More Than Meets the
Eye: Proper 18, Year B
Proverbs 22:1-2, 8-9, 22-23; Isaiah
35:4-7a; Psalm 125; Psalm 146; James 2: 1-17; Mark 7:24-37
The Elves have apparently
decided not to waste time with Mark’s continuing (vain?) attempt to
illustrate who Jesus was and what he meant to Mark’s Christian
community. After the story of the healing of the Syro-Phoenician
woman’s child and the restoration of hearing and speech to the
deaf-mute, they skip the seemingly superfluous feeding of the four
thousand, and the demand by the devious Pharisees for “a sign” that
Jesus was who they were afraid he might be. The curious saying,
“watch out for the leaven of the Pharisees and the leaven of Herod!” is
never dealt with in any of the three years of the Common Lectionary,
even though it appears in all three synoptic gospels. The
scathing review by Mark’s Jesus of the feeding of the five thousand and
the four thousand would seem to be overkill. Mark 8:1-26. After two
thousand years, we are all well aware of how unbelievably stupid the
disciples were.
But why would Mark return again and again to the same complaint about
Jesus’s followers? Their continuing misunderstanding of the
meaning of Jesus’s healings, miraculous interventions, and exorcisms
seems to be deliberate. Mark himself reaches that conclusion in
6:52b: “They were being obstinate.” John Dominic Crossan suggests
that there is not much difference between the followers of Jesus in the
1st Century and the worshipers of Jesus in the 21st Century: “. .
. [W]e prefer to emphasize a miraculous multiplication [of loaves and fishes] which we
want but cannot obtain rather than a just distribution which we can
obtain but do not want.” John Dominic Crossan, First Light: Jesus and
the Kingdom of God (Living the Questions 2009 Participant
Guide, p. 24).
Perhaps Mark’s parables about Jesus reveal more about Jesus than does
orthodox “belief” in miracle and magic. There is certainly more
than will meet the eye (or fill the ears) of most 21st Century
church-goers whose pastors stick to the Revised Common
Lectionary for Proper 18.
The Syro-Phoenician woman may have been invented by Mark to represent
the “God-worshipers” in the Jewish diaspora who accepted that Jesus was
the Messiah. Mark continues his bread/food metaphor when Jesus
tells her that the children (presumably of Israel) must be fed first,
because it is not good to throw children’s food to the dogs. She
comes back with a retort that seems to put Jesus in his place:
“Even the dogs under the table get to eat the scraps dropped by the
children.” Jesus says, “You got it, lady!” This vignette
continues Mark’s metaphors about radical sharing as well as the radical
inclusiveness of the realm of God. The story further demonstrates
Mark ’s conviction that Jesus brought the realm of God to earth.
“The time is fulfilled,” Mark’s Jesus proclaims, “and the kingdom of
God has come near” (Mark 1:14). Mark’s point is that anyone can
experience liberation, whether they are Jews or Gentiles. Once
the radicality of the conditions that prevail in the kingdom of God is
realized – whether by encounters with Jesus himself, or by hearing the
stories Mark told – the demons of injustice and exclusiveness leave.
Mark follows this story with yet another healing. This time the
person is deaf and unable to speak. But Jesus opens his ears, and
he is then not only able to speak, he can’t stop telling the
story. Still, the followers are “dumbfounded” (Five Gospels
translation). It is a most appropriate word. The people
surrounding Jesus are speechless, focused on the magic word
(“ephphatha”) and the miraculous intervention. They are not much
better than the “Pharisees,” who look for some irrefutable sign in the
sky for proof. There will be no sign in the sky.
Next, Mark once more puts the followers with Jesus in a boat.
After the feeding of the 5,000, and then again 4,000, they are still
stumped. This time they have “forgotten” to bring any
bread. But maybe, as Mark has hinted before, they “forgot” on
purpose. After all, the last couple of times they had bread,
Jesus made them give it away. Jesus warns them to beware of the
“leaven” of the Pharisees and of Herod. It is wonderful
wordplay. There was no time to wait for the process of “yeast” or
“sourdough” to work when the Israelites were liberated from Egypt, so
“unleavened bread” became a sacramental meal. But the disciples
don’t realize that they themselves have just demonstrated the
corruption of the sacrament. Instead of experiencing liberation,
they have fallen deeper into bondage. They declined to bring
bread to share. They should not be surprised to discover that
there is indeed no bread.
Finally, Mark gives it one last shot before turning to the beginning of
the end of the journey to Jerusalem. Jesus takes a blind man
outside the village of Bethsaida. The first time he spits into
the man’s eyes and places his hands on him, the man can only see a
distortion. The second time, the man sees everything clearly –
just as Peter at last (next week) declares that “You are the Anointed!”
When the Elves cherry-pick Isaiah to accompany their redacted version
of Mark’s gospel, they contribute to the perpetuation of the failure to
get the point. Isaiah 35 is about the hope for return from exile
of the Israelite nation after the sacking of Jerusalem in the 6th
Century, b.c.e. The selected verses are not about Jesus as “your
God [who] will come with vengeance . . . and save you.” Just
because Isaiah sings that when the people return to Zion “the eyes of
the blind shall be opened and the ears of the deaf unstopped,” there is
no reason to assume that this refers to one Jesus of Nazareth, who
arrived on the scene five hundred years later. However, clearly
Mark was familiar with Isaiah – as were all of the writers of what
became the Christian New Testament. So while the particular
portion from Isaiah the Elves selected is not referenced by Mark, we
could probably speculate that the members of Mark’s community who
accepted Jesus as the Messiah may have expressed their conviction in
terms of a return from exile. The realization that God’s realm of
distributive justice-compassion has been restored would surely be
experienced as the opening of the eyes of the blind, the unstopping of
the ears of the deaf. Mark’s story is an account of the Way of
Jesus. Looking back at Isaiah 35 from the point of view of people
exiled from Jerusalem late in the 1st Century, c.e., and perhaps in
exile from their own Jewish traditions, the journey Mark’s Jesus takes
could certainly be understood to be “A highway. . . called the Holy
Way.” Unfortunately, the Elves left out that part (Isaiah 35:8-10).
In seeming contrast to Paul’s theology, the author of the letter of
James declares that “faith, by itself, if it has no works, is
dead.” But he is talking about works of charity, not obedience to
law. See, e.g., Galatians 2:16-21. Paul
writes that a person is deemed to be just, not according to whatever
works the law may require, but by trust in the life and teachings of
Jesus. Paul goes so far as to declare that “if righteousness
[justice-compassion] comes through the law, then Christ died for
nothing.” As graphically illustrated throughout the Old and New
Testaments, the best-laid plans of Empire from Joshua to David and
throughout human history have resulted in the worst excesses of unjust
systems. James actually agrees with Paul: “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?” This is the lesson about
justice-compassion that Jesus died trying to teach, Mark’s followers of
Jesus failed to learn, and the Elves bury in the string of aphorisms
plucked from Proverbs.
Psalm 146 calls us back to Covenant: “Happy are those whose help is the
God of Jacob, whose hope is in the Lord their God . . . who executes
justice for the oppressed; who gives food to the hungry . . . sets the
prisoners free . . . opens the eyes of the blind . . . upholds the
orphan and the widow, but the way of the wicked he brings to ruin.”
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