Sept. 7, 2003

Mindekirken September 7, 2003
Pastor Jens Arne Dale

Mark 7.24-37

My neighbor Carl came to the garden fence to talk with me as I worked on our house last week. Carl has quite a belly, a wonderful beard and warm smile. For the last seven years he has been Santa Claus for the Salvation Army and some businesses, he told me. And since Santa has his busy season planning Christmas already in September, he had a lot on his mind.

What has made the greatest impact on him as a Santa is to visit with kids who are terminally ill. He has seen how the parents fight back their tears as the children happily receive their gifts. It makes it hard to stick to his role… Carl must be the perfect Santa, and this year he would even go professionally, he told me in confidence.

The woman in today’s text had a daughter who had an unclean spirit. If it had been a terminally ill child, people would have pitied her, but someone with an unclean spirit would hardly receive the same kind of sympathy. In the olden days in Norway they talked about "bytting".

If a child had some kind of severe disability, people thought the trolls had been there during the night and replaced the child with a troll child. This superstition must have been a terrible thing for a father or mother of a child considered a "bytting". To grow up as a "bytting" included shame and degradation in addition to the handicap one had to struggle with.

I think the mother with the daughter who had an unclean spirit was in kind of the same situation. The daughter had some bad compulsion and the situation was very demanding for the mother. This resulted in that people were suspicious. The mother and daughter were regarded as if they were being punished by God. Accordingly there was no place to turn to get support and care. If there is anything that makes us vulnerable, it has to be seeing our own children suffer.

Luckily Jesus appeared. If all others only despised this mother and child, he would be able to meet them with respect and understanding. The rumor of Jesus’ healing had obviously gone ahead of him.

I remember Carl telling me what a great impact it had on the parents to see their joyful children receiving gifts from Santa. Jesus chose another role as the woman bowed down for his feet. Jesus said NO. He had no gift of healing to deliver there and then. For the first time in the Bible’s history we meet an unwilling Jesus. Jesus rejecting people with great need doesn’t fit into our normal image of Jesus. Why did he do this?

14 years ago I served as chaplain in The UN force in Lebanon. We lived at approximately the same place as the woman in today’s text. South of us we had the world’s best protected border. The mutual suspicion of the people on the other side of the fence was well-founded. At the time of Jesus there was no military border to cross, but one definitively came north of the core land of the Jews. Here Baal and other gods were worshiped.

Jesus didn’t go that far north to do mission. He was only interested in rest and release. Nobody was supposed to know where he was. But not even this heathen area could serve as a hideaway. Distress didn’t recognize any border. The woman interrupted the retreat of Jesus with a desperate prayer for help. But Jesus said NO.

Let the children be fed first, for it is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs. Have you ever heard something like this? Here Jesus is dangerously close to use condescending and despising words. The children must be the Jews and the dogs the heathens.

It’s impossible to interpret it in another way. I don’t know how bad such a way of expressing oneself would have been at that time, but it must have been rather clear speech. Matthew gives us another part of Jesus’ explanation. I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. Matt 15.24 The thoughts of Jesus are the same as Paul expresses in this way: The gospel is for the Jew first and also for the Greek. Rom 1.16.

In his earthly work, Jesus has a mission to the Jews first. It has to be completed. Then the limit can be broken as we see in the great commission which Jesus gave to the disciples. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, Matt 28.19. But in today’s text Jesus is only concerned about his own people. The history of salvation has its progress. The surprise here is rather that Jesus becomes involved in healing.

It’s like a foretaste of the time when all limits will be broken: So then you are no longer strangers or aliens, but you are citizens with the saints and also members of the household of God. Ephes 2.19.

The woman took the words of Jesus literally and she used them for her own purposes. Yes, you may call me a dog, Jesus, but even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs. Here Jesus met the princess no one could silence. Jesus ran short of arguments.

Does it work to pray? Yes, and I think today’s text teaches us something about helplessness, prayer and faith. Her fight with Jesus sounds almost like an echo of Jacob’s fight with God: I will not let you go, unless you bless me. Gen 32.26. Prayer might be a fight. It may have to include endurance. It might be costly. The woman humiliated herself for Jesus. In all her helplessness he was her last chance. And she was rewarded. The daughter was freed from the unclean spirit. She got a new life with dignity.

What about our prayers today? Does God hear? Yes, few things in the Bible are more clear than the fact that God listens when we pray. Prayer is the red thread in our service, too. We begin by confessing our sins, all for which we should ask God for forgiveness. Then we have the kyrie eleison, a part which still is sung in Greek because it was so strongly expressed the first time by the blind Barthimaeus who cried at the dusty roadside at Jericho.

Kyrie eleison might as well have been taken from the woman whose daughter had a demon. We cry to God for our daughter who has an unclean spirit. People in our extended family are victims of evil things. We cry to God for help for the ones who are victims of violence and terror. They are our sons and daughters, our brothers and sisters, even if they live in Afghanistan or Iraq or in other places in the Middle East. We cry to God for the ones whose health fails, for the poor, the lonesome, the abused, the expelled. Kyrie eleison. That is the suffering world’s sigh to the creator for redemption.

Then follows gloria, the praise to God, our gratefulness to him for sending us the savior. Glory be to God in the highest is no less than the angels song in the fields of Bethlehem the night Jesus was born. We also have a long intercession in the service, which is concerned about a lot of different people and situations. Last but not least we have the prayers in Holy Communion. There the fellowship with Jesus and all the saints is expressed.

The fellowship with God is an answer to prayer, maybe even more than that God should change the circumstances of our lives. Prayer is the breath of Christian life. It’s the pledge of a better future. God longs to hear our prayers. Like a father enjoys the confidence of a child, God is eager to see us seeking him, to live in a frank relationship with him.

Glory be to God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, one true God, now and forever. Amen.

The Norwegian Lutheran Memorial Church ·  924 E. 21st St, Minneapolis, MN 55404-2952 ·  (612)874-0716