Sermon preached by the Rev. Lowell E. Grisham, Rector
St. Paul's Episcopal Church, Fayetteville, AR
September 10, 2006; 14 Pentecost, Proper 18, Year B
Episcopal Revised Common Lectionary

Mark 7:24-37) -- From there Jesus set out and went away to the region of Tyre. He entered a house and did not want anyone to know he was there. Yet he could not escape notice, but a woman whose little daughter had an unclean spirit immediately heard about him, and she came and bowed down at his feet. Now the woman was a Gentile, of Syrophoenician origin. She begged him to cast the demon out of her daughter. He said to her, "Let the children be fed first, for it is not fair to take the children's food and throw it to the dogs." But she answered him, "Sir, even the dogs under the table eat the children's crumbs." Then he said to her, "For saying that, you may go -- the demon has left your daughter." So she went home, found the child lying on the bed, and the demon gone.
Then he returned from the region of Tyre, and went by way of Sidon towards the Sea of Galilee, in the region of the Decapolis. They brought to him a deaf man who had an impediment in his speech; and they begged him to lay his hand on him. He took him aside in private, away from the crowd, and put his fingers into his ears, and he spat and touched his tongue. Then looking up to heaven, he sighed and said to him, "Ephphatha," that is, "Be opened." And immediately his ears were opened, his tongue was released, and he spoke plainly. Then Jesus ordered them to tell no one; but the more he ordered them, the more zealously they proclaimed it. They were astounded beyond measure, saying, "He has done everything well; he even makes the deaf to hear and the mute to speak."

Did you see the article in yesterday's Religion section of the Democrat-Gazette? The featured story was about "Altruism." Altruism is behavior to benefit another even though you don't expect a benefit for yourself.

According to research the article cited, altruism is triggered by how we see ourselves in relation to others. It's a question of empathy. Do you see the other person as a person like yourself? If you do, you are likely to respond to their plight with empathy, which can motivate acts of altruism. If you don't see the other person as a person who is like you -- in other words, they are "other" than you -- it is unlikely that you will act altruistically.

So who is like us, and who is not like us?

I grew up claiming my own identity primarily through discovering who I was not like. Maybe you did too. At some point I knew I was a boy, not a girl. For a while, those of us who were boys didn't play with girls. Most of my identities were given to me by my environment. I was a Grisham, not a Williston. I was from Mississippi, not from New Jersey, like the Willistons. They didn't quite understand about the 1860's War of Northern Aggression. We drove Fords, not Chevrolets like the Willistons. Fords are better than Chevrolets. The Willistons and the Grishams were Episcopalians, not Baptists like the Moorheads across the street. Big difference. Kent Moorhead couldn't play on Sunday nights; he had to go to church. The Grisham and the Williston kids gave him a hard time about that. Kent was the only minority Baptist in the South. We were all of us Ole Miss Rebels, not LSU Tigers, or even worse, Mississippi State Bulldogs, thank God. We'd barely heard of the Razorbacks. I remember a time when I thought that if I put three decals on my car -- Ole Miss, Beta Theta Pi, and an Episcopal Church shield -- you would know pretty much all you needed to know about me.

It's the most normal thing in the world to acquire your sense of identity this way. Achieving a strong sense of self-definition is an essential step in the process of growing up. There is no personal sin or culpability involved. It takes a village to raise a child, and we necessarily define ourselves in relationship to our village. But villages are not all-wise, and not essentially altruistic. By definition, people outside your village are different from you. People outside of your own sense of self-definition are different from you. The clash of differences is a source of conflict and growth for much of our lives. We all will have border conflicts, but occasionally we'll open the borders so that the "other" is welcomed into our village. That's the gate to empathy, the trigger for altruism.

I remember some of those border-openings. We lived in a neighborhood with lawns and sidewalks and paved streets. I recall my surprise when I went home with a new best friend from school. We ended up on a gravel road. His front yard was mostly dirt; two bird dogs slouched from under the front porch to greet us. The house was unpainted and there was a rusted pickup without tires in the front yard. What a surprise. His home was a different world to me. But we were friends, and we had a great time there. He became part of my village.

I remember meeting a kid who lived close enough to us that it seemed to me that he should be considered part of our neighborhood. He was black though. We'd lived near each other for years. We'd never met. He went to a different school and a different church. We happened across each other in our neighborhood one day -- a compete surprise to me -- and with just a few minutes' conversation, we established a bond. I liked him. He was a lot like me, it seemed. When I went home to tell my parents what they obviously didn't know, that there were some nice kids my age living in my neighborhood whom we didn't know, they cautioned me about playing with them. Other people in town might not understand. There was an undertone of threat. In the early 1960's, grown-up fears made it unsafe for black and white kids to play together in our village. To me, that seemed somewhere between stupid and wrong.

Mark remembers a time when Jesus went just across the border into the neighboring country of Lebanon. He was trying to keep from being noticed. They didn't like Jews on that side of the border. Jews didn't like them any better -- the Dogs of Lebanon. But a woman from there intruded upon their space with cries about her demonic daughter. Jesus dismissed her. His vocation was to the children of Israel. It's not right to throw the children's food to the dogs. His words described a sensible boundary, informed by all he had learned from his village and by all that he knew about his own sense of calling.

Then the unexpected happened. The woman's answer was a surprise. "Sir, even the dogs under the table eat the children's crumbs." Jesus hears a response that sounds wonderfully familiar. It is the sound of a loving mother desperate for her child. It is the sound of a woman expressing faith that something will be done for her child. It is the sound of a woman, a mother -- not a dog. He looks again, and he sees her, really sees her. She is a fellow human being, a child of God. Empathy, compassion flood his heart and he acts instantly, altruistically toward her. "For saying that, you may go -- the demon has left your daughter."

From this point on in Mark's gospel, Jesus ministry changes. Whatever he does in Israel for Jews, he does outside of Israel for Gentiles. He heals a blind man in Peter's town of Bathsaida and he heals deaf-mute man in the Gentile region of the Decapolis. He feeds a multitude in Israel, and he feeds a multitude in the Decapolis. From the moment Jesus recognizes that this Syrophoenician woman is like his own mother, like the other mothers of Israel, he never again treats a Gentile as "the other." Instantly Jesus transcends the boundaries of his village and his inheritance, he responds with empathy and compassion which triggers the altruism that characterized his entire life.

He is our example, our icon and model. It is no sin to have inherited a world view with boundaries largely defined by your cultural upbringing. That's just part of being human and growing up, finding your identity. But once you recognize a human connection with someone you've been taught was outside your borders, different from you, one of those "others" -- then the call is to drop the border, energize your empathy, respond compassionately, and act with altruism. That is the example we have in Jesus.

To suddenly recognize the connection between yourself and someone you thought was so different from you is like having your eyes and ears opened. "Ephphatha! Be opened!" You can see the other as like yourself; you can hear the cry of their hearts as like the cry of your own. Those who once were invisible are suddenly present to us. We are open to them. When that happens, we can we love our neighbor as ourselves, because now we actually acknowledge the other as our neighbor. That's the model we have in Jesus.

What a tragic irony that in his name so many people have suffered oppression and violence because they were different. Because, like this Gentile woman, they were of a different faith or nation. What Christians have done to non-Christians is a scandal. What Christians do to other Christians is a scandal. By the time Jesus died, he had expanded his altruism universally. He had touched lepers, dined with tax-collectors, and welcomed a thief into paradise. In Jesus, mercy triumphs over judgment.

The image of Jesus on the cross is an image of universal altruism. "Forgive them Father, for they know not what they do," he says to all of his blind, boundried, and bigoted neighbors. His is a self-definition that expands infinitely. That's the vision of the Kingdom of God that we are invited to embrace. You can't put enough self-defining stickers on your car because you belong to everyone and everyone belongs to you. "Ask not for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for thee."

If we are going to participate in the healing of the world that Jesus has initiated, we're going to have to be able to recognize how every other human being in the world is like us. We're going to have to stop seeing and treating those "others" as dogs and start seeing and treating them as neighbors. That's the way the demons get cast out. And right now, in this time moment in history, how many troubled mothers there are in this world whose children are being oppressed by these demons. How many need a crumb of compassion tossed their way. For the sake of the children, "Ephphatha! Be opened!"