Speak For Me, September 9, 2012

 Rev. Kathryn Ransdell Sept. 9, 2012

Mark 7:24-37 St. Andrew's-Wesley United Church

Speak for Me!

De mortuis nihil nisi bonum (do-mor-to-is nihl-nissi-bonum)  (“Of the dead, nothing unless good”).  This idea has been hanging around our collective psyche since 600 BC when one of the Seven Sages of Greece first coined the phrase:  τὸν τεθνηκóτα μὴ κακολογεῖν    (Don’t badmouth a dead man).  Consider that...600 BC, Judah was in the process of complete and total devastation, deportation and exile to Babylon.  Probably better that they didn't have CNN back then.  

I wonder how this cultural guideline affects how we prepare for funerals.  Ever been to a funeral and the eulogy didn't sound like the person you knew?  The speaker paints a picture of someone who seems to have ascended into heaven and now sits at the right hand of God and you knew them to be, well, not so angelic.  It's such an interesting process for families to come and sit with a minister and begin speaking of their loved one.  Everyone begins to speak in such glowing terms that an hour can go by and you might think this person has done nothing wrong, not one mistake.  Ever.  In their entire life.  

This establishes a norm in the room that we can use fancy language and call it the hegemonic discourse.  (I have loved this phrase since I first encountered it in feminist and liberation theologies.)  A very basic definition of a hegemonic discourse is that it makes things that ought to be said unsayable.  For funerals, cultural expectation is that everything will be okay as long as we plaster on that smile one last time and all nod quietly to one another and put him in the ground and with that last scoop of sand, and along with the dead body, let us bury our emotions and feelings. 

Then one person in the room goes quiet, turns inward and then you invite them to tell a story.  He could get quite angry.  She drank a lot.  He left us when we were 4.  Either the room will embrace this outside voice and move towards accepting this person for what they were and what they weren't, or the room will go awkwardly quiet, will silence this person out of their own fear, waiting to return to happy, happy, joy, joy.  What I have found is that when the room embrances this still small voice in an appreciative, non-judgemental stance, the room has the ability to enter into spaces of deep healing, which is what funerals should be about, healing for the living.  

There are two great emotions that will dictate our lives:  either fear or love.  

Fear will keep things that ought to be said unsayable.  Love speaks the truth. 
Fear will make you sick.  Love will heal.
Fear will take your life.  Love will give you life.

And sometimes the difference between living in fear and living in love is being willing to listen to that one small voice from the outside.  That one voice in the room that dares to speak her truth.  That outsider who looks in, notices, and observes, who has the perspective of being on the outside to see on the inside, but as the poem on the back of our bulletin cover says so clearly, that still small voice is often on the wrong side of race, religion, gender, class and history.  

In this morning's Scripture, that still small voice belongs to a Syrophoenician woman.  At the time of Jesus, the area of southern Turkey, parts of northern Palestine/Israel and Syria were all the Roman province of Syria, and the southern part of the province of Syria was referred to as Phoenician Syria.  Phoenicia flourished from 1550 BC to 300 BC (highpoint is 1200-800).  It was known for its maritime trading, for its trading in luxurious purple gleaned from shells off the coast of Tyre, and even for spreading their alphabet from which all other phonetic alphabets derived themselves.  

By the time we get to today's stories, what the two characters have in common is that they are under the rule, and oppression of the Roman empire.  What keeps them distant...well, her religion was wrong--She was a Greek lumped into that category called Gentile; Jesus was a Jew.

Her race was wrong-- She was Phoenician.

And her anatomy was wrong.  She was a woman.  Jesus was a man.  And women and men did not speak to one another.  In fact, women weren't considered fully human.  We were property, best used as a pawn in men's schemes.    

Everything about this made it wrong for her to speak to Jesus, much less expect him to do anything for her.  You might say she spoke to him because she knew the odds, and she had nothing to lose.  True, and,  she is a mom.  And that mothering instinct, wherever it comes from, will drive mothers to the farthest extremes, not to mention pre-dawn hockey-practices, for their child.  Mother's will trade their lives for their childs, so it doesn't surprise me one bit what she asks:  "Will you cast the demons out of daughter?|"  

Jesus replies, "Let the children be fed first, for it is not fair to take the children's food and throw it to the dogs." 

These are the best kind of insults.  There is no cursing or swearing or raising of voices, just cold, calm piercing with the intention of putting you in your place and silencing you. 

Not really the warm, fuzzy Jesus we sing about..."Jesus, Jesus how I trust him..."  

This same story is told in Matthew, who takes this oral tradition and gives us a bit more understanding to explain away Jesus' actions.  Jesus was sent to the lost sheep of the house of Israel and not to those outside the house, the Gentiles.  This leaves us to decide that either he shouldn't be wasting his time or the Gentiles don't deserve his time.

And this woman knows this.  She knows the traditions of the Jewish people, the clean and the unclean.  Even in the chapter prior to this one, we are confronted with the Pharisees criticizing Jesus because his disciples aren't adhering to the Jewish custom of washing their hands before they eat, therefore what they are eating is defiling them.  They ask him, "Why do your disciples not live according to the tradition of the elders, but eat with defiled hands?"  

Based upon how he answered this Syrophoenician woman, you might think he would have politely looked at the Pharisees and said, "You're right.  Chop-chop disciples.  Off you go to wash your hands.  Don't forget soap." 

No...he blasts the Pharisees..."You have a fine way of rejecting the commandment of God in order to keep tradition!"  

And what is the commandment: Love the Lord you God and love your neighbor as yourself. 

It would seem in the span of one chapter Jesus is inconsistent with his liberation theology.  It would seem that he got it right in the first scenario and wrong in the second.  It would seem that he wasn't perfect.  Oh my...for all those WASPy white-Anglo-saxon-Protestants, this isn't the kind of Jesus we have painted to be true.  

It would seem that in the mystery and vastness and wideness and depth and breadth of God, the woman with a daughter possessed by demons, the woman who was Gentile and Syrophoenician, the outsider, was placed at that very moment, for that very time, to change the course of humanity. 

And it was up to her to speak up.  

It was up to her to be so clever and quick in her comeback so very present in her strength and so very connected to her truth (which is that mommas love their babies) that she could speak from her soul: Even the dogs eat the crumbs from the children's tables.

It wasn't from the head.  It wasn't polished rhetoric.  It was simple.  Plain.  True.  Powerful.  

And all she had to do was speak up.  All she had to do was speak the truth given to her at that very moment.  She didn't have to arrange a campaign.  All she had to do was speak the truth that she knew at that very moment.  You know...you shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free?  

If we speak up...
we can effect change.
If we listen,
we can be changed.

I believe moments happen often in life when we are called to live with this kind of intentionality.  I also believe that we get numbed from the pain of life and anesthetized by the consumerist worldview that we don't even realize when we are called to speak or listen in these kind of life-transforming ways.  Because of this, I believe when these moments of transformation come, they often get met by fear, and the opportunity for love or healing that was well within grasp, becomes, well delayed, but not impossible. 

But I also believe that is  not the end of the story.  God doesn't finish with us that easily.  I believe this story at this time in history teaches us that we haven't quite got the God thing figured out.  Even Jesus missed the mark.  We will too.   We keep being led to these times and these places where we practice speaking up and deep listening and each time we lean a little bit more into love rather than fall into fear.  

And this brings me back to creation...the best cure for me when I feel like I'm falling into fear is the beach.  When everything else is going wrong, the beach can soothe my soul even with 2-year-old twin toddlers throwing sand in each other's hair.  I'm reminded that although a picture of serenity, everything is changing at every moment, the grains of sand shifting, the tide pushing and pulling.  But somehow it all stays in balance.  If things feel too boxed in, then the beach reminds me that we serve a God whose love is as wide and deep as the ocean.  

The past couple of times when I've gone to the beach, I must confess that in the background of my mind chatter is this whole on-going discussion around a pipeline coming across British Columbia and increased tanker traffic along the coast.  As I look out on the ocean, I can't imagine this beautiful coastline being affected by an oil spill.  I've often wondered how to think on this issue.  I grew up with a landscape littered with pumper jacks and a hometown that was based on the success and expansion of oil.  Good people took care of their families because of the jobs provided by the oil fields.  

But today, I want to look at this issue by going into that deep space within us, that space that mixes with the Divine, and simply wonder, "What is Creation Saying to Us?" 

Our orange banners hang today to remind us that we enter this church time within a season, a growing movement within Christianity to carve a liturgical space known as Creation Time.  Over the next 4 weeks leading up to the celebration of Thanksgiving, we will bring Creation into our time together as if she were a conversation partner who has come for a cup of tea.  

Creation demands that we live life with intentionality, that we be willing to wake-up and risk speaking up, or be so daring to listen deeply.  We may be exploring Mars, but right now, we only have this one earth.  

* How does creation need us to speak up? 
* Where is creation calling us to listen deeply? 
* Who among us has been tapped at this very time in this very place to be the one who speaks the truth and opens us to unimaginable possibilities in the vastness of God's love?  

Creation needs that kind of love to speak up.