good. Their objective was to define the Law so that what started out as a code for a nomadic people would remain relevant for the 1st Century situation. Ordinary people wanted to know how they could keep the Law and the Pharisees made it their objective to show them. So what we have here is really a profound clash of cultures. On the one hand, the Law and its definition, on the other hand, the root purpose of the Law, which was to help people relate to God. And if Mark has Gentiles in mind as a target audience, then there is no doubt as to which side he will come down on.
Notice that Mark goes into a great deal of detail about what the tradition involved. Clearly he has an audience in mind that has little idea of what the Jewish Law required. From his point of view it is important to see that the Law is secondary to the person and teachings of Christ. It is even more important too for him to show that the tradition surrounding the Law is irrelevant to Christians.
We can, of course, see this section as part of the working out that the early Church had to do in defining itself against Judaism. If Mark was writing in the mid to late 60’s, Christianity was still very much a sect within Judaism, but it is rapidly moving out beyond that. For preaching today, however, such matters are of little more than academic interest. How can we make this familiar story relevant for our own situation?
It seems to me that the text asks us questions today about whether our traditions bring us closer to God. Jesus makes it very clear that it is not the externals that matter but what is in our hearts and minds. The passage is, for us, not about washing hands or washing dishes – we do these things recognising that they have a role in physical health. It is, however, helpful to remember that such actions can become obsessive and therefore destructive of mental and emotional well-being. We need to ask ourselves what are our equivalent traditions? What are the things we do because we have always done them assuming that they bring us closer to God?
We might start by examining our forms of worship. Do they bring us closer to God or are they habit? In doing this, we need to remember how very quickly something new can become mere habit. And at the same time we need to remember that not all habits are bad. For example, the ritual washing described by Mark may not have brought anyone closer to God, but it may have helped public health. And habits like going to church are not bad habits. Maybe the nearest we get to a “burning bush” most Sundays is looking at the pulpit fall, but every now and again we may have a startling encounter with the divine.
And perhaps a good way of examining the effectiveness of our traditions is to look for signs that the Kingdom of God is near. Think, perhaps, of the messengers from John the Baptiser (Matt 11: 4) or Jesus in the synagogue at Nazareth (Luke 4: 16ff). When these indicators of the Kingdom, or their modern equivalents, are present, then we can see that the traditions are working.
This test works whether the religious practices are ancient or recent. It can be applied to a very old tradition or to a religious group that has only been in existence for a year or so. Does what we do on Sunday have any effect on our Monday morning living? It seems to me that Jesus is asking that very question of the people around him, then and now. Do you honour the letter of the law or the spirit of the law? Evil intentions come from within the human heart, and it is a charming catalogue that Jesus gives us. The funny thing is that the list would be just about the same today! How little human nature has changed. What we eat or how often we go to church or how often we read the Bible is of no significance if these evils are seen in our everyday living.
We need to be constantly holding our religious practices up for examination to see whether they are in fact bringing us closer to God or whether they have become empty. A difficulty here is that we cannot all fit into the one box. Music that some find repulsive brings others closer to God. And music that some find boring brings to others a profound sense of the presence of God. It is an ongoing challenge for us to ensure that our religious actions are indeed Christian and not mere habit. We are, or should be, after all, a reformed Church in constant need of reformation.
A responsive prayer for renewal:
Leader: O God, who makes all things new, renew us by your power.
People: O Guide, who is always faithful, lead us by your vision.
Leader: O Hope, who renews all life, bring us out of despair.
People: O Friend, who loves us always, challenge us to live your love.
Leader: Create in us a clean heart, O God.
People: and renew a right spirit within us.
Leader: Take from us our hearts of stone
People: and give to us hearts of flesh.
Leader: Renew us by your Spirit all the days of our life.
People: Bring us to the place of rejoicing in the New Jerusalem of your love. Amen
Lisa Withrow, “Seasons of Prayer”
Mark moves immediately from showing Jesus teaching in words to having him teach by action. It is interesting that he has moved geographically from Galilee, which was regarded as a doctrinally dubious area, to a clearly Gentile area. It seems that Mark is determined to show that Jesus, in his person, is carrying the Gospel right outside of the Jewish area. And even here he cannot escape notice. And Mark underlines the Gentile nature of this healing.
What we have is an encounter between the Christ and a woman of wit and intelligence, a woman whose concern as a mother outweighs all other considerations. In preaching about both of these stories, we could focus on the miracle itself. To do this, however, is not always helpful. Many will want to know exactly what happened, and we have no way of understanding the mechanism of miracles. It is more important to understand why Mark set these accounts down in the way he did. This first story seems to me to be about the relationship of the Gospel to the Gentile world. The heart of the story is that first fascinating encounter. Jesus is probably being seen to echo the thoughts of many of Mark’s Christian contemporaries. Christianity is not at this point clearly defined as separate from Judaism. What should his mission be? When the request is made, he sets out the traditionalists’ position. The Messiah is first for the Jews. And, unpleasant though it is for us to hear Jesus refer to the Gentiles as “dogs”, that is an accurate enough reflection of Jewish attitudes. The woman’s response is very smart. The dogs may eat what falls from the table. Note, too, that this is a woman who is asking – someone who by reason of gender is on the borders of society. Jesus is breaking down barriers in every direction.
What she is saying is that the cost to Jesus is nothing. But in a far broader way she is saying that God’s grace and God’s love is for everyone. Mark is defending the way in which many are spreading the Gospel out beyond the traditional limits. It is free and available to all. Certainly it has started off within the Jewish faith but it has attracted all kinds of outsiders. The Syrophoenician woman represents those outsiders. As we expand the meaning of the story it goes something like this: Gentiles- “Can we be part of this faith, part of God’s Kingdom?” The Church- “No, God’s people consists of the Jews. That is where the message begins. Jesus was a Jew, and our faith is rooted in Judaism.” Gentiles- “But surely we can share? It costs you nothing to let us be part of the Kingdom.” The Church- “We can see that you have real faith. Who are we to stop you?”
At first this seems to be a little historical aside in the development of the world-wide faith. But it remains relevant for us today. Who are we to judge those called by God? The Christian community can and should include those quite different to ourselves. Mark has told the story about a woman who is different in ethnic background, religion and outlook. That does not matter. What counts is her faith, and to a lesser extent, her intelligence and wit. We must extend the same openness to those different to ourselves and our communities.
The second story has a slightly different setting It is notable, along with many such stories in Mark, for the theme of secrecy. It has been suggested that Mark could not believe that those who met Jesus, saw his actions and heard his teaching, would not be immediately convinced that this was indeed the Christ. He therefore introduces the theme of secrecy, having Jesus enjoin those around him to keep silent about what they saw. Be that as it may, Mark consistently reports that this instruction was not followed! One commentator remarks that those around Jesus – and maybe even ourselves – will offer all homage to Jesus except obedience! Perhaps that is a point to be used in preaching.
At the risk of allegorising the story, I would want to talk about the fact that Jesus is still working outside the normal limits of orthodox Judaism. Here, in foreign territory, Jesus enables someone to hear and to speak. While the story is about one man, we may well extend this to those on the fringes of orthodox religion who are enabled to hear and to speak the Gospel.
In other words, we need to consider in what unexpected ways we may hear the Gospel and from what unexpected people. We are all too used to looking for a word from God in expected places and from the right people. It may be that Christ empowers quite different people to speak his word to us.
We can also extend the story further. Jesus offers us the power to hear and to speak with new clarity the Gospel. Note how the crowd at the end of the story extend the meaning from the one deaf and dumb man to the general – “He even makes the deaf to hear and the mute to speak.” Clearly Mark meant this as a general truth for his readers, not simply a fact about an un-named man in a little known area of Palestine. Mark himself steers the story in the direction of allegory.
It seems to me that this reading is about the universality of the Gospel – it is not limited to a geographical area, a certain kind of person, a particular situation. Furthermore, Jesus enables people to hear the Good News and to speak it. And again there are no limits. We should expect the unexpected in our Christian walk.
“Lord, we thank you
for all the light, grace and life
seen and known in the church which nurtured us.
Praying that, still may we be set free
from narrow-mindedness and complacency.
Open our eyes
that we may recognise the work of your Spirit
among other people and under different forms.
And should we yet walk in some things
on separate ways,
then present before us the common goal
towards which we travel.”
A prayer from the Church in Sweden
Used in “A wee worship book”, Iona Community