Sermon

Sept 6, 2009 

Last Sunday, Jesus defended his disciples from the charge by the Pharisees that they eat with defiled or unclean hands. Jesus says that it is not what goes into a person that defiles, but what comes out of the heart of a person that defiles.

Jesus opened the possibility that not only could one eat with unwashed hands, one could also eat with "unwashed" persons, that means people who were considered outcasts by the Pharisees. Almost as if to prove this point, Mark immediately follows Jesus into Gentile territory near the city of Tyre. It is here that Jesus encounters a Gentile woman whose daughter is demon possessed.

I am going to work my way to one essential point of today's Gospel. However, to do that, I am going to discuss a kind of hodgepodge of facts about worship in the early Church.

Many Romans believed that the Christians were a funeral society because they always observed the anniversary of a family member’s death. Christians would gather at the tomb where they would read scripture, sing psalms, and say prayers. The Christians, of course, were celebrating the promise of resurrection. This graveside practice later developed into observing what we now know as All Saints Day.

In Africa, newly baptized Christians were given milk and honey to drink. This was to represent that they were now baptized into the Body of Christ and thus were citizens of heaven the land of milk and honey.

In the early church, deacons took the consecrated bread of Holy Communion to the members of the church who were sick. This allowed everyone to commune on any given Sunday, and to share in the worship of that morning.

These little bits of information point to how the worship of the church was an essential part of the life of any Christian in the early church. It also tells us that worship was not something the early Christians simply attended; it was the primary expression of their faith. It was at the heart of the Christian,

In the worship of the idols of ancient Rome, the acts of worship were things performed in order to wrangle something out of the god or to keep the idol happy. When worshiping idols, the Romans could divorce their faith and worship, and they could divorce their lives from worship. For the Romans who worshiped idols, worship was something one did when something was needed.

What we see in today's Gospel is that Jesus cannot escape the crowd. Wherever he goes, the crowd is pressing in. The crowd wants to see a show. The people want to see a magic act. Jesus does not perform miracles as a trick. The miracles change the way a person lives from that point onward. Jesus does miracles because he is revealing who he is.

Notice what happens with the Syrophoenician woman. She does not come for a magic trick; she comes so that her daughter might be healed. She persists in coming to Jesus even when he seems to rebuff her.

Jesus rebuffs her by mouthing the words of the Pharisees. Jesus says that the faith is only for the Israelites and not the Gentiles.

Notice what is happening with the woman. She is not there to perform some act to appease the gods so that she might have her wish granted. This woman's life, heart, and soul are in her request. She approaches Jesus from where she lives. Jesus is showing that the faith is not about what is outside, but what is inside. This Gentile woman, who was considered unclean by the Pharisees, was living the faith.

Jesus heals the deaf man not as a trick. In fact, Jesus tells the man and his friends not to tell anyone what happened. The miracles are about living the faith. They are about the heart of our lives and worshiping from where we live.

Our liturgy is called Divine Liturgy for a reason. It is handed down through the holy history of the church. Our worship grows out of the synagogue, the words of the Bible, and our Lord. Our worship connects us to all the Christians of past ages. However, the most important thing in our worship is that our God offers himself to us through the Word and Sacraments.

Jesus wants us to live the faith rather than have us perform a perfunctory obligation. Worship is about living for the faith is about living.

Jesus comes to us who are defiled by our sins and makes us new. He performs the miracle of forgiving our sins. We come with our hearts marred by thought, word, and deed, and we are made clean inside by the miracle of God's forgiveness. Amen.