Boast in God's Mercy

Mark 7:24-37

Did you ever have one of those uncomfortable conversations?

The kind where you need to ask for help from someone?

From someone you’re not sure will give that help, even when you ask as nicely as you can?

 

We might have more of them than usual at the beginning of a school year, or the start of a new project or program.

When you need help, but you’re just not sure if this person you’re talking to is the right one to ask.

Or you’re trying to get help for someone else, but the person you have to ask is the class bully or the biggest suck-up, or a teacher or a boss who seems to not like you, or even a stranger.

 

That’s kind of what’s happening in the stories Mark tells us about Jesus this week.

Both of the stories are about people coming to Jesus, and asking him to help someone else.

And in the first story, the story of the woman whose little child is sick, there is every reason for her to expect that Jesus won’t want to help her.

 

She’s from a different sort of clan – one that doesn’t get along very well with Jesus’ people, with the people of Israel in the first century.

They are having this conversation in a part of the country where her kinfolk are probably the richer, more privileged folks, and Jesus’ kinfolk are probably the poorer folks, and there’s probably some resentment between the two groups.
Jesus’ folks might be angry about it if they hear he helped out one of those landlord types who everyone assumes just take what they can get all the time.

And to top it off, she wants divine help, a miracle, when the two of them have different religions.

 

But she comes to Jesus anyway, and she asks very carefully. “Bowing down” to show she doesn’t think she’s better than him.

Please, please help my baby. She is so sick from this evil demon, and I know you are the best person to heal her. I really need your help.

 

And Jesus says exactly what she might have expected him to say. What anyone else might have expected him to say.

I can’t waste God’s power on this. You don’t belong. It’s not fair to take what my people need, and give it to your people.

 

That’s pretty uncomfortable for you and me to hear, maybe, after we’ve had generations of teaching that we can trust Jesus to help anybody.

But from a popular opinion perspective at the time, that’s exactly what he would be supposed to say.

But this woman – this momma who knew she was going to have a very uncomfortable conversation when she had to ask for help – this woman tells Jesus that in spite of what everyone else would expect, she trusts that he really will help everybody.

Everybody.

There is enough to go around, she tells him.

I don’t want to take away what your people need. But there is enough, more than enough of God’s mercy, for your people to have what they need, and for my baby to be healed.

 

And Jesus says, “You’re right.”
And her daughter is healed by a miracle so powerful that it happens right that instant, without even seeing or touching the child.  

 

And Mark tells us that story so that now, thousands of years later, we know too that there is always enough of God’s mercy for everyone to have enough.

Even if we have to get into a very uncomfortable conversation about it.

 

Mark tells us this story

– and the story after it, where a bunch of people come to Jesus, and tell him about another person who needs healing, and Jesus takes the time to carefully and specially heal that person, too, with God’s power –

Mark tells us this story so that we can “make our boast of God’s mercy,” just like we prayed in our collect, our prayer of the day at the beginning of the service.

 

You can look in your program, at how we prayed to be able to be like that woman, that momma, in the Jesus story:

Grant us, O Lord, to trust in you with all our hearts;

for, as you always resist the proud who confide in their own strength,

so you never forsake those who make their boast of your mercy;…

If that woman in our story was from the richer, more powerful social group that many bible scholars think she was, it would have been easy for her to “confide in her own strength” – to assume that the resources she had at hand, in her own community, were better than whatever this roving teacher from the other side of the tracks had to offer.

But instead, she “made her boast of God’s mercy”. She went right to the man of God – went right to God – and said “God’s mercy is enough. More than enough. It’s all I need, and it’s exactly what my baby needs. I know, I trust, you will heal her.”

And God did not forsake her. God didn’t leave her on her own; God helped her.

Just like we prayed today.

 

Prayed – and keep praying – that we can trust God that much ourselves.

 

Because we need that kind of trust.

We need to know God will help us when we have to ask for help.

We need to believe – in our guts, not just our heads – that God loves us bigger and stronger and more abundantly than we ever need.  That God loves us more than anyone else can dislike us, and more than anyone can ever say no to us.

 

We need to know that, to trust that, because there will always be things we need help with. Problems too big for us to solve – violence and prejudice and whether everyone has a good job, and a good school, and good medical care and enough to eat – but that we can help solve because God helps us.

 

There will always be uncomfortable conversations – times when we need help and know it might be hard to get. Or times when someone we don’t much like needs help from us.

And if we can trust in God’s mercy, all of those conversations will be a little easier, because we will know that God has enough love and help and kindness and healing for everyone.

We can have those conversations trusting in God, instead of in ourselves.

 

There are lots of things we can do out of our own strength and skill – things that are easy for us right away, sure, and also new things that are hard when we start but are skills we can learn, whether it’s trigonometry or essay writing or programming or dribbling a ball or managing a team or a database or a new language.

 

And there will always – always – at work and at school and at home – be things that we can’t do, or won’t do, without help. Keeping our friends and families safe and healthy. Making the world a friendly place, where everyone wants to help others.

 

And there are things that God will always – always – help us do, even if we don’t know how to ask.

To be brave. To be generous. To help one another. To love – love other people, love ourselves, love God.

 

That’s why we pray, today, and often, that God will help us always to trust God.

So that we can do more than we think we can.

And so that God can do everything we - and everybody - need.

 

How Do They Know?

Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23; James 1:17-27

How do people know that you are a Christian? A follower of Jesus?

 

Or how do you know that someone else is a disciple, a Christian?

 

Do you just say it outright? “Hi, I’m Emily. I’m a Christian.”

Or use that as an answer when someone asks “and what do you do?” in a get to know you conversation?

I’ve seen a lot of t-shirts in the grocery, in airports, wherever, that proclaim that the wearer is “Team Jesus”, or something like that.

 

Or do you know by some kind of action?

Showing up at church every Sunday? Crossing yourself before you step up for an athletic endeavor or to make a presentation in a meeting?
Because you imitate Jesus by something like working as a healer or turning over tables in the marketplace?

 

Or maybe it’s as simple as that mid-century hymn that tells us

“They will know we are Christians by our love,

by our love.

[Yes, they’ll know we are Christians by our love.]”

And that claim is based in scripture, when Jesus tells his disciples shortly before his death that “…everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” (Jn 13:35)

 

So there’s our answer. Simple.

Right until someone asks about what it looks like to love. 

Love one another, or love God.

And has a different opinion about what that looks like than you do.

 

Which is a bit of what’s going on in Mark’s gospel story this morning.

When the Pharisees demand to know how Jesus and his disciples can love God’s law and honor God if they don’t wash their hands before eating.

 

Specifically, that’s not a concern about hygiene; it’s a ritual handwashing, an imitation of the Torah law that instructs priests to wash as a symbol of holiness before entering the sanctuary and offering sacrifices at the altar. 

What our translation calls “defiled” hands aren’t sinful. They’re just common, ordinary; just not set specially apart for the worship of God.

 

But the Pharisees are on a campaign to make all of God’s people in Israel as holy all the time as the priests are when serving at God’s altar. God called Israel a “kingdom of priests” and a “holy nation”, so they think we should act like that.

Mark may be exaggerating when he claims that “all the Jews” wash hands before eating, but probably – given the influence of the Pharisees – most people would know that’s a custom all the “really holy” people do. And some of them – certainly the Pharisees – would be shocked and worried when this miracle man who claims to be holy like God doesn’t do the simple holy rituals, or teach his disciples to do them.

 

So are these Jesus-followers really holy? Is Jesus himself really close to God?
If they aren’t doing this basic and popular ritual of respect for God, of keeping oneself ready to worship and honor God at all times?

 

Without this visible sign, how will anyone know that Jesus and his followers respect God? Love God?

 

Jesus, of course, has an answer for that.
And, as usual, his answer comes at the question a little sideways.

 

Answering “how will we show we love God?” With the declaration that nothing about these ritual practices, nothing about these signs, can separate us from God.

Whether we wash our hands for ritual holiness, whether we cross ourselves at certain prayers, whether we fast before receiving communion, whether we light the candles or forget, none of those ritual actions of holiness - done or left undone - can separate us from God.

(They might help us feel more ready to worship and pray, but Jesus isn’t teaching about helpful spiritual practices today. He’s insisting that omitting them can’t cut us off.)

 

Instead, he says, it’s what comes out of us that makes us “unholy”; what comes “out” of us that can separate us from God. He waves aside concerns about ritual purity, and insists on deep, unfakeable, spiritual purity – of being like God in our hearts, instead of being ritually prepared to encounter God.

 

The things that separate us from God, Jesus says, are harboring, displaying, and acting on evil intentions. Theft, deceit, slander, excess, arrogance, greed and all the forms of the desire always to have more.
When those “come out of us” in our words and in our actions, then we’re separating ourselves from God, from the holiness and love of God.

Those words and actions that come out of us are the things that show we are not with God.

 

He explains this in detail to his closest followers, who – like the Pharisees and the big crowds that follow Jesus – are a little puzzled by this insistence that ritual purity doesn’t matter. (Any of us who’ve watched a cherished church tradition that’s spelled holiness to us be overturned by new teaching can sympathize with how they feel!)

It’s not the holy rituals that make us holy and ready for God. It’s what we let out into the world that can pull us away from God.

 

Jesus doesn’t go on to the corollary that “what comes out of us” can also show how close we are to God, but that’s a natural progression. And an idea that’s picked up by James, writing to Jewish Christians after Jesus has died, risen, and returned to the heaven that he came to us from.

 

Be “doers” of the word of God, James says, not only hearers. Bring out of you the actions and words of holiness, of love, of being close to God. If the goodness of God is not coming out of you, it’s not enough. It’s not full, complete, whole.

 

It would be easy to read James as claiming that we have to do good works in order to get close to Jesus – more of those outward signs, like handwashing. But James is telling us the opposite – that those “good works” – generosity, care for others – come from the “implanted word”, from the holiness and love of God that are already rooted in our hearts. He’s just trying to make sure we don’t ever make the mistake of trying to keep that love of God only in our hearts.
James – like Jesus – wants us – and all God’s world – to see, and benefit from, that love “coming out of us” in words and actions that heal, build up, and pour love on God’s people and the world.

 

James doesn’t want us to smother, stifle, or ignore the love and word of God implanted in us; he wants us to set it free – to let it be seen, and memorable, and effective.  So that the holiness of God, of Christ, is known through us, rather than our holiness known to God.

 

So maybe the question I should have started with – is not how others will know we are Christian, but do others know we are?

Do others know – do we know – that we are living the love of God, pouring out from inside us, not to make us holy, but to celebrate God’s holiness in us, and pour it out, for all to know God’s love.

The Right Questions

John 6:1-21

When John tells us stories about Jesus, he’s usually very intentional about pointing out that Jesus has this divine foreknowledge of what’s about to happen, and this morning’s story is no exception. John tells us that Jesus knows exactly what he’s going to do about the big crowd who come chasing him to see wonders. So it bugs me a bit that Jesus very particularly nudges the disciples and us into thinking about the situation as our problem, an unsolvable dilemma, when he asks Philip, “Where are we going to buy bread for all these people to eat?”.

 

Now, the right answer to that question is that it’s actually the wrong question. The feeding of this hungry crowd is never going to be addressed by going out to a shop and purchasing food.
No disciple – not Philip then, not you or me now – can get these people fed by staying within the conventional lines of where food comes from and how it’s provided.
But Jesus’ question specifically frames the problem in conventional terms. And Philip answers him in those terms – outlining the immense, unbudgetable expense of even trying; even purchasing a token bite of bread for all those people.

 

And now, I think, John’s got us, his readers, where he needs us.

The problem is clearly unsolvable. It’s too big.

It’s like so many – so many – of the problems: the hungers, the injustices, the slow-building disasters, (the weather) that surround you and me from day to day. Some of them urgent and personal; others looming and global, all of them problems that need solving, and are absolutely too big for me, for you, to address.
So many painful global and local situations where we can’t imagine being able to make even a token difference.

 

Many of us recognize the kind of situation Philip is confronted with here, even if none of us have ever personally been suddenly made responsible for catering for five thousand guests we didn’t invite.

 

And then the very next thing that happens is: “here are five loaves and two fish”. Here’s a boy with roughly a meal for a single family.

Among five thousand people.

But among all those thousands of people, how did this one small meal come to Jesus?

 

Has Andrew been trying to solve the meal problem himself? Did he survey the crowd, the region, his fellow disciples… then bring back to Jesus the only thing he could come up with – one kid, with his family’s dinner?

 

Or did that one boy come up out of the crowd on his own?

Did he bring his loaves and fish because he saw the crowd and thought Jesus needed help with the hungry people?

Or did he not even think about the crowd, but brought his meal to Jesus because he thought Jesus might need a snack?

Or because he wanted to just get closer to this extraordinary, holy man?

 

Whoever took that initiative, this moment in the story when the five inadequate loaves and mere two fish appear is a ringing triumph of hope.

Hope not in the sense of “I hope someone can fix this”, but hope that’s a maybe below-conscious-thought experience of the world as possible, rather than hopeless.
Hope that looks not at the impossible size of a problem, but looks at what’s right in front of me, of you; at what happens to be in our hands or within reach, and says “what do I want to do with what I have?”

 

And in this case “I have lunch; I want to bring my lunch to Jesus” turns out to facilitate a miracle.

A miracle of abundance so overwhelming that the leftovers could feed many families well.

 

(I don’t know if the clean-up team was holding up those baskets of leftovers in awe, ready to put them in a museum, or preserve them as holy relics.
Or whether – like after shared meals at Trinity – they were asking around pleading to find folks who would take a basket of leftovers home with them.
But the fact that the leftovers were too abundant to be ignored matters to this story. To making sure you and I know that God doesn’t work small. No “just enough” solutions for Jesus; abundance is God’s first answer to our needs.)

 

I wonder what you and I have among us, right now, that might be the material for a miracle of abundance if we brought it to Jesus.

I wonder what ordinary things are in your house and mine (or your car or desk drawer or wherever things get stored) that might miraculously multiply in Jesus’ hands.

Wonder what ordinary experiences and ideas or even dreams are in the hearts and lives and minds gathered here, that might turn out to be the starting point of extraordinary transformation – for needs we might not see, as well as for impossible problems in front of us – if offered to Jesus at the right moment.

 

So it might be worth looking at the food in your pantry or refrigerator this week, or at your grocery budget, and asking yourself “what do I actually want to do with this? Who do I want to share this with?”

Maybe you’ll find yourself feeding hungry strangers through the multipliers at a local food pantry; maybe you’ll be feeding your own hungry soul, or someone else’s, by a meal you invite a friend – or someone you want to be friends with – to share with you.
Or discover an unexpected pocket of God’s creative delight and abundance by putting ingredients together in a way you hadn’t before.

Some miracles are small and hyper-local.

Many good and holy things aren’t miracles at all.

But sometimes – just sometimes – looking at what’s in your dinner basket puts you in the right place to watch God do the most impossible, glorious, extravagant acts of care and love and power.

 

We want – we need – to be people of hope. People who look at what’s right in front of us, what’s ordinary and ours, and wonder what God might do with it. Practicing that wondering also helps a lot to avoid David’s approach that we heard about this morning, when he looked at someone who wasn’t his, and asked “how can I get that for myself?” The only abundance that comes from that question is abundance of grief and guilt.

 

So it’s worth practicing the holy questions, as we look at what’s around us.

Maybe this week you might look at the tools of your trade or hobbies – whether those are a keyboard, a pen, a camera, a set of power tools, an expert’s education, a mindset for asking questions, the trust of your colleagues – whatever you use to do your job, or to be creative, or care for yourself or others.

Practice looking at what’s in front of you – so ordinary you might not notice it until you try – and asking “what do I want to be able to accomplish with this?
What problem do I wish this could solve?
Who would I be glad to share my skill, or time, or knowledge, or tools with?
How could I bring this laptop, pile of reference books, circular saw, family car, scalpel, whatever, to Jesus?”

 

I don’t know what might happen when we do that.
I suspect that the boy with the fish and loaves had no guess what Jesus might do next.

 

But I suspect it’s worth finding out.

I know it’s always worth the time to wonder.

Because that’s hope.

Hope that lives and acts and breathes and strengthens us, wherever we find ourselves. Hope that makes the world possible.

Hope that lets God be God, and lets Jesus make us miracles.