Scripture text: Mark 7:24-37
Today’s Gospel lesson is always a challenge to us preachers. It contains an obvious problem: what to do about Jesus? One of my seminary professors, when he was to preach on this text in chapel, summed it up nicely. “There’s no getting around it. Jesus acts like a jerk.” And he does. A person in need comes to him with sincerity and vulnerability and not only does he turn his back on them, refusing at the first the requested miracle, but he insults the woman by calling her a dog.
What to do about Jesus here? Some scholars have said his encounter with this Syro-phoenician woman is a turning point in his ministry, that when she turns the insult back on him in faith and in confidence, it reveals to Jesus that the new covenant is meant for all people, not just the Jews. I don’t buy that. I don’t buy that because I know that Jesus is fully aware that the old covenant was meant for all people. It is very clear that the promises given to Abraham would produce a blessing for “all families” of the world. And if that was true for thousands of years before Jesus was born, why would it suddenly stop now?
What’s going on in this story? What sort of game is Jesus playing here, because I am convinced it’s a game. Jesus is a very clever man and he likes to toy with people’s expectations. He is using this woman and her astounding unshakable faith to drive home a point to the rest of us. But what is that point?
I’ve read this story hundreds of times, but this week was the first time something new jumped out at me. It was the first time I really looked at what Jesus says to the woman. “It is not fair...” What a curious way to put things. A clue perhaps to what this is all about.
Of course, we are all about fairness. We like things to be fair. Everyone is equal. Everything is simple. All variables accounted for and controlled. Justice is done. The right and good outcome is achieved and everyone walks away with what they deserve. That’s fairness...or so we think.
But that’s not how life plays out.
Is it fair that students who have put years of work and thousands upon thousands of dollars into a degree in higher education come out to a job market with only minimum wage jobs that will leave them with a burden of debt and financial insolvency for decades if not the rest of their life? Is that fair?
Is it fair that people are condemned to be brutalized by crime, discrimination, poverty, and murder simply because their skin color is darker than ours? Is that fair?
Is it fair that people must brave crossing the sea to lands that do not want them because back home they are trapped between a brutal dictator and a group of fanatics with a fetish for cutting off the heads of those they don’t like? Is that fair? Is it fair that people flee to this country because back home they have the choice between criminal cartels and radical revolutionaries all bent on murder and destruction?
Is it fair that good people die of disease and accident? Is it fair that the best of us are taken too soon? Honesty, what is fair in our world anymore? I don’t know. Not much.
The more things change, the more they stay the same. What is fair about this innocent child tormented by demonic powers? What did this child do to deserve such a fate? Is she so different from the refugees in Europe or the African-Americans stuck in the ghetto or Freddie as he battles against deadly cancer? Do they deserve their fate? Has life been fair to them? And do we care that it hasn’t?
That’s not a question we really want to answer, is it?
But it is the question Jesus wants to answer. Fair doesn’t work. Fair isn’t good enough. Fair, as we practice it in this world, leaves people behind. Fair helps the established. Fair helps the powerful. Fair helps the privileged. And that’s probably why we don’t mind that things aren’t very fair for a lot of people out there. They’re not us.
Until we are. Funny how that works sometimes. What then? What happens we’re the ones left behind? What happens when life deals us a bad hand? What happens when things stop being fair for us?
Fair isn’t good enough. We need something better. What we need is grace. And it is grace that Jesus provides.
Grace is when we given what we do not deserve. Grace is when we are given life when we have failed to promote life in others. Grace is when we are forgiven when we keep screwing up time and time again. Grace is when we are given blessings beyond measure despite the fact that we’ve turned our back on God more times than we can count. Grace isn’t fair...and thank God it isn’t.
Grace is what this woman receives. It’s what her child receives. It’s what she came to ask for. She didn’t want what was fair. She wanted something better and Jesus provides. With a word, the demon is gone. She didn’t get what was fair. She got grace instead.
So what about us? How many of us are living lives filled with what is fair? Are you getting what you think you deserve? Is everything working out the way you always hoped and always envisioned? Probably not. Fair isn’t good enough for us either. We need grace.
And it is grace that Christ provides. You know, when you think about it, Jesus’ life wasn’t very fair either. It’s not very fair that God’s son had to leave his heavenly throne to come down here in the muck and mire of this world. It’s not very fair that he got stuck with a bunch of bumbling idiots as disciples. It’s not very fair that he had to die on the cross. None of that’s fair.
That should be us up there on that cross. But it’s not. It’s him; it’s Jesus standing in our stead, bringing that blessing promised to Abraham that would be for all people. Grace to a world in desperate need of it. Grace to you and to me. Better than fair. Better by far than what is deserved. Better because we need better. Amen.
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