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Sunday, September 9, 2018

“Páli: She Who Wrestles”

Mark 7:24-31
Sunday, September 9, 2018
First Congregational United Church of Christ of Manhattan, KS
Sermon by the Rev. Caela Simmons Wood
I recently had a chance to watch the documentary Believer on Netflix. It follows Imagine Dragons’ front man, Dan Reynolds, in his journey to create a greater sense of safety for LGBTQ Mormons, especially youth and teens, who are dying from suicide at alarming rates in his home state of Utah. Reynolds, a born-and-raised-faithful-Mormon AND a larger-than-life rock star occupies a fairly unique social location. As far as I know, he identifies as heterosexual and approaches his work as an ally to the LGBTQ community, urging the Church to stop teaching that being LGBTQ is a sin.

Near the beginning of the documentary, Reynolds talks about his upbringing as part of the LDS faith. He shares photos from his time as a missionary and talks about what hard work it was to knock on hundreds of doors, knowing he wouldn’t even get a foot in most of them. What kept him moving forward was his profound sense that what he had to share really and truly mattered and could change lives.

It is that same seemingly-unshakable faith in God’s goodness and love that seems to have convinced Reynolds that the LDS Church can change. Reynolds knows he’s up against a massive institution that is slow to change, but his faith in God’s extravagant love and his desperate desire to make the world safer for LGBTQ youth propels him forward.

Near the end of the documentary, Reynolds talks about his sense of determination and persistence. He talks about how the very values instilled in him by his Mormon upbringing have made him into the person he is today. “A determined Mormon is a scary thing,” Reynolds says, “Because they don’t stop. I knocked a hundred doors to get in one door. I knocked thousands of doors in my mission. If there’s one thing I can guarantee, it’s that I will continue to knock this door until someone answers.”  

Those who are filled with faith persist. Those who are desperate persist. New Testament professor Matt Skinner says that desperation and faith may be one and the same. Skinner notices that in Mark’s gospel,  "’faith’ is hardly about getting Jesus' name or titles right, nailing the right confession, or articulating proper doctrine. It's about clinging to Jesus and expecting him to heal, to restore, to save. It's about demanding he do what he says he came to do.” [1]

Sometimes I think that it is only through our desperation that we can come to understand faith at all.

Today’s Gospel lesson is a master class in persistence. I don’t think they had “Nevertheless, she persisted” t-shirts back in Jesus’s day, but if they HAD, this nameless woman in Mark 7 would have been wearing one. She has that kind of desperation that a parent of a child in danger possesses - that raw, bold, tenacious need that propels a desperate person forward in remarkable ways.

Christians have spent a lot of time over the centuries struggling with and trying to explain Jesus’s behavior in this passage. He’s not the warm-and-fuzzy, meek-and-mild Jesus that we prefer. He is likely tired and has traveled to Tyre, a region far to the north of his usual stomping grounds, to try and catch a break. But even in this area, populated by Gentiles, people have heard of the famous Jew who has the power to heal. So when this nameless woman approaches him seeking a miracle on behalf of her daughter, Jesus is less-than-compassionate.

He tells her he cannot heal her daughter - at least right now - because the children (that is, the Jews) must be fed first. We can clean up Jesus’s cranky response a bit by noticing that he’s not saying he’ll NEVER help anyone else...just that his mission is to save Israel first and perhaps the time for his ministry to expand beyond Israel isn’t quite here yet.

But then he goes and calls her a dog. Which is, you know, harder to explain away. I guess even Jesus has bad days, but it is a bit disappointing to see our Ruler and Savior calling this woman mean names. Especially if you consider she’s from different ethnic group and some interpreters have noted this may have been an ethnic slur.

This mother is undeterred. And rather than spending a lot of time trying to guess why Jesus was so rude to her, I’d like to spend a little more time celebrating her because she is the hero of this story.

Like many women in the Bible, she is unnamed. She is usually referred to by her ethnicity, “the Syrophoenician woman.” Which feels a bit problematic, no? So I’m going to refer to her today as Páli, which, in Greek, means “struggle” or “wrestle,” because her story reminds me of Jacob, who was so desperate in his wilderness wandering that he wrestled with some kind of holy creature in the desert. “I will not let you go until you bless me!” Jacob shouted at a stranger in the middle of the night. Before the nameless man-angle-Godlike-creature departed, it did bless Jacob, giving him a new name - Israel - meaning one who has wrestled with God.

The one we are calling Páli may or may not have known this story about Jacob because she wasn’t Jewish. She lived in Tyre, far to the north of Jesus’s homeland, in a region that was decidedly not Jewish. We are told that she was of Syrian and Phoenician descent and Greek, which is why I’ve given her a Greek name. All of this is to say that she was not like Jesus. The two would have been “other” to each other. And yet this “otherness” does not keep her from approaching him with her deep desire and need to see her daughter healed.

She has enough respect for this Jewish healer to bow before him and not waste his time. She gets right to the point, begging him to save her young daughter. When Jesus responds unkindly, likening her to a dog, she thinks quickly on her feet. Rather than veering off into a theological debate about what Jesus’s true mission is or correcting his rudeness, she rolls with it. On a podcast I was listening to earlier this week, Matt Skinner, referred to this as a Judo move. [2] She uses Jesus’s own force and momentum to her advantage, rather than fighting against it. You can almost see her wheels turning, “Okay, so he thinks I’m a dog? Fine. I can work with that.” She answers him, “Even the dogs who hang around under the table get to eat the crumbs that the children drop.”

I’m not asking you to put me first, she says. I’m not asking you to call me one of yours. I’m not looking to get into some kind of existential debate. All I want is for my daughter to be well. And I believe that whatever power you have leftover - whatever crumbs you can throw my way - will be enough to save her. That’s all I want is the crumbs.

And she convinces him. Crumbs she wants and crumbs she gets. Jesus doesn’t even take the time to go and meet her daughter. He heals her from a distance. “Go,” Jesus says to Páli, “Your daughter is well.” Páli quickly returns home and finds that he tells the truth.

In addition to doing what she set out to do - find relief for her daughter - this desperate woman, this woman of faith seems to have done something else. She wrestles with the Holy and wins. And she changes the course of Jesus’s ministry.

Preaching professor Karoline Lewis notes that Jesus’s ministry in Mark’s gospel begins with the casting out of demons. It’s what sets the stage for all of the signs and wonders to come. And when he casts out the demon from Páli’s daughter in Tyre, we are seeing the beginning of another phase of his ministry. Immediately after leaving Páli, Jesus goes to another region populated by Gentles. Again, he is approached by people with needs...but this time there is no name-calling and no reticence to heal. Jesus’s understanding of the scope of his ministry seems to have changed. He is now on a different, broader course.  [3]

Through her willingness to wrestle with Jesus, Páli not only saves her daughter but changes Jesus. For whatever reason, his initial focus was too narrow. He felt constrained in some way by his mission to come to the people of Israel first. But after this encounter with an unnamed woman in a foreign land he came to understand that what he was sent to accomplish was much bigger than what he had initially imagined. Páli pushed Jesus to become more. Wow.

The encounter changes them both. Their willingness to enter into a true dialogue - the kind where you listen, learn, and are open to change - shapes them in profound ways.

Perhaps it is only in our moments of desperation that we are willing to have this kind of faith. The kind of faith that is more than an intellectual exercise. The kind of faith that is bigger than just empty words. The kind of faith that isn’t about being certain, but IS about clinging to possibility. The kind of faith that compels us into action. The kind of faith that can change the world.

If desperation is the key to this life-changing, world-changing faith that heals, then I suppose we should all seeking a connection with desperation. Are we in touch with our own desperation? What is it that I need so badly I’d be willing to wrestle with God for it? Can we learn to trust that God is big enough to hold our desperation and stand by us in the midst of it?

And how much time do we spend with desperate people? How often are we around women like Páli - the ones who are willing to risk it all because their needs are so great? What are we learning from them? How can they teach us to be faithful?

Notes:
[2] Working Preacher podcast for Sep. 9. 2018
[3] Ibid.



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