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Today, the “gospel” is a verb. That is, the good news of Jesus Christ requires that we act. We’ve talked about action vs. passivity over the last few weeks as we’ve read the Letter of James. James lays out the case for Christians living a life of high moral and ethical standards as exemplified by Christ. The moral and ethical standards come from an understanding of – and response to – the love of God for us and as manifested in the life of Christ.

Favoritism separates us from each other and that is why it is not a proper response to the gospel. The type of favoritism or discrimination that concerns James is when our actions prefer one child of God over another based upon economic or social status. Or when we prefer one child of God over another because one looks and acts like we do and the other acts “differently.” The very words “we/other” or “us/them” create the kind of boundaries and separations between the children of God that most concerned James.

We play favorites- we discriminate- every day in countless ways. In a positive light, discrimination is defined as “recognition and understanding of the difference between one thing and another.” You might hear the phrase: “she has a discriminating ear” meaning that she can tell the difference between my playing a sonata correctly or my repeatedly hitting the wrong notes. Between a piece of music being played in a way that is pleasing to the ear and my playing it discordantly because I consistently hit F-sharp when I should have hit plain F.

At its worst, though, discrimination is defined as “the unjust or prejudicial treatment of different categories of people or things, especially on the grounds of race, age, or sex.” When I reject someone solely because he or she doesn’t meet my definition of “good” or “correct.” When I play favorites to put someone else down so I can be lifted up. And, sometimes, I’m sad to say, when our brothers or sisters in Christ reject someone because he or she doesn’t understand God in the same way that they do. When we create barriers rather than tearing them down.

At the beginning of the passage from Mark today, we see Jesus discriminating on the very basis that James warns us against. Jesus first says “no” to the Syrophoenician woman. He’s really pretty nasty. “Let the children be fed first, for it is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs” implying that the Syrophoenician woman and her daughter are dogs. They are not worthy because they are gentiles. They are not worthy because Jesus, at this point, seems to understand his ministry as being solely to the children of Israel and not to the whole world. They are not worthy because it is a woman asking, rather than a male of her family, in a society that was very patriarchal. They are not worthy because of sickness that separates the daughter from her companions.

The woman only wants what all parents want for their children. Health. She wants for her own daughter what she has seen or heard Jesus do for his own people: healing, health, fullness and goodness of life. Reconnection and reintegration into society as a person with value and worth.

This passage comes hard on the heels of the confrontation between Jesus and the Pharisees over keeping of the purity customs. Jesus responded to the Pharisees by reminding us that it is what comes out of our mouths that defiles- not what we put into our bodies. And, it is what is in our hearts that governs and informs what comes out of our mouths. What is in our hearts guides how we act and respond to each of God’s children and their needs. At the end of that passage, I imagine Jesus was, figuratively at least, tearing his hair out. Don’t they get it? What more must I do for these hard-hearted people to see- to understand how to live together in community and in relationship with God. Oh, just leave me alone, Jesus might have felt.

Perhaps his frustration is what led Jesus to leave the land of the Israelites and travel to Tyre- a land of gentiles. And immediately he is beset by this foreign woman who wants Jesus to do for her – a gentile – what Jesus has done for so many of the chosen people. The woman challenges Jesus to expand his ministry beyond the chosen people. To not discriminate. To not play favorites.

She pushes Jesus to do what Jewish teaching states in Leviticus 19:18 “to love the neighbor as self.” She calls upon Jesus to see her, and her daughter, as neighbors entitled to love and a response to their needs based on love. Even though the woman and her daughter are not part of the chosen people, she is still a child of God, entitled to respect and response based upon love. She calls Jesus to account by responding to him: “Sir, even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs.”

In typical fashion, Mark does not give us many details and certainly not any indication of Jesus’ emotions around this encounter. The very next verse is Jesus responding “for saying that, you may go- the demon has left your daughter.” Jesus does not even know where she lives or where her daughter lies sick or what kind of demon it is that has possessed her daughter. From afar, Jesus heals the daughter and the demon departed. Gerd Thiessen suggests that even more than showing that Jesus can heal from a distance, this passage – the woman’s request, Jesus’ response, her challenge and Jesus’ reply and action, show the overthrowing of preconceptions and prejudice.[1]

Johns Hopkins Pediatric Oncology group recently posted a YouTube video entitled “You are beautiful”.[2] It is a very touching reminder that even when we have cancer, we are beautiful. Even when we have no hair, even when we have to wear a face mask, even when…. Whatever it is that challenges our life, we are beautiful. The video, to the song, “What Makes You Beautiful” by British band One Direction, reminds us, I think, that we are beautiful because we are human beings loved by God. And, we are called to act in response to that love.

Do we welcome the stranger in our midst fully – or do we throw the scraps under the table to that stranger? Do we play favorites- talking only to the people we know rather than extending the warm hand of fellowship to the person looking lost and in need of directions? A friend of mine recently forwarded a meditation on the awesomeness of creation. The meditation ends with this reminder: “Life without God is like an unsharpened pencil – it has no point.” Life that is lived by making choices based upon economic status or bank accounts, fine clothes, or because someone believes in exactly the way we do leads to distance from God. It has no point at the end of the day. But when we remember, each day, that we are called “to strive for justice and peace among all people, and respect the dignity of every human being” (BCP, 305) and we act with understanding of this call, then we are a sharpened pencil. And, most of all, remember the response to that query in our Baptismal Covenant: “I will, with God’s help.” We cannot do it ourselves. We need God’s help to love our neighbor as ourselves. And the truly good news is that God offers us that help each and every day. Amen.