A sermon preached by the Rev’d Natasha Woodward
at the Church of All Saints, Orpington
Sunday 6 September 2009, 13 after Trinity / Proper 18
Readings: Isaiah 35.4-7a; James 2.1-10, 14-17; Mark 7.24-end
“Left Behind” is a series of 16 novels have sold in their millions in America. They are based on a theological doctrine of “the rapture”- this is a belief mainly held by some American Christians. It is derived from a completely literal reading of the Bible, including, the book of revelation and phrases in the letters. The belief is that at some time in the future, there will be a ‘rapture’, when everyone in the world who is a true Christian believer is taken away – and all the rest of us are left. The novels are about that period, what happens when a seemingly random selection of people are instantly removed from whatever they happen to be doing – whether flying planes or performing surgery – and the subsequent wars and battles, which go on for 16 novels, when you include the ‘prequel’. The belief in a ‘rapture’ – a moment or period when all the true Christians are taken away but everyone else remains – is so strong that it has been reported this week that a bunch of atheists have seen a business opportunity – because pets – cats and dogs – cannot be true believers and thus will be left behind when the rapture comes, this company is offering the services of certified sinners who will look after the pets who are left behind when their Christian owners are taken away.
What you have is a stark expression of the belief that God will divide the world, he will take away those who have adequate belief, and leave the rest. It’s all or nothing – by the end – either you are in or you are out.
In our gospel reading this morning we have an extract from Mark’s gospel, which needs a bit of context, as it falls within the arc of a mini-story within the gospel. [Thanks to UCC Weekly Seeds for many of these ideas]. It begins in the previous chapter (6) with the feeding of the 5,000, when so many people ate their fill, when all the disciples had were five loaves and two fishes. The end of this section is in chapter 8 – the feeding of the 4,000 with this time 7 loaves and a few small fish. Two stories of miraculous meals, huge generosity. Our healing miracles which we read about today, along with a few other things, happen in the middle.
So – you may not have known that these two feeding miracles happen so close together, and both in the same gospel. Now you might ask, why have two feeding miracles? Surely the point is proved with the first? That God comes with abundance, that when people come together great things happen, that all in their need are equal before God, and so on. The feeding of the 5,000, the feeding of the 4,000 – both show us this.
But there is an immensely important difference between them, which is really easy to miss unless you are an export in the geography of the middle east. The first, the feeding of the 5,000, is in Jewish territory – the people who benefit, are Jews, people who shared Jesus’s religious faith in the Lord, people who are already halfway along to understanding what Jesus is all about. The second feeding is in the region of Tyre: Gentile territory, they are pagans, people who believe all sorts of things, people who for Jesus and the disciples as they were growing up would have been complete outsiders, people who would have seemed to them to have different moral codes, doing things that Jews found abhorrent – they were, to borrow a phrase from another context – beyond the pale. The feeding of the 5,000 is with Jews, representing the whole of Israel, the feeding of the 4,000 is with Gentiles, representing the whole of the world.
In every day life one of the most obvious distinctions between Jews and Gentiles of that time was what they would eat and wouldn’t eat. Jews considered some foods which the Gentiles ate to be unclean, inappropriate for eating. In between these two feeding stories, one of the things Jesus does is to declare that all food is clean. Or more particularly, in a rather graphic image, I think, he says that the things which defile are the things which comes out of a person, not the things that go in. No food defiles. But what really can defile, what really is disgusting, are evil intentions which come from within – among a few, adultery, envy, slander and pride. These are the things that are really disgusting – things that are unclean.
So Jesus declares all food clean. And then, in his actions, culminating in the feeding of the 4,000, he also declares all people clean – and a crucial moment for this is that encounter with the woman we heard about today. All people – even gentiles – even those who have no understanding of what he is about – they all deserve to do more than just pick up the crumbs under the table – they all can feast, they all deserve to eat.
How different is this message from that of the theology behind the Left Behind books – where at the rapture there are some who are in and some who are out, and you can tell who is who by reading the Bible as carefully as possible and seeing how their beliefs and lives measure up. Well, I have a lot of problems with this. The most important one is that this approach seems to completely ignore the teaching of Jesus and the way he lived his life. For Jesus constantly questioned the idea that there are some who are in and some who are out, and that one could tell who was who. Time and time again his actions are about meeting all who come to him - all can receive from him. The feeding of the 5,000 Jews gives way to the 4,000 Gentiles, with the 7 baskets left over representing the whole of the world – these people who in that context would have been seen as faithless and lacking in moral standards. Jesus doesn’t just give them crumbs which have fallen from the table - they receive a meal, just as good as that given to those on the “inside” to sustain and refresh them.
It can seem simpler to say that those who are good will receive good things from God, and those who aren’t won’t. But that’s not the message from Jesus here. The message here is that all people may receive from God good things that they don’t deserve.
It’s only human to find that difficult to really take on board – even Jesus shows a development, his human side wanting first to help those who he knew were devoted to God – until, in Mark’s account, he really encounters the need of this foreign woman who said to him “but I only want to eat the crumbs from under your table.” Then Jesus’ actions powerfully proclaim the availability of God’s care to all.
It is only human to want to give people as much love and care and attention that they deserve – but it is divine to give them, to give all of us, the love and care and attention that we don’t deserve. Imitating God is about helping those who don’t deserve it as well as those who do – which is just as well, because at some level, none of us deserve the good things that God has in store for us.
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