Hearts Open Slowly

Proverbs 22:1-2, 8-9, 22-23 Mark 7:24-37
September 6, 2009 Rev. Alan Claassen

Please pray with me:
From the cowardice that does not face the truth
From the laziness that accepts half-truths
And from the arrogance that thinks it knows the whole truth
Lord, deliver me. Amen

Last week, while over 75 of us worshiped at White Pines Lake,
sharing music, the beauty of nature and the sacrament of baptism,
5 members of our congregation, led by F. Messer, shared in prayer together.
I would like to read one of the prayers that they shared together.
This is a prayer written by the saint, Mister Rogers:
At the center of the universe is a loving heart
That continues to beat
And that wants the best for every person.
Anything we can do to help foster
The intellect and spiritual and emotional growth
Of our fellow human beings,
That is our job.
Those of us who have this particular vision
Must continue against all odds.
Life is for service.





As I prepare sermons and share in dialogue and ministry with this congregation in the year ahead,
I will remember that this is my job,
to help foster your intellect,
and your spiritual and the emotional growth.
It’s your job too.
This is love.
As I speak what is true for me I will listen to you with an open heart.
That is what Christ calls me, and each one of us to do, to bring the kin-dom of heaven a little closer to earth, the right place for love.

This week's scripture passage, from the Gospel of Mark
is about listening well and speaking clearly.
In light one of the classes that we will be offering this fall,
we could say this morning’s gospel reading is about
Compassionate Communication.
Though it didn’t start out that way.

Listen again to the exchange between Jesus and the pagan mother,
which often makes us uncomfortable when we read it.
The Gentile woman hears that Jesus, whom she must have heard about,
has left his homeland, crossed the borders, and come into her territory.
She begs Jesus to cast the demons out of her daughter.
Jesus replies, “Let the children (of Israel) be fed first,
for it is not fair to take the children’s food
and throw it to the dogs.”

The woman, who has just been called a dog by Jesus,
uses a little compassionate communication,
and replies to the riddle Jesus has posed
with an answer that shows a lot of cleverness and love.
“Sir, even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs.”
Jesus responds to her compassion and cleverness and tells her to go home,
her daughter is healed.

If we simply gloss over the apparent uncharacteristic rudeness of Jesus
and the to-be-expected healing of the woman’s daughter
we may miss this intention of the Gospel writer and its meaning for us today.
How, we might ask, can Jesus, our loving and tender Savior,
tell a desperate mother that she and her little girl are "dogs"?
Our discomfort with Jesus' humanity and his perspective as a faithful Jew,
trips us up on this exchange, even though things turn out well in the end.
But if we look closer,
using the tools of contemporary Biblical scholarship
that we will be studying in another class we are offering this fall,
we can find another way to approach the meaning of this passage
for the community that the Gospel of Mark was first written for,
as well as a possible meaning for us today.
Could this story in fact be a great turning point in the Gospel of Mark?

It is always good to remember that the Gospels were written 50 -70 years after Jesus died.
They were each written in a particular community
that was still in process of transitioning from a Jewish community into a Christian one.
They each had particular questions to answer that influenced the stories that were told
and the way that they were told.

Could the struggles of the early church, which produced this narrative,
be evident in the tension it expresses and resolves?
They had to answer the question, “Do we welcome Gentiles into the church?”
Do we welcome women into positions of authority in the church?
Is God’s love for everyone?
Just before Jesus left the crowds of Galilee
for the hoped for seclusion of the Gentile lands,
he had shocked the religious authorities by declaring all foods clean
and by focusing instead on what lives in our hearts.
Whether he wanted to or not, he encountered a tenacious, determined mother
in search of healing for her little girl,
a woman who would not be turned away from the table of God's grace,
even if all she got was the crumbs that fell to the floor.

She used her wits in a culture that valued riddles for figuring things out,
and she won both the argument
and the healing she had requested of this teacher from another religion
and another land.
The heart of Jesus is touched, even moved in new directions,
by love,
the love of a mother for her child,
that is at the heart of God's own love.
Something deep inside Jesus remembers and recognizes this.
We might even say that something in Jesus' heart and mind is "opened up" by this love.

Borders were crossed,
boundaries broken down,
hearts were opened,
and so was the Christian mission,
as Gentiles and women
embraced the good news of the gospel,
and were welcomed into the Christian community
Just as Jesus declared all foods clean, then,
he declared all people "clean," acceptable, included at the table.
Is Mark I writing this story this way, saying to his fledgling Christian community,
“If Jesus can expand his boundaries of who is acceptable, can we?

The second story relates another kind of opening.
Friends brought a deaf man with a speech impediment to Jesus.
Jesus touched the man’s ears,
Touched the man’s tongue,
Looked up to heaven and said the eph-phatha! (Be opened)
Eph-phatha is an Aramaic word, and aramaic was the native tongue of Jesus and those among whom he ministered.

The multiple layers of the Aramaic word, eph-phatha are interesting in this story.
On one level it simply means opening, such as opening the man’s ear passages.
On another level, it addresses the fears that are stopping us from becoming who we are.
The healed man is able to speak plainly after his ears were opened and his tongue was released.
It is good to remember the connection between listening and speaking.

For the church to become a place where hearts are allowed to open slowly
it is also good to remember to have an ongoing dialogue with God.
To speak your need for guidance and then to listen…….
In other words, to be in prayer with God on a daily basis.

I personally don’t see how it is possible to do the work of fostering
the intellectual, spiritual and emotional growth
of our fellow human beings
without that listening and speaking,
humble asking and courageous responding,
dialogue with God.


I don’t see how we can do any of this without prayer.

Prayer that directs our attention to God, to Jesus, to the Holy Spirit
That touches our deafness,
our inability to speak,
our frightened place
With love, not judgment.
With prayer that opens the heart slowly.

May our time of holy communion this morning be a time be a prayer
where we hear the word and feel the touch of the compassionate healer,
Jesus of Nazareth, the one whom we call Christ.
May our time of sharing the pieces of the bread broken open for us
and the cup emptied for us
be a time of remembering both our need and our strength,
our need for one another and for God,
who is the loving heart at the center of the universe
who wants the best for everyone.



Let the people say,
Amen.

For the Biblical interpretation of the Gospel of Mark passage I thank Kate Huey in her article that can be found in the worship section of ucc.org