Proper 18 :: Isaiah 35:4 – 7a / Psalm 146 / Mark 7:24 – 37
This is the homily given at St. John’s, Huntingdon,
Pennsylvania, by Fr. Gene Tucker, on Sunday, September 5, 2021.
“SOME EFFORT
REQUIRED”
(Homily
text: Mark 7:24 – 37)
No matter how much we want it, if we
think about it, most of the things we do in life require some effort to bring
about or to accomplish. Wouldn’t it be wonderful, for example, if a fine meal
would simply appear before us? Yes, it would. But the truth is, that wonderful
meal wouldn’t come to be unless someone with good cooking skills did all the
work to bring the raw ingredients together to make it. We could say the same
about many other things, such as building a house, or building a career, or
going to school to learn things. Each and all of these things requires effort,
sometime a good deal of effort.
In this morning’s Gospel, we read
about the Syrophoenician woman who comes to Jesus. She is in dire need, for her
daughter is gravely ill. Apparently, she’s heard about the healings that this
Jewish miracle worker had been doing in Galilee, and so, perhaps, she believes
(or thinks) that He can help her daughter.
She comes to Jesus, kneels before Him,
and begs Him to fix what’s wrong with her daughter. In response, Jesus makes a
reply that seems like a put-down. He says, “Let the children first be fed. It
isn’t right to take the children’s bread and throw it to the dogs.”
We ought to pause for a moment right
here. Understanding the culture of time will help us to understand more fully
what the Lord said, for dogs, in Jewish culture, were considered to be unclean
animals. (Even today, to call someone a “dog” is not a kind thing to say to
someone, even though we don’t regard dogs as being unclean.)
But the woman applies some effort to
her request. She says, “Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs under the table eat the
children’s crumbs.”
We’d have a good understanding of this
conversation if we’d understand that by using the word “children”, Jesus is
referring to the Jews, to God’s chosen people, and that by using the word
“dogs”, He is referring to non-Jewish, Gentile people.
Now, let’s look at this very bold
woman, a woman who listens carefully, but who is persistent, realizing that her
need to have her daughter healed is going to take some effort, some evidence of
her faith in Jesus’ power to heal her daughter, for she takes the Lord’s
seeming rebuke and places it back, squarely, before the Lord. She says, “Yes,
Lord, but even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs.” In so
doing, she uses a different word for “dogs” that the Lord uses. She uses the
diminutive form of “dogs”.[1] She says “puppy dogs”, the sort of dogs that, in Gentile culture, would have
been part of the household.
Some effort required.
It might have been easy for this woman
to simply walk away when Jesus challenged her like He did. She could have given
up. But she didn’t.
How often does the Lord put a test of
a person’s faith in the path to granting that person’s request? The answer is,
the Lord often does exactly that. Here, He does it with the unnamed woman. He
did the same with the ten lepers who were healed, telling them that (before
they were healed), they were to go show themselves to the priest as evidence of
their healing.[2] That’s just one example. There are many others. Sometimes, the Lord will say
something like, “Your faith has made you whole.”
Some effort required.
How often do we wish for something to
happen? Yes, good things usually. It’s important for us to ask God for those
good things that we need (which is different from those things that we might
want, it’s important to note).
But oftentimes what God does in
responding to our requests and our needs is to say, “You’re going to have to
put some effort into this. Part of that effort is to believe that I can grant
your request. But another part of that effort is going to require you to make
use of the raw materials (talents and skills, to cite but one example) I’ve
given you to make your request a reality. In this way, you and I work
together.”
Too often, it seems to me, we treat
God like an ATM machine. You know, we put in our prayer request access card, we
punch in our password, and expect God to give us what we need, immediately, and
without effort on our part. We then, oftentimes, put God away until the next
request arises. Aren’t we like that a lot of the time? Yes, I believe we are
exactly like that, far too many times, to be honest about it. But if we think more
deeply about this image, usually we have to work to make money, in order to be
able to put it into our account. (Assuming, of course, that the money wasn’t a
gift somehow.) Here we have evidence that some effort is usually required to
make something happen.
Such a rule applies to nearly
everything in life. Such a rule also applies to our walk with God. Some effort
on our part will be required. And in that effort, there is a test of our
willingness to use what God has already given us, the raw materials with which
to bring about that which we need, God working together with us.
AMEN.
[1] This fine point of translation is, unfortunately, not included in most translations of the Bible.
[2] See Luke 17:11 – 19.
