Stumbling into hell?

Demons and hell and self-mutilation, sprinkled with salt and unquenchable fire. Whoa!

Whatever happened to last Sunday’s Jesus? What happened to the gentle teacher who made it so easy to remember Mister Rogers? What happened to the nursery-painting-Jesus, the smiling man surrounded by the little children of the world, black and yellow, red and white?

This is no zero-calorie, honey-sweet Jesus who doesn’t offend anyone; this is holy fire and salt with a bite. This is Mark’s way of shaking us out of our unholy habit of making our own personal Jesus in the image of what we like to call our needs. This is Jesus pushing back against our desire to domesticate him to our own little world where we have prepared a place for him.

On the way to Jerusalem, on the way to the cross, the disciples had been arguing with one another who was the greatest. Jesus took a little child and put it among them, and taking it in his arms, he said to them, “Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes not me but the one who sent me.”

Without a doubt he surprised and confused them when he told them that the littlest ones, the ones without any power or status, are indeed the earthly embodiments of the great God of heaven who desires to be with us.

I wonder if Jesus was still holding the child in his arms when John responded, “Teacher, we saw someone casting out demons in your name, and we tried to stop him, because he was not following us.”

Jesus was speaking about welcoming little ones, but his disciples were concerned about what others were doing in his name. Ironic, isn’t it? Jesus urges us to learn to see the presence of God in the ones we so easily overlook, like the very child in his arms, but our eyes are busy watching the competition instead.

“Teacher, we saw someone casting out demons in your name, and we tried to stop him, because he was not following us.” Yes, you heard that right. Not ‘because he was not following you’ or ‘because he was not following with us.’ “We tried to stop him, because he was not following us.” Ironic, isn’t it? Jesus is teaching his followers to see the world through his eyes, but we are busy observing and judging the actions of others who don’t see things our way.

The greatest irony, however, may well be that only a few verses earlier in Mark, the disciples were unable to do anything when a father asked them to help his son who was being tormented by a demon. They couldn’t do anything, because they didn’t pray (Mark 9:14-29). But now, instead of celebrating that great works of healing and liberation in Jesus’ name were being done outside their circle, they intervened as if they had the exclusive copyright on Jesus’ name.

Lack of spiritual grounding, failure to bring about healing, lack of attention, obsession with status, and jealous protection of what we consider our turf – the emerging picture of Jesus’ followers is not very attractive. Jesus is on the way to Jerusalem, and we claim to be following him, but Mark holds up a mirror and for a moment we realize that we are suffering from serious ADD. Our eyes are not on the one who is going ahead of us; our feet are not pointed in the direction he is going; and our hands are busy doing many things. We stumble over our attitudes, our priorities, our distractions, ourselves.

Mark confirms that stumbling is quite common among disciples, and to the degree that it puts an occasional dent in our pride, tripping over ourselves is perhaps even to be welcomed. But our lack of attention and our misdirected desires have consequences not just for us but also for others.

Just like the disciples were not able to cast out the demon from the boy because they were not rooted in prayer, we will not be able to do our part in God’s mission of healing, liberation, and wholeness unless we are spiritually rooted in the presence and power of Christ. We need to be grounded not just for our own well-being and wholeness, but for the sake of others, for the sake of the gospel and the world.

Just like John overlooked the child in Jesus’ arms because his attention was elsewhere, we will be blind to the presence of God in the powerless unless we have our eyes opened by the living Christ. We need to have our vision adjusted not just for own sake, but for the healing of the nations.

As disciples of Jesus Christ, we are to be fully engaged in God’s mission: our hands the hands of healing, our feet the feet of messengers of peace, our eyes the eyes of compassion, our lips the lips of truth. We bear the name of Christ in order that we might be conduits of God’s grace and mercy, and anything that blocks their flow must go.

If your hand causes you to stumble, cut it off; it is better for you to enter life maimed than to have two hands and go to hell, to the unquenchable fire.

And if your foot causes you to stumble, cut it off; it is better for you to enter life lame than to have two feet and to be thrown into hell.

And if your eye causes you to stumble, tear it out; it is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye than to have two eyes and to be thrown into hell.

I hear these terrifying words, and I don’t know what to make of them; their brutality shocks me, their violence disturbs me. My immediate reaction is silence. My inclination is to joke, “Now if your other hand causes you to stumble, you’ll find it difficult to cut it off since you have only that one hand left.” I want to joke and laugh to release some of the tension, yet at the same time I know that these words are no laughing matter.

Throughout history, people have been scapegoated and cut off from their communities for allegedly causing others to stumble. Heretics were cut off and burnt at the stake lest they cause the body of Christ to stumble. Dissenters were cut off and disappeared lest they cause chaos in the body politic. No, these words are no laughing matter.

I wonder if they are meant to shock us; because so much is at stake, and we don’t get it when Jesus tells us to stop obsessing about status and start paying attention to each other. Perhaps he speaks of decisive, violent action, because nothing else gets our attention.

I am reminded of a wolf who stepped into a trap and it snapped shut. For an entire day, she tried unsuccessfully to free herself, pulling and biting the chain, trying to pry open the steel jaws with her snout. The next day she bit off her own leg, leaving her foot in the trap. She was limping, but she was free, she was alive.

You know it’s not your foot that’s causing you to walk off the trail, literally or metaphorically. It’s not somebody’s hand that’s causing them to lash out and hurt their spouse or a child. It’s not my eye that’s causing me to ignore the needs of others or to see only what I want to see.

It is my lack of attention to the reign of God that’s causing me to stumble. It is my being absorbed with myself, my status, and my needs that’s pulling me off the way of Christ. Jesus says that this path of self-centeredness can only end in hell, and I believe him. I don’t believe, though, that hell is a place of God’s making. Hell is what happens to life when we have it our way.

The path to life requires that I let myself be transformed by the grace and mercy of God. It requires that I attend to and trust the voice and word of God, that I keep my eyes on Jesus and my hands ready to serve others. It requires that I don’t try to domesticate Jesus by showing him the place I have prepared for him in the house of my life. It requires that I follow him on the way until we get to the city where all are at home.

As disciples of Jesus Christ, we are called to be fully engaged in God’s mission with all our heart, and soul, and might. We bear the name of Christ in order that we might be conduits of God’s grace and mercy, and anything that blocks their flow must go.

The imagery of cutting limbs and gouging eyes is disturbing, but it reminds us that faith in Christ isn’t just a matter of the heart feeling strangely warmed by the touch of grace, and then seeking to repeat or prolong that feeling. The transformation of the self in the image of Christ includes the removal of all that hinders the flow of grace – walls of suspicion, boulders of pride, dams of greed – and removing those obstacles can be painful. Our spiritual formation as disciples of Jesus Christ is not just a matter of heart and mind, or of attitudes and opinions. Our hands and our actions must invite and proclaim the reign of God. Our feet must become familiar with the way of peace and the path of forgiveness. Our eyes must learn to completely follow the gaze of Christ, our ears to pay attention to the still, small voice, and our lips to be careful in what we say and sing.

When and how do we learn these things and develop these new familiarities? First and foremost in weekly worship, in the presence of the living Christ in the community of believers. Then in our daily attention to prayer and work.

In the end, it is not our willingness to go to violent extremes with ourselves or with others that allows us to enter life. It is God’s unwavering commitment to us and our redemption, and our willingness to allow God to do this work with us.

Audio of this post

World Communion Sunday 2009

World Communion Sunday is celebrated by congregations around the globe. The first Sunday of October has become a time when Christians in every culture break bread and pour the cup to remember and affirm Jesus Christ as the Head of the Church. On that day, Christians everywhere remember that we are part of the whole body of believers. With this unique focus on the Table and on Christian unity, it should not surprise us, that this day is one of the "High Holidays" of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ). Whether the Table brings people together in a grand cathedral, a mud hut, outside on a hilltop, in a meetinghouse, or in a storefront, or whether the Table is made of wood or stone or represented by a blanket on the ground – God’s people around the globe gather in response to Christ’s invitation to give thanks for the gifts of God.

At Vine Street this year, we will celebrate World Communion Sunday with our friends from the Congo. Nouvelle Aliance has been worshiping on Fridays and Sundays in our chapel for several months now, and our worship committee and the leadership of Nouvelle Aliance decided to have our first joint worship service on this special day. We will sing familiar tunes with words in English, French, and Lingala. We will hear Scripture read in various languages as well, and our prayers will reflect the wonderful diversity of the body of Christ. All of us, no matter what journey has brought us to the table, no matter what language or culture has shaped us, all of us will come to the table with empty hands to receive the gifts of God for a hungry world, the gifts that make us whole.

It is no coincidence that in the afternoon of that day, we will have yet another celebration. In the fall of 1809, Thomas Campbell published a brief essay, Declaration and Address, a passionate call to Christian unity. That document became one of the key texts for the Stone-Campbell Movement and its vision of the church, and to this day it inspires the ministry of Christian Churches, Churches of Christ and the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ).

In celebration of the bicentennial of Thomas Campbell’s Declaration and Address Christians, congregations with roots in that movement will come together to celebrate the Lord’s Supper on Sunday October 4, 2009. Here in Nashville, we will meet at 4PM at the West End Church of Christ; our own T.J. McLaughlin will direct a unity choir. There won’t be any preaching, only a brief statement about the historical importance of the occasion – both two-hundred years ago and today – and an invitation to what Campbell called “that great ordinance of Unity and Love.”

Won't you be my neighbor?

I didn’t meet Mr. Rogers until I was well into my thirties – the Mister Rogers that is, the one with the cardigan and the warm smile and the song, “It’s a beautiful day in the neighborhood…”

My colleague, Rochelle Stackhouse grew up with Mr. Rogers and his kind invitation to all children,

Since we’re together we might as well say:
Would you be mine?
Could you be mine?
Won’t you be my neighbor?

Rochelle remembers the first time she met Mr. Rogers in person ( see Lectionary Homiletics 20, No. 5, August/September 2009, p. 61). She was standing with a group of adults and several small children waiting for an elevator at Princeton Seminary. The doors opened, and to their great surprise, out stepped Fred Rogers. In case you’re wondering, “What on earth was he doing there?” – Mr. Rogers was a Presbyterian minister, and thus not completely out of place at Princeton. Anyway, he got off the elevator, and as the adults all spoke to him, he didn’t pay them any attention and instead stooped down to greet the children standing there first. Only after he had spoken to each one of them did he stand back up and speak to the taller people.

That was Mister Rogers. A tall man, he stooped to live, at least for a moment, in the world of the little ones. And with that small effort of attention he brought them in.

Do you remember having to climb up on the kitchen stool on which you simply sat down only a few years later? Do you remember being in a room with adults and they were all standing and chatting way up there while you were trying to find your way across the room through a forest of legs?

I remember sitting at the small table with the rest of the kids at every family gathering, and we would eat and talk and laugh and fight – and I remember how proud I was when I got to sit at the grown-up table for the first time. They had put one of the firm pillows on my chair to bring me up a couple of inches, so I could reach my glass and get a better view of my dinner plate. So there I sat, and I ate and I drank and I watched and I listened. At that table, I didn’t laugh much; the adults weren’t even half as hilarious as my cousins. I also didn’t say much, because my mom had been very clear that I was only to speak when spoken to, and who talks to a little boy when there’s a table full of grown-ups? I noticed that knocking over my glass of apple juice got everybody’s attention, but I also learned that the adults didn’t think peas in a puddle were nearly as funny as I thought.

We all have memories like that, memories of a world just beyond our reach, a world we can’t wait to belong to. Getting to the grown-up table is easy, all you have to do is get older. Getting to hang out with the cool people at high-school is a lot tougher, and getting a piece of the American Dream Pie even more so: you either have to figure out who’s doing the slicing and get yourself a seat at that table, or get a hold of the pie and a knife, or learn to bake.

From a very young age, we are encouraged to be ambitious and competitive, to set goals for ourselves and pursue them, to work hard and meet the right people.

The disciples had met Jesus. They had met the one who would set all things right. He had talked about going to Jerusalem, and they were ready for the challenge. They were still in Galilee, still preparing for the great journey south to the city of David. Jesus was still teaching them, talking again about being betrayed into human hands and being killed and after three days rising again.

They did not understand what he was saying, and they were afraid to ask him. Why do you think were they afraid to ask? Was it because they didn’t want to appear too slow for the race to the top? Was it because they had to make the others believe that they had it all together?

Instead of asking questions, they were jockeying for positions of influence and status. You know that at least two of them spoke with great conviction about sitting at Jesus’ right and left when he would come in glory. And one of them had to mention several times that he had been with Jesus the longest, and another that Jesus had already entrusted him with the office of treasurer. And while one touted his revolutionary zeal, another bragged about his connections in the business community.

When they got to the house, Jesus, never afraid to ask questions, said, “What were you arguing about on the way?” And suddenly they were silent, the whole chatty, ambitious bunch; no one said a word. Do you think they were embarrassed? I don’t know; had he asked them in private, individually, he may have heard statements like, “That Theophilus thinks he is the greatest” or “Bartholomew is dreaming about a seat on the supreme court.”

Three times in the gospel of Mark, Jesus talks about being rejected and betrayed, being handed over and condemned to death, being killed and rising again after three days. Three times, not just because this is disturbing news that doesn’t sink in easily, but because the meaning of discipleship is so tied up with that particular path. To follow this Messiah on his path is to let him turn our world, the world we and the generations before us have made of God’s creation, to let him turn that world upside down.

He sits down, calls the twelve, and says, “Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all.” In the kingdoms of the world, those at the top of the ladder lord it over those at the bottom. But in the kingdom of God, earth and heaven touch not at the top, in the clouds of power where one hand washes the other, but at the bottom where Jesus stoops to wash our feet. On this path, greatness is defined not in terms of superiority but service.

It is easy to imagine at this point a new round of arguments among the disciples, only now we try to outperform one another in lowliness, now we strive to stand out, head and shoulders above the rest, with our perfect humility. “Look at me, Jesus, I’m the humblest.” But that’s not the path.

We all start out little. We all start out needing to be noticed, needing to be held, needing to be talked to and fed. We all start out needing to be welcomed despite our lack of status, knowledge, accomplishments and any measure of greatness. We we need somebody to see us simply because we are here, and we become human only through the eyes and hands and words of others.
I wonder how much our desire for greatness has to do with that deep need to be seen, to be noticed and recognized, and finally, finally welcomed.

Jesus took a little child and put it among them; and taking it in his arms, he said to them, “Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes not me but the one who sent me.”

We are arguing about who is the greatest and worthy of recognition, and Jesus puts a child among us. We didn’t notice the child, did we? We were engaged in important conversations, making sure our voice would get through, our opinion would be heard, and our contribution recognized in its importance.

Jesus stoops and picks up a little child; not necessarily a precious, cuddly little sunshine, one of those fat-cheeked cherubs politicians like to pick up anytime cameras are around. Just a child, any child, and he says to us who want to follow him, “If you want to be great, notice the little ones and bring them in.” To be great is not to make yourself as big as possible just to be seen, but to shift your attention and notice the little ones. Welcome the one who has little or no status, who is not great by any measure, the one who is beyond the circle, who needs a welcome.

“Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes not me but the one who sent me.”

Welcome is woven through this teaching unlike any other verse of scripture. Welcome, welcome, welcome, welcome, as steady as the holy, holy, holy sung in heaven. Welcoming the little ones, those who are so easily overlooked at the tables where the grown-up conversations take place, we welcome Christ himself, and welcoming him, we welcome the One who sent him.

Much of our theological tradition has taught us to wonder, “What must I do, who do I have to be in order to be worthy to be received and welcomed by the holy God?” In Jesus’ teaching the perspective is turned around, and our attention is turned away from ourselves and our anxious obsession with our status. The challenge for a disciple of Jesus is not to be seen, but to see.

The little ones, those made invisible by our arrangements of power and importance, our patterns of inclusion and exclusion, are truly the embodiment of the invisible God who comes to us. Welcoming one such child, says Jesus, we welcome the Holy One whose powerful word created the heavens and the earth.

Since we’re together we might as well say:
Would you be mine?
Could you be mine?
Won’t you be my neighbor?

Those are lines worth remembering and repeating.

Audio of this post

homelessness : 360

why 360?

At Vine Street, we want to integrate what we do in education, advocacy, service, and worship; 360 is the sum of all angles, and a circle is a beautiful thing (especially when no one’s left out).

why homelessness?

Lack of housing makes all other problems worse; poverty is a systemic issue (and a challenge to any spirituality), and housing is a good point of entry into the complexities of loving and serving the poor among our neighbors. In the future, we will use the 360 concept to address other issues like hunger or immigration as well as our local and global neighborhood.

how?

On October 20, Campus for Human Development commission their new volunteers in a worship service at Vine Street.

In the weeks to follow we address issues of homelessness through education events for adults, youth, and children – including tours, books, videos, and conversations.

Members of every Vine Street household engage in two weeks of prayer: every human being needs a home. Families and individuals have a little paper house – like a coin bank – to collect and offer some of their prayers in writing.

On November 8, Erik Cole gives the 2009 Roger T. Nooe Lecture on World Peace with a focus on homelessness in Nashville. Erik grew up at Vine Street, and he is known in the community for his work on the Metro Council, and specifically for his strong leadership on the Metro Homelessness Commission.

On November 15, individuals and families bring their “houses of prayer” to God’s house of prayer. The worship service celebrates God’s hospitality and challenges us to renewed commitment to participate in God’s mission of bringing all people home; part of that recommitment are our time&talent surveys. Our annual Thanksgiving luncheon adds to the festive character of the day; that night, Vine Street begins a week of hosting Room in the Inn.

Throughout the process, participants write about their experience at vinestreet.ning.com

Worship Forum 3

One wild and precious life

Mark 8:27-38 provides the context for this post

All the school supplies have been purchased and the first ball games of the new season have been lost and won. You have moved your beach bum and pool clothes to a different corner of the closet, perhaps to a different closet altogether. The garden, after weeks of lush fecundity, is dreaming of cold sabbath days of rest. And on the Osage Orange tree the leaves are already turning and falling. Summer is on its way out and fall is in the air.

I invite you to linger a little, to hold on to one of those summer moments when you could hear the crickets chirping, and the whole world smelled like grass and, by some wondrous magic, time stood still.

I want to read for you The Summer Day, by Mary Oliver. I connect with this poem because I too have sat in the grass, lost in wonder, watching some little detail of creation. I too have strolled through the fields, idle and blessed all day long, simply allowing views, smells, sounds, and questions to rise.

In Mary Oliver’s poem, the questions change from childlike curiosity and wonder, “Who made the world?“ to very grown-up responsibility,

Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?

Questions about life float easily into each other. Tell me, what will it profit you to gain the whole world and forfeit your one wild and precious life? Jesus teaches that the way to find life and save it is to give it away, to lose it for something. And nothing is more terrifying than the suspicion that you have given away your life, perhaps only one day of it, for too little or for the wrong currency.

I heard an interview with a New York stock broker on the radio last week. When the big brokerage houses went down fast last fall, he thought his job with a smaller firm was safe. He had a position on the trading floor, he had a function and he fulfilled it. And he fulfilled it with pride, because Frank – let’s call him Frank – was a certified member of the New York Stock Exchange like his father and grandfather before him, and they both had worked well beyond their 80th birthdays. Frank was looking forward to a few more good years before retirement.

In November he got the phone call, and the news hit him like a truck out of nowhere; somebody said something about streamlining and necessary adjustments to the overall cost structure. Frank hung up the phone and got on the subway back to New Jersey.

Frank is 52 years old, and his chances of ever working in the financial sector again are slim. He still gets up early in the morning, but instead of catching the subway to Wall Street at 6:30 AM, he now makes breakfast for his wife and youngest son. He’s noticed that the number of dads dropping off their kids at school in the morning has been going up, and at the end of the summer he went to his first parent-teacher-night in years. Frank lost a dream when he lost his job, but now he knows that in the pursuit of his dream he had given away his life for too little, and he is grateful that he noticed that before it was too late. Mercy comes in surprising ways.

In today’s Gospel lesson, the question, “What will it profit you to gain the whole world and forfeit your life?” is raised rather late. The first question of the dialogue is an easy one, the answer a simple matter of completing an informal poll and reporting the results.

“Who do people say that I am?” Jesus asks.

The disciples answer, “John the Baptist; and others, Elijah; and still others, one of the prophets. They look to you as a teacher and healer and a spiritual master.” It’s easy to talk about Jesus.

The second question is anything but easy.

“Who do you say that I am?”

They had been with him since the first days on the shores of the Sea of Galilee. They had followed him from town to town, village to village, farm to farm, and wherever he went, they had seen signs of God’s reign: he healed the sick, he drove out demons, and he gave bread to thousands. They had seen hope springing up among the poor; they had heard powerful words of forgiveness, and teachings that left the religious experts speechless.

“Who do you say that I am?”

Peter answered him, “You are the Messiah.” You are the Christ, you are God’s Anointed One, you are the One sent to save God’s people Israel. That’s a powerful response, but it is not as simple as it may seem.

The journey will go to Jerusalem, the City of David. They look down the path, and images of greatness rise in their minds: God’s Messiah waging war against the forces of evil and cleansing the land from all impurity; God’s Messiah driving out the foreign oppressors and establishing peace in Zion; God’s Messiah entering the city in glory and claiming his crown and throne and kingdom.

They look down the path and see it all very clearly: the words of the prophets – finally fulfilled; the glory of Zion – finally restored; the reign of God – finally established.

But Jesus doesn’t call for his horse and armor. He is not the answer to our questions. Jesus looks down the path and what he sees is very different from our expectations:

The Son of Man must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again.

His suffering, his rejection and death are not unfortunate accidents, the regrettable but preventable results of particular political circumstances. Jesus must undergo great suffering and be killed because in faithfulness to God’s way he rejects our self-seeking, self-serving, power-building, and control-maintaining ways.

To say to Jesus, “You are the Messiah”is to let him break the mold of our expectations and follow him on the way. To say to Jesus, “You are the Christ”is to believe that the way to enter the reign of God is laid out not in our imagination, but in his way to the cross.

Peter took him aside and rebuked him. The glamour of following Jesus to the City of David was suddenly gone for him; he had a different map in mind, a different path and outcome. This wasn’t what he had planned to do with his one wild and precious life, so he quit following and became a voice of temptation until Jesus called him again.

At the center of Mark’s Gospel, the question is, Do we follow whom we need Jesus to be for us or Will we follow Jesus on his way?

Midway between Galilee and Jerusalem, Jesus calls us again to follow him, only this time we know what lies ahead:

If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.

He calls us to let ourselves be marked as Christ’s own and to follow him on the way where life is not measured in what we gain and pile up and secure, but in how we give ourselves away. We cannot possess this one wild and precious life, we can only live it in love with God and with each other. All our attempts to secure life by gaining control over the world and over others will only exhaust our souls in the effort; we will lose what we meant to save. He calls us to follow him on the way where we no longer try and save ourselves with all our formidable means of power, but let him be our Savior. He frees us from the incessant tyranny of doing more and walks us to a life of losing our petty obsessions and mistaken priorities for the love of God and neighbor.

Summer is almost over and our schedules are filling up fast. New routines quickly become old ones, and you already know that soon you will forget that summer day when you remembered,

I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?

This question is a good one when it asks for more ways to live fully in relationship with God, and with loved ones, friends, neighbors, and strangers, and with this beautiful earth. This same question is a sad one when it is asked too late and with regret, because so many summer days, fall, winter, and spring days have come and gone with too little wonder, too little attention, and too little love.

Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?

For us the answer has everything to do with how we respond to Jesus’ question, Who do you say that I am?


Audio of this post

Worship Forum 2

A Tale of Two Houses

Jesus went away, far away from home; he went north to the region of Tyre, a city on the Mediterranean in what’s today southern Lebanon. Going there, he crossed the border in more than one sense, leaving behind the familiar Jewish and rural culture of Galilee for a port city infamous for its pagan ways. He went from where almost everybody was “one of us” to where almost everybody was “one of them” – Greek-speaking people who worshiped strange gods, ate strange foods, wore strange clothes, and observed strange customs.

This wasn’t the first time Jesus went away to be alone, but it was the first time he went so far. “He entered a house and did not want anyone to know he was there,” Mark writes, “yet he could not escape notice.” Word about him had travelled faster than he did, and a Gentile from the area, a mother whose little daughter had an unclean spirit immediately had heard about him. All by herself, she entered the house and bowed down at his feet, begging him to cast the demon out of her child.

It wasn’t proper for a woman to enter a house in order to approach a man who didn’t belong to her family for help. It was unthinkable for a Gentile woman to approach a Jewish man for help for a little girl, let alone a girl possessed by a demon.

She did it anyway. So much was wrong with that little scene, but she ignored every rule to get close to Jesus and beg for her child’s well-being. We may continue to wonder why Jesus crossed the border, but we know in our bones why she did. The walls of custom, language, gender, religion and ethnicity were high between her and the man from Nazareth, insurmountable, some might say, but her love for her child gave her wings. She left the house where her child lay bound by a demon, and she went to the house where Jesus was, a house built with walls of otherness and difference, but also one in which the promise of healing was hiding. She got through to Jesus, bowed down at his feet in a posture of complete surrender, and begged him to free her daughter.

It would be so easy to imagine how he took her by the hand and told her to get up and go home, saying that the demon had left her daughter and that all was well. But he didn’t. Instead 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.”


If you were to write the script for a Jesus movie, that’s a scene you’d likely want to skip, unless you want to portray Jesus as a ranting radio talkshow host. This line about children and dogs just doesn’t sound like the kind of Jesus you’d want to introduce, does it? It’s like he’s sitting in this little house of exclusive concern for his own people, telling the rest of the world that we’ll just have to live with our demons. The kingdom of God has come near, but nearer to some than to others. “Let the children be fed first,” he said to her, telling her in no uncertain terms that at the table where the bread of life was broken and shared her little girl didn’t qualify as a child.

Galilean peasants were not fond of city folk like this woman. Small farms produced most of the food for the urban populations, but the latter controlled the markets. People in the cities bought up and stored so much of the harvest for themselves each season that the country folk did not have enough, especially in times when supplies went down and prices went up. In the ears of poor Galilean farmers, Jesus told this rich lady to get in line and wait her turn. In God’s reign, the last would be first, and those rich, sophisticated, urban Gentiles who always managed to be first, those dogs would be last.

The little scene is explosive because this encounter in the border region brings to light powerful prejudices that have a real basis in the social, economic, and political relationships between two neighboring peoples. When Jesus refers to the woman and her daughter as dogs, he does not evoke an endearing image of happy puppies who sleep in their owners bed and eat better than half the world’s children; he insults her and her child with a familiar pejorative.

In Jesus’ time and culture, dogs were semi-wild animals that roamed the streets scavenging for food; they were not allowed inside the house. Jesus told the woman that the door was closed for her and her child. The time would come when those outside of the covenant would be welcome inside, but not yet, not now, not 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 this unnamed mother was already in the house. If you want to call her a dog, call her a bulldog, for she won’t let go.

“In my house, Sir,” she says, “even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs.”

She takes the insult and reflects it back, and now the picture looks very different. In my house, she tells him, dogs don’t wait until the children are finished; dogs and children both eat at the same time. The dogs position themselves strategically around and under the table, their eyes focussed with undivided attention, their tails wagging in joyful expectation of a bit of bread dropped either by accident or by a child’s secret design.

In my house, she tells him, the children eat their fill and the dogs still get to feast on the crumbs. You can send me away, but not until you have tossed me a crumb-sized blessing. I’m not asking for a seat at the table; even a morsel of mercy will suffice to free my daughter from the chains of the demon that is holding her captive. There is no reason why the reign of God should be enclosed by the walls of this house; break the bread, feed the children, and let the dogs have a feast.

Jesus said to her, “For saying that, you may go—the demon has left your daughter.”

Seven short verses that can make your head spin. Did this woman, with her dogged persistence and her quick wit, driven by her love for her child, did she remind Jesus of the wideness of God’s mercy? Did she convince him that the time to open up the covenant was not sometime but now?

She left the house where he had hoped to remain invisible, and she left it with a blessing she had wrestled from him – or rather with a promise: “You may go, the demon has left your daughter.”

She still had to go from the house of promise to the house where her child was now free. She wouldn’t know with certainty that God’s reign was indeed open to all until she had returned. All she could do was to take Jesus at his word and leave for the long journey home. She had begged with desperate intensity, she had argued with wit and unbending resolve, but now she had to walk with trust. And she did; she stepped across the threshold and went home – with a morsel of a promise that meant more than the world to her.

In this scene of only seven verses, an unnamed Gentile mother dwells at the margins; she bumps up against walls of custom, language, gender, religion and ethnicity, walls that have the power to hide Jesus and the promise of God’s reign, walls that can exclude people from the abundance of God’s mercy.

In this scene she dwells at the margins, but in the gospel of Jesus Christ, this unnamed Gentile mother dwells at the center together with others who show us the meaning and power of faith. The word faith is never mentioned, but her actions embody it beautifully: her dogged determination fuelled by her love, her courage and perseverance in wrestling with the very Son of God, and her trust in the promise that the reign of God was indeed open for all.

She went home, found the child lying on the bed, and the demon gone. And more than one demon was gone. The equally threatening demon of prejudice, and of relationships destroyed by injustice, had been driven out as well. The miracle of Jesus’ power and a woman’s faith consisted not only in healing a child far away; the miracle also became manifest in the bridging of the divisive distance between nations and cultures, in the overcoming of the realities that separate us by the reality that brings us together. We sing a song about that miracle:

As Christ breaks bread and bids us share,
Each proud division ends.
The love that made us, makes us one,
And strangers now are friends.

The miracle continues wherever the power of God in Jesus Christ and the tenacity of our faith come together. The house of prejudice becomes the house of promise, and the house of bondage becomes the house of laughter. May God bless us with faith that won’t let go.

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