“Whose Kin(g)dom?”
September 8, 2024
Rev. Rebecca Migliore
Okay, I want you to imagine that you are a dog. You have just jumped into the lake to retrieve a stick, and now you have brought it back to shore, to your owner. You drop the stick, and (do this with me) you shake off the water. Ahhh. Better. That’s how I feel as we switch gears again from the gospel of John to the gospel of Mark. I know Rose read Mark last week, but the last time I thought about preaching, I was surrounded by the hidden symbolism of John, and Jesus talking about being the bread of life.
So here we are, in the world of Mark. A world where we are being swept quickly, “immediately” Mark would say, towards the conclusion of the gospel, and the realization of something that we the reader have already been told—that this is about Jesus, the Son of God. Mark talks about secrets, and often has Jesus telling people not to talk about what has happened, but really…Did anyone think that was going to work? I mean, isn’t one way to have everyone know something is to say “shhh, don’t tell, it’s a secret!”
Jesus has appeared on the scene, been baptized, and driven into the wilderness to be tempted. He has called disciples and embarked on a ministry—starting first in Galilee and Capernaum, healing and expelling demons, teaching in parables and calming the seas, even restoring a little girl from the dead and feeding the five thousand with a few fish and several loaves of bread—all the while talking about the kin(g)dom of God.
Now he steps outside his home region, going to Tyre (a major port for the Phoenician empire—ie, not Jewish). He is staying at a house and is trying to be incognito. Good luck. As one translation puts it, “he could not escape notice.”
A woman comes, a Gentile woman, a Syrophoenician woman, a woman who has a little daughter who has an unclean spirit—that is, the daughter is ill, and we know what happens to those who have unclean spirits—they are shunned or even outcast in their own community.
Has this woman heard the story of Jesus resurrecting a child like her own, a child who was so gravely ill that she succumbed to death? Had she heard tell about this healer who was so powerful that one only had to touch the hem of his garment and blood that had been flowing for twelve years would stop? Was she so desperate that she would seek out this foreigner, this Jew, this man? Anything to help her child? Yes. She came and bowed down at his feet.
You have to imagine this. It doesn’t say she bowed from the waist. It says she bowed down at his feet—and the only way to do that, I imagine, is to get on your knees, to bend from there, to become vulnerable and small. And then she begged. She pled her case for her daughter. Please cast out her demon, like he had done before. Restore her to herself, like he had done before. God, her God, had brought him here, to her, so he might do healing in this land as well.
I have pondered over Jesus’ words. Were they said quietly and ironically? Were they said dismissively and curtly? “Let the children be fed first”—in other words, why should I be concerned with you, with a gentile, with someone not of my people. I have come to bring the good news of God, our God to my people: “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near, repent, and believe in the good news.”
And then Jesus utters that phrase, “for it is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.” Some commentators say that the word he used was a diminutive, “little dogs,” but it must have stung nonetheless. Here she was, groveling at his feet, as a hungry dog would do, crouched near the master, hoping for a hand-out. And maybe the hurt of the words, intended or not, maybe the frustration of a parent wanting the best for her child, maybe the anger at a God who had brought a saving grace this close only to snatch it away again, loosened her tongue and she spoke from her heart, from her place there at his feet.
“Sir, even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs.” Yes, I recognize that you believe you have been called to a certain people, but you are here, and I am here, and can I not gather even the crumbs of your power, the crumbs of your grace, the crumbs that are not worth anything to you or to them, but to me, they would make all the difference in the world?!
I imagine that there was this pause. She had snapped back at “the master.” In her fire for her daughter had she ruined any chance for her healing? Then, I imagine, he smiled and even helped her to her feet. “For saying that, you may go—the demon has left your daughter.” And so it had. “When she went home”—here was a healing from afar. The daughter didn’t even have to touch the hem of Jesus’ garment. Her mother only had to request, and insist with Jesus that it was “right” and the healing occurred. What an extraordinary story. Paired with this story is the one of Jesus healing a deaf and mute man—someone who couldn’t speak for himself, and Jesus healed him as well. “Don’t tell anyone” Jesus says. And, of course, they don’t listen, for they were astounded beyond measure.
I don’t think we are meant to take this as a touchstone for healing advice for every situation. I imagine that there were those who Jesus did not heal in his own day, for whatever reason. And we all certainly know of people who we have prayed for, who we have laid hands on, who we have begged for, who have not been cured of whatever ails them. So what are these stories all about? What has this to say to us?
I think, as my sermon title suggests, it has something to do with this idea of kin(g)dom that Jesus has been preaching about. He has already said that whoever is around him, whoever believes in him, whoever has ears to hear, those are the ones he sees as mother, and brother and sister. Family, not by blood, but by belief. This story and other stories in the gospels suggest that this idea, the family of God being not by blood but by belief, begins to widen the scope of Jesus’ ministry. Yes, he came to spread the good news of God’s kin(g)dom to God’s people (the Jewish people)—but along the way, God’s people became larger than anyone had thought.
There were poor people who weren’t Jews. There were sick people who weren’t Jews. There were possessed people who weren’t Jews. There were people seeking after God, knocking and asking and listening and wondering who weren’t Jews. Wasn’t the kin(g)dom for them too?
Maybe this secret, this hidden pearl, this good seed, this good news, wasn’t meant to be kept secret. Maybe God had intended it this way all along. Maybe it was those of us who think we are on the inside track, the chosen people, the ones who have followed all the laws and sat in the right seats and kept ourselves away from the riff-raff and unclean persons, who forgot what the kin(g)dom was about anyway.
Don’t the prophets imagine that when the time comes, all peoples will come to worship God on the holy mountain? Not just God’s chosen, but all people. And didn’t God choose a people, bless a people, so that through them all people would be blessed? It’s funny how we lose sight of what was intended in God’s final days—that God’s grace and mercy might bewider than we can imagine (and probably tolerate). How could God let those people come worship where we worship? Those, dare I say it, “dogs”?
But the master of all creation, cares for both children and dogs. And maybe it is only we who see others as dogs in the first place. Maybe that vision of family stretches far beyond our local group, far beyond our religious structures, far beyond what our puny brains can comprehend. For it is God’s kin(g)dom, not ours. As our wonderful communion hymn says, “this is God’s table, it’s not yours or mine—Come to the table of grace.”
And how wonderful is it that Jesus, the bread of life, broken for the world, has spread crumbs everywhere. And that dogs, and squirrels and chipmunks and deer and even mice, but especially that all people, are welcome to come and scoop up the left-overs. Weren’t there baskets and baskets left over from the feast of fish and loaves even after all were filled? Isn’t there so much more of Jesus, so much more of God’s love, so much more of grace and mercy and forgiveness and belonging and welcome?
Maybe the hush-hush news of the gospel of Mark hints at this kernel of eternal truth: that there is enough for all. Whose kin(g)dom? It is first God’s kin(g)dom. It is not first yours or mine, and certainly not ours to exclude, or fence, or hide, or use as a stick to beat others down. It is God’s kin(g)dom in all its unknowableness, all its mysteriousness, all its powerfulness.
Whose kin(g)dom? After God, it is for our neighbors—it is for the poor ones, for those who are dealing with ailments, for those who cannot even speak their distress, or hear the good news. It is for the lonely and the lost and all those who society forgets or wants to ignore. It is a place where there is so much that none need be turned away. As our hymn reminds us, it is when we are surrounded by those who the world has rejected, when we see those others call “dogs” as friends, as family, “then we know that God still goes that road with us, then we know that God still goes that road with us.”
Whose kin(g)dom? Finally, it is offered to us--but not because we have earned it. The door opens because we too are in need of God’s wonder and joy. We too need the crumbs that give life. We too long to be God’s children. We too are inheritors of the secret— the kin(g)dom has come. It is here. May we have ears to hear. A/A
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