Seeing Others, Seeing Ourselves
Mark 7:24-37; James 2:1-17[1]
If you asked people
what the marks of genuine faith are, the vast majority would say something
about being kind to others. And that would be true the world over, regardless
of race or religion. It has been taught world-wide from the beginnings of human
religious devotion. Unfortunately, however much we may say that kindness and
compassion ought to define our lives, we’ve never quite been able to put that
into practice. From the beginning of time, we have drawn lines and built fences
to separate “Us” from “Them.” And we’ve done it because have always seen those who
are “Other” as a threat to our survival.
The practical truth,
however, is that our continued building of barriers and drawing of lines does
not enhance our safety. Rather, dividing the world into “Us” and “Them” poses
the greatest threat to human survival. We see it locally where communities are tearing
themselves apart over everything from public safety to the current health
crisis to schooling for our children. We see it globally in the changing
weather patterns that are putting people in harm’s way from fire and flooding,
from drought and superstorms. “Us” versus “Them” is not only not compassionate,
it also undermines the future of humanity, because we can only solve these
problems by working together!
With that in mind, we
may find it surprising that in our Gospel lesson for today Jesus appears to
endorse an “us versus them” mentality in his encounter with a woman who was a
“foreigner.” When she heard he was near, she went and begged him to help her
daughter. Begged! In response, Jesus said: “Let the children be fed first, for
it is not fair to take the children's food and throw it to the dogs” (Mk.
7:27). Not only does that sound unkind, it was also downright insulting. It sounds
like the typical Jewish mindset that only Jewish people qualified as the
“neighbors” God commanded them to love. Everyone else was a Gentile “dog.”
I find it hard to
believe that was who Jesus was. As we saw last week, Jesus made it clear being
accepted and loved by God is not about washing your hands “properly” or eating
the “right” foods. And Jesus also made it clear that how you treat people is
the measure for how well you honor God. With that in mind, I don’t think it’s a
coincidence that our Gospel lesson for today is about Jesus healing people who
would have been considered “unclean” simply because of where they were born.
Although it’s not obvious here, Jesus’ interactions elsewhere with all those
who would have been considered “Other” shows how wrong-headed it is to draw
lines that exclude certain people from God’s love.
I think we have to
understand Jesus’ strange comment in light of how he actually treated people
who were considered “dogs.” Perhaps he was testing the woman to see if she
truly had faith. If so, she passed with flying colors, because she called him
“Lord,” and she’s the only person in Mark’s gospel to do so! Perhaps he was
testing his disciples to find out whether they understood what it meant to love
their neighbors. If so, I’d have to say that, like everything else Jesus tried
to teach them, at this point they still didn’t get it. The bottom line is that
we can only read this strange comment rightly if we keep in mind that
everything Jesus did was about loving God and loving others, especially
“outsiders.”
While we all “know”
that this is what real faith looks like, our lesson from James may push us a
bit on whether we “walk the walk” or only “talk the talk.” I think James is
saying that just as we cannot love God without loving others, so we cannot
honor God if we dishonor others. And he challenged the churches of his day for
dishonoring those who were poor and not so “well-dressed” by being less than
“welcoming” when they came for worship. He says it bluntly: “If a brother or
sister is naked and lacks daily food, and one of you says to them, ‘Go in
peace; keep warm and eat your fill,’ and yet you do not supply their bodily
needs, what is the good of that?” (Jas 2:16).
It would seem that,
for James, the true test of our faith is how we love others. And for James,
loving your neighbor as yourself cannot be just something we talk about. If it
comes from a heart of genuine faith, it will have to move us toward action. So
the real question for us is whether we will go beyond talking and actually help
people in need. How we do that in practice will be different for all of us, but
I think it has to begin with compassion. And real compassion starts with seeing
“that every human face is the face of a neighbor.”[2] It
starts with seeing ourselves in the face of everyone we label “Other.”
If you read my
newsletter column this week, you know that we’re attempting to rise to a new
level of meeting that challenge as a church family. We are embarking on a
“listening exercise” by reading the stories of people whom we may be tempted to
view as “Other.” Our hope is that this will help us learn new ways to love our
neighbors, all our neighbors, by going beyond talking about it and doing
something to help. Where that begins is recognizing the God-given right “of
every person to be considered a person.”[3] It
begins with seeing ourselves when we see others.
[1] ©
2021 Alan Brehm. A sermon delivered by Rev. Alan Brehm, Ph. D. for Hickman Presbyterian
Church, Hickman, NE.
[2] Henri Nouwen, The Wounded Healer, 41.
[3] Paul
Tillich, Love, Power and Justice, 25,
36, 60. This is Tillich’s definition of justice, which he argues must flow from
love.
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