A Course on Miracles from Jesus

[This was shared during worship with the people and guests of Living Water Lutheran Church, Springboro, Ohio, earlier today. All of the Biblical citations in today's message are from the English Standard Version (ESV) translation.]

Mark 7:24-37
Today, I want to talk with you about miracles. Particularly, the miracles performed by Jesus and, in our own day, the miracles that come when people call out to God in Jesus’ name. 

Probably all of us have experienced the agony of prayers offered for loved ones or for ourselves when God seemed to ignore what we prayed for, when the miracles we've sought haven't come. Nothing is more painful or haunting for the believer in Christ than this. And it's something I want to ask the Lord about when I get to see Him face to face in eternity.

But I’m confident that if we were to poll this group of worshipers this morning, a majority of us would affirm not only that Jesus works miracles, but also that we know of at least one miracle from our own lives or from the lives of others, that can only be attributed to Christ. When I had a heart attack five years ago, I had what's called the widow maker, a 100% blockage of the left anterior descending artery, I was told by my cardiologist that, given the lack of risk factors on my part, he had no way of explaining why I'd had the heart attack. He also said that he was also nearly as baffled by my survival. (My body had developed lots of ancillary arteries that were picking up the slack.) But his nurse cut to the chase on this last point. I survived, she said, because God had things for me to do. I believe in miracles.

Let’s acknowledge something, though: Whenever we Christians talk about miracles, we’re in dangerous territory. 

One reason this is true is that there are televangelists who have built vast empires on their claims that God wants our entire earthly lives to be miraculous walks in the park and that if we haven’t experienced a miracle in the past twenty-four hours, there must be some deficiency in our faith. It’s a deficiency likely to be cured, they imply, if we’ll send their ministries a $100 love-offering. But this notion of miracles being the normal mode of life on this earth flies in the face of Biblical truth. 

The most common Greek New Testament word which we translate into English as miracle is semeia. As we’ve pointed out before, it’s a word that literally means sign. Whenever Jesus perform a miracle even today, He takes the chance that some people will be so astonished by the miracle that they fail to see the sign that the miracle gives. Every one of Jesus’ miracles point to His lordship over the universe. They're signs of His capacity to conquer and destroy the power of sin and death over our lives, which He accomplished on the first Easter, when He rose from the dead. 

All of Jesus’ miracles call us to faith in Him, not in the signs themselves. 

To believe in the miracle and not the miracle worker is to pursue a “what’s-in-it-for-me-now?” religion. It’s utilitarian. 

To believe in the miracle-worker is to know that God is for me, whether things are going badly for me or whether, as a sign of His grace and power, Jesus visits me with a miracle. 

This is exactly why Jesus scorned the crowd that came tearing after Him following His feeding of the 5000. He told them in John 6:26: “Truly, truly, I say to you, you are seeking me, not because you saw signs, but because you ate your fill of the loaves.” 

Jesus performs two miracles in today’s gospel lesson. In addition to their being signs of His dominion over life and death, they also are signs of another truth about life in His Kingdom. 

Let’s take a look at this lesson, Mark 7:24-37. 

First though, let’s set the scene because understanding the context in which these incidents take place is a key to understanding what Jesus wants to tell us today. Our gospel lesson picks up the narratives from Mark’s gospel that we looked at during the past two weeks. 

Two weeks ago, Jesus declared that His disciples were not defiled by failing to observe ritual cleansing before sitting down to dinner. 

Last week, He told us that nothing from outside of us can render us unclean in the eyes of God, only the sins that come from inside of us can make us unclean. 

(In the bargain, He declared that all foods are clean. I suppose that means Big Macs are clean, though they’re hard on the arteries, and I hope it means that Chipotle’s burrito bowls are clean.) 

Be that as it may, we come to our gospel lesson. Verse 24: “And from there [Jesus] 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.” 

After declaring that all foods were clean, Jesus goes to Gentile territory, a place that His critics would have regarded as unclean. He goes there apparently to rest, not to minister. 

While Jesus did minister to the stray Gentile who approached Him in Judea, of course, and though, after His resurrection, Jesus did send His disciples to make full-fledged equal partner disciples among the Gentiles, Jesus was clear about His own mission. As He puts it in Matthew 5:24: “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” 

But by simply going to this Gentile territory, Jesus was making clear that no place, no person, no nation, is so unclean or so distant from God that it's beyond the scope of God’s dominion or grace.  

Verse 25: “But immediately [There’s that favorite word of Mark’s again, immediately. Here it conveys that the Son of Man, Who had no place to lay His head, didn’t have a moment to rest.] [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.” 

This scene violates so many cultural norms of Jesus’ day that if the Pharisees had seen it, they might have gone crazy! 

In a Gentile house, a Gentile woman dares to speak to a Jewish man in front of other Jewish men. And this unclean woman asks that this Jewish man would employ the power of Judea’s God to cast a demon from her Gentile, unclean daughter. 

The cultural norms of Jesus’ day would have said that He should turn His back on this foreigner, that He should spurn her, that He should ignore her desperate need. 

But Jesus was no slave to cultural norms. Instead, His heart was, in Martin Luther’s phrase, “held captive to the Word of God.” 

So, rather than rejecting this woman, Jesus decides to teach His disciples, including you and me, an important lesson by satirizing cultural norms and, in a friendly exchange, bantering with this woman before saying yes to her prayer.

Verse 27: “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.’” 

I love this dialog! 

Jesus first signals that He intends to honor the woman’s request when He says, “Let the children be fed first.” The implication is that she will be fed second. In Jesus’ Kingdom, there’s plenty of love to go around, whether we’re Americans or Syrians, Iraqis or whatever. 

But also in saying what He does in verse 27, Jesus parrots the bigoted conventions of His fellow Judeans: “I can’t give you what belongs to God’s children, lady. Don’t you know that the nickname given to Gentiles by my countrymen is dogs?” 

In Judea, people didn’t keep dogs as pets; they were just unwanted scavengers. And to call Gentiles dogs was to say they were nobodies, non-humans, unworthy of the attention or help of God. (This is what many Muslims today mean when they call non-Muslims, infidels.) 

The woman immediately picks up on Jesus’ Saturday Night Live-worthy sendup of His fellow Judeans. And, drawing on her culture’s habit of keeping dogs as pets, she says: “Yet even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs.” 

Jesus saw her faith and He delivered her daughter from evil. 

Verse 31: “Then he returned from the region of Tyre and went through Sidon to the Sea of Galilee, in the region of the Decapolis. And they brought to him a man who was deaf and had a speech impediment, and they begged him to lay his hand on him. And taking him aside from the crowd privately, he put his fingers into his ears, and after spitting touched his tongue. And looking up to heaven, he sighed and said to him, ‘Ephphatha,’ that is, ‘Be opened.’ And his ears were opened, his tongue was released, and he spoke plainly.” 

Here we have a second Gentile, this one a man and this one suffering from a physical rather than a spiritual ailment. As was true of the little girl, someone else came to present the man’s need to Jesus. In effect, they prayed to Jesus, just as we do when we pray for those who have spiritual or physical needs. Again, Jesus doesn’t turn His back on these foreign petitioners. 

He honors their faith in Him. He performs a miracle.

Verse 36: “And Jesus charged them to tell no one. But the more he charged them, the more zealously they proclaimed it. And they were astonished beyond measure, saying, ‘He has done all things well. He even makes the deaf hear and the mute speak.’” 

Jesus told the crowds not to tell others about the miracle because He knew the danger of worshiping the miracle instead of the miracle worker. Jesus didn’t want people to see Him as a genie who could be bottled up until we get into a jam, a pushover who will bend to our wills and otherwise leave us alone. 

To see Jesus in that way is to miss the point and it is to be far from Him and the eternal life He gives to all who turn from sin and believe in Him as God and Messiah. 

Jesus wanted--Jesus still wants--all people to see Him for Who He is: Lord of heaven and earth; God in flesh appearing; the hope of sinners; the only way to life with God; the only way to sanity and peace. 

As someone has pointed out, there were many people who suffered from spiritual and physical ailments who Jesus, in His time on earth, never met or had the opportunity to heal. If miracles were the point of Jesus' ministry, He could have healed the whole world long ago. But what good would it do any of us to be healed of disease, but not be cured of the sin that cuts us off from life with God? 

Today, we who confess Christ as Lord and God are the beneficiaries of His greatest miracle and sign: His death, in which He bore our condemnation for sin, and His resurrection, in which He opens up everlasting life free of sin and death, to all who trust in Him. 

And today, He calls us to go where He never went in His time on earth, sharing the benefit of His death and resurrection with others: praying for the hurting; serving our neighbors; and making disciples of Christ through our confident sharing of the good news of Jesus. In fact, Jesus says that we will do greater works in His name as His Church than He was able to do confined to His singular human life in first-century Judea, precisely because we can pray, serve, and make disciples in the power of His name!

Jesus always performed His miracles as signs of His dominion over life and death. 

But in the miracles we’ve looked at today, He also gave signs that no one is beyond the scope of His grace and lordship and that we who confess Him as Lord, should see everyone as worthy of our prayers, our compassion, our help, and our proclamation of Jesus as the way, the truth, and the life. 

May God help we redeemed sinners, bought out of death by the blood of Jesus Christ, to see others, even those who hate us, as our mission field. 

And, as we do, may we see them with the compassionate and humble eyes of our miracle working Savior Jesus. Amen

Deciding How to Live

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

James 3:13-4:8
Robert Frost’s famous poem, The Road Not Taken, begins:

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could. 

Anyone who has ever had to make a decision in life can identify with those lines. We all must make decisions.

Some decisions we make, of course, have more importance than others.

The career path we will follow.

Who we will marry.

How much effort we will choose to put into our relationships.

What to do in caring for elderly parents.

Life is filled with consequential decisions and, as we make them, we feel the need for wisdom.

In today’s second lesson, James, the earthly brother of Jesus and leader of the Christians in Jerusalem, says that there are two kinds of wisdom. And the consequences these two divergent forms of wisdom bring into our lives are dramatically different. Turn please to the lesson, James 3:13-4:8.

James begins with a question:

“Who is wise and understanding among you? Let him [or her] show by good conduct that his [or her] works are done in the meekness of wisdom.” 

Now, truth be told, we don’t like being told to be meek. We flinch when Jesus says, in the Sermon on the Mount, “the meek will inherit the earth.” But, we don’t want to inherit the earth. We want it now! We’re not into delayed gratification.

And if the rows of self-help books you find in most bookstores are any indication, our idea of wisdom has to do with being shrewd and bold about getting what we want when we want it, no matter who or what gets in the way.

James well describes the shrewd, plotting wisdom that the world usually recommends to us:

"But if you have bitter envy and self-seeking in your hearts, do not boast and lie against the truth. This wisdom does not descend from above, but is earthly [from the world, not from God in heaven], sensual [it gratifies the parts of us slated for death], demonic [from hell, the place of everlasting punishment and condemnation for those who turn their backs on Jesus Christ]. For where envy and self-seeking exist, confusion and every evil thing are there." 

The problem with the wisdom generated by human beings is that it’s me-centered. Buy into the “wisdom” of this world and you may achieve things that the world considers great, but you will not be in alignment with God’s will that we love God and love others as we love ourselves. You will, as Jesus says, "gain the world and lose your life."

This sort of death-dealing wisdom even has been given place in the twenty-first century Church.

For example, some conservative denominations and Christian megachurches wrap Jesus in the American flag to justify everything about American traditions and values, to give them the sheen of holiness. In doing so, they subordinate Jesus to the United States, engaging in an idolatry that appeals to those who are certain that, even if God isn't a Republican or a Democrat, a conservative, liberal, libertarian, or socialist, God is an American. This false wisdom may help churches get along with people who would rather not be confronted with the truth about the flaws of this nation we love, but it will leave the people who accept it far from the true God of the universe we know in Jesus.

Sadly, many embrace other forms of false and worldly wisdom in the so-called "liberal" denominations, like our own Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.

An official web site of our ELCA, called Living Lutheran, recently published a sermon by Pastor Delmer Chilton, an assistant to the bishop of the ELCA’s Southeastern Synod. His text was Mark 7:24-37, a passage of the Bible that we looked at a few weeks ago. It deals with Jesus’ encounter with a Syrophoenician woman, a Gentile, a non-Jew, whose daughter had a demon.

Jesus, you’ll remember, at first appears to refuse the woman her request. “Let the children [by which Jesus means the children of Israel] be fed first, for it is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.” “Dogs” was the put-down term Jews used about Gentiles, who they believed could never be saved from sin and death nor be right with God. But we know that Jesus came to die and rise for all people, giving eternal life to all who turn from sin and believe in Him alone as God and authority over their lives.

We also know that Jesus is God the Son: all-knowing, all-powerful. “The Father and I are one,” Jesus tells us [John 10:30].

So, we are momentarily mystified by Jesus’ seeming refusal of this woman’s request.

But as we pointed out a few weeks ago, the word that Jesus uses for dogs is the word for puppies. The Syrophoenician woman immediately picks up on Jesus’ playful phrasing, understanding not only that Jesus is going to grant her request, but that He is using this incident as a memorable sign that His grace can reach and change the life of any person, whatever their nationality or former religious persuasion. As Jesus will put it elsewhere in Mark’s gospel, “The one who believes in Me and is baptized will be saved; but the one who does not believe in Me will be condemned.”

In his ELCA official web site sermon, Delmer Chilton ignores all that Jesus claims about Himself throughout the rest of the gospels and says that Jesus really was going to turn the Syrophoenician woman down until she taught Jesus what it means to be God and Savior of the world. Chilton claims that after this encounter, “Jesus stands corrected...the woman has helped Jesus understand a difficult part of Scripture and a difficult part of his call.”

Folks, this is the cunning, shrewd, self-serving wisdom of the world dressed up as Christianity. It’s the same kind of sin the devil has been enticing proud people into embracing since the garden of Eden.

You see, if you whittle God down to your size, then you, not God, can call the shots. You can tell God how to be God. You can decide what truths in God’s Word you’ll accept as authoritative over your life and what ones you’ll ignore or denigrate. It allows you to remake Christian truth in ways that are more palatable to you.

Operating from the same mindset, the pastor of an ELCA congregation in Santa Fe, New Mexico told another newspaper a few weeks ago that Bible “is not a talking book” [a surprise to anyone who’s been taught that the Bible is the Word of God in which God speaks to us] and then, he asserted, the Bible “doesn’t tell me what to do.”

Turn please, to 2 Timothy 3:16. It says:

“All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof [that means censuring or rebuking for wandering away from God’s will], for correction, for instruction in righteousness...” 

There are things we may not understand in the Bible, but it is the living Word of God, the place we go to find hope, salvation, truth, and God's will for our lives. It records God's definitive disclosure of Himself, first to ancient Israel and ultimately to all the world, through Jesus Christ. This is the God Who will give us wisdom for every decision we may face in life, if will will only ask for it in Jesus' Name. James 1:5 reminds us: “If any of you lacks wisdom, let him [or her] ask God, who gives to all liberally and without reproach, and it will be given...”

The kind of wisdom that we need isn’t the wisdom of the world, or of the devil, or even from within ourselves. James describes it in James 3:17: “But the wisdom that is from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, willing to yield, full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality and without hypocrisy.”

Life is too big for us to figure it out on our own.

We need the wisdom God gives to those who humbly surrender their lives to Jesus Christ. Look again at our text, at James 4:7-8:

“Therefore submit to God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you. Draw near to God and He will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded.”

In my own life, whether before I turned from atheism to faith in Christ or in the years since I fell in love with Jesus, I have always gotten into spiritual danger, relational danger, and the danger of forgetting who God made me to be and who Christ, by His cross and resurrection, freed me to be in when I do three different things.

I've gotten into trouble when I have followed my own thoughtful analysis of circumstances, instead of following Jesus. God gave us our brains. So, we are to use them. But if my brain isn't subordinated to the God revealed to us in Jesus Christ, I will inevitably make unwise choices. As Proverbs 14:12 reminds us: “There is a way that seems right to [human beings], but its end is the way of death.”

I've also gotten myself into trouble when I have followed my heart instead of following Jesus. God gave us our emotions and they can bless our lives. But if my heart isn't subordinated to Jesus Christ, I make unwise decisions. Jeremiah 17:9 says that the human heart "is devious above all else; it is perverse..."

I've also gotten myself into trouble when I've followed the crowd or some individual I respect or like, instead of following Christ. Proverbs 11:14 tells us, "Where there is no guidance, a nation falls, but in abundance of counselors there is safety." It's good to get the advice of other people. But if those other people aren't following Jesus, their advice is, at best, suspect.

I've gotten myself into trouble in life then, when I haven't followed the wisdom of God.

But, how can we operate from God’s wisdom, rather than the wisdom of the world?

For me, one passage of Scripture seems to best summarize God’s counsel and command for those who want to live in the wisdom of God every day of their lives.

Please turn to Romans 12:1-2.

It says:

“I beseech you therefore, [brothers and sisters], by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service. And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God.”

Wisdom--as well as life, hope, and joy--comes to those who give their all to the God Who gave His all to us in Jesus Christ. Wisdom comes to those who surrender to Christ! 

Jesus says, “...wide is the gate and broad is the way that leads to destruction [that is, to hell and separation from God], and there are many who [take this route]...[But] narrow is the gate and difficult is the way which leads to life and there are few who find it.” (Matthew 7:13-14)

We all have decisions to make in life. Surrender to Jesus Christ and God will guide you to make wise choices.

Sometimes those choices will lead you through pain and growth and maturity you’d just as soon not acquire.

But when you choose to follow Jesus Christ, you will always be living wisely.

You will always be on the way that leads to life. Amen

Facing Evil: When We Can't, Jesus Can

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

Mark 7:24-37
I was a young pastor. I’d received what I thought was a solid seminary education. I believed in the Bible. And I accepted the Lordship of Jesus with all my heart. But whenever I ran across passages in the Gospels telling about Jesus casting out demons, I didn’t know what to make of them.

I had never met anyone that I thought to be demon-possessed. And many Bible scholars who comment on such passages say confidently that those people the Bible describes as having demons really were mentally ill or suffering from some other affliction.

Then, I met a husband and wife missionary team supported by the first congregation I served. The couple was in the States on furlough and had come to speak at our church’s annual outdoor mission festival. They served in India and most of their work was with a leper colony they had founded there. One day, while speaking with them privately though, I was surprised when, after they told me about worship services, many conversions to Christ, and the medical clinic they ran, this couple also said that occasionally, they performed exorcisms.

I tried to conceal my shock behind a poker face. “Exorcisms?” I thought. “You mean, like in the Gospels, like in the movies, you cast out demons?”

I guess that they could see my unspoken questions and began to explain that sometimes, people would be brought to them who displayed a cluster of symptoms that might include depression, violence, self-destructiveness, convulsions, or explosive rage. When medical treatment and counseling proved ineffective, the missionaries told me, they were fairly certain that the problem wasn’t psychological or medical; they were dealing with demons.

It was then that they would call on the Name of Jesus to cast evil from the people brought to them. They told me about people whose lives were totally turned around, all their former disturbing symptoms gone, because their demons were exorcised or removed by the power of Jesus Christ.

I found that I had to believe them. They weren’t nut cases. They were well-known to all the people of my first parish; the wife, a nurse, had been raised there. And they claimed to have met demon-possessed people and seen Jesus cast the demons out.

So, I thought, trying to make sense of it all, demon possession and the possibility of exorcising demons from people must be real. But, I reasoned, this whole phenomenon must be something that in today’s world only happens in primitive settings more like first-century Judea where the Bible tells us that Jesus cast out demons. The teeming, impoverished section of India where those two missionaries served would have been more like that than would the United States.

That line of reasoning, I suppose, was comforting for me. Nobody wants to run into a demon. So, I told myself that they weren’t to be found in the good old US of A.

But truth be told, I think I was only whistling in the dark. If you believe in the existence of evil—and who can watch a TV news report or read the news online and not believe that there is evil?—then how can you deny the possibility that evil may so fill a person’s mind and life that they become possessed by that evil?

And besides, if I believed in the Bible and if, when reading it, I ran across incidents like the one recounted in today’s Gospel lesson, in which a desperate woman asks Jesus to cast out a demon from her daughter and Jesus, in response to her faith, does just that, how could I keep whistling in the dark?

I soon learned that it isn’t just Christian preachers who wrestle with such issues. Psychotherapist R.D. Laing gained prominence in the late-1960s with his cutting edge thoughts on human psychology—some of it kooky, some of it right on. In his book, The Divided Self, published in 1964, Laing noted “a…curious phenomenon of the personality…is that in which the individual seems to be the vehicle of a personality that is not his own. Someone else’s personality seems to ‘possess’ him, finding expression through his words and actions, whereas the individual’s own personality is temporarily ‘lost’ or gone…”

But even if references to demon-possession sound like way-out psychobabble or kooky preacher talk to you, I think you’ll agree that evil—active opposition to the will and commands of God, refusal to reverence God, and resistance to loving others—is increasing in our world today.

That’s because evil fills up the vacuums, the empty places of our lives, our institutions, and even our churches.

In the New Testament’s last book, Revelation, the risen and ascended Jesus tells one church that though their congregation is commendable in lots of ways, the members had forgotten their first love.

In other words, that congregation had become a social club, not a family of believers who sought to give God thanks for Jesus’ death and resurrection through changed lives.

It didn't seek to share Christ with others.

Churches that forget that Christ is to be their first love stop being churches and seem not to pray, “Change my heart, God,”* but, “God, You need to change with the times.”

We leave room for evil when we put ourselves first in life and when we forget that Christ is to be our first love.

People also leave room for evil when they fail to maintain personal contact with God.

Week before last, I went to Columbus to have lunch with my best friend from high school, a fellow I’ve known since the fourth grade, who lives in Arizona and only gets back this way once a year. On the way up to Columbus, I wondered what his mood would be. He’s going through the breakup of his marriage of thirty years.

“I’m keeping my life simple right now,” he told me. “No TV. A one-room apartment. I go to work. I read my Bible and pray every day. I go to men’s Bible study at church. I go to worship on Sunday. [And pulling out a card, he told me] I’m an agent of the FBIC, Mark: Fully Believing in Christ.”

When I left Bill that day, I knew he would be OK. He had invited Jesus to participate in his life. His relationship with God is personal.

Evil goes where Jesus Christ has not been invited. That’s why it’s so critically important for you and me to pray for our spiritually-disconnected friends, neighbors, coworkers, and classmates.

That’s why it’s central to who we are as Christians to invite those who aren’t in relationship with Christ and the Church to get to know Jesus Christ, to worship with us, to dig into God’s Word with us.

It’s why you and I need, in the words of Martin Luther which you’ve heard me cite many times, to live in daily repentance and renewal, daily surrendering to Christ so that evil cannot get a decisive foothold in our lives or in the lives of those for whom we pray.

And it’s essential that we pay attention to who hasn’t been worshiping with us lately, to pray for them, and, in simple Christian love and friendship, call them up and find out how they’re doing.

Just how the daughter of the Syrophoenician woman in today’s Gospel lesson came to be possessed by evil isn’t said. Of course, she was, like the deaf mute man Jesus also heals in the lesson, a Gentile, a non-Jew, who may never have heard the story of the God of all creation who had made the Jews His chosen people and, over long centuries, had prepared them for the arrival of the Messiah, the Lamb of God Who takes away the sin of the world.

But the actions of this mother should be a lesson to all of us. She didn’t give up hope. She went to Jesus on behalf of her demon-possessed daughter. As Luther reminds us in A Mighty Fortress is Our God, “hordes of devils fill the land, all threatening to devour us.” But we can, as the hymn also says, “tremble not, unmoved we stand,” knowing that evil cannot overpower us.**

Once, I met a Lutheran pastor who told me about his childhood and youth lived in North Dakota, near a small town that had little for young people to do and offered few opportunities for the future. He had more than a few run-ins with the law and his life seemed to be spinning inevitably toward dysfunction and evil.

One day, he passed the bedroom of his grandfather, in his nineties, then living with his family. The old man was praying for children, grandchildren, nephews, nieces, and neighbors. He prayed for blessings, guidance, and healing.

Then this troubled teenager heard his grandfather begin to pray for him. The grandfather’s voice choked and the boy could see that he was sobbing softly as he asked God to intervene in the young man’s life, to guide him, to help the boy follow Jesus and live, rather than give in to the sin of this dying world.

At that moment, the teen thought his grandfather was silly. But, as the years went by, increasingly, when he contemplated doing wrong or stupid things, something or Someone, seemed to steer him elsewhere. His grandfather’s prayers were answered. That’s how that felow ended up following Christ, ended up in seminary, ended up a pastor.

The power of evil is huge in our world today. But as the Syrophoenician woman in our Gospel lesson learned when she prayed for her daughter, Jesus is able to overcome all and give us new life.

Today, tomorrow, everyday, put your life—put the life of the world—in the hands of Jesus.

When we fall, Jesus lifts us.

When we die, Jesus gives us life.

When we can’t, Jesus can. Always.

AMEN

*"Change my heart, O God" is the opening line of the praise song featured in the video below. It's based on imagery of God as the potter to whom the believer is called to willingly submit, allowing God to make them new. Check out this list of Scripture passages (and their contexts) to see how the terms "potter" and "clay" are used in both the Old and New Testaments.



**Below is a performance of A Mighty Fortress is Our God by the Pacific Lutheran University Choir of the West.

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.”