I don’t like this one very much; that said, here it is!
Mark 7:24-37; James 2:1-17; Psalm 146; Isaiah 35:4-7a
We’ve got two things going on in our gospel today. The first is Jesus fulfilling some of the expectations assigned to the Messiah in Jewish religious culture. The second is Jesus showing how we ought to act by how He acts. Pretty straightforward right? Well, yes it really kind of is.
So let’s look at things more or less in order. Our first lesson is from Isaiah 35. This is the tail end of a rather unpleasant prophecy in which the people of Israel are told of God’s anger at them and pretty much everyone else. It’s immediately followed by a narrative accounting of Sennacherib, the king of Assyria, laying siege to Jerusalem. It was a bit of a bleak time, but God protected the people and Sennacherib’s forces were routed, not by human action, but by the angel of the Lord showing up in their camp and killing some 185,000 Assyrian soldiers. Some scholars have chalked said incident up to disease, such as the plague or cholera, but the end effect is the same. God rescued his people from a rather unpleasant situation.
But what does that have to do with Isaiah 35? In a way, the account of Isaiah 36-37 reinforces what is prophesied in Isaiah 35. Just like Isaiah 35 is the answer to what sounds like a bad situation for everyone, Isaiah 36-37 is an historical account of an answer to a bad situation for everyone. So Isaiah, in chapter 35, prophesies, “Say to those with fearful hearts, ‘be strong, do not fear; you God will come, he will come with vengeance; with divine retribution he will come to save you.’ Then will the eyes of the blind be opened and the ears of the deaf unstopped. Then will the lame leap like a deer, and the mute tongue shout for joy.” In other words, “You’ll know when God is about to save all y’all when the blind see, the deaf hear, the lame walk, and the mute speak.”
So now skip ahead to the time of my favorite emperor, Tiberius Julius Caesar Augustus. The Jewish people had been under Roman rule for around 90 years, and they weren’t very happy about it. They were crying out for God to send someone to them who would rescue them from the occupation. Contrary to their expectations, they got Jesus — who was sent to save them, just not in the way they expected.
Now, when Jesus wasn’t teaching, he spent most of his time healing the sick, the demon-possessed, the deaf, the blind, the mute, and the lame. Today’s gospel recounts Jesus healing a little girl from an evil spirit, a gentile woman’s daughter, by the by, and a man who was deaf and mute. It’s small wonder that the people’s comment afterwards echoes what is said in Isaiah 35, “He even makes the deaf hear and the mute speak.” The people were starting to make connections between Jesus and the Messiah, even if they were misunderstanding what the Messiah was supposed to do.
So that covers the first bit, now the second: Jesus shows us how we ought to act by how he acts. One thing that always stands out about Jesus is his complete lack of prejudice. He helps Jews and Gentiles, religious people and “sinners”, the rich and the poor. He simply doesn’t differentiate. The only time he does lump people into categories is when dealing with those he calls “hypocrites”, namely the ones who claim to be close to God yet have missed the boat completely, but we’re not focusing on that today.
Jesus acts in the way that James is telling Christians to act in our New Testament lesson: “My brothers, as believers in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ, don’t show favoritism;” “whoever keeps the whole law and yet stumbles at just one point is guilty of breaking it all;” “speak and act as those who are going to be judged by the law that gives freedom, because judgment without mercy will be shown to anyone who has not been merciful;” “faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead.” First off, James is reminding folk of Jesus’ example, a position he holds because he is the Messiah, God’s only Son. Then he basically reminds people of how Jesus behaved. He didn’t treat one person differently from another, he upheld the Law, he dealt with people mercifully, and his actions showed his faith.
As followers of Jesus, James is also reminding all of us to live according to his example. It’s not an easy goal to live up to, but an important one. After all, if we act like everyone else in the world, how will anyone know we are Christians?