00:00:10.340 - 00:00:37.380

Good morning friends. Let us once more return to God in prayer, Christ in the eyes of all who see me Christ in the ears that hear my voice, Christ in the hearts of who know me

00:00:38.810 - 00:01:03.530

. I so going to be right. So going to be I'm in if you grew up in a church culture where Bible memorization was a thing. You may have memorized. The verse Jesus Christ is the

00:01:03.540 - 00:01:23.360

same yesterday today and forever. Even if you didn't , you have likely heard this verse before we learn it in Sunday school. And honestly, sometimes we Christians use it as a weapon, a cudgel to

00:01:23.370 - 00:01:37.820

bludgeon, those with whom we disagree. Those who want to move us in directions, we would rather not go. But when we use the Epistle of Hebrews, in this way, we make two fundamental

00:01:37.830 - 00:01:59.030

mistakes. First, we take the verse out of its biblical context. The context which includes a warning to choose your leaders carefully because of who Christ is . Second. When we use Hebrews this way,

00:01:59.040 - 00:02:23.800

we can overlook or want to ignore today's gospel story . A story about Jesus and an encounter with a Greek woman of Cyr Phoenician origin and the lessons Jesus learns from her as they encounter one another in the

00:02:23.810 - 00:02:46.980

borderlands of Tyre. And Sidon Mark tells this story after an extremely busy and traumatic time for Jesus. John, the Baptist has been executed and the disciples have returned from their ministries. Jesus wants to take

00:02:46.990 - 00:03:07.630

them away for arrest but they are surrounded by a large crowd of 5000 people. Then after they feed the 5000, he crosses over the Galilean Lake to Ganre. But even on the other side of the

00:03:07.640 - 00:03:23.960

lake, there is no rest. He is mobbed by people who want to be healed. What's more ? He is being challenged by the religious leaders of his people and his disciples don't seem to understand the

00:03:23.970 - 00:03:46.790

first thing he's trying to teach them, put yourself in jesus' shoes. He was fully divine. But we also confess that he was fully human. This was a man who was tired grieving and needed a

00:03:46.800 - 00:04:09.490

break. Those in league with the Romans had killed the man who baptized him and everywhere he went, he was being pulled on for more and more and more so like Elijah before him, Jesus runs away

00:04:10.100 - 00:04:30.040

, he leaves Galilee and crosses into the borderlands or in Greek, Tahoora of Tyre. And just in case you have any doubt about what he's feeling, Mark makes it very plain. He does not want

00:04:30.050 - 00:04:58.710

to know anyone while he's there. This is the Jesus who encounters the Greek woman of Cyra Phoenician origin , a tired Jesus, a grieving Jesus, a Jesus who just wants to be left alone. Ok

00:04:59.820 - 00:05:20.620

. Now, none of this excuses how Jesus addresses this woman, but it might just explain to us what state of mind he was in when she came looking for him. Jesus was exhausted. Jesus was

00:05:20.630 - 00:05:38.720

hurting and as a friend of mine used to say , hurt people, hurt people. What's more despite the way the first chapter of the Gospel of John portrays him, Jesus did not just fall out of

00:05:38.730 - 00:05:57.120

a coconut tree to quote the vice president Jesus like all of us and I quote, exists in the context of all in which he lived and what came before him? Close quote, jesus' context includes a

00:05:57.130 - 00:06:21.080

queen from tire named Jezebel, a queen who put God's prophets to death. It includes the rise of a Roman empire that the cirrhotics welcomed that the Greeks emulated and to which Herod who killed John was subservient

00:06:23.260 - 00:06:40.830

. What's more jesus' context includes many prophetic writings in which the Messiah is only and always for the descendants of Abraham through his wife, Sarah, not for Abraham's descendants to Hagar or for the Children of any

00:06:40.840 - 00:07:03.660

other woman. Jesus embodies a hybrid reality, Son of God and Child of the Galilee informed by the prejudices, pains and passions of his people. The borderlands challenged Jesus because in the borderlands, he has

00:07:03.670 - 00:07:25.240

stepped out of his context out of the context that informs and shapes him. The borderlands challenge him because in them, he must attend to a woman who embodies that space between cultures, a Greek and a

00:07:25.900 - 00:07:45.600

copic elite and a woman in a patriarchal society, an embodiment of imperial acquiescence and the mother of a desperately sick child, Jezebel. Yes. And Hagar the God namer like Gloria and, and Zaldua,

00:07:45.780 - 00:08:07.280

this woman could state I, I'm a wind suede bridge, a crossroads inhabited by whirlwinds her multiple allegiances confront those of Jesus himself as they face each other in an other place. Uno Prola una Tiara re

00:08:07.300 - 00:08:26.480

Meo, a place in a constant state of transition . This woman asked him to heal her daughter. She comes to him, not as an imperialist or a queen, but as a desperate parent with no

00:08:26.490 - 00:08:52.340

other recourse. And Jesus calls her a dog which is an insult in English and Hebrew and Greek. And then she responds simply this way. Yes, sir. And even the dogs eat from the crumbs

00:08:52.350 - 00:09:13.720

that fall from the children's table. And Jesus is stopped short in that moment, she sees what he doesn't, she sees and she knows that Jesus does not yet fully understand just how broad his ministry will

00:09:13.730 - 00:09:31.410

be. He does not yet understand that Alesha healed Naman and the widow, even though they were not part of the Children. He does not yet realize that even the crumbs of his ministry will nourish and

00:09:31.420 - 00:09:50.040

heal the world and that he in his life, death. And resurrection will set a table for every person Jew and Greek Galilean and Cynic, a table that crosses the borderlands and destroys our categories until we

00:09:50.050 - 00:10:15.240

are left with just one image of the divine Imago day. Jesus doesn't yet understand because he's fully human and just as he needed to learn to walk and talk to dress himself and clean himself to read and

00:10:15.250 - 00:10:35.690

write, he has yet another lesson to learn. Every Simba needs His Mufasa and his Rafiki. Every Luke needs his Obiwan and his Yoda. Every Moana requires her grandmother in this borderland space. That teacher

00:10:35.700 - 00:10:54.340

is an unnamed mother, a Greek woman of Cyrus Phoenician origin who forces Jesus to confront his sense of lack his sense that there is not enough. She forces him to remember the God who sends rain upon

00:10:54.340 - 00:11:13.600

the just and the unjust the God who is gracious and merciful. The God who has made covenant, not simply with one family or one people, but with all of humanity and this entire God beloved world

00:11:15.750 - 00:11:30.830

, it is her word, not her face that causes him to change his mind. Check the text again. If you don't believe me, I know Carson's got his Bible right there. Matthew Matthew in

00:11:30.840 - 00:11:45.750

his discomfort changes Mark's story to make this about the faith of a Canaanite woman. But in Mark's story , what's at stake is not this woman's faith. What's at stake is her word? Her word that

00:11:45.760 - 00:12:03.500

pushes back on jesus' refusal her word is difficult. It seems subservient self effacing. She seems to take on his insults in ways we would never want for our daughters, for our Children. But this may

00:12:03.510 - 00:12:22.070

well be an example of what African Americans call hitting a straight lit with a crook stick in following his canine metaphor. She challenges whether the border he claims to stake is as rigid as he imagines by following

00:12:22.080 - 00:12:37.140

his metaphor. She exposes holes in the wall. He seeks to build and gaps in the razor wire he's trying to string. By following, following his metaphor, she shows him that the gospel cannot be

00:12:37.150 - 00:12:50.950

contained. That if it is truly good news, it will spill over and nourish even those on the outskirts and hear me, she's not trying to be a disciple. She does not deny herself, take

00:12:50.960 - 00:13:07.410

up her cross and follow him. But in this borderland, this space in between as a person of hybrid identity, she reminds him that there is no border for good news, there is no border for

00:13:07.420 - 00:13:20.820

good deeds. There is no border for care of the other, for love of the neighbor, for welcome of the stranger, what you do for good or bad, what you deny or what you perform

00:13:20.850 - 00:13:41.030

. All of it impacts everyone and not even the Son of God is exempt from that truth. And the remarkable thing about this encounter is not just that Jesus is a product of this context, nor is

00:13:41.040 - 00:13:58.890

it simply that she pushes back at him with her word. Perhaps the most remarkable part of this story is that Jesus learns from her. Like many of us, he may not acknowledge to his teachers what

00:13:58.900 - 00:14:18.980

he has learned in the moment. Huh? But his ministry is forever changed before he met her. He had fed 5000 of his own people picking up 12 baskets or Kinoy of food. Here, Mark

00:14:18.990 - 00:14:35.280

uses a translation of a Hebrew word for basket perhaps making the case that this is a thoroughly Jewish feeding story. But after her love loss, after her word, after her challenge, Jesus remains in the

00:14:35.290 - 00:14:54.820

borderlands, not to escape but to heal and set a table. And at that table, 4000 gentiles eat and seventh fits the Greek word for basket are collected. Jesus' ministry and vision expand because he went

00:14:54.830 - 00:15:16.770

to the borders. But moreover, they expand because he let the borders challenge him and change him. Seminary. My friends is a kind of borderland, a borderland between the academy and the church. And

00:15:16.780 - 00:15:35.250

it is tempting to want to escape to these borderlands if you are tired or hurt or overwhelmed by the world or the church. But if you came here , determined to hide, you will be disappointed for

00:15:35.260 - 00:15:54.590

here all of the context in which you live and move will be unmasked, examined, tested and tried . You also will face like Jesus, your own contextual prejudices and presuppositions, your own walls and offenses

00:15:54.600 - 00:16:15.300

here, you will challenge the certainties that your ancestors have maintained in their journeys of faith. But in this borderland, you will also find what this woman taught Jesus years ago. God's grace is abundant.

00:16:15.510 - 00:16:32.780

Far more than you or I or anyone else could ask or think and you will find like it or not, that God's grace does not stop at this or any table for the crumbs of grace that land

00:16:32.790 - 00:16:48.270

on the carpet of God's house are more than sufficient to heal the world. God bids us all come and eat, not off the floor but around this table laid in the midst of the scarred borderlands to

00:16:48.280 - 00:17:08.350

come and eat, not as enemies but as welcome guests of the Jesus who learned and is always learning that Jesus who healed and is always healing the Jesus who grew and is always growing Jesus the same yesterday

00:17:08.360 - 00:17:27.780

today and forever because this woman answered and spoke a word to him. Jesus has opened the way in the borderlands, not only for the healing of her daughter, but for the inclusion of us all and