Jesus turned his face toward the salvation of all people in the seventh chapter of the Gospel According to Mark. The Syro-Phoenician woman called him to accountability beyond his own race, type, kind and clan. It is astounding that Jesus, immediately thereafter, altered the course of his earthly ministry. He resolutely sets his face toward the self-sacrifice of Jerusalem.
Since the seventh chapter, Jesus has walked and talked with his disciples, teaching them about the nature of this self-sacrifice. They do not understand the concept. It is possible that they are too caught up in the traditional organizational and institutional thinking in which they had been raised to comprehend a sacrificial formula. Instead of understanding and supporting Jesus, they argue about which of them is the greatest, lobby for position, tell the children who crowd around Jesus to go away, and, this week, tell poor old blind Bartimaeus to be silent. "Shut up, old man. He isn't going to pay any attention to you, a poor beggar...Get a job and lay off the booze!"
The Syro-Phoenician woman would not settle for Jesus' racial epithet. The children continued to jump and hop and crowd around Jesus, being children. Blind Bartimeaus sees the truth and follows Jesus on the path of sacrifice. While the disciples imagine the gilded hallways of power and authority, Jesus directs them along dirt paths of giving up what one is given for the sake of others...every other and all others.
The Church has, for a long time, walked with the disciples down those gilded hallways of power and authority, legislating morality and demanding that the culture honor the standards of its religious orthodoxies. The Church has coerced and manipulated. It has claimed its place as the one true faith through which we determine both domestic and foreign policy. It has claimed the throne of American empirical rule.
This all began to change in the mid- to late-sixties. Through the Vietnam war and its demonstrations, through the civil rights movement, and its assassinations, through the equal rights amendment struggle, through Watergate and coverups and hearings and impeachment, the culture gradually abandoned the gilded hallways of power and authority. The culture began to demand that we embrace a more egalitarian, fair and gracious model of societal organization. It called the Church back to the dirt tracks of sacrificial ministry.
The Church resisted. It preferred the golden halls of sanctimony and the empty liturgies and impractical rites of totem and taboo. It despised the children around Jesus, the Syro-Phoenician mudblood, the bum Bartimeaus and those who had been estranged from the right ways of Sunday morning morality. And it began to shrink. Its influence diminished. Much of it died. Many went away.
Now, however, we, the Church of Jesus Christ, hear Christ's sacrificial teachings.. We hear him as he calls us to stand with him, drinking from the cup from which he drank, suffering the baptism with which he is baptized. We return to the dirt tracks upon which the faith was originated. We return to service and ministry that is carried out for the sake of all people. We embrace again the Syro-Phoenician woman, the children who crowd around Jesus, poor, rejected Bartimeaus, the untouchables, the outcast, the disenheartened and the hopeless.
These are the days of hope and promise. These are the days of the faithful Church of Jesus Christ. These are the days of working together for the individual and systemic justice and equality that Christ had sacrificed himself to bring. Thanks be to God for bringing us back, not giving up on us and directing us down the paths of faithfulness,service and ministry.
Welcome back to the grimy, dirt paths of sacrificial ministry!
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