Meggan Manlove

Post Falls – Q’emiln Park

Worship service with Calvary, Post Falls; Trinity, Coeur d’Alene; Church of the Master, Coeur d’Alene

Mark 7: 24-37

Dear friends in Christ, grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

My default way into this story is reflecting on my parents’ own desperation when I developed a seizure disorder as a grade school kid. We were living in Western South Dakota, not exactly a hub for pediatric neurologists and in the 1980s so much less was known about the illness. My mom knew me well enough to know that the meds I was put on automatically turned me into a different person. She knew herself well enough that she could rebuff local community members who asked, “what are you going to do about your daughter?” 

Desperation can lead to heart ache and depression, but it can also open us up to possibilities and turn up the creative in us. My story has a happy ending because my parents kept searching for healing; also because we had some amazing resources and connections.

The woman in our gospel story falls at Jesus’ feet to petition a healing on behalf of her own daughter. The woman is Greek, a Syro-Phoenician—in other words, a gentile. One scholar names that her solicitation is an affront to the honor status of Jesus: no woman, and especially a gentile, unknown and unrelated to this Jew, would have dared invade his privacy at home to seek a favor. 

A rebuff by Jesus is understandable and expected. And he proceeds to defend the collective honor of the Jews: “Let the children be satisfied first, for it is not right that the children’s bread be thrown to the dogs.” 

It appears she recognizes — somehow — a certain abundance about the things Jesus is up to. Go ahead, children, eat all you want. But what if your table can’t contain all the food Jesus brings? Everyone in the room, including Jesus, recalls the leftovers when Jesus fed the great crowd.  The excess must therefore start spilling to the floor — even now.  Put plainly, she says “be who you are, Jesus.”

The woman also recognizes the potency of this “food.” She doesn’t demand to be treated as one of the “children.” Look, Mister, I’m not asking for a seat at the table. My daughter is suffering. All I need from you is a crumb or two. I know that will do the job. But I’m going to need it right now. Parents of really sick children don’t wait around.

The woman argues that dogs might at least be entitled to the crumbs. In the great twist, she seeks to defend the rights of her people to the liberating power of Jesus’ healing ministry. Given the social dynamics at play here, it is somewhat shocking that Jesus concedes her the debate. He heals her daughter, and not because of her faith but because of her talk, her faith-filled talk back. Jesus allows himself to be “shamed” in order to include this gentile woman in the new community of the kingdom.

Though not named in this story, I want to read between the lines here that the Holy Spirit is indeed active and present, working through the woman’s argument. The same Holy Spirit that was at Jesus’ baptism and who drove Jesus into the wilderness transformed the woman’s desperation into an interpretation of the Living Word, accelerating Jesus’ ministry to the gentiles. She embodies a living faith, or trust, in Jesus. She sees exactly who he is and trusts that in fact he can make her daughter whole.

Consider how suffering and desperation have shaped entire people’s interpretations of scripture. Enslaved African Americans saw their lives in the story of the Hebrew people in bondage in Egypt. They claimed the liberation in the story as their own. We take this interpretation for granted today, but it was surely the Holy Spirit embedding faith and trust in the triune God that helped them take a story from their slaveholders’ bibles and make it their own, giving them hope for freedom.

The Syrophoenician woman does something similar today. Her desperation for her daughter’s healing opens her imagination with the help of the Holy Spirit. Jesus heals not once, but twice, for he goes on to heal a deaf man with a speech impediment. He heals the man not just with words but with physical touch. 

I feel some desperation for healing today, and perhaps you do too. I want healing for individual members of our synod whose lives have been shaken. As wars carry on in Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, and other parts of the world, as the poorest of the poor in our world suffer in different corners of the globe, I cry out to God for healing. I cry out on daily walks, in my dreams, and with others in worship services like this one.  

I am grateful for the gift of faith, for trusting the triune God. I am grateful not because I think it makes me superior but because it’s how I keep living with glimpses of hope. And faith, or trust, lives in me only because it’s a gift from that same Holy Spirit. Part of what happens in worship is that my trust in God is renewed and nourished. And from worship we are sent out to love and heal and mend the world God created.

I love that today we will follow Jesus’ example of healing by assembling personal care kits for our neighbors, perhaps near and far. Across the Northwest Intermountain Synod and the entire ELCA people are helping mend the world with small acts of love for God’s Work. Our Hands. Sunday. It’s a good day to wonder who else needs healing nearby and far away? How might your tri-parish collaboration witness to the love and healing we know through Jesus Christ? What biblical story might inform your partnerships?

With so much hurting and brokenness in the world, including in Kootenei County, it is easy, even for those of us steeped in the Lutheran tradition, to think these acts of love will win us some favor with God. 

God’s Work. Our Hands. Sunday, like the entire church year and one’s entire life of faith, is grounded in worship, worship in which we are reminded that faith or trust is itself a gift of God, given and nurtured by the Holy Spirit. In this space, soon we will be fed with the bread of life, connecting us to the woman in our text and to so many characters in scripture.

After another healing, the healing of Jairus’ daughter, Jesus instructed those present to “give her something to eat.” In like fashion, Jesus instructs his disciples in the first feeding of the multitude to “give the crowd something to eat.” The woman argues for the crumbs from the table and her daughter is healed. For us, crumbs might be enough but instead Jesus sets an abundant and life-giving feast for us this day where we will receive the bread of life and the cup of salvation or healing and wholeness. We are sent forth to bringing healing and wholeness to the world only by the grace of God.