Proverbs 22:1-2, 8-9, 22-23 Psalm 125 James 2:1-10, [11-13], 14-17 Mark 7:24-37

Our Gospel lesson shares the account of a desperate woman – so desperate that she is not deterred by the fierce social boundaries that stand between her and her goal; so desperate she risks severe punishment, maybe even death, to throw herself at the feet of Jewish man by the name of Jesus, begging his healing for her demon-possessed daughter.  She is a woman; she is a Syrophoenician; she is a Gentile; her life is cheap; she has no rights in 1^st Century Palestine; she has no legitimate claim on Jesus of Nazareth.  Yet, she is a mother desperate for her child’s healing, healing that she is confident only Jesus can offer.  She is a mother with faith in the healing power of Jesus Christ – faith so intense that she will not be diverted from her mission, even as she is rebuked so cruelly by Jesus himself.

This week’s news has been filled with the scenes of many desperate mothers:  Mothers in earth-quake and storm-ravaged Haiti pleading for food and safe lodging for their children; grieving mothers of the thirteen members of our armed forces who were senselessly and brutally murdered in the terrorist suicide attack at Hamid Karzai Airport in Kabul; mothers in flooded towns in Louisiana and the Northeast watching their children grow ill for lack of sanitation and clean drinking water; and hundreds of unseen mothers abandoned and stranded in Afghanistan, horrified that it is only a matter of time before their young daughters will be searched out and ripped from their arms to be sold as sex slaves.  We don’t have to look far to find desperate mothers and fathers willing to risk their lives to save their children, fearless of boundaries that stand in their way, frantically demanding their voices be heard. 

Jesus’ response to this desperate mother introduced in our Gospel lesson is not what we would expect.  In fact, Jesus’ response is appalling.  We are outraged at what we hear as race-based hate speech.  Preachers in pulpits all across the world today are grappling with this cruel dismissal that confronts this desperate outcast mother who comes in ultimate humility begging for her child’s healing.  I have no explanations that would attempt to soften the outrage, but I am certain that Jesus wants us to be outraged by his statement; Jesus wants all who witnessed this event and all who have read of this event over these past 2,000 years to be outraged.

And, the writer of Mark’s Gospel wants us to carry that sense of outrage into the quickly following account of Jesus’ healing of the deaf mute.  It’s always necessary in reading Gospel accounts that we take note of the surrounding elements.  Mark places this next account of the healing of the deaf mute strategically.  We are to be alerted and reminded that it is only through the healing grace of Jesus Christ that we begin to open our ears and lift our voices – opening our hearts in defense of the desperate who are too often marginalized and rebuked – opening our hearts and lowering our voices so that we might hear the struggles of others.

Most of us have experienced the mental torment of not having our voices heard, some of us more than others.  The world is desperate to be heard and to be healed through the grace of Jesus Christ; it is we who are to hear those cries of desperation and lift our own voices.  It is we who are to model the humble absolute unshakable faith of this gutsy female foreign outcast of today’s Gospel lesson. 

James the Evangelist asks us, “What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if you say you have faith but do not have works?”  Martin Luther dismissed The Epistle of James as “the epistle of straw” in his campaign against “works righteousness” – the misconception that we can earn our way into heaven with our human hands.  Yes, as the Apostle Paul preaches over and over, we are justified by grace through our faith in Jesus Christ.  Human hands do not earn our way to heaven; only God provides for our salvation through the redemptive power of the Jesus Christ.  But true faith does not allow our hearts and minds and our hands and feet to be idle.

True faith does not allow us to close our ears to the cries of the desperate.  We cannot separate the divine Jesus Christ from the human Jesus of Nazareth; we cannot separate our faith from our works.  

With God’s help, our ears are opened and our voices are raised to bring the desperate of world, kneeling at the feet of Jesus Christ, made whole by their faith in his healing grace.