Who's in Charge: God or Your Tongue?

[This was shared during the 10:15 worship service at Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio, this morning.]

James 3:1-12
The book of James, from which our second lesson for today comes, is a practical handbook for Christian living.

We might wonder why we need such a thing. After all, we’re Lutherans: We know that all who repent and believe in Jesus Christ are saved from sin and death and have life with God that begins now and will be lived in perfection in eternity. “‘Nuff said, preacher, the Browns/Bengals game is on at 1.” Who needs a handbook?

Thank God, salvation, life with God, and the comfort and power of the Holy Spirit’s presence are all free gifts given to all with surrendering trust in Jesus Christ!

But, according to the Bible, even after we’ve been baptized, affirmed our belief in Christ, and become part of God’s kingdom, we still live in this world until either Christ returns or we die and rise into eternity with God.

And as long as we draw breath here, the old Adam (or the old Eve) in us must, as Martin Luther writes in The Small Catechism, “be drowned by daily sorrow for sin and repentance and be put to death.”

It’s only then, Luther says, “that the new person [can] come forth every day and rise to live before God in righteousness and purity forever.”

As was true of Jesus in the wilderness, even after we're baptized, the devil works on us everyday to push us away from God. So does the sin within us and around us.

So, unless we stay open to God’s grace and guidance and remain submitted to the God we know in Jesus Christ as the final authority over our lives, the temptations to take God’s grace for granted and to take up any sin that pleases us can overrun us and steer us, bit by bit, away from an eternity with God to an eternity in hell.

James’ guidebook for Christians isn’t a “how to get salvation” book. It’s more like a mirror that we can hold up to our lives and, first, see our need of Christ’s forgiveness and, second, see our need of the Holy Spirit’s help in living a life in response to God's gracious love.

In the Bible lesson from James we looked at last week, we were encouraged to turn from the sin of partiality to some people over others. In today's lesson, the issue is controlling our tongues, the words that we speak.

This may not seem like a big deal to us. But it is to God.

Turn to our lesson, James 3:1-12, please.

In verses 2 and 3, James anticipates our dismissal of our words as being “no big deal,” as something that could possibly stand in the way between God and us. He says that little things--like small bits in the mouths of horses or tiny rudders on the backs of giant ships--can exercise great control over and have a huge impact on big things.

Then, look at what we’re told next, starting in verse 5: “...the tongue is a little member and boasts great things. See how great a forest it kindles! And the tongue is a fire, a world of iniquity [that means immoral or grossly unfair living]. The tongue...defiles the whole body, and sets on fire the course of nature; and it is set on fire by hell...”

James goes on to say that we know how to tame wild animals, but no human being, no human effort can tame the tongue or the damage it can do.

In verses 9 and 10, he hands out his most severe indictment of the damage done by our mouths, in effect, repeating it twice in different ways just to make sure we get the message:

“With [the tongue] we bless our God and Father, and with it we curse men, who have been made in the [likeness] of God. Out of the same mouth proceed blessing and cursing. My brethren, these things ought not to be so.”

Our words are powerful. I think the reason for this is simple. We are the only ones of God’s creatures “made in the image” of the God Who spoke and brought the whole universe into being.

It’s no coincidence then, that one of the first ways in which the Old Testament book of Genesis says that Adam, the first human being, expressed human dominion over creation was to give names--to speak descriptive words--over every other creature. This power--the power to give names or labels to people or things--reflects the image of God within every human being.

But after the fall into sin, we sinners naturally began misusing this gift of speech. In fact, James says, because sin has filled us, our tongues have taken control of us to the point that sometimes we speak without thinking or speak on the basis of malicious thinking, bringing harm to others and to ourselves.

And this is very serious business! Turn to Matthew 24:36-37. Jesus says:

“I say to you that for every idle word [every thoughtless meaningless word] [people] may speak, they will give account of it in the day of judgment. For by your words you will be justified and by your words you will be condemned.” 

If those words of Jesus, God in the flesh, don’t make you squirm a little, you probably weren’t listening!

The failure to control our mouths is a sin issue.

Careless words, whether spoken in judgment of others, to criticize others without loving them, or to pass along the latest gossip, are not harmless things.

Unrepented, careless words put our eternal relationship with God at risk.

It turns out that God has not rescinded the Eighth Commandment: “You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.”

We “bear false witness” not just when we tell outright lies about others. Martin Luther writes of this commandment: “We are to fear and love God so that we do not betray, slander, lie, or gossip about our neighbors, but speak well of them, and put the most charitable construction on all that they do.”

But, there is good news.

Our intemperate tongues (and all our other sins) don’t need to control us or our eternal destinies.

We can live differently.

We can move closer to God and not continually drive a wedge between God and us through our careless words.

In our gospel lesson for today, Jesus tells those who would follow Him into eternity: “Whoever desires to come after Me, let him [or her] deny [themselves] and take up [their] cross and follow Me.”

The indispensable step in getting free of the sins of our mouths is to bring those sins to Jesus, to confess them to God, to admit that we have used our words to curse others, gossip about others and tear them down.

Drawing on the covenant God has made with us in our baptism, we need to drown our old sinful selves and allow, through the grace God bears for all who believe in the crucified and risen Jesus, our new selves to “rise to live before God in righteousness and purity forever.”

Back in Old Testament times, God’s people sang to God, “There is forgiveness with you, so that you may be revered” (Psalm 130:4). That’s no less true today for us when we take up our crosses, confess our sins, follow Jesus, and receive God’s grace!

If, as you’ve been listening to this sermon, God has brought to mind ways in which you have misused the gift of speech, you can take this step right now. “God,” you can pray, “for the sake of Jesus, forgive me for using my words to bring pain to others or dishonor to You.”

Whenever we confess our sins to God in the Name of Jesus, there is forgiveness in God! As long as we are living on this earth, we can take advantage of the Bible’s promise that all who call on the Name of Jesus Christ will be saved!

But what then? What do we do next? How do we let God’s Holy Spirit guide us so that we don’t engage in careless or harmful talk?

Here are few suggestions.

First: We surrender our brains and our mouths to God, along with the rest of our lives. A good prayer to offer each day might be the one in Psalm 119:14: “Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable to you, O Lord, my rock and my redeemer.”

Second: Before we open our mouths to share something critical of another human being, we should ask ourselves, “Does this help anything?” In Ephesians 4:29, we read these words: “Let no evil talk come out of your mouths, but only what is useful for building up, as there is need, so that your words may give grace to those who hear.”

Third: We ask ourselves another question: Would we say these words to Jesus Christ? In a very real way, whether our words build others up or tear them down, Christ hears every one of them. As Jesus once said, “There is nothing concealed that will not be disclosed, or hidden that will not be made known” (Luke 12:2). Jesus also say that when we encounter others, we really meet Him (Matthew 25:31-46). Do we think that Jesus wants to hear what we have to say?

Fourth: If our words have harmed another person, it can be appropriate to apologize to them. They may not forgive you. But at least, you will have the satisfaction of making an effort.

Finally: Whether in conversation with others or in conversation with God, try silence. (This is really hard for me!) Proverbs 17:28 says that, “Even fools who keep silence are considered wise.”

But isn’t just to impress others that we should keep silence. James 1:19 says that we Christians should be “swift to hear, slow to speak.” God, after all, gave us two ears and one mouth and our communication probably ought to be in that proportion. When we remain silent and truly listen to others, we come to understand them more and judge them less.

Silence also can be a great way to build up our relationship with God. Through the prophet Isaiah, God said, “Listen to me in silence, O coastlands” (Isaiah 41:1). Sometimes, in our praying, we can get so busy speaking, often even telling God how to do His job, that we forget to let God be God. Silence before God can be a conduit by which God brings us comfort, hope, and guidance. In Psalm 46:10, we're told: “Be still and know that I am God.” Practicing silence is a good way to love God and love our neighbors as we love ourselves.

Before closing, let me add that controlling my mouth is a huge issue in my life. I like to talk.

So, each day, I ask God to crucify the old Adam in me, so inclined to fill the air with useless, self-referential words and instead, help me to honor Christ with my words and my life.

As some of you know, one of my most frequent prayer requests to God is: “Give me the right words and the right silences.” I want to honor the God Who gave His only Son so that all who believe in Him may have life forever. I don’t want my mouth to get in the way of God’s grace.

Even if you’re only a fraction as mouthy as I can be, you may be able to say the same thing. May we all seek God’s help in guiding and guarding the things we say and so, honoring Him with our whole lives. Amen

Seeing and Serving the "Invisible" People

[This was shared during the 10:15 worship with the people of Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio, this morning.]

James 2:1-17
Through the centuries, the New Testament book of James, from which our second Bible lesson for today is drawn, hasn’t enjoyed much appreciation by we Lutheran Christians. Martin Luther himself called it an “epistle of straw,” worthy of being burned.

Yet Luther also said that this New Testament letter had important wisdom for those who already believe in the gospel.

And that’s why I believe the book of James is, as much as any other book of the Bible, the Word of God: It’s a word from God about how to live as though Jesus Christ really is the Savior and God we confess Him to be.

The Church, as I’ve said before, is Christ’s hospital for recovering hypocrites. It’s in the fellowship of the Church that we are confronted by the reality of our sin and hypocrisy, face the reality that death is sin’s natural consequence, and that only those who believe in the crucified and risen Jesus are set free  from sin and death.

But it’s also in the fellowship of the Church, gathered around God’s Word in Jesus’ Name, that God affects those mid-course corrections that we imperfect hypocrites need as we travel through life toward the moment we meet Christ face to face.

In today’s lesson, James addresses one of the most common ways we can go off course in our faith: Showing partiality to some people over others.

Please turn to the lesson, James 2:1-17. James begins:

My brethren [sisters, too], do not hold the faith of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord of glory, with partiality. For if there should come into your assembly a man with gold rings, in fine apparel, and there should also come in a poor man in filthy clothes, and you pay attention to the one wearing the fine clothes and say to him, ‘You sit here in a good place,’ and say to the poor man, ‘You stand there,’ or, ‘Sit here at my footstool,’ have you not shown partiality among yourselves, and become judges with evil thoughts?’

The churches to which James wrote were themselves largely composed of poor people. Yet, James says, they fell all over themselves in welcoming rich people to their worship gatherings.

This may have been something they did out of habit; the poor of ancient cultures were taught to be completely subservient to the rich and were also taught that wealth was a sign of God’s favor.

On the other hand, they may have treated poor visitors to their worship the way they did either because it made them feel good to be superior to somebody else for once or because they had been taught that poverty was God’s curse for sin.

Whatever the reasons for their partiality, James was saying it was always wrong! It still is.

And you know what? Partiality of any kind is always wrong.

In a sermon on this passage from James, Pastor Maxie Dunham tells the true story of a woman, Dr. Ridenour, who, in her mid-forties, suffered from a stroke that rendered her partially paralyzed for some time.

“The paralysis,” Dunnam writes, “was an embarrassment, creating a kind of vulnerability and nakedness, a sadness, and an infinite kind of loneliness.” People didn’t know how to relate to her and so, hung up on their own discomfort, they ignored Jesus’ command to love others as we love ourselves and ignored Dr. Ridenour. She became invisible.

Who do we avoid--who do we render invisible--by ignoring them?

“Did you meet the visitors in worship last Sunday?” I’ve routinely asked the members of the three congregations I’ve served as pastor over the years. Inevitably, it seems, someone will say, “No. I didn’t meet them because I never met them before.”

Isn’t that answer a way of saying, “I didn’t meet them because I don’t want to meet them”?

It’s really a handy way to foil God’s purpose for our lives. And what are God's purposes for us?

Take a look, please, at 2 Corinthians 5:20. It says:

“Now then, we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God were pleading through us: we implore you Christ’s behalf, be reconciled to God. For [God] made [Christ] Who knew no sin to be sin for us [Christ, though sinless, bore our sin on the cross], that we might become the righteousness of God in [Christ].” 

Through our faith in Christ, God has made us right with God [that’s a big part of what righteousness means for us, being right with God] and we in turn are to be ambassadors for Christ and His kingdom to other people.

But, if we make other people invisible, we won’t have to be ambassadors. We won't see anybody who needs the gospel.

 “I didn’t see that visitor to worship,” we say.

“I didn’t know there were hungry people in Hocking County."

"I didn’t know that my neighbor was unemployed or having health issues."

"I didn’t know about their grief.”

This is no different from those Jesus condemns in His parable of the last judgment. Take a look at Matthew 25:44-45. “Lord,” the condemned ask plaintively, “when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not minister to you?” You can’t see people you’ve willfully made invisible, of no account, unworthy of your consideration, concern, or even a simple greeting.

In Matthew 5:46, Jesus says that, at the final judgment, he will say to those who have condemned themselves by ignoring Him and others, “Assuredly, I say to you, inasmuch as you did it not to one of the least of these, you did not do it to Me.”

Now, don’t get confused!

You will not be saved from sin and death and purposeless living by doing good works.

In Jesus Christ, God has already done all the work needed to save us so that we can live this life with purpose and look forward to living with God for eternity.

Jesus didn’t lead a sinless life, die on a cross, and rise from the dead just to turn you into a neurotic who thinks you have to work hard at doing enough good things to earn God’s love or grace!

God already loves you. That’s why He sent God the Son to die and rise for you.

Turn please to Ephesians 2:8-9. It says:

“For by grace [that is, God’s charity] you have been saved through faith, and that is not of yourselves [you didn’t earn your salvation]; it is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast.” 

We are saved by God’s grace through faith in Jesus Christ. Period.

For God’s “amazing grace,” we should give glory to God every single day!

But faith in Jesus Christ is more than the acceptance of an intellectual proposition. James puts it this way back in our lesson, at James 2:17: “Faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead.”

Faith is a trust in Jesus that will so free us from concern about ourselves that, if we let it, God will open our eyes to see others.

We’ll see the visitor to worship, the hungry, the jobless, the grieving.

The still small voice of God will tell our spirits, “Now that you have eternity with Me, what have you got to lose from reaching out to others? Not even death itself can separate you from Me. So, go for it!”

A man I know, a Christian, hesitated to call on a friend whose wife had just left him. He didn’t want to butt in and he was sure others were reaching out to his friend.

Besides, the very idea of calling his friend made him feel uncomfortable.

What would he say?

How could he handle those awkward silences?

But when he told a wise friend about his hesitation, the friend told him, as gently as he could, “Get over yourself. Your discomfort is not the issue at hand. The issue is that, right now, is that your friend feels alone, isolated from others and from God. You need to call your friend.”

He did and you know what? He learned that he was the first person to have called that hurting man in weeks. He was so glad he’d taken his friend’s advice!

First Corinthians 12:27 says that we Christians, members of Christ’s eternal Church, are part of the “body of Christ.” That means that we are Christ’s hands and feet in the world.

What does that mean exactly?

Well, for one thing, it means that no one should be invisible to us. Jesus, God the Son, could have stayed safely enthroned in heaven, listening to the praises of the angels, acting as though you and I didn’t exist, ignoring the fact that without His intervention, we would live this life without His help, die in our sins, and spend eternity in hell.

But the God of love was unwilling to give up on us so easily. We weren’t invisible to God!

That’s why we’re told that Jesus “became flesh and dwelt among us.”

And when Jesus walked on this earth, He reached out to and loved all sorts of people: the rich, the poor, the religious, the unrepentant sinners, the blind, the lame, the grieving, the in-crowd, and the forgotten.

Jesus could do that because He operated in the certainty that, as He trusted in God the Father, nothing could separate Jesus from Him: not the hatred of the crowds, not the condemnation of religious or government authorities, not the torture or execution or death on the cross He would undergo.

As believers in Jesus, we can live in the same assurance.

So, this week, I want to ask you to go to God in prayer and make a simple request.

“God,” we can pray, “this week let me put my faith into action. Reveal to me one person who would otherwise be invisible to me. It might be someone I have tried to forget or it may be a stranger I’ve never met. Help me to see them as you see them, as children in need of Your grace and help me to reach out to them in Your love in some way.”

I’m going to be offering the same prayer myself.

May God help us to put away partiality.

May God help us to love as He has loved us.

Faith without works is dead. May our faith in Christ be alive every day!

A Look at This Coming Sunday's Bible Lessons

[Each week, my aim, not always hit, is to present some comments on the Bible lessons assigned for the subsequent Sundays. My hope is to help members of the congregation I serve as pastor, Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio, to prepare for Sunday worship. Because we basically follow the Revised Common Lectionary used by many other churches, I hope that others will find the comments helpful, too.]

Fourteenth Sunday after Pentecost
September 6, 2009

The Bible Lessons:
Isaiah 35:4-7
Psalm 146
James 2:1-10, 14-17
Mark 7:24-37

The Prayer of the Day
Gracious God, throughout the ages you transform sickness into health and death into life. Open us to the power of your presence, and make us a people ready to proclaim your promises to the whole world, through Jesus Christ, our healer and Lord.

General Comments
1. Isaiah 35:4-7: If modern scholars are correct, this section of Isaiah was originally addressed to God's people during their exile in Babylon.

Here, God promises that His people will return to the land He gave to them and those who have harmed them will be punished.

The promise that the blind will receive sight, the deaf will hear, the lame will leap, and the dumb will sing is alluded to in the Gospel lesson from Mark.

The mention of waters in the wilderness reminds me of the water from a rock provided to the ancient Israelites as they moved from slavery in Egypt to the promised land. (It also echoes of the second creation account, found in Genesis 2 and 3.)

2. Psalm 146: The psalmist talks to himself, or his "soul." The word for soul in Biblical Hebrew is nephesh, literally throat. As used here, nephesh has in mind the entire human being.

The use of nephesh bears a connection to the passage from Isaiah. Without the living water God provides (see John 4), we're left parched and dead. God refreshes those who turn to Him and are given life.

The psalmist resolves to never stop praising God.

One reason for elevating God above anything else is that mortals--not even the most powerful of people or armies--can provide us with the help--or the life--our thirsty souls crave and need. Only God can do that.

3. James 2:1-10, 14-17: James, ever committed to living out the faith we confess, chides the first-century Christians for giving preferential treatment to the wealthy with which it comes in contact. Meanwhile, James says, they ignore the poor among them. And they do this, he points out, when the poor--living life closer to reality--have always been likelier to embrace faith in God than have the wealthy. The wealthy, he says, delusionally think themselves self-sufficient and, on top of that, oppress the poor.

James commends the Golden Rule--what he calls "the royal law": "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you."

Preferential treatment, James says, is a sin, a violation of God's law, and when we violate one of God's laws, we are liable for violating them all.

What good, James asks us, is unlived faith? Can inauthentic faith save us? If, by our behavior or preferential treatment, we honor Jesus with our lips and deny Him with our lives, what sort of faith do we really have?

James' condemnation of giving preference to some people over others sets the table interestingly for our Gospel lesson.

Gospel Lesson: Mark 7:24-37
First of all, it's important to put the two incidents recounted in our Gospel lesson into context.

Context #1: Jesus seeking respite. As early as Mark 6:31, after the apostles have come back from the mission of preaching repentance and casting out demons, Jesus is reported as wanting to go away to a quiet place with the twelve. But in the time between then and our lesson, Jesus has been compelled by compassion to feed the 5000, heal the sick in Gennesaret, and set the Pharisees and others right on what is clean and unclean.

Now, it appears that Jesus is so desperate for some down time that He takes the apostles with Him into Gentile territory. Even there, we're told, His fame as a wonder-worker precedes Him and when, in response to a Gentile woman's faith, He casts out a demon, He feels compelled to travel some distance away, to The Decapolis (the Ten Cities), a Greek-speaking, Gentile enclave.

Jesus needed rest. We need rest. But even our time of rest is not "me time," it's "God time." Jesus sought rest in order to be alone with the Father (Mark 6:46). God can give us rest. Only God can slake our thirsty souls, fill our empty hearts. This is why Jesus was always "interruptible": open to doing God's will, even when He was "off the clock." I am, I confess, a hard-headed student when it comes to living life Jesus' way!

Context #2: Clean/Unclean. As mentioned above, just before our lesson, Jesus has been challenged by the Pharisees for allowing His disciples to eat dinner without going through the process of ritual cleansing that their traditions held to be religiously essential. Jesus said that it's what comes out of us--things like sexual intimacy outside of marriage, theft, murder, and so on--that defile us, not the things that enter us from the outside.

Now comes our Gospel lesson in which Jesus goes to a Gentile country which would, by definition, have been seen as "unclean" by the Pharisees. He enters a presumably Gentile house, also "unclean." A woman approaches Jesus, an "unclean" thing for her to do. Jesus speaks with her, an "unclean" thing for Him to do in a society which forbade males to publicly speak to anyone other than wives, mothers, or sisters. The woman petitions Jesus on behalf of her daughter, demon-possessed, unclean.

Obviously, Jesus is bent on turning traditional ideas about what is clean and unclean on their head. While Jesus' earthly mission is to the lost sheep of the house of Israel, the two incidents in our Gospel lesson foreshadow what will become the mission of the Church: Calling the entire world to repent for sin and believe in Jesus Christ.

²⁴From there he 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,
(1) Tyre sat on the Mediterranean coast in what was then part of Syria, like Judea, under the dominion of the Roman Empire. It is Gentile.

(2) There's no explanation of whose house Jesus entered, if its occupants were known to Jesus, or if He and the disciples paid to stay there.

(3) Jesus was so celebrated as a wonder-worker, He could go nowhere undetected. The question always was, of course, were these people following Jesus just to get what they wanted or because they saw in His wonders, the signs of His Lordship. I have watched the faith of many people crumble when they realized that Jesus wouldn't say yes to their every prayer. It was largely because Jesus wouldn't be the sort of Messiah they expected that eventually, the crowds who had once flocked to Jesus cried for His execution.

25but a woman whose little daughter had an unclean spirit immediately heard about him, and she came and bowed down at his feet.
(1) As indicated above, this was considered damnably forward behavior. In Matthew's account of this incident, the disciples ask that Jesus send the woman away.

26Now the woman was a Gentile, of Syrophoenician origin. She begged him to cast the demon out of her daughter.
(1) Mark underscores the woman's uncleanness by pointing out that she was a Gentile, a non-Jew, one who could have no claim on the mercy of God. All of us who are non-Jewish Christians must realize that we have no right to the grace and mercy of God--in fact, nobody does. But like this woman, we can, if we pay attention, see the gracious loving intentions of God for all who dare to turn to Him.

(2) Matthew drives the reality of this woman's "uncleanness," her distance from God, by referring to her by the more ancient name of her people, Canaanite. The Canaanites had been enemies of God's people, workers of injustice unwilling to share the land with the ancient Israelites.

(3) The daughter of the woman is demon-possessed. What to make of this in our post-modern world?

When I was a younger Christian, passages like this embarrassed me. Demon-possession? Mightn't this just be the way pre-modern peoples described things like mental illness? Today though, after several personal experiences and reading several books, including psychiatrist M. Scott Peck's People of the Lie, I've become convinced that demon-possession is a real phenomenon, one that even exists today. (I may write or preach more about this later.) I no longer blush when I read passages like our Gospel lesson.

27He 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.”
(1) This passage has occasioned much debate among Bible scholars.

Some say that Jesus satirizes His people's usual racist dismissal of non-Jews as "dogs," by using the term which would come to mean "house pet." The problem with this contention is that in Jesus' day, people didn't keep house pets.

Others claim that Jesus undergoes a kind of "conversion" experience as it relates to His people's chauvinism in the face of this woman's faith. The problems with this idea are that (a) Jesus had, according to the other Gospel-writers, already had a number of positive encounters with foreign people; (b) this interpretation would mean that Jesus was guilty of the sin of preferential treatment, thereby rendering His cross and resurrection meaningless. Only a sinless Savior can save us. Besides, it's obvious that Jesus didn't accept traditional notions regarding the uncleanness of non-Jews, else He wouldn't even be where we find Him in Mark's narrative!

No, I believe that Jesus is underscoring the teaching about the absurdity of thinking that uncleanness is an outside, rather than an inside phenomenon (Mark 7:20-23). The woman wasn't unclean because she was Syrophoenician.

Jesus wanted this to be clear before He proceeded to violate a traditional taboo by responding to the pleading mother's request.

28But she answered him, “Sir, even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs.”
(1) The woman doesn't argue about her status. She realizes that she is, in the eyes of the Judeans, a dog, an outsider to God's promises, not a member of God's people. But she apparently knows enough about this God to also know that He delights in showing mercy to those who come to Him. The Old Testament tells the stories of many foreigners who benefited from the mercy of God: the people of Nineveh in Jonah's time; Ruth, who would become a descendant of King David; and Naaman, the Syrian commander, to name a few.

Pious Jews knew that there was nothing special about the patriarchs Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. God simply chose the Israelites because God chose them, as an act of grace. And He did it so that Israel would cast God's light on the nations, becoming, we know, the birthing place of the Savior of the world, Jesus.

(2) The woman exhibits persistent, submissive faith, an example to all of us.

29Then he said to her, “For saying that, you may go—the demon has left your daughter.”
(1) Clearly, Jesus regards her statement as a confession of faith. "I'm not entitled," she says, "But I believe." This is the sort of faith I pray that God will build in me!

30So she went home, found the child lying on the bed, and the demon gone.

31Then he returned from the region of Tyre, and went by way of Sidon towards the Sea of Galilee, in the region of the Decapolis. 32They brought to him a deaf man who had an impediment in his speech; and they begged him to lay his hand on him. 33He took him aside in private, away from the crowd, and put his fingers into his ears, and he spat and touched his tongue.
(1) We're presented with an odd picture of Jesus. Clearly, from the miracle that precedes this one, Jesus didn't have to touch the affected portions of the deaf-mute's body. But He did. Here, Jesus is doing the very work God had promised to do for the exiles some seven-hundred years before.

34Then looking up to heaven, he sighed and said to him, “Ephphatha,” that is, “Be opened.”
(1) Ed Markquart says that the words, "he sighed," give Mark's narrative an immediacy that reads like a first-hand account. Markquart attributes this to Peter, whose account of Jesus' ministry, death, and resurrection, have traditionally been thought to be Mark's primary source.

35And immediately his ears were opened, his tongue was released, and he spoke plainly.
(1) An allusion to Isaiah 35:4-7, our first lesson.

36Then Jesus ordered them to tell no one; but the more he ordered them, the more zealously they proclaimed it.
(1) Throughout Mark, we see Jesus trying to keep the lid on "the Messianic secret," the secret that He is more than a wonder-wokrer, but also the Messiah and Savior. Until people understand that Jesus has come to deal with sin by dying on a cross and to invite people to die to their own sins in order to have a claim in His resurrection, they're too likely to see Him as a genie who does their bidding.

But it's no use. Jesus' reputation--and the pressure on Him to be puppet king for people's selfish desires--grows with every miracle. And, of course, the disappointment people feel that Jesus isn't a messiah they can control contributes to the opposition to Him and to His crucifixion. In killing Him, the known world--Jews and Gentiles--who murdered Jesus, were, without realizing it, advancing the very plan of God.

37They were astounded beyond measure, saying, “He has done everything well; he even makes the deaf to hear and the mute to speak.”