For the Underdog - September 10, 2006
Mark 7: 24-37I think it was about this time last year that I told you all that I watch a television show called “Big Brother.” It is a competitive show, and the winner—the last person to leave the house—wins $500,000, whereas second place gets $50,000. That's still a nice chink of change, but strategically speaking, if a person makes an error that results in winning second place instead of the grand prize, it's commonly known as “the $450,000 mistake.”
I've watched this show now every season its been on, and no matter now much you try to convince me otherwise, I'm a sucker for the underdog. I keep thinking that some year, a deserving person, nice person, a person who succeeded and got to the final two players without telling any lies, will win. This season of Big Brother has two more days to it, and I can tell you already, that isn't going to happen this year, either.
As a person who roots or the underdog, I like to hang around other people who do the same. In college, some of my best friends were Cubs fans. Now, some of them are Packers fans. Many, many a time I have voted for a political candidate, in a political party that had a snowball's chance in Miami of winning the election. What makes me this way? I'm not sure. Maybe I'm just a sucker for a great comeback story. Or maybe I'm just a sucker.
But when it comes right down to it, it's relatively easy for a person who lives in a position of relative power (someone who by nothing more than the accident of birth and adoption, or the privilege of an education, clearly has been given a seat at most tables) to root for the underdog, isn't it? It's not too much of a stretch for someone to reach down and offer a hand up to someone. Today's two stories aren't really about the ones reaching down, but the ones reaching up.
It was not rocket science that Jesus would encounter the Syrophoenician woman. He did come to her town, after all. Much has been made about the fact that this woman was a Gentile, but it seems to me that to focus on the fact that she was a foreigner makes as much sense as going to Mexico and being stunned to find the street signs in Spanish! Jesus knew full well that he would encounter Gentiles there.
No, what puts this woman in her place, and makes her the underdog, is Jesus himself. And boy, is that hard to say! Jesus is about as un-Saviorlike as we ever seen him in all of Scripture here. Preachers try to mitigate what he says here, try to soften his insult, try to make it seem as if he is calling her something. endearing like “Little Puppy.” But the truth is, he is calling her a bad name, and there is no way around that.
The last time I preached a passage similar to this one, Matthew's account of this story, I had just become a doggie-mommy for the first time, a fact I pointed out in my sermon. I'm not really going to preach about dogs today, because the story for today is contrasted against the second story we are given as text. The focus for this is less about what a scoundrel Jesus is, and our impulse to somehow make that okay, than it is about the underdogs—the true underdogs in these two stories.
Mark's story differs from Matthews in some important ways. In this version there is no crowd of disciples, telling her to go away from Jesus and stop interrupting him. There is just a woman, lying in the dirt, begging for what she needs-- healing for her daughter. Jesus tells her himself: “I'm busy here preaching to the Jews. There is only so much I can do.” Then he hurls that famous insult at her.
But instead of slinking away, she reminds Jesus: “Yes, but there is enough. I will take whatever little bits you can offer me.” She matches him point for point. In Matthew's story, the woman is rewarded for her faith with the healing of her daughter. Jesus doesn't say that in Mark; this time the woman gets the healing for her daughter, that thing she came seeking from Jesus, just for showing up and speaking it. Just for standing up, reaching out, and using her voice to make known what she wants, she gets what she needs.
It sounds simple enough, doesn't it? Just show up, say what you need, and you get it. Well, wouldn't it be nice of it really worked that way? If people in power—really in power—could just look at this story and somehow get it: ”Oh, okay. The people just have to ask for what they want, and we give it to them.” What a wonderful world that would be.
It doesn't work that way does it? In the real world, in the world of FEMA, and the 9-11 commission, and the world of the Iraq war, and the world of the genocide in Darfur, and in the world of inner city gang rapes and drive-by shootings, it doesn't work that way. In today's reality, this little story from Mark seems downright charming, like some sort of fairy tale. The kind of story a sucker would believe in.
So…Jesus leaves Tyre and goes back to Galilee. And a man is brought to him for healing. The man cannot hear or speak, but must rely on the kindness of others to even express what his needs are. If showing up and speaking out are what one must do to get what one needs, this man is really in trouble—he can't do either of those! Now, this man represents more of what the reality of our world is like. This man is a poor, homeless family in Mississippi, who does not have a direct line to FEMA. He's a refugee in a camp, driven from his village with nothing—nothing—by the Janjuweed. He's an eleven-year-old girl on the north side of Milwaukee who is tortured and terrorized, raped repeatedly for the amusement of a crowd. He has no voice but the voices of others.
Jesus takes this man away from the crowd, and touches him where his needs are. With some saliva he anoints his tongue, and he puts his fingers in his ears, and he looks to heaven and proclaims healing on the man. And even more miraculously than the Syrphonician woman, he gets the healing he can't even ask for.
Miracles abound in this text. For the first underdog, finding her voice and speaking her need was in itself the first miracle. She took an enormous risk, reaching out to Jesus, and he didn't make it easy for her. But still she persisted. When I think of her, I think of people like Rosa Parks—people who stood up, spoke out, resisted the powers in order to change her reality. Just like competitive reality shows, life itself does not easily reward this kind of underdog. If you've ever been in a position to need a little help, you know the roadblocks that our culture puts in front of getting what we need. It's not an easy time in history to ask for wholeness or healing. It takes acts of courage. In this miracle story we are urged to be persistent in our insisting on what we need. We are to be like a proverbial dog with a bone. Jesus is showing us that God will not ignore our cries for help.
In the second miracle story…well, you might be wondering what our social location is in the story of the man who has no voice. I'll give you a hint: I could have titled this sermon “Spit and Waxy Fingers”. (I didn't because I thought that might be a little too distracting.) Let's face it, talk is not only cheap, it is worthless if the person you are trying to communicate with is deaf. Jesus doesn't just stand there talking to the man, he encounters the source of his deafness, his silence; he gets up close and personal with the problem. Jesus dares getting close enough to his silent tongue and his stopped-up ears. And in this world, brothers and sisters, we are the way Jesus does this.
Ergo, we are the spit on the tongues of those without voice, and we are the fingers in the ears of the deaf. And our acts of bravery, of courage, of standing up with and for the underdog, are to encounter those in our world whose voices have been long silenced. They are to stand with those who have been deafened by the messages of defeat to the point that they can no longer hear the message of hope and salvation and grace, and to live out loud the gospel message of healing and wholeness.
This second miracle is also a miracle of defiance. We're taught to look the other way, to walk around those who lay on the sidewalk and ask for a crumb. Every culturally ingrained impulse we have screams at us to expect those who have needs to solve their own problems. But this second story reminds us that the gospel is for those who have voice and for those who don't, that grace is not an endorsement of the privileged class, a stamp of God's approval on those who are healthy and able, who do the right things, but is instead a gift freely given also to those who have nothing, who struggle with the very basic tenants of faith.
In other words, Gods touch of healing and wholeness are for all of us, whether we consider ourselves a have or a have-not. Whether we are an underdog, or those in the position to stand with and for the underdogs. As the Syrophoenician woman reminds Jesus, there is enough, there is enough, brother and sisters. Grace abounds.
Thanks be to God!
