Mark 7 The Limitlessness of God's Grace and Wideness of God's Mercy

There is a limitlessness to God's grace and a wideness to God's mercy that we as human beings cannot contain.  It is this limitlessness to God's grace and wideness to God's mercy which allows each one of you and us as a community to gather on this day. And, it is precisely this grace and mercy of God that gives us hope for all people everywhere.  We gained that hope again today as we heard the story from Mark’s gospel, a story which is one of the most complex and difficult within Mark’s gospel.

This morning I want to explore with you this limitlessness to God's grace and wideness to God's mercy by addressing three aspects of the reading.  firstly, the difficulty of the language that we encounter in Jesus words which drive us to see the bigger picture of who Jesus was.  Secondly, the nature of the two healings that take place. and finally, the response of Jesus followers to these events.  In each of these three we will encounter the scriptures interpreting our lives and hopefully God speaking into our existence through the power of the Holy Spirit with a word of grace and mercy for us today.

So turning to my first point, Jesus language is difficult in his passage.  I have preached on this passage on numerous occasions, and I have always stumbled on the point of Jesus language in relationship to the Syrophoenician woman, whom Jesus essentially calls a dog.  Regardless of the previous ways in which I have dealt with this issue as a chaplain working in an all-girls school in the 21st century and in the context of the vigorous public debate that we have had over the last 18 months about the treatment of women in Australian society this particular issue feels even more poignant as I mention today.

Working with girls and young women it would be very easy for them to stumble on what Jesus does here and rather than read on label Jesus as a misogynist and potentially a racist as well.  Through a modern lens of interpretation Jesus’ words are highly uncomfortable for us.  He is speaking of a woman of another culture and of another religion in a way that we would deem disparaging.  So, it is important in this respect to not limit our understanding of who Jesus is to this particularly interaction.

In addition to this problem, another issue that can arise from such an interpretation of Jesus’ words would be a misunderstanding that somehow Jesus was actually distinguishing women as somehow this are or people of another race as somehow lesser.  A cursory glance at the history of Christianity would tell us that there have been Christians and are still Christians who behave in manners that are sexist and are racist.

There are many ways and that I could address this particular issue but today I would begin by pushing us back to Mark chapter 4. In Mark 4 versus 10 to 12 Jesus says this:

“To you has been given the secret of the kingdom of God, but for those outside, everything comes in parables; in order that

‘they may indeed look, but not perceive,
    and may indeed listen, but not understand;
so that they may not turn again and be forgiven.’”

Mark's gospel is an enigma and within it we encounter many mysteries including the one which is why Jesus speaks this way at this particular time.  It is difficult for us to contextualise that moment 2000 years ago but it is pertinent for us to look at Jesus comment in light of the whole of Mark's gospel.  Jesus has followers who are women, there are encounters in Mark's gospel with people who sit outside the Jewish faith, it is women who are the witnesses to Jesus’ resurrection.  Far from excluding or demeaning women and outsiders Jesus’ behaviour breaks down social religious and racial barriers that were almost incomprehensible to the people of Jesus time.

Such was Jesus’ behaviour that Paul would later write that in Christ there is no male or female.  Such was Jesus’ behaviour that Paul would become a missionary to the gentiles.  There is a limitlessness to God's grace and a wideness to God's mercy that we as human beings cannot contain and that we certainly cannot limit to one encounter that Jesus has.  ultimately, Jesus responds to the woman's cries, and he grants healing to the daughter. this brings me to my second point which is to speak about the two healings.

There is a limitlessness to God's grace and a wideness to God's mercy that we encounter in the healing of the girl with demons and the healing of the man he was deaf and had a speech impediment. 

Let us firstly consider the healing of the girl.  It is important for us to understand a number of things about this girl. She was not Jewish, she was of a different religion, she probably did not know anything about who Jesus was. She was not present in the room, and there is no evidence or suggestion that she repented of anything nor that after the healing she became a follower of Jesus.  Despite all of this she is healed when her mother makes the appeal to Jesus.  The girl experience is salvation.  Let me say that bit again the girl experiences salvation.

One of the things was that we easily lose sight of as we look back at these ancient stories is it salvation was often understood as a transformation in the lived experience of the person encountering the healing.  So often when we speak of salvation as modern Christians, we tend to think about what's going to happen after we die. But in the ancient world salvation was very much understood about bringing a person back into the community to live a full life.  By casting the demon out Jesus saves her.

The second healing story is very similar.  The man who could not hear and who had difficulty articulating was brought to Jesus by others.  Given that the man had no capacity to hear and had limited capacity to speak it is more than likely he had no understanding who Jesus was.  How much his the who brought the man understood about who Jesus was is left again I would you use the word an enigma, a mystery.  Jesus saves this man as well.  He says, “Ephphatha”, which means “be opened”, and immediately the man is able to hear and speak again.  The consequences of this healing were salvation for this man.  Through this action this man was able to re-enter society and participate in being part of the community again, he was given life in all its fullness.

For both the young girl and the man there was a limitlessness to God's grace and a wideness to God's mercy as Jesus saved them and gave them the capacity to participate in the life of the world again.  We can only speculate that the transformation in this life might have also had implications about their transformation for the next life.  However, we should not interpret that they ever proclaimed and confessed Jesus as Lord as we do because the way we do that is completely transformed by the 2000 years that have passed. The story gives to us hope that Jesus does have a deep concern for people in this life, in the midst of their personal struggles.

This brings me to the third aspect of the story that is pertinent to address when considering the limitlessness of God's grace and wideness of God's mercy.  The second last line in the story that we read today raises significant questions about our behaviour as Jesus followers. let me remind you of what it says, “Then Jesus ordered them to tell no one; but the more he ordered them, the more zealously they proclaimed it.” Jesus says to his followers I don't want you to tell this story at the more that he told them not to do it the more they did it. In other words, Jesus followers do precisely what he says for them not to do to the point at which Mark wrote the story down years later. And, here we are, nearly 2000 years later still talking about a story that Jesus told us not to share.  The situation is more than a little ironic.

If we go back to Mark four, the passage I quoted earlier, I'm going to remind you again of something that it said Jesus said to the disciples his followers, “to you has been given the secret of the Kingdom of heaven.”  Jesus followers are given an immense privileged insight into who Jesus was and what he was doing.  However, the context of Jesus saying this to disciples was a moment in which they did not understand one of the parables that Jesus had told.  The whole of Mark operates like one long parable weather disciples who are insiders and are given the insights from Jesus himself continually, almost predictably, muck things up.

What this does is affirm the limitlessness of God's grace and wideness of God's mercy because the spite their erroneous ways Jesus continues to encourage those disciples, his followers, to continue on their journey with him.  And more than that, he entrusts to them the message of the good news of the Kingdom of God to carry forward after his death.  This is grace and mercy enacted within Jesus’ followers right down to the present day.

As people who follow Jesus now, as his disciples in this the 21st century, we know but there are moments in which we all fail Jesus.  We know that there are moments in which we do precisely the opposite thing which Jesus commands us.  And I'm not just talking about not sharing this story that we're sharing.  Let me just dwell on Jesus teaching to love one another as I have loved you.  We are sitting in a church called the uniting church because the church in history has failed to be one.  We have denominations many of whom do not love one another.  Unlike Jesus even within congregations we find so many things to have conflict about.  I have been in ministry for 22 years, I am the son of a minister, and in not one congregation have I ever seen people loving one another perfectly there is always conflict.  Whether it is about the colour of the paint that you're going to paint the hall or how you interpret the scriptures we as human beings are really good at not loving one another and not being gracious and merciful to one another.

Yet, there is a limitlessness to God's grace and a wideness to God's mercy. Simply seen in the fact that we're sitting here drawn together by the power of the Holy Spirit to be worshipping God and today to gather around the table where Jesus as our host will serve us as he served his disciples in the Last Supper. What an astounding story of grace and mercy in which our lives are embedded.

So, I'm going to say it again: There is a limitlessness to God's grace and a wideness to God's mercy that we as human beings cannot domesticate.  As people cry out for healing and for hope it is not for us to limit who God may choose to save in this life or in the next.  Jesus’ healing reached the Syrophoenician woman's daughter and the man bought to Jesus who could not hear and could not speak properly.  In the power of the Holy Spirit and in faith and hope I would say to you that Jesus is present with us as he was with his followers 2000 years ago even when they did precisely the opposite thing he asked them to do. and finally, the wideness of God's mercy and that limitlessness of God's grace challenge us to see beyond a single story about Jesus to understand that the boundaries of gender and religion and race crossed by Jesus should cause us to consider again what it means for us to love one another.

Hear this good news There is a limitlessness to God's grace and a wideness to God's mercy that we as human beings cannot contain and may you receive the gift of the release from your demons and may you this day be opened by the miracle of God's presence in your life.

I invite you to take a moment to contemplate all that has been said and consider what might God be seen to you this day.

And under God we ascribe all the glory honour and power. now and forever. Amen.

 

A Message in 3 Gifts

 Ephesians 1:3-14, Mark 6:30-34,53-56

For those of you whom I teach you will be used to a return to term ritual in which I invite you to share something from your holidays as we first call the roll.  It provides a moment of reconnection not just as your teacher but with one another as a class well.  No doubt, for staff and for students alike, the next few days will provide moments of such reconnection as we return from our time off.

There is a beautiful moment in the Bible passage from Mark's gospel in which the disciples returned to Jesus after being out working among the people teaching and healing.  We are told that the apostles, which literally means the ones who were sent, gather around Jesus, and shared their stories. 

In contrast to us, the disciples though were returning from their labours and even in that moment we are told that they were so busy that “They had no leisure even to eat.”  This phrase is another reminder of the busyness of our term life when students come to my classes after first or second break and ask for permission to eat during class because they had a meeting during the break.  Jesus recognises the busyness of the disciples and as we follow through the short story that we have heard from Mark I believe there are three key ideas contained in the story for us.

On the first weekend of our holidays the Uniting Church in Australia celebrated its anniversary and so today as we reflect together on the reading from Mark, I want to offer the message in the form of three gifts.  I'm going to invite students to come and unwrap these gifts as we explore each one.

(1. Clock/Celtic Cross 2. This book will make you Smarter/Bible 3. Medical Kit/El Salvador Cross)

Part 1 - The Gift of Time

Let’s unwrap the first gift.

The first gift contained within the passage is the gift of time.  Jesus says to the disciples who were so busy, “Come away to a deserted place all by yourselves and rest a while.”  As a school community most of us have just received a similar gift, the gift of time.  And, for many of us too, this was a much-needed break.  But I want to explore the gift of time that Jesus was offering the disciples and to connect it with the idea of holidays.

You see the word holiday has its origins in the phrase holy day.  It stems from a time that the only holidays that were granted to people were days that were considered holy. This included the Sabbath, which is Saturday.  On the blog Rest and Work it says this, “After six days of creation, God looks upon the works of his hands and pronounces it “very good” (Gen 1:31). But it is not until the seventh day that God calls something, “holy,” the day of rest that he interjects into the time and space of creation. The day of rest receives the attribution of holiness, which is the very essence of God’s character.” https://www.theologyofwork.org/key-topics/rest-and-work-overview The story of creation in the Bible is not a scientific explanation of the origin of all things rather it teaches us how to be in the world and one of the things it teaches us is that resting in God’s holiness is important because in this we encounter and are shaped by the character of God.

For Christians Sunday, the first day of the week, is the day that we remember the resurrection of Jesus and is consider it the first day of the new creation.  For Christians it is the day of rest.  It is a reminder of the beginning of the eternal Sabbath promised for the whole creation where we can rest in God’s holiness together eternally. Whilst this ancient idea may have been lost on most of us one of the implications of holidays becomes how we conceive of the time into which we are entering. 

In the Greek language, that the Bible was written in, there are two words that are used in association with time.  The first is chronos. Chronos essentially refers to the ticking of the clock, the sequential passing of time.  Whereas the second word, kairos, has a different connotation.  Kairos infers the opportune time, the right time, maybe even the time for encounter.

When Jesus offers that the disciples come away to a deserted place what I believe he is offering them is not simply chronos but kairos.  This time of encounter had already begun in his process of reconnecting with them and them sharing stories. But in the invitation to come away from the crowd Jesus was inviting the disciples to come with him to rest in God's presence.

So, one of the questions this raises for us is whether your holiday was simply experiencing time as chronos or whether you made space for kairos.  Experiencing time as chronos means that time is something that needs to be filled up, that time is something that causes us to be restless, or that as time passes we experience boredom.  So it is, that we scurry about trying to keep ourselves occupied - bingeing the latest Netflix, or Stan, or Amazon, or Disney series.  Our fingers race across our phones searching for content in Instagram, or Tik Tok, or messages from friends that will satisfy our restless hearts and minds.  Yet, the research shows us that we feel disconnected and lonely as we search for meaning by filling our lives as if there is only chronos.  Is this really a holiday? Do we really come away feeling rejuvenated and renewed in our sense of purpose and meaning in life?

Sometimes it is the ancient wisdom that can help us.  Pope Gregory I, sometimes referred to as Gregory the Great reminds us, “We make idols of our concepts, but Wisdom is born of wonder.”  When we spend our fleeting and fragile lives simply filling up time as chronos, with distractions, there appears to be little space for wonder which is why the concept of taking notice in our wellbeing framework is so important because it is about moving from chronos into kairos.  Almost two centuries earlier the great teacher of the church St Augustine said, “God is always trying to give good things to us, but our hands are too full to receive them.” (St. Augustine, City of God)

We fill up our time just as we fill up our hands.  As full as our time may be, we remain restless.  Augustine also said in his book Confessions, “Our hearts are restless until they rest in you.”  Kairos is the time when we take notice, we take notice of God, we take notice of God’s presence in and around us and we lean into the invitation of Jesus to come away, to transform our holidays, or at least moments within them into holy days.  To enter the kairos moment which is also beyond time - eternal.  Looking at the Celtic Cross in the gift we see the circle which represents eternity. 

In her song the Well the singer JJ Heller reflects on the Well of Jesus’ presence of the source of life in contrast to the pursuit of her own desires.  For me going to the Well of Jesus’ presence is her acknowledgement of being in a karios moment with God rather than simply living life in chronos.  I invite you to listen to the song now as a kairos moment, a time to connect with God.

Song for Reflection You are the Well that never runs dry 

Part 2 – The gift of a Teacher

It is somewhat ironic that whilst Jesus offers to his disciples the gift of time to rest in God's presence the crowd follows them.  It is a telling moment that we see the character of Jesus reflecting the character of God when on encountering the crowd we are told, “He had compassion for them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd; and he began to teach them many things.”

So, this is the second gift that we are given. (Unwrap the gift) These books represent the gift of a teacher.  Returning into our context here at school and contemplating the term ahead it might be difficult for us to sometimes see our teachers as a gift but a gift they are.  The gift of Jesus as our teacher is represented by the Bible which I will return to in a moment. Whilst, the gift of our education system, is represented by this book of mine entitled This book will make you smarter.  I will leave it up to you to judge whether me owning this book is actually reflected in who I am.

Whatever you may think about my knowledge and wisdom let me quote from Carlo Rovelli who writes in the book about “The uselessness of certainty.”  He says this:

 

There is a widely held notion that does plenty of damage: the notion of ‘scientifically proved.’  Nearly an oxymoron.  The very foundation of science is to keep the door open to doubt. Precisely because we keep questioning everything, especially our own premises, we are always ready to improve our knowledge. Therefore, a good scientist is never ‘certain.’ 

It may surprise some of you to know that Rovelli is a physicist who works in France at the Centre de Physique Théoretique.

What Rovelli is critiquing is what is known as scientism within our community, an assumption that science is about certainty.  James Tartaglia and Tracy Llanera in their article ‘Can we outgrow the problem of nihilism?’ on the ABC Religion and Ethics Website say this, the philosopher, “Heidegger warned how the culture of scientism, and of our obsession with manipulating reality, can obstruct the way the world might relate to human beings. Adopting a scientistic way of life, according to Heidegger, stifles our ability to listen to the voice of Being and kills off possibilities of wonder.”

https://www.abc.net.au/religion/can-we-outgrow-nihilism-james-tartaglia-and-tracy-llanera/13432122

As teachers and learners, we are constantly being challenged to have a growth mindset and to keep learning: to wonder and be in awe.  To be curious and agile as we reflect on what teachings we encounter.  When Jesus sees the crowd, he sees them as sheep without a shepherd.  This reality is more so given the scientism, consumerism, and individualism of our era.  Jesus is still looking upon us with compassion. 

Richard Kearny in his recent article ‘God after the loss of God: What comes after atheism?’ introduces us a new word, anatheism.  By which he means “returning to God after God.”  He goes on to suggest, “anatheism contains a moment of atheism within itself, as it does a moment of theism.”  To put it more simply anatheism suggests that we have moments of believing in God and moments of rejecting belief in God, sometimes at one and the same time, but in which we are caught up in mystery and wonder and not certainty.  A space in which we might still be prepared to listen for God speaking to us through Jesus.

https://www.abc.net.au/religion/richard-kearney-anatheism-what-comes-after-god/11719700

If Jesus is our true shepherd, then Jesus’ teaching is not simply a teaching about who God is but who we are in the midst of our seeking and searching for meaning and purpose.  The psychologist Martin Seligman in his PERMA model of wellbeing outlines five aspects leading to wellbeing acknowledging that one of these is having meaning. 

Further, studies have shown that those who receive the gift of faith and, for example, sit at the feet of Jesus as their teacher, have better outcomes for their wellbeing.  I believe approaching Jesus as our teacher is also about receiving the gift of teaching that comes through others and is connected to every aspect of our learning.  Alongside the scientist Rovelli I would encourage you to enter into having a lack of certainty or to receive the gift of doubt that the disciples Thomas encountered. This is a way of having a growth mindset and being prepared to learn from Jesus our true teacher about God, ourselves, and this creation in which we live.  Therefore. I included the Bible in this gift as a primary source in which we listen for Jesus speaking to us.

As we continue to reflect on this gift of a teacher, I have chosen a second song for contemplation released just 10 days ago.  A song which I believe has elements of anatheism, something being lost and re-found and then re-shared.  It is by the South African singer Matthew Mole and has implicit Christian themes within it.  As an artist Mole does not throw his faith in people’s faces but it is certainly there.  As you watch it, view the song with curiosity, as a parable exploring the possibility of God’s presence which is with you, even when you may be missing it.

Song for Reflection I’m with you

Part 3 – The gift of Healing

Unwrap last gift.

The last gift is the gift of healing.  After Jesus teaches, he and the disciples move off into the surrounding villages and everywhere they go people are bought for healing.  The healing provided by Jesus is a sign of God's care and concern for us and for all people.  Symbols within the gift of healing are the symbols of a medical kit and of the El Salvador cross.

Healing has many layers and expressions.  There is the healing of our sinfulness.  Healing of our souls as we are drawn back into relationship with God.  Healing of our bodies and our minds which stands over against the entropy of our existence. 

Unlike the first two gifts this gift of healing is one which is more complex in our relationship with God.  Recent weeks have reminded us of the ongoing pandemic that continues to unfold around us.  The devastation and heartbreak that has been wrought upon the world community is deep and abiding.  When we turned to God with our prayers for healing and for hope it is like the people who long ago carried people on their mats into Jesus’ presence.  They brough them to Jesus in the hope that even touching the hem of his robe might restore people to wholeness in their life.

Rather speak more about God’s gift of healing we are going to pray for the world and its people.  We will pray for this country Australia and for our community. We pray for each other and the ones whom we love.  We will come in faith and hope that we might reach out to touch Jesus’ robe.