2024.09.08 | Cultural Conversion
“Cultural Conversion”
The Rev. Dr. Arlene K. Nehring
Senior Minister & Executive Director
Eden United Church of Christ, Hayward, California
Sixteenth Sunday after Pentecost
Sunday, Sep 8, 2024
Mark 7:24-37 | Español
Today’s text is the most important conversion story in the Christian New Testament. And, here’s an interesting point--it’s not a conversion story about a disciple of Christ; it’s a conversion story about Jesus himself.
In Mark 7:24-37 (and Matthew 15:21-28) the gospels describe how Jesus’ heart, mind, and soul were changed, so that he no longer believed that his mission was solely to the Jews--his own people--but, moreover, he understood that his mission was to the whole people of God--to Jews and Gentiles alike--to everyone on this earth.
If Jesus had not been converted in this way, we wouldn’t be here today celebrating the Sacrament of Baptism, repainting the main campus, or getting ready to hold our 160th anniversary as a congregation. Why?
Because Christianity would have died in the early first century AD, and the only people alive today who might recognize Jesus’ name would be ancient near eastern scholars who go to far flung places on sabbatical to taste their coffee and bring some back for us.
II
So, as the young people say--”It’s a thing”--(It’s a BIG thing)--that Jesus had this conversion experience, but what’s even more remarkable is the way in which Jesus was converted.
Consider for example that Jesus was converted by a Canaanite woman--a person of Greek descent. His conversion took place in a geographic area known as Tyre and Sidon, which was the coastal area north of Galilee near, where he had lived his whole life, and he was now in a city which modern people call Beirut, which was and is populated primarily by Arabs. [Megan McKenna, Not Counting Women and Children: Neglected Stories from the Bible. (Orbis: Maryknoll, NY, 1994) 121.]
(If you want to know more about Beirut, Lebanon, talk with my Stephanie at fellowship time after worship. She learned how to ride her tricycle by peddling it around the dining room table with the blackout curtains pulled down.)
Now, back to ancient Beirut, and the region of Tyre and Sidon. In this setting, both Jesus and his visitor from Cana were strangers. They were strangers to each other, and strangers in a land that was strange to them.
Jesus was a single Jewish male from ancient Israel which had been colonized by the Roman government. The Canaanite was a Gentle. Jesus was a Jew. Jesus had a name that was growing in notoriety and popularity. The stranger from Cana had no-name, or moreover, she was a person of such low estate that her name didn’t matter enough to anyone to remember it.
Jesus and the Syrophoenician woman were of different races, nationalities, genders, religions, politics, and socio-economic class. In summary, they were about as different as two people could possibly be.
Yet, despite their differences in “social location,” Jesus and this No-Name Woman had more in common than seems possible on first blush, and both were profoundly changed by their mutual encounter.
III
Consider their respective circumstances. Jesus had been on the move like some politician running for President of the United States in the summer before the general election. He was on a whistlestop tour of the flyover states trying to pick up votes from those purple states. He had been healing the sick, teaching the good news, and preaching to the masses for weeks on end. And, as a result, he and his disciples were exhausted and desperate for rest and relief.
Then here comes this No-Name Woman--who I live to think of as this “EveryMother”--who finds Jesus and his people, and she starts pounding on the door of their Verbo, just as he is about to put his head down to sleep. Worse yet, she won’t go away. She won’t “no” for an answer. She persists.
In an effort to restore peace to the household, Jesus gets up and answers the door and tries to persuade her to move on, but she will not.
Like every parent who’s made a midnight run to the ER with a sick child, she was doing whatever it took to get her child to the doctor, and she didn’t care if the ER or the doctor was in her HMO or her PPO network.
Jesus, on the other hand, saw himself as the doctor on call, but he was only serving people in his HMO. He had not gotten the memo that he was operating a one-person regional trauma center, much less the Tyre and Sidon’s version of Highland Hospital or St. Rose.
So he shows up in the gospel story today in a most “un-Christian-like” way possible, by referring to this frantic mother and her people as “dogs,” and reinforcing the HMO policy that sounded like a members-only country club policy.
The story might have ended there, but the woman wouldn’t take “no” for an answer, and she turned back to Jesus saying: “Sir, even the dogs (the Gentiles) under the table eat the children’s (the Israelites) crumbs.” (7:28)
Then, boom, mic drop. Jesus was transformed, and his mind was changed. His cold heart was warmed. His soul was converted. And, Jesus said to this woman, “For saying that, you may go—the demon has left your daughter.”
And, she went home, and found the child lying quietly on the bed, and the demon was gone. (7:29-30)
IV
What caused this change, do you think? What caused a stranger in a strange land to seek the ministry of a healer who did not share her faith tradition? What caused Jesus to travel to what his own people thought to be a God-forsaken land for spiritual renewal?
Think about this ironic question for a moment.
My sense is that they both came to the conclusion that the old ideas, the old beliefs, and the old ways of doing things were just not going to work. (Or as Einstein may have said, “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”)
They had to try something new. They had to change. And they did.
They rejected the exclusiveness of their home cultures, and embraced the inclusiveness of God’s grace.
They branched out. They acquired a new way of thinking, and being, and doing. In Canaute terms, the Syrophonecian woman placed all her bets on Jesus. In Hebraic terms, Jesus realized that God was doing a new thing. In UCC terms, both parties trusted that God had yet more truth and light to break forth from their holy word. And when they did, look what happened--a miracle occured! The woman’s daughter was healed. The mother went back home and on with her life, and Jesus and his disciples were finally able to rest from their labors.
This past Friday, another kind of miracle occurred. On Friday, September 5, 2024, according to the US Catholic Conference of Bishops’ website:
Nasaruddin Umar, the grand imam of the Istiqlal Mosque, welcomed the pope to the mosque compound Sept. 5 and led him directly to the "tunnel of friendship," a wide underground walkway that connects the mosque and the Catholic cathedral across the busy street.
Like the pope, the imam was dressed in white from head to toe and greeted Pope Francis with a kiss on the cheek. At the end of the meeting, Umar put an arm around the pope's shoulder and kissed him on the top of the head. Pope Francis, who was seated in his wheelchair, took the imam's hand and kissed it.
Earlier, facing the entrance to the tunnel, Pope Francis had told the imam and donors who helped build it, "When we think of a tunnel, we might easily imagine a dark pathway. This could be frightening, especially if we are alone. Yet here it is different, for everything is illuminated."
"I would like to tell you, however, that you are the light that illuminates it," the pope said, "and you do so by your friendship, by the harmony you cultivate, the support you give each other, and by journeying together, which leads you in the end toward the fullness of light."
The pope and imam signed "The Istiqlal Declaration," a short document committing members of both religious communities to defending human dignity, especially when threatened with violence, and to defending the integrity of creation.
"The values shared by our religious traditions should be effectively promoted in order to defeat the culture of violence and indifference afflicting our world," the declaration said. "Indeed, religious values should be directed toward promoting a culture of respect, dignity, compassion, reconciliation and fraternal solidarity in order to overcome both dehumanization and environmental destruction."
Engkus Ruswana, a leader of Majelis Luhur Kepercayaan Indonesia, an organization for followers of Indigenous religions, said his faith's priority "is humanity and community, and the relationship between the human and nature. Indigenous religions, you know, have a good relationship between human beings and nature. Our principle is that we have to care for the Earth, for the world."
V
Whether we seek healing for ourselves, our children, or all of creation, we must be open to cultural conversion--body, mind, and soul--and invite in the Spirit, so that God can begin the healing and so that we can enjoy the rest and renewal that we so desperately need. Amen.