by Jeffrey Spencer | Oct 8, 2024 | Sermons
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Sermon for the Twentieth Sunday after Pentecost – October 6, 2024
Mark 10:2-16
Dear friends, grace to you and peace from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ.
Preaching on marriage and divorce is a daunting task. These topics touch on some of the most sensitive and painful aspects of many peoples’ lives. Our texts for today also happen to poke several of the hottest hot button issues raging in our culture today.
For encouragement this week I looked up a sermon of Martin Luther’s on the topic. Surely someone as biblically astute and as graciously pastoral as Martin Luther would know how to tackle these sensitive issues, right? Well, I looked at his most famous marriage sermon, and the first words were, “How I dread preaching on the estate of marriage!” I found it oddly reassuring that even Luther himself approached these topics with a measure of dread! “But,” Luther continued, “timidity is no help in an emergency. I must proceed. I must try to instruct bewildered consciences and take up the matter boldly.”
So, despite the landmines in just about every sentence I am about to speak, let us proceed together boldly, listening to what God’s Word has to teach us today.
The Pharisees asked Jesus about marriage and divorce in an attempt to get him into trouble. Marriage and divorce were hot button issues in Jesus’ time too. In fact, you’ll recall that John the Baptist ended up imprisoned and ultimately executed because he dared to speak out against Herod after he divorced his first wife in order to marry his sister-in-law. There were also debates raging at this time about what exactly the Bible said about when divorce was allowed, with different rabbis lining up on different sides. If the Pharisees could drag Jesus into this debate, perhaps even get him to say something that would get him in trouble with Herod, maybe they wouldn’t have to deal with him anymore. This was the “test” for Jesus.
I think this context is important to note. In his reply, Jesus is not talking to a woman with an abusive husband. He is not talking to a spouse who has been abandoned or discarded for another. I believe Jesus would have had a very different reply for people in those situations. I’ll come back to that in a bit. The context here is that Jesus is talking to Pharisees who are trying to get him into trouble.
When these Pharisees ask Jesus about his take on the lawfulness of divorce, Jesus turns the question back to them, asking them what the law of Moses says. The Pharisees correctly point out that divorce is allowed in some circumstances. It is indeed there in the book of Deuteronomy that a man can give his wife a certificate of dismissal and divorce her. But Jesus isn’t satisfied with this answer. He wants to go deeper. And so Jesus identifies the root problem causing divorce. Jesus says that it isn’t so much a legal issue as it is a heart issue. The root problem is hearts that are hardened. “Because of your hardness of heart he wrote this commandment for you,” Jesus says.
A hardened heart is a heart that is opposed to God and to God’s will. Pharoah was described as having a hardened heart when he refused to obey God’s command to let his people go. The Greek word here translated as “hardened heart” is sklerocardia, which you might recognize as the root for diagnostic terms used in medicine today, terms like arterial sclerosis or cardiac arrest. These terms are used to describe hearts that are blocked and malfunctioning. Sklerocardia is a spiritual condition wherein the heart has blocked out God’s truth and so is out of beat. One theologian has described sklerocardia in this particular context as “willful blindness to truth and a stubborn refusal to yield to God and his ways for a properly ordered, healthy, and fruitful relationship as shown to us from the beginning of creation.”
And “the beginning of creation” is exactly where Jesus goes next. Jesus quickly moves beyond the finer points of the law of Moses and instead pulls out the blueprints for humankind. Jesus sets aside the already much-debated escape clause for divorce in Deuteronomy and begins a Bible study on Genesis, where God’s original intentions for marriage are made clear.
First Jesus quotes from Genesis 1, saying: “From the beginning of creation, ‘God made them male and female.’” Jesus goes back to the beginning, pointing out how God created two distinct but complimentary kinds of humans. They are literally made for each other! Jesus teaches here that gender is given by God and is an essential feature of the created order. Being male or female is bestowed by God, and it is good!
Then Jesus quotes from Genesis 2, saying: “‘For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.’ So they are no longer two, but one flesh.” Citing Genesis, Jesus describes marriage as the coming together of a man and a woman into an organic oneness. In marriage, these two halves of humanity come together in a unity that will be so close – relationally, spiritually, and physically – that they will be like one person. “So they are no longer two, but one flesh,” Jesus says.
To separate the two is not merely a matter of tearing up a contract, it is more like the tearing of flesh, with all the pain that brings. And so Jesus adds his own word, his own emphasis, saying, “Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.”
Citing the very blueprints God has given for humankind, Jesus describes what God’s intentions are for marriage. Two become one flesh. They become a single biological dyad, bound together by vows of love and faithfulness. This holy union will be the foundation of human society. This two becoming one will be the source of all human life.
This is something so beautiful and so essential that every culture across time and place has sought to celebrate it and encourage it and protect it. But at the same time, in a fallen world many hearts have been hardened against it. People railed against this in Jesus’ time, and they rail against it today too.
When I started out in ministry, divorce was the hot button issue. Now, a couple of decades later, just about every word Jesus says as he teaches from Genesis is railed against: from the basic realities of being a man or a woman, to the purpose of marriage, even the number of people a marriage might involve. Nearly every word out of Jesus’ mouth here is now being questioned, or resisted, or rejected entirely in our culture today.
When the Pharisees lured Jesus into this potentially dangerous topic, Jesus was every bit as bold as John the Baptist was. Jesus went right to the original blueprints for humankind in Genesis. Jesus was so insistent on God’s original intent in those blueprints that it shocked even the disciples.
As Jesus’ disciples today, these words are for us. Through this living Word Jesus is now teaching us. Our first reading from Genesis and Jesus’ own citation of it as authoritative are given for our benefit, that we would know the truth about God’s blueprint for the flourishing of humankind. We cannot be followers of Jesus while ignoring or rejecting the truth he so passionately proclaims. As it is, our society is increasingly losing touch with truth, losing touch with reality, certainly losing touch with something that God and his Son both call precious and holy. We dare not lose touch with it too.
At the same time, we cannot let our hearts be hardened towards those who are confused about this truth, and we cannot let our hearts be hardened towards those who have fallen short of it.
As followers of Jesus, we should not only look at what he teaches here when he is tangling with the Pharisees in a debate. We also need to look at how our Lord treated those who, for whatever reason, had fallen short of the blueprint. We need to consider how he treated people in concrete situations.
For example, there was the woman at the well. She had been married five times, and the man she was currently with was not her husband! And what did Jesus do?
He didn’t condone her situation, but neither did he condemn her. Instead, he offered her living water welling up to eternal life. He offered her a new life in him that would continue forever. He showed her mercy.
When he wasn’t debating Pharisees, Jesus went around the villages and towns healing those who were broken. He went around showing compassion towards those who were suffering from situations beyond their control. He went around forgiving those who had sinned. When it came to concrete situations, Jesus never stopped speaking the truth, but he also never failed to show mercy.
As Christians, we live at this intersection of truth and mercy. If we are going to call ourselves followers of Jesus, we need to keep these two in tension. There are truths given to us from the lips of our Lord that we cannot deny, but they must always be lived out with mercy towards those who don’t understand God’s truth or have fallen short of it. This balance isn’t always easy to find. Sometimes it is hard to know how this takes shape in the various concrete situations that we encounter in life. Fidelity to the truth will draw hard lines in the sand at times, but for followers of Jesus, it must always be done with mercy. It must be done with mercy because our Lord Jesus has had mercy on us.
You see, the truth is, we all have sklerocardia. No matter how successful one may be at marriage, we all have the same spiritual condition. We all have hardened hearts – they are just hardened in different ways, with different symptoms.
We all fall short of the blueprints in one way or another. This is not an excuse to throw them out, but it is a humbling reminder that every one of us, regardless of marital history or marital status, are equally dependent on God’s mercy, which he abundantly provides to all of us through his dear Son.
Marriage is a precious and holy thing. It is not merely a socially constructed human invention. It has been established by the God who created us. As such it is to be celebrated and cherished and guarded and honored. It is to be protected as fiercely as our Lord Jesus sought to protect it.
But as important as it is, there is only one marriage which saves us – and that is the marriage between Christ and his bride, the church. This bride, the church, is made up of people who are married or single, divorced or remarried, widows and widowers. This bride, the church, is made up of people who are sometimes confused or have fallen short in any number of ways. It is made up of people who have been joined to Christ through his mercy.
As Christ’s beloved bride, together our hearts are being healed by a merciful Lord who has joined himself to us forever, a merciful Lord who has promised to never leave nor forsake us, a merciful Lord who loves all of us and will never let us go.
Thanks be to God. Amen.
Rev. Jeffrey R. Spencer
Oak Harbor Lutheran Church
by Jeffrey Spencer | Oct 1, 2024 | Sermons
CLICK HERE for a worship video for September 29
Sermon for the Nineteenth Sunday after Pentecost – September 29, 2024
Mark 9:38-50
Dear friends, grace to you and peace from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ.
Did Jesus just describe a mafia-style hit job in our gospel reading for today? You heard that too, right? Having a millstone tied around your neck and being thrown into the sea sounds an awful lot like wearing a pair of concrete shoes and going for a swim in New York harbor or wearing a “Chicago overcoat” and being tossed into the river!
And did Jesus really just say that if your hand or foot causes you to stumble you should cut them off, and if your eye causes you to stumble you should tear it out? Did Jesus really just suggest self-mutilation as a means of managing sin in our lives?
Yep, he said both of these things – and this isn’t just an isolated incident. Jesus talks like this on other occasions too.
Jesus, of course, is using hyperbole. He is using extreme language and imagery to make a point. The great Catholic writer Flannery O’Connor, who herself was known to use grotesque imagery in her stories, once said, “To the hard of hearing, you shout, and, for the almost blind, you draw large and startling figures.” This is what Jesus is doing here. He shouts because he knows we have selective hearing. We tend to shut our ears to the things he says that we don’t like. Jesus draws large and startling figures here to grab our attention, to keep us from looking away.
So, just to be clear, Jesus doesn’t literally want anyone to be thrown into the sea with a great millstone around their neck. Neither does he literally wish for anyone to start hacking off limbs or gouging out eyes.
However, if your reaction to hearing that this is hyperbole is to wipe your brow and say, “Whew, that’s good!” then you have utterly missed the point! If your response to hearing that these are metaphors and not to be taken literally is to relax and brush it all off, you are still shutting your ears to what he is trying to say to you! You are still averting your eyes from the urgent truth he is trying to show you! The language is extreme because what he is saying is so terribly important! Jesus may not be speaking literally, but he is deadly serious – and so let’s not relax too quickly here. Jesus shouts and draws large and startling figures for a reason. He speaks this way because sin is serious business. Stumbling can have deadly consequences, for us and for others.
The first concern Jesus expresses is for others. Jesus warns his disciples to not put a stumbling block in front the little ones who believe in him. These little ones include the young children Jesus had just pointed to as the ones they are to welcome and serve. These little ones can also be understood to be new Christians, new followers of Jesus who are still growing in their faith. These little ones can also be understood to be the allies across the street who are casting out demons in Jesus’ name, the new-to-them followers of Jesus who are outside of their circle.
Our behavior towards these others matters. Our attitudes and our words and our actions can become obstacles that get in the way of their walk with Jesus. They can become stumbling blocks that trip people up, that prevent these little ones from drawing closer to Christ.
Corruption and abuse in the church are obvious examples of this. There are the grievous public sins and scandals that turn people away from Christianity. But there are also plenty of other stumbling blocks which are more subtle and insidious. There are the ways Christians, both individually and as congregations, can become territorial or elitist or insular or self-righteous, or ethnocentric or politically partisan, or rude, or cold, or unwelcoming. These too can cause people to stub their toe on their way to Christ, and woe to those who are that stumbling block, Jesus says.
Jesus is also concerned about the stumbling of the disciples themselves. He is not only concerned about them putting stumbling blocks in front of others, but also about them tripping over their own two feet! He is concerned about them doing a faceplant due to their own sin! And so, in the strongest terms possible, Jesus tells them that when sin starts to trip them up, to cut it out! When those temptations and triggers begin to lead them astray, get rid of them! They are to cut them out of their lives! “If your hand causes you to stumble, cut it off!” “If your foot causes you to stumble, cut it off!” “If your eye causes you to stumble, tear it out!”
The Christian life is a life of spiritual warfare. It is a battle against temptations. It is a struggle against the forces of the world, the devil, and our sinful flesh, which are always trying to trip us up. I was reading an unrelated book this past week and came across a quote from Martin Luther that I’d never seen before which summarizes this struggle nicely. In one of his Table Talk conversations Luther said, “Sin in a man is like his beard, which, though shaved off today so that a man is very smooth around his mouth, yet grows again by tomorrow morning…Just so sin remains in us and bestirs itself as long as we live, but we must resist it and always cut off its hair.”
This gospel reading, as hard as it is to hear, is much-needed reminder of this call to resist sin in our lives, to cut it out and cut it off. It is a much-needed corrective to the all too casual and comfortable mindset of too many Christians who seem to believe that what they do doesn’t really matter. It is a much-needed antidote to what Lutheran pastor Deitrich Bonhoeffer called “cheap grace.” In his book The Cost of Discipleship, Bonhoeffer warns that cheap grace is the mortal enemy of the church. He describes cheap grace as “preaching forgiveness without repentance; it is baptism without the discipline of community…Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without the living, incarnate Jesus Christ.”
Both Luther and Bonhoeffer are describing the pattern of Christian life which St. Paul articulates so succinctly in Galatians 5, where he calls us to “crucify the flesh with its passions and desires.”
This might sound harsh and demanding and deadly serious – because it is! But it all comes from a place of love. Jesus calls us to cut it out and cut it off because he loves us. He does indeed shout and use startling figures of speech, but he explicitly says that the reason behind it all is so that you may enter into life.
Imagine you go to a doctor who examines you and discovers that you have skin cancer, or a diabetic ulcer on your foot, or hand infected with gangrene. Now imagine the doctor saying, “Ah, just leave it. Who cares?” That doctor does not have your best interests in mind. That doctor does not care about you. That doctor does not care about your life.
Jesus is not that kind of doctor. Jesus loves us enough to say, “this needs to be amputated, stat.” Jesus loves us enough to say, “cut it out, cut it off.” Jesus tells us what we need to hear in order to enter life, in order to enter into a life with him that begins now and continues forever.
This gospel reading, of course, is only one snippet of the larger narrative of Mark’s gospel. It is important, to be sure, but it is not the whole story. We dare not dismiss it or brush it off, but we also need to set it into its larger context.
You see, as the story unfolds, there is a major plot twist. The same Jesus who warned about millstones being hung around one’s neck willingly let himself be hung from a cross. The same Jesus who talked about severed hands and severed feet let his own hands and feet be pierced with nails. The same Jesus who warned about the deadly consequences of sin himself endured death. Every consequence Jesus describes in our reading for today he ended up taking upon himself.
And so, you see, in the end, Jesus doesn’t leave it up to you to secure your salvation through self-amputation. In order to ensure your place with him, he has sacrificed himself. In order to ensure that you would enter into life with him, he himself has endured the consequences of our sin for us.
There is still a daily struggle to be had as we seek to avoid stumbling and causing others to stumble. There is still a spiritual battle to be waged as we continue to resist sin, cutting it off as it keeps growing back day after day. We continue to be called to engage in spiritual warfare as we battle the world, the devil, and our sinful selves, striving to crucify the flesh with its passions and desires.
But we take up this daily battle in the good confidence that the war has ultimately already been won by our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, who wore a millstone around his own neck so that we would enter into life with him, today and forever.
Thanks be to God. Amen.
Rev. Jeffrey R. Spencer
Oak Harbor Lutheran Church
by Jeffrey Spencer | Sep 17, 2024 | Sermons
CLICK HERE for a worship video for September 15
Sermon for the Seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost – September 15, 2024
Mark 8:27-38
Dear friends, grace to you and peace from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ.
“Who do you say that I am?” Jesus asked the disciples. And after Peter correctly identified Jesus as the Messiah, as the promised Savior, Jesus sat them all down and began to teach them what that meant. He taught them what kind of Messiah he would be. He taught them how he would save. Jesus told them that he would undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again.
To put it lightly, this was not at all what Peter had in mind! We don’t know what exactly Peter expected Jesus to do as the Messiah, but it certainly didn’t involve him undergoing great suffering! This was the furthest thing from Peter’s mind. A suffering and dying Messiah wasn’t on his radar at all! And so Peter took Jesus aside and rebuked him. In Matthew’s account of this incident he tells us that Peter said, “No, Jesus! This must never happen to you!”
To be sure, it was a gutsy move to dare to take Jesus aside and rebuke him – but to be fair to Peter, this was a very human response. Peter was having a very human reaction to suffering, which is, naturally, to avoid it at all costs! Peter was thinking in human terms, which are bent towards self-preservation, towards self-fulfillment, towards self-serving ends. But therein lies the problem: Peter was setting his mind on human things, not divine things. This is exactly what Jesus says to Peter as he rebukes him right back: “Get behind me, Satan! For you are setting your mind not on divine things, but on human things.”
The divine thing that Peter didn’t yet get was that it would be through suffering that Jesus would accomplish his saving work as the Messiah. The divine thing Peter didn’t yet understand was that Jesus would suffer and die on the cross for the sins of the world, and then rise again on the third day.
And Jesus wouldn’t be the only one who would bear a cross. His followers would too! “If any want to become my followers,” Jesus continued, “let them deny themselves and take up their crosses and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it.”
This all sounds very gloomy on the surface, very negative. Troubling, even. It seems that way from a human point of view. But Jesus is describing divine things. He is describing divine love. As St. Paul writes in Romans 5:8, “God proves his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” As Jesus says in John 15: “There is no greater love than this – to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.” This suffering and dying Messiah would do his saving work through divine, sacrificial love.
Jesus first describes the divine act of saving love which he is about to accomplish on the cross, and then he describes how this will impact the lives of his disciples. As his followers are swept up in the sacrificial love of the cross, they will begin to follow him by taking up crosses of their own. They will begin to willingly deny themselves for the sake of others. They will begin to willingly endure suffering as a response to the saving love they have received in Christ. They will begin to lose their old self-centered life and live into something new through him. This might not be easy, but it sure isn’t gloomy! This is what it means to live a redeemed life rooted in divine love. This is what it means to live the new life God provides through the power and promise of the resurrection.
On our wedding day I gave my wife a gold crucifix necklace. A crucifix, of course, is a cross with the body of Jesus still on it. After all our wedding festivities were over and it was just the two of us, I gave it to her. She unwrapped it. She opened the velvety jewelry box and took it out. She held it up, the suffering body of Jesus dangling from the chain. As we both looked at it, I pointed to it and said to her: “That is what it’s going to be like to be married to me.”
Just kidding. That’s been the joke ever since, but that’s not what I said. To be honest, neither of us remember exactly what I said, but we both agree on what it meant to us, and what means to us now. That crucifix represents to both of us that our marriage is rooted in and shaped by the sacrificial love of Christ. And this being the case, there is a little kernel of truth in the joke!
It is blessedly rare, but sometimes we suffer because of each other. I’m not talking about anything major. I’m talking about those inevitable disagreements and misunderstandings and kerfuffles that come up. A professor of mine once colorfully said of marriage that when you put two sinners belly to belly for a lifetime there is bound to be trouble once in a while. It is unavoidable!
Sometimes we suffer not because of each other, but with each other. My wife and I have both had a difficult few weeks emotionally as we’ve adjusted to having an empty nest. Don’t get me wrong, isn’t all bad – but it has stirred up more grief in us than we were expecting. There is a tremendous sense of loss as we come to terms with the reality that a truly wonderful time in our lives, a time we both enjoyed very much, has come to a close. This is something we’ve suffered through together.
And then there have been the times when one of us has entered into the suffering of the other. There are those times when one of us has been there for the other when one of us has had a bad day or when there has been a sickness or a medical worry or a traumatic event impacting one of us more than the other. We have shared in the suffering of the other as we’ve walked through it together, offering our encouragement and our support along the way.
There is a lot of joy in our marriage, a lot of laughter, a lot of fun, but love really shows itself in an especially profound way in these times of suffering. I’m not holding us up as the ideal couple or saying we have this all figured out. We aren’t, and we don’t! But having the sacrificial love of the cross at the center of our relationship, being steeped in the sacrificial love of Christ delivered through Word and Sacrament, has shaped us in ways that make us more willing to bear crosses for and with each other.
This is what Jesus is describing in our gospel reading. This is what he is teaching the disciples, and us – and it applies to all Christians, and to all of Christian life!
Today Jesus teaches us that the Messiah came to undergo great suffering. Jesus suffered because of us. It is our sins that put him on the cross. Jesus suffers with us, weeping with us when we weep, bearing the pain of the world with us. Jesus comes alongside us in our suffering to encourage and support us, assuring us that we are not alone and that our suffering will not have the last word.
And through his sacrificial love for us, he changes our hearts and minds, turning them away from human things and towards divine things. We are always works in progress. This won’t be completed until the day of resurrection. But even now our Lord Jesus pours his divine love out for us in such a way that we begin to deny ourselves, we begin to take up our own crosses, we begin to loosen our grip on our self-centered lives and start to live more and more for others – not only for our loved ones, not only for our families, but also for our brothers and sisters in Christ next to us here at church, for our neighbors, for those around us in need, even, Jesus would tell us, for those we consider our enemies. We are sacrificially loved and so we sacrificially love!
Dear friends, there is a deeper joy and a richer life to be found when Christ is at the center instead of you. Jesus has come to free you from your bondage to sin and self. The Messiah has come to suffer and die and rise again in order to prove his great love for you. There is no greater love than this, and he gives it to you!
Carry this divine, sacrificial love around your neck. Carry it in your heart. Put it at the center of your life instead of yourself. Hold fast to it through all suffering.
Let Christ fill you with this divine, sacrificial love of the cross today, and then watch as it begins to flow through you as you take up your own cross and begin to love others like Jesus loves you.
Thanks be to God. Amen.
Rev. Jeffrey R. Spencer
Oak Harbor Lutheran Church
by Jeffrey Spencer | Sep 10, 2024 | Sermons
CLICK HERE for a worship video for September 8
Sermon for the Sixteenth Sunday after Pentecost – September 8, 2024
Mark 7:24-37
Dear friends, grace to you and peace from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ.
This morning we find Jesus leaving his familiar environment in Galilee and traveling into the region of Tyre. Jesus was no longer among his fellow Jews. Now he was in Gentile territory. He wasn’t in Tyre too long before he was approached by a Syrophoenician woman. It was extremely unusual for a Gentile woman to approach a Jewish man, but this woman was desperate. This was a mother whose little girl was suffering, plagued by an unclean spirit. The precise nature of her daughter’s problem is unclear, but she was battling some kind of demon. She was in the power of something terrible, something not of God. This desperate mother came and fell at Jesus’ feet. She begged Jesus to help her. She had heard stories about the things Jesus had done, the healings he had performed, the demons he had cast out. She had nowhere else to turn, and so, although she was a Gentile and a woman, she turned to Jesus for help.
And Jesus, at least at first, said…no. In fact, Jesus didn’t just say no, he 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.” Preachers have been trying to do damage control ever since!
Scholars have long tried to make sense of Jesus’ words here, and especially struggle to do so today in our hypersensitive, just-waiting-to-be-offended age. Some have suggested Jesus was testing her. Some say he was testing the disciples. Some say he had a sparkle in his eye when he said it and was only joking. Some say he was tired, and this illustrates his humanity. Some have said Jesus was just using the common language of his time and culture. Others have said he was only following God’s timeline, which was Jews first, Gentiles later. Some point out that he uses the term for little dog, or pet, instead of the term for a street dog, so it isn’t as mean as it sounds. The newest one I’ve heard is that Jesus was racist and that this is God the Father putting him through diversity training. This last one, of course, is theological illiteracy – not to mention blasphemy.
Some of those explanations are better than others, but I like Martin Luther’s explanation the best. Luther doesn’t try to apologize for Jesus. He leaves the offense there, but looks beyond it to where it ultimately led. Luther acknowledges that Jesus appeared to be rude to her, but he said there was a purpose in it. He argues that Jesus was talking this way in order to provoke faith in her. Luther argues that Jesus was stirring up faith in her like a hunter flushes a pheasant out of the bushes.
And boy did Jesus ever flush out her faith! This Gentile woman responds with one of the most powerful and bold demonstrations of faith in all of scripture! This woman doesn’t get offended, and she won’t be deterred. She doesn’t deny the position that she is in. She doesn’t deny that as a Gentile she has no right to demand anything of Jesus. She doesn’t try to argue that she deserves anything from him. Instead, she holds Jesus to his own words, trusting that even the smallest bit from him will be enough. “Sir,” she says, “even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs.”
You’ve heard of mustard seed faith – well this is table crumb faith! She trusts Jesus in spite of what seems like his initial cold shoulder. She trusts him in spite of his appearance of rudeness, in spite of his initial “no.” She trusts that Jesus will come through for her. She won’t let go of that hope so easily! This woman has faith in Christ, and it is on full display! Jesus recognizes this. This is what he was provoking in her. And so he said to her: “For saying that you may go – the demon has left your daughter.” She went home and found her daughter lying in her bed, and the demon gone.
There is a particularly desperate kind of anguish that parents feel for their children when they are suffering, but even if you’re not a parent or have never been in that kind of situation with your kids, probably all of us have had times when God seems to be ignoring us, when Jesus seems to be brushing us off. There are times when all of us feel like God is blessing others while treating us like the dog under the table. There are times when God seems to be ignoring our prayers or saying no to them.
I talk to people all the time who have much in common with the Syrophoenician woman. I talk to people who come to me with tears in their eyes because their child has a demon of unbelief, or the demon of addiction, or a demon of depression or anxiety. I talk to people who have loved ones who are suffering, who are facing serious health problems. I know there are people in this sanctuary right now who have been begging Jesus for healing of bodies and minds and relationships, begging Jesus that things could be different, and so far all they’ve gotten from him for an answer seems to be a cruel-sounding “no.”
The Syrophoenician woman is the patron saint of all who have ever experienced what seems to be God’s cold shoulder. She is the patron saint of all Gentiles, all who acknowledge that they don’t have a birthright or a special claim to God’s attention. She is the patron saint of all who have wondered if they haven’t somehow ended up in the doghouse with God.
And this Syrophoenician woman doesn’t just echo the desperation of what seem to be our unanswered prayers. She also shows us what Christian faith looks like. “Sir,” she says, “even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs.” This is more than a witty comeback; it is a beautiful confession of faith. Christian faith understands that we have no right to demand anything from Jesus. It understands that we don’t deserve anything from him. But at the same time, Christian faith boldly holds on to hope. Christian faith trusts that even table crumbs from him are enough! Christian faith boldly holds Jesus to his Word. Christian faith trusts in the goodness and mercy of Christ even when it cannot be immediately seen.
We’ve probably all known someone who is a little gruff or abrasive in their personality, but when you get to know them, you see that they have a heart of gold. My grandfather was like that. He was often distant and prickly. He used to call all his grandkids “dummkoph,” which is German for “blockhead.” (And that is a generous translation.)
But all of us grandkids knew that underneath that sometimes gruff exterior there was a loving heart, and so in spite of the often-perceived aloofness and the snarling, we all loved to spend time with him. We knew that behind the snarl there was a tenderness, a great generosity, a playfulness and a deep affection. We called it out of him by pulling on his arm and demanding his attention. Then he would come down to our level and show us his softened heart. Then he would lift us up into his lap and hold us in his loving arms. You could say that our trust in him, our faith in him, revealed his true self to us. It revealed what was ultimately his loving heart.
The Syrophoenician woman verbally yanked on Jesus’ arm, and her confession of faith continues to be heard throughout the world to this day. This insistent faith ultimately revealed Jesus’ true self. It revealed his goodness and his mercy.
This was Jesus’ purpose all along. This is who he always was, despite initial impressions. Jesus was flushing out her faith. He was provoking her to trust him in spite of appearances, and as she did, it ultimately revealed Jesus’ true self. It revealed his loving heart.
This story provokes us to faith too. It invites us to look beyond what sometimes seems to be God’s cold shoulder. It invites us to trust Jesus beyond the “no” which sometimes seems to be the answer to our prayers. It invites us to believe in his goodness and mercy, even when we cannot immediately see it.
Like the Syrophoenician woman, we sometimes find ourselves desperate for help from God. We too contend with demons – in our own lives and in the lives of the people we love. We too fall to our knees, pleading for help, help that sometimes seems slow in coming.
But like the Syrophoenician woman, as we tug on Jesus’ arm, he shows us his true self. As we hold him to his Word, as we trust in him, he shows us his true heart.
We see this true heart in scripture. We see it in where this story ultimately ends up, as Jesus ultimately casts the demon out of the Syrophoenician woman’s daughter, making her well.
We see this true heart most clearly on the cross, where Jesus experienced everything that we do: the cup of suffering that isn’t removed from us, the sense of forsakenness, the seeming silence of God. Jesus suffered all of that himself so that we would know that we are never alone, that we are never forsaken, that we are never without hope. In his great love for us he died and rose again to show us God’s true heart towards us.
We see Jesus’ true heart at his table, where he gives us so much more than mere crumbs. He gives us Himself. He gives us his own Body and Blood. He gives us the full meal deal of forgiveness, life, and salvation.
I can’t fully explain why Jesus says the things he does to the Syrophoenician woman.
Nor can I tell you why he sometimes seems to be reluctant to answer your prayers more quickly.
But I can tell you that Jesus has ultimately shown us his true heart.
He is showing it to us again today through Word and Sacrament, so that no matter who you are or what your situation is, you would know that his heart is full of goodness and mercy and love and compassion for you.
Thanks be to God. Amen.
Rev. Jeffrey R. Spencer
Oak Harbor Lutheran Church
by Jeffrey Spencer | Sep 2, 2024 | Sermons
CLICK HERE for a worship video for September 1
Sermon for the Fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost – September 1, 2024
James 1:17-27, Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23
Dear friends, grace to you and peace from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ.
As we come to September and get closer to autumn, you can bet that cold and flu season is just around the corner. In fact, we’re getting reports from our kids that on college campuses it is already well underway. One of our sons and our niece have both started off the school year at Washington State University with nasty bugs.
There are some preventative measures you can take to avoid getting sick. You can take vitamin C. You can get a flu shot, which sometimes kind of helps. You can avoid sick people, being especially careful to not use their fork or their toothbrush, which you probably shouldn’t do anyway. And, of course, you should wash your hands – frequently and thoroughly. These are all good preventative measures to avoid catching something.
The Pharisees in our gospel reading for today practiced some preventative measures of their own. But they weren’t worried about catching a cold or the flu. The Pharisees weren’t concerned about becoming physically sick. Instead, they were concerned about becoming spiritually sick.
The Pharisees, along with most devout Jews, established a whole set of religious practices they put in place to preserve their spiritual health. They developed a whole set of rules above and beyond God’s commandments which they thought would help them avoid getting spiritually sick. They were to keep themselves separate from others who had questionable moral or spiritual health. They wouldn’t eat anything from the market unless it was ritually washed and dedicated to God. The utensils and pots and pans they used were similarly “purified” through ritual washing. And, of course, they washed their hands. This wasn’t to get rid of germs – they didn’t even know about germs! This was about ritual purity, not hygiene. All of this was in place to keep them from becoming spiritually sick. These practices had become well-established and widely practiced among the Jewish people as a sort of preventative measure against the sickness of sin.
So imagine their shock when they saw some of Jesus’ disciples digging into their meal without going through these proper rituals first! This was the spiritual equivalent of having someone sneeze on your plate or cough in your face! The Pharisees approached Jesus about this. They asked him: “Why do your disciples not live according to the tradition of the elders, but eat with defiled hands?” How could they be so careless? They wanted an explanation.
Jesus never does directly answer their question. Instead of explaining why his disciples don’t do the ritual hand washing, he instead uses their question as an opportunity to challenge their assumptions about spiritual health.
First, Jesus points out that these Pharisees aren’t as spiritually healthy as they think they are! “You abandon the commandment of God and hold to human tradition!” Jesus says, turning the tables on them. A few verses from this section are dropped, so we don’t hear the exact charge in our reading for today, but in the omitted verses Jesus accuses them of breaking the fourth commandment. He accuses them of using some of the traditions of the elders as a religious loophole to avoid taking care of their parents, violating the commandment to honor your father and mother. These Pharisees are bragging about being as healthy as a horse and pointing a disgusted finger at others while they have chicken pox all over their faces! And so Jesus rightly calls them hypocrites.
Jesus then goes on to challenge their assumptions even more. You see, these Pharisees seem to believe that sin is something you catch from others. They seem to think that you get it by being around others who have it. But Jesus tells them that it’s more complicated than that. “There is nothing outside a person that by going in can defile,” Jesus says. Sin isn’t something you catch! It isn’t something floating around outside of you that you breathe in. Instead, it already resides in every human heart. “It is from within,” Jesus says, “from the human heart, that evil intentions come: fornication, theft, murder, adultery, avarice, wickedness, deceit, licentiousness, envy, slander, pride, folly. All these evil things come from within, and they are what defile a person.”
These Pharisees were always on the lookout for ways they might be spiritually infected by others. They pointed at Jesus’ disciples as being contagious, and all the while that bug was already there within their own hearts. They thought sin was a virus, but Jesus teaches them that it is genetic.
What does this mean for us?
Sometimes we do need to be careful about the air we breathe. Sometimes as Christians we do need to separate ourselves from certain people or situations or environments. Just as addicts often need a whole new friend group in order to stay clean and sober, sinners need to be careful about the company we keep and the circles we move in and the media we consume so as not to make our spiritual sickness worse. There are things we do need to stay away from, things we need to avoid, things we need to wash our hands of completely so as not to exacerbate our symptoms. We are called again and again in scripture – even in the New Testament – to be holy, to be godly, to be careful about how we live. Our second reading for today concludes with a call to keep ourselves “unstained by the world.”
But at the same time, we need to remember that sin and evil aren’t just “out there.” They aren’t just floating around outside of us. It isn’t only found in other people, those people we avoid, those people we judge. It’s already right here in our hearts.
As the great Soviet dissident and writer Aleksander Solzhenitsyn once wrote, “The line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties – but right through every human heart.” This sounds to me a lot like what Jesus said to the Pharisees, and what he’s saying to us today. There are things we can and should do to limit our exposure to that which would lead us astray, to be sure. But we cannot escape what is already in our hearts.
So what are we to do? What do we do with these hearts of ours that Jesus says are already infected with sin and evil? What are we to do with this gospel reading?
I’m privy to a lot of medical situations people endure. People often come to me with prayer requests when they are undergoing medical testing or struggling with frustrating symptoms. There often comes a point when they finally get a correct diagnosis. And when that correct diagnosis comes, even if it isn’t great, there is usually a great sense of relief. “At least now we know,” people say. I know a kid who wasn’t gaining weight like he should. He had tummy troubles and potty issues. He went years with these symptoms before finally getting correctly diagnosed with Celiac disease. This isn’t fun to have, but it was also a relief to know what the real problem was. “At least now we know,” his mother said. Once you know what the problem is, you can start thinking about what is going to make you better. Getting a correct diagnosis was the first step in getting his life back.
Our gospel reading is notably deficient in actual gospel – that is, there is nothing that is explicitly and obviously good news in it. But the beginning of the good news is there in the accurate diagnosis of our spiritual sickness. Spiritually speaking, we all have a genetic heart condition. This isn’t the gospel, but it is the beginning of the good news, because now at least we know! Now we know what we’re dealing with. Now we know the truth about ourselves. Now we know the real problem.
Now we know that our problem is more than skin deep, and so we need something more than hand sanitizer or a topical lotion. Now we know that our illness is more than viral, and so we know that all the preventative measures in the world will not ultimately save us. Now we know the full truth about our condition, and so now we are in a position to receive the only thing that can make us well.
Why could the disciples eat with unwashed hands? Because they were eating with Jesus, whose grace meant that they were already clean. Why didn’t they need those spiritual preventative measures? Because they were with Jesus, who had come to make them well through his saving love.
This same Jesus comes to us today. He makes us clean by his word of forgiveness, where he sanitizes us anew by his grace. He comes in the cleansing Word and water which are poured over a new brother in Christ today who is receiving the sacrament of Holy Baptism. Jesus comes to us in his Holy Supper to give us a blood transfusion as we literally receive him – in, with, and under the bread and wine – that he would literally enter into the veins that lead directly to our hearts.
Today, through Word and Sacrament, our Lord Jesus is creating new hearts in us. By his presence here with us today, we are made clean. By the grace he pours out for us, we are made well. He is the cure for our sin-sick hearts, and as we receive him today, we get our lives back – today and forever.
Thanks be to God. Amen.
Rev. Jeffrey R. Spencer
Oak Harbor Lutheran Church
