Dogs are people, too

Isaiah 35:4-7a

Say to those who are of a fearful heart, "Be strong, do not fear! Here is your God. He will come with vengeance, with terrible recompense. He will come and save you.” Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the dead unstopped; then the lame shall leap like a deer, and the tongue of the speechless sing for joy. For waters shall break forth in the wilderness, and streams in the desert; the burning sand shall become a pool, and the thirsty ground springs of water.

Psalm 146

Hallelujah! Praise the Lord, O my soul! I will praise the Lord as long as I live; I will sing praise to my God while I have my being. Put not your trust in rulers, in mortals in whom there is no help. When they breathe their last, they return to earth, and in that day their thoughts perish. Happy are they who have the God of Jacob for their help, whose hope is in the Lord their God; who made heaven and earth, the seas, and all that is in them, who keeps promises forever; who gives justice to those who are oppressed, and food to those who hunger. The Lord sets the captive free. The Lord opens the eyes of the blind; the Lord lifts up those who are bowed down; the Lord loves the righteous. The Lord cares for the stranger; the Lord sustains the orphan and widow, but frustrates the way of the wicked. The Lord shall reign forever, your God, O Zion, throughout all generations. Hallelujah!

James 2:1-10, 14-17

My brothers and sisters, do you with your acts of favoritism really believe in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ? For if a person with gold rings and in fine clothes comes into your assembly, and if a poor person in dirty clothes also comes in, and if you take notice of the one wearing the fine clothes and say, “Have a seat here, please,” while to the one who is poor you say, “Stand there,” or “sit at my feet,” have you not made distinctions among yourselves, and become judges with evil thoughts? Listen, my beloved brothers and sisters. Has not God chosen the poor in the world to be rich in faith and to be heirs of the kingdom that he has promised to those who love him? But you have dishonored the poor. Is it not the rich who oppress you? Is it not they who drag you into court? Is it not they who blaspheme the excellent name that was invoked over you? You do well if you really fulfill the royal law according to the scripture, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” But if you show partiality, you commit sin and are convicted by the law as transgressors. For whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point has become accountable for all of it. [For the one who said, “You shall not commit adultery,” also said, “You shall not murder.” Now if you do not commit adultery but if you murder, you have become a transgressor of the law. So speak and so act as those who are to be judged by the law of liberty. For judgment will be without mercy to anyone who has shown mercy; mercy triumphs over judgment. What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if you say you have faith but do not have works? Can faith save you? If a brother or sister is naked and lacks daily food, and one of you says to them, “Go in peace; keep warm and eat your fill,” and yet you do not supply their bodily needs, what is the good of that? So faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead.

Mark 7:24-37

Jesus set out and went away to the region of Tyre. He entered a house and did not want anyone to know he was there. Yet he could not escape notice, but a woman whose little daughter had an unclean spirit immediately heard about him, and she came and bowed down at his feet. Now the woman was a Gentile, of Syrophoenician origin. She begged him to cast the demon out of her daughter.  He said to her, “Let the children be fed first, for it is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.” But she answered him, “Sir, even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs.” Then he said to her, “For saying that, you may go - the demon has left your daughter.” So she went home, found the child lying on the bed, and the demon gone. Then he returned from the region of Tyre, and went by way of Sidon towards the Sea of Galilee, in the region of the Ten Cities. They brought to him a deaf man who had an impediment in his speech; and they begged him to lay his hands on him. He took him aside in private, away from the crowd, and put his fingers into his ears, and he spat and touched his tongue. Then looking up to heaven, he sighed and said to him, “Ephphatha,” that is, “Be opened." And immediately his ears were opened, his tongue was released, and he spoke plainly. Then Jesus ordered them to tell no one; but the more he ordered them, the more zealously they proclaimed it. They were astounded beyond measure, saying, “He has done everything well; he even makes the deaf to hear and the mute to speak.”

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Sunday morning comics were part of my routine every week after worship. Dad would separate out the ads and sports section and leave the important stuff - front page, comics, Toledo living - so after church we could get to the good stuff. As much as I love reading the comics, I devour graphic novels, which are drawn in lots of different ways but are their own type of storytelling altogether. For example, there is a two volume set of graphic novels called "Maus" which tells the story of a man gathering Holocaust stories from his father who lived through it. I was a little slow at getting the connection when the storyteller and his family are drawn as mice, until the Germans showed up drawn as cats. Of course the Jews would be drawn as mice, because at the time popular media called them rats, so they would be easier to kill.

People are so much easier to dismiss when they’re not considered people. Kim Davis isn’t a person according to social media: she's a bigot and a hypocrite. The people she denied service to weren’t people, they were gays whose marriages were against the law of her god. Then there are the cops, and the bleeding heart liberals, the old dead white guys and the angry feminists, the sluts and the rednecks, the politicians, the tea partiers, the poor, the kids, the grieving, the thugs, the addicts, the alcoholics, the one percent, the government, the IRS, the schizophrenic… the myriad of names and labels we put on one another so we can get away from each other. I spent a summer working as chaplain in a psych ward and was there when one of our people got a diagnosis of schizophrenia - he was crushed. He said, ‘nobody’s gonna hire a crazy schizophrenic’. The occupational therapist reminded him he is a ‘person with schizophrenia,’ and one of the other patients started to list off the names of famous artists and musicians who also had schizophrenic brains. A few days later, while the television in the common room was blaring, one of the other people said we ought to write the network and complain about their Law & Order-type shows, that it was always those mental patients off their meds who were the victims or the criminals, never the heroes or ordinary folks. The labels made it easy to pigeon-hole them, to further feed into the stereotype, to expect that we knew everything about their value based on a diagnosis or cultural background.

Jesus was trying to get away from the crowds and rest awhile, but this foreign woman was desperate to save her sick daughter. Jesus dismissed her outright. He called her a dog, maybe she would go away and bark up some other tree and leave him alone. She wasn’t even one of his own people. Wasn’t a Jew. Wasn’t a man. Shouldn’t have been talking to him in the first place. “Feed the children, it’s not fair to take from them and feed dogs.” My dad used that same reasoning to explain why we would never have a dog at home when I was growing up. Too many kids were hungry to spend money feeding domesticated animals, he said. And that’s all the foreign woman was, an animal. Easy to dismiss, to throw away. Not even ruined goods because you’d have to first be valued goods to be ruined. She just didn’t count in the first place, not being Jewish. Wrong culture, wrong gender, wrong class, wrong time, just wrong. And our dear, sweet, lovely Jesus… well, can you imagine the babe born in a manger using the n-word today? Or any other ethnic slur? Because that’s what he did then. Or maybe this Labor Day weekend we can connect the idea with a factory worker coming to the boss because an 80-hour work-week wasn’t healthy for 12-year-olds who ought to be going to school, and that boss responding with a pink slip.

How have you experienced being thrown away? Being ignored, dismissed, not taken seriously? I know it’s been a rough summer for Fred while the dumpster outside his home is being filled over and over again with a lifetime of collections ruined by the elements. It’s hard to see a loved one put into a nursing home without feeling a little guilty about not being able to do what’s needed to care for them. To complain about being harassed and have no one believe you. To only get your parents’ attention when you’re in trouble and not have your struggles heard or taken seriously because you’re just a kid. To be left outside of the church because you haven’t dressed properly for the occasion, pushed out of worship with disapproving stares because a child is a bit too squirmy or talkative. Physically left out because there isn’t a lift or a ramp for your wheelchair or crutches. Denied access because you don’t speak the language and no one is trying to help you or learn from you.

I imagine this Syrophoenician woman a bit like Moses, calling God to account for God’s own promises and reputation. You say you’re compassionate and merciful? You say you’re bigger than any one country or kingdom? So why should your power to heal stop at the entry gate to the temple? Why should your forgiveness and grace only go as far as the Jews and no farther? Surely even the slightest outpouring of God’s presence on the earth can spill into neighboring territories!

The woman calls Jesus to account. “Even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from the children’s table.” She holds up his own character in sharp relief against the dismissal he’s just uttered. Everyone else already talks like that, calls her ‘dog,’ this man is supposed to be different. So be different, Jesus! Keep your promise, bring the Kingdom.

And he does. The Kingdom spills over even into Gentile territory, freeing that little girl from the power of that demon which held her. Freeing Jesus, too, it seems. In case we might forget that Jesus was also a human being who was part of a particular culture, this story shows a tired and cranky racist who learns from a cultural minority how to open his heart just a bit more.

So it makes a sort of story sense that his next immediate miracle is to open the ears and loose the tongue of a man who can neither hear nor speak well. When the man is brought to him, Jesus takes him aside, away from the crowds, probably still a bit tired himself, and I imagine him thinking of that Gentile woman when he sighs “be opened.” Maybe the kingdom of God is breaking open upon the world, bubbling up from the dreams and the demands of the oppressed and the outcast. Ears opened and tongue loosed, the man is restored to his community and can’t seem to stop talking about how it happened. Just as the prophet Isaiah foretold, the “eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the dead unstopped; then the lame shall leap like a deer, and the tongue of the speechless sing for joy. For waters shall break forth in the wilderness, and streams in the desert; the burning sand shall become a pool, and the thirsty ground springs of water.”

Dry ground will have to break open to the power of water, as dry and tired hearts are broken open in the welcome embrace of Baptism. The solid and too-stiff boxes we stick one another in with all of those labels and expectations, they will melt under the flowing stream, under the waters of grace and forgiveness. Those waters run over us like water over sharp rocks gradually rubs them smooth, tumbling us against each other as we are formed in community, with all of our differences and complexities. We will have some baptisms here next week, celebrating that promise of God to break open our hearts to one another, just as God’s own heart has broken open for us. Water will flow, promises will be made, the kingdom will sigh and expand and grow around us and within us. And just like Jesus, we will learn to listen, and like the man who was healed, we will not keep silent, and just as God has promised, we will be forgiven every time that we fail at this. For we are not the labels we put on each other. Not dogs, not bigots, not progressives or tea partiers or independents, not dismissed as useless or inadequate or irrelevant, but children, all - children of God who feast on the crumbs of Grace at this Table, at the Lord’s own invitation. And the lame will leap and the speechless will sing, for the kingdom of God has come near.