The Rev. Canon Anne E. Kitch
Proverbs 22:1-2, 8-9, 22-23 James 2:1-10, 11-17 Mark 7:24-37
Anniversaries. They are a way we mark time. The word itself comes from the Latin words for year and turn: the turning of the years. To honor an anniversary is to return again to a time, a place of remembrance. At the end of August I attended an annual training event to be recertified and an EFM mentor. It was a return for me as I found myself with the same five people who I had been in a small group with the year before. It wasn’t until we sat down together to begin our work that I was suddenly aware that a year had passed--and what a year it had been. The event gave me a chance to review in a very tangible way where I had been in the past year. Specifically, I became aware of where there had been healing in my life. A year before I had arrived at the training exhausted and overwhelmed and in many ways broken. Now I came full of joy and energy and playfulness. How had that happened? How had the healing taken place with me unaware of it?
I was filled with a powerful sense of God’s care for me and a sudden knowledge that God had worked powerfully in my life in ways that I had been unconscious of. This really shouldn’t surprise me. It is often my experience that while God is working in my life, I am sometimes unconscious of it as an ongoing event. But then I have a moment to reflect, to look back, and I can see how God has been there. I realize how God’s good work has been done in me. It seems I sometimes only recognize God’s healing in retrospect. And then there are times that I actively seek it out.
Where does healing come from? How does healing happen? Healing was a huge part of Jesus’ ministry. He healed poor people and rich people, children, adults, soldiers, and homemakers, He healed Jews, Gentiles, Greeks, and Romans. He cured lifelong afflictions and ordinary fevers, chronic conditions and birth defects. mental and psychological anguish. He exorcised demons and raised people from the dead. Where did his healing come from? And what exactly does a healing ministry have to do with being the Son of God and the messiah?
In the two healing stories we heard today, the healing is sought. The woman comes to Jesus on behalf of her daughter. Friends bring the deaf man to Jesus. Jesus didn’t go looking for them. In fact sometimes he seemed to want to hide from all the needs and hurts of others. When he went to the region of Tyre after his confrontation with the Pharisees (some 35 miles North of Galilee, more than a day’s walk from his home territory), “he entered a house and did not want anyone to know he was there. Yet he could not escape notice but a woman whose little daughter had an unclean sprit immediately heard about him and she came and bowed down at his feet.”
Now this woman lived in Tyre. She was not one of Jesus’ people. She was not the same religion or ethnicity or even from the same country. The text refers to her as Syrophoenician, meaning she was living in Phoenicia but of Syrian descent (like Italtian-American or French-Canadian). She was also a Gentile, or some texts say Greek--clearly not Jewish. When you are exhausted, when you want time to yourself, when you do not want to be found, it is hard enough to have to respond positively to a family member or a friend who seeks you out. You definitely don’t want to have anything to do with an outsider, a stranger who has no claim on you. This woman had no claim on Jesus. He was not her rabbi, not her countryman; he was not her messiah. And when she asks for healing for her daughter, he tells her as much (basically a loose translation of that children and dogs comment would be, “You have no claim on me!”)
Having been put off, she then asks for something else. She asks for justice--and in doing so reminds Jesus, reminds us, who does have a claim on him. See, Jesus is not Israel’s messiah. Jesus is not the savior of the Jews. Jesus is the savior of the world--including the world of a Syrian, non-Jewish woman in Tyre. She demands justice and receives it. And her daughter is healed. What is the relationship between healing and justice?
The region of Tyre is much in the news today. You only have to read the headlines to get a good picture…
Lebanon Prepares Mass Graves in Tyre
Officials say more than 500 Lebanese civilians have been killed since the conflict began, and more mass burials are planned Monday in the southern port city of Tyre
(August 2, 2006, NPR)
Returning Lebanese Rebury the Dead
Lebanese are now back in towns that were the focus of Israeli-Hezbollah fighting, and they're giving proper funerals to loved ones who were buried in mass graves. At the port of Tyre, more than 160 bodies were reburied.
(August 20, 2006, NPR)
Sidon Journal; Wake of War Idles Lebanon's Fleet, and Its Fishermen
Every morning, the fishermen gather at a grimy outdoor cafe overlooking the docks of this ancient port town. It is the height of the fishing season, but their boats sit at the water's edge like abandoned cars, rusting. ''We have been sitting here for 50 days,'' said Muhammad Ibrahim
(August 28, 2006, NYTimes)
Besieged
Things were getting back to normal in Tyre. The bomb craters in the main streets had been filled in with dirt, which slowed traffic but at least made passage possible. Some of the town’s more spectacular ruins were already being shoveled into great heaps of rubble. (September 3, 2006, NYTimes)
And in the midst of that rubble who is in need of justice? Of healing? Of peace? In an online journal reflection on today’s lessons, Jerry Goebel (a minister to at risk youth in WA) writes “In Tyre, this week, a woman still cries out for her daughter. She [is] not part of the hatred and politics that turned southern Lebanon into a disaster zone. Yet, that woman still cannot find a voice in an area torn asunder by religion and politics.” So many Christians in our country are fond of asking WWJD: What Would Jesus Do? What Would Jesus Do in Tyre? “We already know. The same thing he did 2,000 years ago in that ancient city. He would find the most ignored, most forgotten, most desperate person in the city, and he would heal her daughter.”*
When do we receive healing? Where does healing come from? How is it related to justice? What does a Syrophoenician woman have to do with Jesus? What do people in the Middle East have to do with us?
This week we encounter the anniversary of 9/11. We have marked the time for five years. We return again to a time, a place of remembrance. Consciously or unconsciously we revisit a time of horror and tragedy and terrorism. It is hard to enter those waters again. But as I contemplate this anniversary I find I am compelled to take stock in terms of healing. Where has there been healing over the past five years, and where has there been none? Where has there been justice, and where has there been none? Healing and justice, justice and peace.
What about us? Who has a claim on us? What are we called to do? Where does healing come from? In reflecting on this anniversary, Taylor Burton-Edwards, Director of Worship Resources for the United Methodist Church, writes, “Healing comes as we act in love toward those who harmed us, forgive our enemies, and reach out in love toward those who hurt the most — whoever they are, wherever they are. Healing comes as our souls, which need not be destroyed by outward pains, choose love again — not fear, not pain, not hate.” **
Healing and justice go hand in hand. Scripture is clear. In Proverbs we read, “whoever sows injustice will reap calamity.” And in the letter of James, “What good is it if a brother or sister lacks daily food and you say ‘Go in peace: keep warm and eat your fill,’ but do not supply their bodily needs?” And then there are the actions of Jesus.
On Friday evening my children prayed with friends of theirs before they sat down and ate their pizza. This was their prayer:
Bless our food, Dear God we pray,
And bless us too throughout this day.
Keep us safe and close to You,
Keep us just in all we do.
Keep us just in all we do.
Copyright © 2006 Anne E. Kitch
*Jerry Goebel: 2005 © http://onefamilyoutreach.com.
** Taylor Burton-Edwards, Reflections and a Hymn for the Fifth Anniversary of September 11, 2001 http://www.gbod.org/worship
