'Keeping on' for what's right...

Today’s gospel reading (Mark 7:24-37) gives us the account of a persistent woman begging Jesus to heal her daughter. We are told that the daughter had an unclean spirit, perhaps today we may recognise it as something like epilepsy, but whatever it was it was damaging her life.

And so the mother approached Jesus who initially seemed to reject her. But she persisted and eventually her daughter was healed. And so in a way this just goes down as another miracle of Jesus, but actually there is a little more to this account as well.

The first thing to look at was the attitude of the mother. This was a very pushy woman - perhaps the sort of ardent feminist found on a bus one day. When she was getting on a man just in front of her got up from his seat. She thought to herself, "Here's another man trying to keep up the customs of a patriarchal society by offering a poor, defenceless woman his seat," and so she pushed him back onto the seat.
A few minutes later, the man tried to get up again. She was insulted again and refused to let him get up.
Finally, the man said, "Look, lady, you've got to let me get up. I'm two miles past my stop already."

But being serious this mother had a valid mission and she wouldn’t let anything distract her. She approached Jesus knowing that the Jews didn’t like her people at all. She approached him with the knowledge that she could well be rejected, but her love for her daughter was obviously enough to persuade her to give this a try and she wasn’t giving in easily.

And secondly we look at the response of Jesus. He dismissed her, some have said as a joke, but others have suggested that he was just rude to her. One thing that is clear is that it really doesn’t seem like a normal response from him. When we think of Jesus we think of love and compassion and care, and time for people in need.

So what was really going on ? The reasons for the actions of the mother are very clear. She believed that her daughter needed the sort of help that only Jesus could give. Maybe she had tried everything else, and recognised that it was he alone who could help. But what was Jesus doing ?

There are a number of clues in the reading. First we are told that he was in Tyre in a house and he didn’t want anyone to know he was there. He had clearly gone for a well earned and probably much needed break from his ministry. I’m sure many of you will know what it feels like to have a holiday interrupted by work or people connected to your work. However nice the people may be, sometimes you just need a break. And I think it’s encouraging to know that even Jesus felt the same.

But secondly it was a custom that women didn’t speak to men in public, and whilst Jesus broke with many customs and traditions there were times when it would have been sensible for him to stay in line for the good of his future ministry. This woman was forcing him to break that custom. More than that she wasn’t even a Jew – she was a Gentile – people who were often looked down on by Jews.

So Jesus had reasonable grounds not to give her much attention. Others have suggested as a kind of apology for Jesus’ behaviour that he was actually only joking, winding the woman up before attending to her need as he’d always intended to.

But maybe this doesn’t matter too much anyway, because we won’t know the real answer. But what is really important is the faith and the determination of the mother, and ultimately the response of Jesus. The mother’s example of love is one for us all to admire. She wasn’t bothered what it cost her, as long as her daughter got the right help. Her example of self sacrifice has been followed by many people who have realised that they have found something important enough to fight for.

We think of the famous saying of Martin Luther King who said that unless you’ve found something worth dying for, then you’ve not found anything worth living for. As Christians we have a huge amount of work to do – things such as fighting injustice and poverty in the world, working within our own communities, spreading the gospel message through our own words and actions and so on…

The self sacrificing love of the mother in this account was wonderful but it was nothing compared to the love of Jesus as he died on the cross. That is the love we must respond to as individuals and as a Church.

And through the actions of this woman we are encouraged to be determined and persistent in all that we do in Jesus’ name. Many times as we seek to share the gospel we will be rejected, sometimes very clearly but sometimes just through indifference – but we must never abandon that need to follow the command of Jesus to go and share the gospel with all nations.

And perhaps there was just one more reason why Jesus responded to this woman in the end, and again it represents a lesson for us all. The last verse of the reading from the epistle of James that we heard (2:17) is one of the most controversial of the New Testament. He wrote, ‘So faith, by itself, if it has no works, is dead.’

You, like me, will probably have been taught that faith in Jesus is enough by itself to gain salvation. This verse from James seems to contradict this, but actually it doesn’t. The clue for why not lies in the word ‘dead’. James is not saying that a person who is not working for God is not a member of his kingdom – he is just making the point that a living faith will inevitably lead us to respond to the love of Jesus through our actions.

Those actions may involve anything – from the busiest Christian worker, to the elderly housebound person who prays regularly at home… Somebody once wrote that ‘I really only love God as much as I love the person I love the least…’ A living faith will mean a desire to serve God in everything that we do – as we make a cup of tea for a friend, as we offer a prayer for someone in need, as we talk to someone about our faith and hope in Jesus, as we work to relieve the pain and suffering of others, such as those refugees caught up in horrible situations that we see…

A living faith will help us to put aside irrelevant distractions and focus on God’s love for us and all people…

And maybe when Jesus responded to the woman he was acknowledging and perhaps reminding himself and us that he had to do what he promised and that was to love and show evidence of that love and compassion at all times, even those times when it was inconvenient and he just didn’t feel like it.

Jesus could not ignore her pleas for compassion and help because that would have been against his nature – and so we thank God for that love, for that compassion, concern and the power of healing, but today we also thank God for the woman who was persistent, and for people throughout the world of the past and of today who push for what is good and what is right, and who are prepared to kneel at the feet of Jesus and ask for the help that only he can give.

And we pray that we will be one of those people. AMEN