Our Labor

 Charlotte Collins Reed
Christ Church Episcopal
September 5, 2021

18 Proper B 

          Apparently, Jesus has gotten up on the wrong side of the bed this morning, as my mother used to say when one of her children came downstairs in the morning grumpy and out of sorts.  As a good southern woman, Mom might also add a “Bless his heart.”  Jesus is inexplicably rude to the Gentile woman this morning when she begs Jesus to cast the demon out of her daughter.  Jesus’ response is “Let the children be fed first, for it is not fair to take the children’s food and feed it to the dogs.”  Jesus is not talking about household pets waiting patiently for any morsel to be dropped to the floor from the highchair.  Comparing the woman to a beloved household pet would be bad enough.  But he is comparing the women with a mangy wild dog foraging for food. 

          This is totally unexpected behavior from Jesus.  The Gentile woman is of Syrophoenician origin.  She does not live in Israel.  She does not practice Judaism.  Her ancestors were enemies of Israel.  And yet, she approaches Jesus believing that he can heal her daughter.  Jesus seems to be telling us that we should take care of our own people first, and the others can have whatever crumbs are left.  We expect Jesus, based on many of his parables, healings, and teachings, to remind us with his words and actions of God’s call to care for all people.   The reading from Proverbs says “Do not rob the poor because they are poor, or crush the afflicted at the gate; for the Lord pleads their cause and despoils of life those who despoil them.”  And the reading from James reminds us “You do well if you really fulfill the royal law according to the scripture, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’”  Jesus would do well to listen to those words this morning!

          There is no good explanation for Jesus’ rudeness toward the Syrophoenician woman.  Some commentaries chalk it up to Jesus’ being tired and having his time away interrupted by yet more human need.  Others say he was just having a bad day, or he is teasing the woman, or testing her faith.  Still others suggest that Jesus did not understand that his mission was to both Jews and Gentiles until the woman in this story challenges him.  But I do know this: if we let ourselves get hung up on Jesus’ rudeness, we will miss the larger and more important point of the story.

          In the end, Jesus does cast the demon out of the Syrophoenician woman’s daughter.  Not only that, Jesus also heals a deaf man with a speech impediment.  The way Jesus goes about that healing is not exactly good pandemic hygiene!  But hygiene aside, Jesus’ healing is effective, and the man can hear and speak clearly.                                                                                                          

Throughout the gospels as well as the book of Isaiah, the sign that the Kingdom of God has come near is that the lame can walk, the deaf can hear, the blind can see, and the oppressed are freed.  In today’s story, the child oppressed by a demon is freed and a man is healed of his deafness.  Jesus’ actions this morning tell us that the Kingdom of God has come near.

The real question this morning is not “Why was Jesus so rude?” The real question is “What are we doing with our lives as followers of Jesus to make the Kingdom of God come near?”  The news of late is filled with images of Afghan refugees fleeing for their lives, devastation from the earthquake in Haiti, mindboggling damage from hurricane Ida, and Covid-ravaged parts of the country and the world.  In some cases, like the Syrophoenician woman, the people do not live here or are not from here. They do not worship like we do and come from a very different culture.  They may even have been our enemies at some point.  In another place in the gospels, Jesus is clear about how we treat our enemies when he tells us to love our enemies and pray for those who harm us.  In other cases, we know victims of the wrath of Hurricane Ida, or know people who know victims, or have visited the affected communities and feel some connection with them.  But whether we feel connected or not, the call of the gospel is to use our lives to make the Kingdom of God a more present reality in the world today, doing what we can to liberate the oppressed, heal the sick, and care for those in need, whoever and wherever they are.  How can we make the Kingdom of God a more present reality for those who will resettle in northeast Ohio, or who have lost everything in Hurricane Ida, or who are grieving the loss of a loved one to Covid-19? 

On this Labor Day Sunday, we ask God's blessing upon all of our labor, on all that we do with our lives.  In a few minutes, we will pray a litany for our labor and you will be invited forward for the anointing or blessing of your hands.  All of our labor, whatever we do and wherever we do it, can be work that makes the Kingdom of God come near, whether here at home, in our country, or around the world.    Jesus calls us to open our hearts to make the Kingdom come near for those close by and those far way, for those we know and for those we don’t know, for those we feel a connection with and for those we don’t. Jesus' work was simply to make the Kingdom of God come near.  Period.  Jesus calls us to do likewise.

                                                                             Amen.