A sermon preached by Pastor Lewis Polzin on September 5, 2021 at St. Peter–Immanuel Lutheran Church in Milwaukee, WI, on Mark 7:24-30. You may play the audio of the sermon here.
A mostly unedited transcript of the sermon follows the jump:
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.
The text this morning is from the Gospel according to St. Mark, the seventh chapter:
And from there he arose and went away to the region of Tyre and Sidon. And he entered a house and did not want anyone to know, yet he could not be hidden. But immediately a woman whose little daughter had an unclean spirit heard of him and came and fell down at his feet. Now the woman was a Gentile, a Syrophoenician by birth. And she begged him to cast the demon out of her daughter. And he said to her, “Let the children be fed first, for it is not right to take the children’s bread and throw it to the dogs.” But she answered him, “Yes, Lord; yet even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs.” And he said to her, “For this statement you may go your way; the demon has left your daughter.” And she went home and found the child lying in bed and the demon gone.
Thus far the text.
My dear friends in Christ,
It's easy for us to look at this passage today and go, all right, these are great miracles. Jesus cast a demon out of a little girl from miles away. And on top of that, he even heals a deaf and a mute man, something that had never been done before. Oh, the way he does that is actually really interesting where he grabs on and spits and sighs and we kind of go, all right, what's Jesus doing here? And the very simple answer to that is we don't know. So we aren't going to have a sermon on that, but it's easy for us to be distracted by these miracles and not see what's actually going on because the miracles are indeed great.
John tells us in his gospel that all the miracles that Jesus does are actually signs. They're ways of pointing to the fact that he's the Messiah. And certainly we could spend a lot of time looking at these miracles and saying, how are these pointing to the fact that Jesus is the Messiah. And maybe we can another sermon, but instead we need to consider the area about which this is written because Mark is coming at us with a very specific knowledge to say that Jesus is in the region of Tyre and Sidon and even more in the, Decapolis, meaning the 10 cities, an area of Gentiles.
Now you must understand that, to the Jew, the Gentiles are anybody who's not Jewish. Well, they're almost as bad as Samaritans. It doesn't matter what they actually believe. What matters is the fact that they're not Jewish. They're not Israelites by birth. Now, certainly there are converts among the Jews and we even see them in the Book of Acts that all of these people from all over the world come together in the city of Jerusalem at Pentecost, and God the Holy Spirit comes down on the apostles and speaks in all of their languages through those apostles so that they might hear the good news of Jesus Christ. We know that there are converts to Judaism, get that, but for the Jews to be among the Gentiles, it was not kosher.
Think for a moment about the parable of the prodigal son who says to his father, I wish you were dead, just give me the money and I'll be done with you. He runs off and he lives however he wants. And he finds himself having spent all of his money, not being able to find a home or food anywhere. He finds himself working in the sties, working with the pigs. Now you can take from that, he's working, not with Jews, but he's working Gentiles, debasing himself so far as to live among the pigs. That would have been a big no-no in Judaism back then; certainly, it would be still even today in Judaism, because they follow that thing that we've talked about the last few weeks, the Tradition of the Elders, which not only says, according to the law of God, you shall not eat anything of the cloven hooves, which would include pig, but the Tradition of the Elders would say you shouldn't even be around them. The prodigal son debased himself, he made himself unclean ceremonially by living with the pigs.
And so the older brother, knowing where this younger brother was, when the younger brother comes back on the horizon to beg of his father by saying, Bring me back into your household, just as a servant, because I've sinned against you. It's his way of worming his way back in, the older brother knows. And he says, Let's not have anything to do with this. And the father says, No, this is my beloved son. He was once lost to me. He was dead to me, but now he's found. What a wonderful picture that is of God, certainly, but you see the father was weird, just like our Father is a little weird where he welcomes in everybody to his family. But the father here was weird, especially to bring back an unclean person into his household. That would have been unheard of in Jewish circles. And so is that, as Jesus is in this region of Tyre and Sidon and in the Decapolis, this is weird.
Now you might ask what's he doing there? Well, as it happened, there were Jews living in these areas. The Jews had been spread out across the face of the planet in the Diaspora back when Babylon had taken them into captivity. They didn't all stay in Babylon, but they couldn't stay in Israel. And ever since then, Jews who had to make a living sold and traded with people in these areas. They would have certainly looked down upon the Gentiles, but they were there nonetheless.
Jesus made his way there to preach the good news, even to these people. This should be for us a really comforting thought, that Jesus finds his people wherever they are to bring the good news of Jesus Christ to them. There is no way that Jesus is going to let his people rot wherever they're at. Even if it's a place that you don't expect, Jesus will always find his people. But he’s still around these Gentiles, and now there’s this Syrophoenician woman. If you know anything about your ancient history, Syrophoenician means that she was probably from area of Syria, which was a much bigger area even than it is today, and Phoenicia, which is that Babylonian side of things. She was not just a woman who was a Gentile, but she was descended from the oppressors of Israel, the very people who destroyed the temple of God and took the people into captivity. She was the worst of the worst. She was disgusting. She was nasty. No good Jew would ever be caught dead dealing with someone like her.
But this is a mother. This is a mother whose daughter is ill, and not just ill, but possessed by a demon. It was a demon. And no good comes from demon possession; they’re almost always going to end in death. And we expect that because we know that the effect of sin is death. Not just death at the end, that last day, when we breathe our last and our heart stops and our brain stops firing-that's death, certainly. But every day that we have until that moment is a day of death. We expect sickness, we expect breakage. We expect horrible things to come to us because that's the effect of sin all leading us to that day. It's like death is chasing us each and every day of our lives. Trying to get us with his scythe and bring us to where he is. And every day that we don't die is a mercy from God. Even if we're dealing with all of this stuff in our lives, it’s still a gift.
But this is a mother looking at her daughter and grieving over this, how do I help her? What can I do? I would give up everything, even my own life in order to heal her, to have my little girl made well again. She hears of this Jesus, this Jesus who's coming to her region, this Jesus who's coming to her land, this Jesus who would have nothing to do with her, if only he knew who she was. And of course we know Jesus knows. And so she comes and she says, help me, help my daughter, give her back to me. She comes to him as someone who's heard of the miracles that he does and knows that he can do a miracle for her, too.
Maybe she thought he was a bread king, a king who just gives the people what they want or need. But, by the end of Jesus’ first response, that weak faith she had worked itself out to true faith in the Messiah of the world. But of course we know mostly about this woman because Jesus seems to insult her. He calls her a dog. Now I think too much is often made of this, that he calls her a dog. But it's true. I mean, calling anyone, especially in the ancient world, an animal name, it's not a good thing. Think of, you brood of vipers, you brood of serpents, it's along those lines. And dogs, well, they just were not had in Israelite homes. Do you know where your dog has been? I don't even know where my dog has been this week. We went for a walk this earlier in the week and I swear she walked through so much junk that there really is no way that I should have let her back in my house. She was on stones and bugs and sniffed at everything the other animals had left behind. She walked in it. And the dogs of Jesus’ day would have walked not just in what the animals left, but even what humans threw out into the street (there were no sewers then). You wouldn’t let a dog in to live with you.
But, Jesus calls her a dog, a big insult. But we know Jesus. He’s not just working to insult the woman, but to make a point to say, I've come the children of Israel. They need to eat everything first. Jesus doesn't say that all those who are outside of Israel don't get something. He's saying the children of Israel, they need to eat first. And this woman responds back to him, Yes, Lord. But even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall off of the table. Jesus hears this and he immediately knows something that you and I may have missed: this woman, while she's certainly a Syrophoenician woman, is a child of God because she has repented. She knows who she is. She knows that she's a dog. She knows that she's worse than a dog. She knows that she is so filthy and disgusting and gross and nasty because of who she is because she's a sinner. And she responds to Jesus with that. Jesus says, Because of this statement of yours, because you've come to me in repentant faith, because you are indeed a child of Israel, what you've asked for will be done for you. She showed that the people of Israel are composed of more than just those who are circumcised and those who come from them. She is one who's responding with a circumcised heart. She's responding with faith. And she knew in this moment that even if Jesus still said no, that, because of her faith, she would go back and teach to her daughter so that she would be saved, maybe not in this life, but saved when that moment of death finally catches up to her. And for her daughter, that would be soon.
But she finds that her request is granted. Now again, it's easy to just focus on the great miracle. She got what she wanted. Jesus did an amazing thing, but we miss out if we look just at that. We miss the fact that Jesus has pointed out something very real to us. We are called to be the children of God, not because we come from those who are circumcised, but because we come with a circumcised heart and all of us then can belong to God as his sons. Whether you've got female parts or male parts, God calls you his son because you are an inheritor of the kingdom of God. To be a son of God is to be one who has all that he has, to inherit everything that he would give you. And that inheritance comes through death, not your death, but the death of Christ. For if he dies, he gives to you all that is his own, his righteousness and his salvation. They're yours.
Now we sang for our opening hymn today a hymn that reminds us of this. It reminds us that we belong to God and every single person we see is a person for whom Christ died. Today, we live in an age of racism. Racism is alive and well. Racism is rightly defined as one race thinking less of another one race based on who they are, the traits that they've inherited. It’s judging people based on how they look, not who they are. For a long time in America's history, we have understand a lot of our racism was from the white Anglo-Saxon Protestant groups toward others. For instance, racism was directed towards the Africans who would come over from Africa those who had come from the Caribbean, those who have darker skin who had come from South America, the Irish as they came over, the Chinese as they came over, the Japanese as they came over. I mean, even into the 1940s, we were still throwing people of color into internment camps in this country.
What a shame it is that even our children have not heard of this, that even into the 1980s, where North Americans, not just the US, but also Canada, took children of Native American descent and threw them into boarding schools. They were stolen away from their families and they died from disease and neglect and starvation. And we don't teach that.
But today we're facing racism still. While we've worked to try to correct this in the hearts of so many, it still persists. We all see the news. We know that this is the case. We know it's still here, but we also know that, very popularly right now, racism is on the rise again. And it comes in the form of what's called critical race theory or cultural marxism. They’re not quite the same thing, but they are very related. You may have heard some of this on the news, where everybody is defined according to their own different makeups. Basically you are decided by one group to be less than another group. It actually even goes down to discriminate against the individual. As a white male, who is in love with a woman, specifically, my wife, and as a Christian, I would be at the low end of the totem pole. According to these theories, I should be the least listened to in all of culture. In fact, it’s not even that people shouldn’t listen to me, but that I should not have any influence on anything ever.
Now, aside from the fact that I’m a pastor, not preaching my Word by God’s Word, generally people probably shouldn’t listen to me. I’m not an expert on a lot. Most of the time, I just do my best, and sometimes it falls short. When it’s God’s Word, it doesn’t matter who’s teaching it as long as it’s right. But, I am judged incompetent in everything according to these theories.
Now, if you're a white woman, you should be listened to a little less than anybody else, but still more than a white man. And it goes all the way up until you're finally a trans woman, whether that is a man becoming a woman or a woman becoming a man, who happens to be African American, and who is interested in the opposite gender of whatever the gender is that you've chosen, and is Muslim, too. That’s like the holy grail for these folks. It’s not just in society, it’s being actively taught in schools and universities, in public assistance, in the military. And it’s awful. It’s not awful because people are judging me, that’s fine; I’d give up all my rights as a Christian to win a single person. It’s awful because it encourages us to judge others based on their appearance, based on their traits, and not the content of their character. We should grieve at this as Christians. I don't say this to get on some political pulpit and say, well, only you like these politicians who are going to fight against this. That's not my point. The point is, what are we as Christians being encouraged to look at, how should we think of others, and does that correspond to what God's Word says or not?
Jesus went into the region of Tye and Sidon. Jesus went into the Decapolis of the Gentiles. Jesus healed those who were not of Israel. Jesus tells us that all people have been died for by him, if only they would have the faith to believe. And as Christians, we are to open our eyes to the fact that our Lord has redeemed creation and he has made us all beautiful from the very outset. We might be the ugliest person we know, and that's perfectly fine. We may have the weirdest skin color of our society and that's perfectly fine. But all of us human beings have been made in the image of God. We bear the creator’s own image. Can we really say that there is any person that is more or less worth the love of God? No.
I mean, we have had racism for so long, and we have tried to get rid of it. But it’s back, because Satan loves to divide people, and race and gender and these things are so easy to use. But Jesus blows these divisions out of the water by healing this little girl. He shows us that every person is beloved by God, not because there's anything in them that makes them worthy, but because God has declared them worthy in the death of the first perfect human being, Jesus Christ. Every person is one for whom Christ died; how can we ever hold to an idea that devalues another based on their characteristics? Whether they’re a day old in the womb of their mother or 117 years old and dying from dementia, every person is valuable, every person is loved, and every person equal in the eyes of God, able to be taught the Word that they might believe in Christ.
And for you, Christ has redeemed you. The world is going to tell you that this is the dumbest thing, that Christ has made us all one in him, and that, because you’re a Christian, you should be cast out of society. But, even if you do deal with the persecution that is coming, even if you should be sentenced to death, the fact is that the Lord has redeemed you. He has chosen you, he has died for you, rose for you. He has forgiven your sins and welcomes you to everlasting life. He strengthens you with his Word and Sacrament. He guides you in the paths of righteousness.
You don't have to be from a certain nation. You don't have to be from the certain race or certain people. You have been made in the image of God. And you have had the Savior die for your sins. That will never go away from you. No matter what else anyone tells you, it is yours now and forever. In the name of Jesus, amen.
Now may the peace of God which passes all human understanding guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus, our Lord! Amen.
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