Beloved Members of St. Martin’s,
One of the biggest—and most damaging—tendencies in our society right now is the tendency to divide people into who is “worthy”—and who is not. Worthy of respect. Worthy of acceptance. Worthy of leadership. Worthy of help. Worthy of grace. Worthy of an opportunity.
Those who are deemed “worthy” find doors opened for them. Opportunities abounding. Those who are not deemed worthy find doors slammed in their faces and bolted tight.
This tendency to try to invite some in and keep others out is completely human. But when we act upon it, we run up against the example of Jesus, especially as bookended perfectly in out two anecdotes in this weekend’s gospel passage from Mark 7. Both the Gentile woman and the man with impaired hearing and speech were often easily excluded from consideration by people like Jesus- based both of foreignness and difficulty in communicating. The woman, a mother, is portrayed as boldly seeking Jesus’s help for her child, and being insistent about it; while the other is passively brought before Jesus by others, and is not portrayed as saying or communicating for himself at all.
One at first receives a rejection from Jesus, while the other, sighing assistance. But help, nonetheless.
What catches my ear as I ponder our gospel reading is Jesus’s comment as he cures the man’s hearing and speech. “Be opened,” Jesus says. And one wonders if that advice was not something Jesus said to himself after yielding to the insistence of that Gentile mother, who would not take not for an answer. Even Jesus can learn, we are reminded.
“Ephphatha. Be opened.”
The Syrophoenician woman and the man with the speech and hearing obstacles reminded Jesus and reminds all of us, every single day, to be opened to a crucial reality—a reality still coming into being due to our own resistance and fearfulness. A reality that therefore can never be repeated enough to break through our human tendencies to exclude those different from us. That challenging reality is that God’s reconciling, healing love truly has no limits. God’s love is a generous, abundant love. God’s call is a generous, abundant call to all. This reminds us that our discipleship too must be open to all. We don’t exist as a community of faith merely for ourselves or for those who are similar to us. We exist as a community of faith to serve as disciples and witnesses to the world outside these doors, both when we are acting as a community and when we are acting as individuals. Even when we think no one is looking. Being open to the movement of the Spirit of God in our lives is the foundation of salvation and discipleship, but it's also scary. It means being open to God’s will wherever it may lead us, and we like to be in control of where we are going. It means being open to being surprised. It means being open to acknowledging that God’s ways are not our ways of exclusion and setting people up for failure. Instead God's ways are always about regeneration of heart and spirit. About being open as a sign of the abundant grace and love God offers each and every one of us, whether we are “worthy” of it. Or not. Maybe especially when we are not.
As we enter the fall season, a time of the start of the school year, the program year, our annual stewardship in gathering, may we embody that generosity of spirit and action that opens us to the healing, abundant movement of the Holy Spirit in our lives, not just in theory, but in action.
In Christ’s love,
Mother Leslie+
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