scripture: mark 7:24-7:37

Morning Worship 19 November '22

The Rev. Brad Sullivan Emmanuel Episcopal Church September 26, 2021 Proper 121, B Mark 7:24-37 Glorious Train Wrecks and Glorious Symphonies Have you ever had a terrible empathy fail? You’re overcome with emotion, exhausted, and totally stressed out by all that is going on, and you feel completely not good enough for all that is going on. So, you talk to a friend about it. The friend responds with, “Oh, that’s ok, it was so much worse for me last year.” You end up feeling even worse, like you’re still not good enough, but now you’re also unimportant. I’ve been in a workshop for the last couple days called, “Dare to Lead,” made by and based on the work of Brene Brown. She is a researcher and author of “Dare to Lead,” “The Daring Way,” and other books about shame, how destructive shame is for us, and how empathy is the antidote for shame. Different from guilt which says, “I messed up or did something bad,” shame says, “I am messed up, and I am bad.” Shame is the feeling of being totally unworthy of love and belonging. Alone. Scared. Not good enough. Not worth people’s time. One of the major antidotes for shame is empathy. Empathy helps us feel connected to others. Empathy doesn’t dismiss our pain, our fears, or the things we’ve done. Empathy looks at us as we are, warts and all, and says says, “I’m here with you; I get it; you aren’t alone; and you are totally worthy of love and belonging.” Sadly, a lot of Christian theology says the opposite. We’re sinners, totally unworthy, and destined for torment forever. That’s what we deserve…unless we believe in Jesus. Then, we’re still unworthy, but God loves us anyway. That’s a pretty abusive theology. Shame is at its root. You’re terrible, unworthy, you don’t belong; you’re no good; you should be punished. Shame, being unworthy of love and belonging. Then, according to these theologies, Jesus comes along and says, believe in me, and God won’t punish you forever…because God loves you. That’s what abusers do to their victims. Tear them down, make them feel worthless, and then say, “I love you, and I alone can make you well, not worthy of love…but I alone will love you even though you are totally unworthy.” That’s about control, not empathy or love. It’s bad theology which turns God into an abuser, rather than a loving God. See the truth of our nature is that we are made beautiful, wonderful, and totally worthy of love and belonging. We’re not born with some stain of original sin. We’re born, and we are hurt over time. We fear. We act out. We hurt others our of our own hurt. God is of course not happy with all of the hurt and harm we do, but God does not see us a terrible and totally unworthy of love. God loves us and hates to see us hurting ourselves and hurting each other. So, to help heal us, God became human, showing us empathy and love. God, Jesus, knows exactly what it’s like to be human. Life is hard; being human is hard. It’s beautiful, and messy, and painful; a glorious train-wreck, and a glorious symphony all at once. By joining with us in being human, God says, “I’m here with you; I get it; you aren’t alone; and you are totally worthy of love and belonging.” So then, believing that theology, that we are worthy of love and belonging, believing that God is not just trying to control us with fear and shame, what is Jesus saying with this dismemberment/mutilation lesson? Well, obviously, Jesus is not literally telling us to cut off our hands or else he’ll punish us forever. I know it sounds that way. “It is better for you to enter life maimed than to have two hands…and to be thrown into hell.” “If you mess up too much, I’m going to hurt you…forever.” That’s not love. That’s shame, control, fear and abuse. Remember, Jesus loves us and we are worthy of God’s love and belonging. This dismemberment/mutilation lesson, then, cannot be saying, cut off your hand or I’ll punish you forever. The lesson cannot be about shaming us and forcing control over us with coercion. Hear the lesson instead in the light of empathy and love, and you’ll see that this lesson is about taking seriously the harm we can cause, showing us just how bad that harm can be, and so encouraging us to take big steps to choose instead a way of healing and restoration. “Golly, cutting off my hand sounds terrible, and Jesus is saying that the harm I can cause to myself and others with my hand can be even worse than that. I can harm other people in ways that are worse than removing my hand; I can in fact harm people in ways that become like Hell on Earth. I can’t bring about Hell on Earth. I really don’t want to do that; I don’t want to cause harm like that. I mean, I’m often hurt and angry, but gee whiz, I don’t want to bring about Hell on Earth. Maybe I oughta seek another way?” See, this cast into hell part of Jesus’ lesson is not really unknown to us. Planes flown into buildings. Being so angry and feeling so alone that it seems like me against the world. Choosing numbing behaviors so much that people never address the problems in their lives, but just keep growing more isolated and resentful. Politicians wanting to win so badly and being so assured of their righteousness that they denigrate the other side as being evil, bringing about such division and strife that we can’t even countenance the thought that there may be some good coming from the other side, that freedom and public health become enemies of each other. We get being cast into hell. We do it to ourselves all the time. Not casting ourselves into Hell on Earth can take drastic change, drastic giving up of something we hold dear and can’t imagine being without. Giving up the need to be right in a religious belief and for others to share in that belief. Letting go of resentments and accepting one’s own faults so that it is no longer me agains the world. Letting go of numbing so that we actually have to work together on life’s challenges. Giving up dehumanizing anger and entrenched wrangling over ideological differences so that we don’t make things even worse than our fears of what might happen if the other side won. Giving up these things can feel like cutting off one’s own hand, or foot, or eye. Jesus is then hold up that pain next to the pain of the hells that we often make and cast each other into. Jesus is showing empathy and love, saying, “I know the healing work is hard, and I know, as we all know, how much harder life is without that healing work. Even though it can feel like cutting off your own hand, doing that healing work is so much better than living through Hell on Earth.” God loves us, not in spite of us being unworthy of God’s love. God loves us as God’s children, and we are totally worthy of God’s love and belonging. God also teaches us hard lessons because God knows life can be even harder without them. “I’m here with you; I get it,” God says. “You aren’t alone; and you are totally worthy of love and belonging.”

The Rev. Brad Sullivan Emmanuel Episcopal Church September 5, 2021 Proper 18, B Mark 7:24-37 Casting Down Our sIeDlOvLeSs There have often been times when I’ve been in a large group of people and found that I had a great fondness for a good many of the people there, and at the same time, I’ve found a great antipathy for another large part of the group. I’m referring to times when I’ve been to a sporting event like an Astros game. Folks wearing the Astros shirts and hats, well they’re my people. There is this connection, this bond, this belonging we feel for each other. We don’t know anything at all about each other, but we’re wearing the same color t-shirt. We belong together for that night in the tribe of the Astros. Now the fans in the Yankees shirts, for example, well we just don’t belong together. I may have much more in common with them, may like them immensely more outside of that stadium and in different t-shirts, but for that night, at the game, we are two different groups who do not belong together. I’m overstating things a bit of course, but forming exclusive groups is something we humans tend to be pretty good at doing. “No girls allowed.” “No boys allowed.” Little kids making their own often temporary exclusive groups. It seems innocent enough; it usually is, and children’s “No Boys Allowed” and “No Girls Allowed” clubs also show us how, even early in our lives, we tend toward forming like groups that exclude those who are not alike. This forming of like groups makes some sense. Sometimes people want to be with folks who are most obviously like them. Sadly, these like groups or exclusive groups can end up hurting those who are excluded. Even kids’ “boys only” or “girls only” clubs can unintentionally hurt those who are excluded. Some kids grow up not quite sure where they fit, not sure where they belong: with the girls or with the boys. I think of Steve, as I knew her years ago, now Beth, who had this experience growing up. There was no intention of excluding her, and yet there wasn’t really a place for her on the playground when the gym teacher said, “Boys over here, girls over there.” Oftentimes we don’t mean to exclude, we’re just trying to have a group gathered around a particular similarity. Other times, we very much mean to exclude, to exclude those who are deemed as unworthy, undesirable, or not belonging. “Whites only.” “No Jews.” “No Irish.” “Women need not apply.” There are countless ways our society and all societies have excluded others, and the Church, much as it tries to love, has often been a willing part of such exclusion. In the past, our churches have been intentionally racially segregated. We have kept women out of ministry even though Jesus and the early Church did not. We’ve allowed members of the LGBTQ+ community to be a part of the church, so long as they were quiet about and hid who they were. That’s just a partial list of how the institution itself has excluded groups from the church. Even more are the ways individuals have removed people they felt were undesirable. They disapproving look given, the audible whispers of disdain, the snubbing of some, and the outright statement that “you would be happier somewhere else” to others. Excluding others in the church has a long history, probably as long as the church has been around. Even the earliest members of the church were human and full of the same challenges that we all have, wanting to feel comfortable, wanting to belong, and sometimes excluding others to make sure we felt comfortable in our own belonging. Even in Jesus’ day, before he had established his church, Jesus was a part of this human tendency toward exclusion. When a woman who was a Gentile begged Jesus to cast a demon out of her daughter, he initially refused. He called her a dog. He saw her as unworthy, as undesirable, as not belonging. Jesus was acting as he had been taught. We don’t associate with those Gentile dogs. Then, the woman didn’t fight Jesus or refute his claim of her beastliness. “Sir, even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs,” she said. Supporting Jesus’ claim, she revealed it for what it was: cruelty and exclusion. It seems that she brought Jesus up short. It seems that his eyes were opened in that moment, that what he had been taught about Gentiles as less than human dogs wasn’t really the case. Here was not an unworthy dog, but a woman and a child. These also were beloved children of God, and Jesus healed the daughter immediately. Jesus, who was God, yes, but also fully human with human limitations and frailties had been taught one thing about humanity, that there were undesirable less than humans, and then when he saw one of these undesirable less thans up close, he realized that he had been given a false teaching. This woman, and by extension these Gentiles, were not less than humans, but full humans, beloved of God, who were deserving of love and belonging. Now, you could say when we exclude others that we’re only human, also following what we’ve been taught. That’s true enough. Even so, when we exclude others from the church, we don’t do so by acting as humans. When we exclude others from the church, we become idolaters, acting as though we were God. It’s God’s church, not ours, so when we start to proclaim who can be a part of God’s church and who cannot, we are moving God out of our way so that we can make God’s church what we want it to be. Putting ourself in God’s place, we end up becoming our own idols, ultimately worshipping ourselves, rather than God. Who is in, and who is out? Who is worthy, and who is unworthy? By the teaching of various days, the out and unworthy were black people, women, homosexual people, children who made noise or moved, folks without enough money, or folks with the wrong clothes. All of these people have been excluded from the church at various times and places, following accepted norms of the majority at the time, only to have those norms cast out, those idols thrown down, and the people seen no longer as dogs, but as beloved children of God. What norms, against what people, do we still hold, putting them down as dogs and raising ourselves as idols in God’s place? Who would make any of us personally uncomfortable sitting next to us, or preaching to us, or celebrating at this table? Realizing who those people are, remember that they are not dogs, but God’s beloved children, and we are not God to exclude them or anyone from God’s church. No longer in charge as gatekeeper, we simply get to enjoy the rich diversity of who God’s children are. Astros and Yankees fans. Rich and poor. LGBTQ+. Cis-gender. Heterosexual. Any and all races and skin colors. American. Immigrant. Children. Adults. Felons. Men and women and all those in between. There is such a rich and beautiful diversity of God’s children, and God’s intention for God’s church and God’s kingdom is for us to enjoy all of each other. We are each others’ family, God’s family. No one of us welcomes another, but we meet each other together, for we all belong here, in God’s church as God’s family.

"Keeping it Simple" Wednesday night services. Verse by verse teaching through the book of Mark by Assistant Pastor Darrell Logan of Calvary Queen Creek, AZ.

Our relationship with God is not founded on or maintained by our merits, but rather on the finished work of Christ. Let's join Pastor Phil in Mark chapter 7 as he continues that thought…

Jesus helps people where they are - spiritually, emotionally, physically, and even geographically.

Jesus helps people where they are - spiritually, emotionally, physically, and even geographically.

Jesus is Savior of ALL

Rev. Curtis Price delivering the sermon for September 6, 2015 at First Baptist Church of Salt Lake City. The Text for the day was Mark 7:24-37.

In the final section of Mark 7, we are introduced to two miracles which both have puzzling content--Jesus ignoring a woman and then putting her down? Jesus using spit and touching ears and tongue? Listen in to find out what Jesus was trying to teach, both in the miracles and to His disciples, through these two interesting miracles.

Brad Sullivan Proper 18, Year B September 6, 2015 Saint Mark's Episcopal Church, Bay City, TX James 2:1-10, (11-13), 14-17 Mark 7:24-37 Jesus didn’t want to heal a little girl who was possessed by a demon simply because she wasn’t Jewish. That’s a hard point for us to accept, and this is a difficult passage to wrestle with. Many have said that Jesus was just testing the Syrophoenician woman’s faith, and that he really intended to heal the woman’s daughter all along, but that doesn’t really seem to follow the story. Jesus had traveled north of Israel to the region of Tyre. This was gentile country, and the woman is named as a gentile. There was no reason to test her faith. I think we can take Jesus’ dismissal of the woman on face value. “Let the children be fed first,” Jesus said, “for it is not fair to take the children’s food and feed it to the dogs.” I was sent for Israel, Jesus told her and that’s not you. Jesus didn’t want to heal the woman. She wasn’t his problem. Don’t ask me to heal you, Jesus was saying, have your little demigod idol thing heal you. Then, Jesus healed her anyway. Jesus dismissed and insulted her, and the woman does not respond with anger, but takes his insult because her love for her daughter was greater than her pride. I think in that moment Jesus saw this woman’s humanity. No longer was she a gentile who wasn’t his problem. She was a woman and a mother who loved her daughter. I don’t think that’s sinful on Jesus’ part. He likely grew up being told that the gentiles were not their people and not their problem. So, that’s probably what Jesus believed. Then he met the Syrophoenician woman and realized that she was part of humanity. No longer was she not his problem, and no longer was he here only for Israel, but for all mankind. There has been an ongoing humanitarian crisis in Syria which has been growing since the uprising in 2011 aimed at ousting president Assad. Since then, civil war has engulfed the country, both sides have targeted civilians and used them as shields, and the self-proclaimed Islamic state has taken territory and begun their brutal tactics of maiming and killing Christians, Muslims, and anyone else they deem unworthy. This has left over 11 million people displaced from their homes, and over 4 million Syrian refugees have fled the country, seeking asylum in surrounding nations and even up into Europe. The crisis of refugees has caught the world’s attention recently because of pictures of little children who died trying to escape, their bodies washing up on the shores of Greece. Folks leaving Syria said it was worth the risk because they were dead there anyway. This may seem like it’s not our problem. It’s a world away. There are so many people here who are in need. Why give our help and our prayers to folks fleeing Syria when there’s so much to do here? It’s not our problem, but then like Jesus with the Syrophoenician woman, we eventually see their humanity and realize it is our problem. They are people, and as Body of Christ, we are called to seek and serve Christ in all persons. We’ll also find, as Jesus did, that there is more than enough help to go around. After Jesus healed the Syrophoenician woman’s daughter, he healed a deaf man in the largely gentile region of the Decapolis, just east of Israel. We don’t know if this man was Jewish or Gentile. Maybe it didn’t matter anymore. Jesus healed him. Not long after that, Jesus multiplied food so that from enough for a couple of people he fed 5000 people. There was plenty of food to go around and plenty of food left over, crumbs enough for all the dogs under the children’s table. While believing himself to be limited in his mission, Jesus found that his mission was not limited only to Israel, and he found that he had more than enough healing to go around. As Jesus’ body, we too have more than enough to go around. The Syrian people are fleeing the threat of death from three different armies in their country, each of which have shielded themselves behind civilians and targeted civilians. We have more than enough to help people this humanitarian crisis, which is one of the worst we’ve seen. We can give to organizations like World Vision who are helping to provide food and shelter for Syrians fleeing their country. We can petition our government to allow more refugees into America. We can learn more about the crisis and learn about other ways to help. We can pray for the people of Syria, the refugees, those taking them in, and those in danger of dying during their travels. Perhaps more than pray for them a few times, we may still not really want to do much to help. There’s too much to do here. It’s not our problem, but even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs. We may want to do more to help here instead, but there’s no reason why we can’t do both. As Jesus found after he healed the Syrophoenician woman’s daughter, he still had plenty left to heal a deaf man and then feed 5000 people with 5 loaves of bread and two fish. We may just find that if we give help to Syrian refugees, that there’s also a deaf man who needs healing here, or 5000 people who need food. We have more than enough healing and resources to go around, and like Jesus, we find that people half a world away are our problem because they are human beings made in God’s image, and through Jesus, we have more than enough love to give and we have more than enough help to give. Amen.

Pastor Joe continues in Mark.