Proper 18

Have you ever left town for a much-needed rest and vacation — as Jesus does in today’s Gospel — only to run smack-dab into someone you know, and worse, someone who’s very chatty?

There are no expressions or words to describe this annoying phenomenon, one to which we all can relate. Well … perhaps there are some words, but I can’t say them out loud.         

The attempt to “get away” could even be as innocuous as trying to take a lunch break from the office. You want to be alone for 45 measly minutes with Peace and Quiet as your only companions. You need to be alone! But suddenly, you see Harold and Priscilla entering the restaurant — yes, Harold with the greasy comb over and Priscilla from the mail room who always has a No. 2 pencil nested in her bouffant.

You pull your menu up to your face, but the menu is the size of a post card. Harold and Priscilla spot you and are delighted to join you in your small booth without asking. As they do, your good friends Peace and Quiet vanish like — to quote Goethe — “an echo or a dream.”

In today’s Gospel, Jesus is feeling this same frustration for which there seems to be no name. Jesus is afraid that he, too, will not be able “to escape notice” (v. 24). He goes to his vacation rental in Tyre on the coast of the “Great Sea” and “enters [the] house and did not want anyone to know he was there” (v. 24).

Alas, he did not escape notice. His reputation as a healer has preceded him. He is known as somebody. The word on the street is that when all else has failed, when there’s absolutely no hope, when salvation or deliverance seems absolutely, unequivocally, positively impossible — try Jesus.

This is precisely what happens when an unnamed Gentile lady known to us through subsequent millennia as the “Syrophoenician Woman” contacts Jesus. Her little girl had an “unclean spirit.” She either didn’t know that Jesus wanted a break from the Messiah job, or she didn’t care, because the Bible says that “she came and bowed down at his feet. … [and] begged him to cast the demon out of her daughter” (vv. 25-26).

For some reason, the woman seems to wind him up. Jesus is harsh and teachy, but in the end, he casts out the demon without even so much as visiting the girl herself.

This done, the next word in the text is “Then” (v. 31). We don’t know how much time elapses between the expulsion of the demon and the word “Then.”

What we do know is that he leaves his holiday hideout where he gamely tried to lay low and heads back to Galilee. The locals must have known he was coming. For “They brought to him a deaf man who had an impediment in his speech” and begged Jesus to heal him (v. 32). Jesus “sighed” (v. 34) and looked upwards to the heavens. He touched the man’s ears and tongue, said, “Be opened,” and the nameless man was “immediately” healed (v. 35).

Jesus pleaded, even “ordered,” the crowds to keep quiet about all of this. But “the more he ordered them, the more zealously they proclaimed it … saying ‘He has done everything well’” (vv. 36-37).

Jesus had this reputation for doing “everything well” and wherever he went, even if he tried to sneak away, people found him and told every living soul — a rapid-fire means of communication 2,000 years ago.

“He has done everything well.” That was the word then, but the news now is that a ton of people are repulsed by what is happening in the name of Jesus and by those who wave the Christian flag loud and proud.

In fact, the authors of a new study on religion, secularism, and politics published at the end of last year note that the number of nonreligious people in the United States is rapidly rising. Their data show that even one news story about Christians doing something stupid and offensive is enough to push an “undecided” over the edge, slipping over to an already burgeoning nonreligious and secular component of our society. Just one news story.

So, it’s not really a surprise that according to this study, the nonreligious or “nones” now outnumber any other religious group. They’re more numerous than Catholics. They outnumber evangelicals. The nones do not yet outnumber all religious groups combined, but if present trends continue, it’s only a matter of time until there’s more religious nothing than there is religious something.

Jesus’ followers have a bad rep right now, and it’s going to be tough to change that – unless we get to work.

And it will take work. People of faith, people who love Jesus, must live and love by a higher standard than the one to which they are living and loving right now.

When Jesus slipped out of sight and went to Tyre, he hoped no one would notice.

Jesus probably feels the same way today. But guess who shows up? Bad Christians! And unlike the Syrophoenician Woman, they do not bow down at his feet and beg Jesus to expel demons — which they surely should do. Instead, they beg Jesus to endorse their cause and movements.

Showing up uninvited to meet Jesus are, for example, Christian political action committees and lobbyists. These groups exist on the liberal left and the conservative right, each one committed to polishing Jesus’ reputation in the halls of Congress to advance their own agendas. According to a study by the Pew Research Center’s Forum on Religion & Public Life, advocacy organizations have grown from fewer than 40 in 1970 to more than 200 today. “Together, [they] spend $390 million per year advocating on about 300 domestic and international issues, from bioethics and moral issues to economic and poverty concerns.”

Some Christian groups are spending millions to argue positions opposed by other Christian lobbyists, who are also spending millions. You can certainly make a case for the good and necessary work they’re doing, but would Jesus be thrilled if they showed up at his cabana on the Mediterranean when he’s on a spiritual retreat? Your call.

You can understand that when Jesus goes to Tyre for a little rest, he’s praying that these people are not going to show up. Apparently, they didn’t. But they did during Passover, and we know how that turned out.

But some needy folks — people who needed a healing touch — did appear in Tyre and Galilee. A lady whose daughter was in distress, and a man who was deaf and dumb. And Jesus stopped what he was doing and touched them, healed them, made them whole.

If we are going to interfere with Jesus’ vacation plans, the very least we might do is to follow the Syrophoenician model and ask Jesus to expel the demons of religious nationalism; influence peddling; sectarian, political and racial hatred; provincial blindness; and self-righteous arrogance.

If we could do this, the nones of the world just might reconsider and say — as did the local crowds in ancient Galilee — “He has done everything well.”

We don’t have a word for the experience of traveling to a far location for peace and quiet only to run into someone who insists on consuming large portions of our time.

Yet, even in this circumstance, Jesus had a reputation as being someone who did “everything well.”

This needs to be our reputation as well.

Let’s be Jesus people, people who are willing to listen to a distraught mother, or a man out of work, or a teenager who has lost her way.

The public might not notice. So much the better. Even Jesus cautioned his friends to remain quiet and keep a low profile.

Remember, the yeast of kindness will leaven the dough of belief, and those close enough to witness it will say “everything was done well.”