A Homily for the Fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost
Texts: St. James 2:1-17; St. Mark 7:24-37
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and Christ Jesus our Lord, who came to feed the children of God. Amen.
We’ve seen something like this before.
Jesus is staying at a home in the area near Tyre when a woman comes to him, asking that Christ might cast a demon out of her daughter. There’s a familiar pattern for healing stories and exorcisms like this. There will be some little exchange, the disciples will get annoyed, onlookers will scoff at the entire situation, and Jesus will tell the woman that she has great faith and the daughter will made well. Standard enough fare for the Gospels.
We see these healing narratives over and over again. So much so that we get used to them and, to be honest, we stop paying attention until the end. Oh, hey. Jesus healed the person with…what was it this time? Another leper? Leprosy! Jesus healed the person with leprosy. Yea. Alright. They get a little boring, we lose focus, and the details often evade us as long as it’s a happy ending.
Usually, any sort of disturbing details are floating just under the surface; they demand a close reading of the text to really get at the real point of the story.
But not this time.
Continue reading “Dogs at the Table”