Proper 18 (September 4-10)
Texts: Mark 7:24-37;
James 2:1-17; Isa. 35:4-7a
LISTENING TO THE LEAST
On October 28, 1959, John Howard Griffin underwent a
transformation that
changed many lives beyond his own -- he made his skin black and
traveled
through the segregated Deep South. His odyssey of discovery was
captured in
journal entries, arguably the single most important documentation
of 20th-century
American racism ever written. This is the story of a man who
opened his eyes and
helped an entire nation to do likewise.
That's from an Amazon.com description of the book Black
Like Me, by John Howard Griffin, a white
man who turned his skin black to write a book about racism. It's an
amazing story, but it raises
the very crucial question: why did it take a white man's account of
racism for other white people
to finally listen? African American scholar and author Professor
Nell Painter notes, "When
Griffin was invited to troubled cities, he said exactly the same
thing local black people had been
saying, but the powers that were could not hear the black people." (1) People of Color had been
telling this story for a long time, but could the white community
listen to them? Why did it take a
white man for them to finally hear?
Another question: did you notice the joke Mark is telling us in
today's Gospel Reading? I think
he might actually mean for us to chuckle or at least smile. He tells
a story where Jesus actually
listens to a marginalized woman, as she teaches him a lesson about
inclusivity in the face of their
ethnic brand of 'racism' in Jesus' day. Then, he takes his disciples
aside to heal a deaf and mute
person. Do you catch the comic irony? Jesus listens to an outsider
to whom his people usually
remained deaf and mute, and then he literally heals a person who
can't speak or hear. It's as if he
is saying that it may be easier to heal someone who physically
cannot hear than it is to heal us
ordinary folks when it comes to listening to outsiders. Shortly, in
Mark's Gospel, we will hear
two healing of blind men when Jesus is trying to help his disciples
see what discipleship means.
In being able to laugh at the disciples, hopefully we can also laugh
at ourselves.
Jesus is modeling for us an important wisdom, if the barriers that
divide us are to ever be healed.
Jesus' receptivity to Syro-Phoenician woman's wisdom points to a
critical truth: Oppressed
people often have a profound analysis of social situations, and know
the paths to justice. People
in positions of authority would do well to heed them if we are to
stand together for peace. (2)
Last Sunday we concluded our series on the ELCA Social Statement on
Criminal Justice by
lifting up the hardest part for us to hear about, the racial
component. And what I want us to
consider carefully this morning is this: if we aren't willing to
listen to the story of People of
Color themselves, then it is difficult for us as white people to
fully comprehend the inequities in
our Criminal Justice system.
Last week, I mentioned that the excellent recent book on this matter
is titled The
New Jim Crow,
by Michelle Alexander. Ms. Alexander is a graduate of
Stanford Law School; she clerked for
Supreme Court Justice Harry Blackmun, and she is a professor of law
at Ohio State University.
Michelle Alexander is also African American. We might ask ourselves
as white people: Does
that make us any less or more able to hear what she has to say in
this book? Does a voice inside
us say, "Well, of course, she would argue that, she's African
American." Like with John Howard
Griffin and his book Black Like Me, would the white
community be more likely to trust the story
of racism in our Criminal Justice system if it were told by a white
person?
Jesus did the unthinkable for a Jewish man. He himself had just
finished debating with other
Jewish teachers about how inclusive the boundaries of clean and
unclean might stretch. He had
deemed all food as clean. That was already outrageous
enough. But then he goes to foreign
territory, where a foreign woman bursts into the house
where he is staying. By Jewish standards,
she is doubly unclean: Gentile woman with demon daughter. Notice
first of all, though, Jesus
doesn't throw her out, which would have been the reaction of most
Jewish teachers. He actually
listens to what she says. He lets her plead her case. He at first
voices the traditional stance of
exclusion, even calling her a dog. But her courage, her faith, and
her persistence yields a
complete about-face. The woman does not argue with Jesus' refusal.
She does not retaliate or
attack. She does not seek to be great or to be first. She seeks to
serve her daughter's well-being,
and she is willing to become least in order to make that happen. The
spiritual secret of becoming
least is so that God can become most. This is the attitude of the
kingdom, the new humanity that
Jesus is bringing about. (3) Jesus
responds by making this woman a model of faith for us and then
heals her daughter.
Healing. We know Jesus' healing in our lives, don't we? Most often
that healing comes when we
listen to and heed the broken parts of our selves -- rather than
casting them away from our
consciousness. Jesus heals us when we are courageous as the
Syro-Phoenician woman to trust
that Jesus helps to heal the broken and the least among us and in
us.
This morning we lift up that Jesus also heals our communities. Jesus
models for us a listening to
the wisdom of the oppressed that we might be healed of our
divisions. If the Syro-Phoenician
woman were to speak to us tonight, would it be something like this?
(Read by female voice)
My daughter is many. She is within you, broken and weeping and
raging. She
lives homeless on your streets. She is incarcerated for drug use
in your prisons.
She is the lesbian woman whose partner is denied entering the
hospital room of
their dying daughter. She is the beautiful and suffocating
earth. She seeks healing,
liberation from the demons. Where do you see my daughter?
Sisters, know your strengths and use them for healing. My
strengths were a clever
mind, verbal dexterity, and an iron will. My request was granted
because I used
my gifts in the name of healing. Sisters, claim your strengths,
honor them, and use
them. What are the gifts you have been given for healing?
Sisters, brothers, don't back down in the face of injustice.
Persist. In my
persistence I was heard. Where will you struggle relentlessly
for the healing of my
daughters?
Where you sit in privilege at the expense of others, I invite
you to listen to my
daughters who suffer the lack of privilege. See it and find ways
to not cooperate
with it, to stand against it, to dismantle it. I was a pagan and
a woman. Jesus,
compared to me, was a person of privilege. By the rules of his
world, he should
have turned me away. He did not. Instead he later gave up his
privilege on the
cross, letting himself be declared unclean, in solidarity with
me. Follow him.
Follow him that we may be healed and together live in the grace
of God's one
human family. (4)
Paul J. Nuechterlein
Delivered at Prince of Peace Lutheran,
Portage, MI, August 30 & Sept. 2, 2012
Notes
1. http://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/Black-Like-Me-50-Years-Later.html?c=y&page=3
2. Ched Myers -- with the team of
Marie Dennis, Joseph Nangle, Cynthia Moe-Lobeda, and Stuart Taylor
-- "Say
to
This Mountain": Mark's Story of Discipleship
[Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1996], page 85. I owe the basic idea
for this sermon to Myers and team and their chapter on Mark 7.
3. John Shea, The
Spiritual Wisdom of the Gospels for Christian Preachers and
Teachers: Eating with the
Bridegroom (Year B) [Liturgical Press, 2005], page
220.
4. Myers, et al., pp. 85-86 - an edited
version of their monologue.