Sermon on Isaiah 35 and Mark 7. Proclaimed at Hope Lutheran Church, Bowers, PA.
I remember the moment that I knew I was going to get fired from my old job. Before I went to seminary, I worked as a systems administrator for a sizable corporation down in Reading. With about a dozen other people, I kept a number of large, mainframe computers in good working order, with lots of projects running at the same time to improve their performance. I was responsible for making sure we could recover from a disaster, and for cataloguing all of our data backups, and for getting the right data to our accounting departments without slowing the computer system down. Lots of weird, unrelated stuff. But the biggest project I was involved in had to do with system security.
Now, if you have done anything on the Internet these days, you know that companies take computer security very seriously. Recently, I put my name and password into a website, and was promptly informed that the company had changed its rules about passwords, and so I needed to change mine. The first one I tried didn’t fit one of the seven new rules. The second one worked, but then they wanted to verify that I was really a human being, so would I please type the words that I saw in this picture, which was kind of fuzzy so I wasn’t really sure what the words said, so I guessed incorrectly. When I finally made it through that stage, they sent a code to my cell phone to ensure that the real human being I’d just proved I was, was, in fact, me, and not some other human being. When all was said and done, and I’d provided my paternal grandmother’s third grade teacher’s best friend’s maiden name, and a blood sample for DNA testing, and the computer was sure I was who I said I was—I was informed that the company had changed it rules about passwords, and so I needed to change mine. All of this to see if something I’d ordered had shipped yet.
When it comes to important, proprietary data, then, things are indeed a little more secure. My job was to prepare to take two completely separate security systems and mash them together into one. It was a complex task, one that probably should have been given to someone with more experience than I, but it was mine and I was going to do it right. So I had a plan, and I was doing some testing to make sure it was going to work when we rolled out in a month. On the test system, I had the whole thing set up just like the real thing; you almost couldn’t tell the difference. My first step was to delete the old security list. So I typed in the command, and hit enter, and then noticed I was not in fact on the test system, but on the real thing. 1:00 in the afternoon, in the middle of a business day, I accidentally removed the entire corporation’s computer security system. Nobody could get in, and international business ground to a halt, and my entire life flashed in front of my face.
The first part of our Gospel reading today is a much stranger story than mine. Jesus goes to a far-away place, and he refuses to heal a woman’s daughter.
We’re told, at the beginning of the passage, that Jesus is near Tyre, and doesn’t want anyone to know he’s there. Tyre is a city on the Mediterranean coast, far to the northwest of Galilee, a place that was very powerful in its days, and considered one of the traditional enemies of Israel. Jesus has intentionally taken himself far away from his home, where no one will know him, and is trying to go incognito, to make sure nobody sees him, that he doesn’t run into someone from church while he’s at the grocery store and get caught in a long conversation he doesn’t know how to get out of. We like to think of Jesus as perfect, and pure, and holy, and I suppose it’s true that he’s all of these things, but just as much as Jesus is God, Jesus is also human. He’s been working hard, preaching and teaching and healing, and like any other human being, he is tired, and testy, and crabby, and achy, and he needs a vacation.
And the last thing anyone wants when they’re relaxing in the beach house looking over the waves and finally beginning to unwind is for someone to come in and say, “Hey there, I’ve heard you heal people, and I’ve got this daughter who is sick? I know you’re on vacation from working but I’d only like you to do a little work, so…” So Jesus turns to her, and says, “It is not fair to take the children’s food and give it to the dogs.” The children of Israel should get fed first, he says. Just leave me alone. You are a foreigner, a native of Tyre, the enemy of my people, and I will not heal your daughter.
Some say this is just Jesus’s way of teaching his disciples, but here in Mark’s version of the story, the disciples are nowhere to be found. Jesus and the woman are alone. It may make us uncomfortable, but it sounds an awful lot like the only one learning anything here is Jesus, when the woman insists that being a foreigner is not enough reason to withhold God’s grace and love from her.
Is it strange that God needs to be reminded about how much He loves us? God is love, so why the reminder to be who he already is? But Abraham reminds God to be merciful toward Sodom and Gomorrah in Genesis 18. And Moses reminds God to love the Israelites, even when they make golden idols, in Exodus 32. Amos pleads with God to forgive Israel in Amos 7. Mary sings God’s greatness when she becomes pregnant and learns that a sword will pierce her own soul. Paul calls out to God from prison. Again and again, humankind reminding God of who God is, of his grace, of his love, which has proved itself again and again, without exception—even on God’s own crabbiest day, abundant and unstoppable.
As my fingers flew over the keys, I shouted to M—, my boss, “I’ve made a big mistake and messed up the security system. Calls are going to start pouring in. I’m fixing it now, and I’ll explain once it’s back in working order.” And twenty minutes later, it was all over. I stood in her office, with another high-level coworker she’d brought in to hear, and I explained. And waited to find out how much time I had to clean out my desk.
She said: “Well, you fixed the problem quickly, not least because you were over-prepared in case of a problem. You didn’t try to hide it, but alerted everyone quickly. Mistakes happen. You handled this one well. Just be more careful next time.” And it was over. In my next review, I received a promotion—not because of this, of course, but it didn’t stand in my way. But the truth is, I should have known how things would work out. I knew her well enough by then, and the company as well, and I could have guessed the problem would have been handled with compassion and grace. Because that’s who M— was.
And if a cog—albeit one I like very much—in a corporate machine could offer such grace, certainly God’s must be greater. That is who God is, after all. If God needs a reminder of that once in a while, then it is no wonder we do too. God whispers to us, every moment of every day, “I love you, I forgive you, I’m taking care of you, because that’s who I am. So stop worrying, and start loving, because that’s who you are.” God opens our deafness and brightens our blindness. God pours forth rivers in the desert, and springs up pools of water in the thirsty land. That is who God is. And you? You are God’s child, baptized into Christ, loved into new life. That abundance, that flowing water of life, that is for you. You are freed to go and pour out that love and grace on the world around you. Because that is who you are. When you wander from that, remember who you are. And listen for God to tell you. And sing to God, our Radiant Light, of His great love. It’s worth the reminder.