Sermon: Arguing with God

Rev. Bryn Smallwood-Garcia
Congregational Church of Brookfield (UCC)

14th Sunday After Pentecost
September 06, 2009

"Arguing with God"

Psalm 123:1-4
Mark 7:24-30

Prayer:  May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our minds and hearts gathered here this day be acceptable in your sight, Oh Lord, our Strength and our Redeemer.  Amen.  

This story from Mark doesn’t sound much like Jesus, does it?  Jesus, who loves all the little children of the world – here he doesn’t sound very “open and affirming.”  He sounds just plain mean.  Here this poor mother, from a little seaside town in what is today Lebanon – she just wants her daughter to get well.  And Jesus sounds like a typical Jewish man of his time, who figures that since she’s a Gentile, and a woman, she is beneath contempt. Did you know the Pharisees back then had a prayer that went, “I thank you, O Lord, that you did not make me a dog, a Gentile, or a woman”? 

I mean, from Jesus we might expect a little more compassion, or at least less concern for the rules of society – by chapter 7 of Mark, we’ve seen him break religious law and defy his culture repeatedly.  He casts demons out of a man and plucks grain on the Sabbath, he touches and heals women (even bleeding women), the disabled, and a leper; he one time cast demons out of a doubly unclean man – unclean because he lived among the tombs and unclean because he was a Gentile living in Gerasa (another non-Jewish province, like Tyre).  Even right before this incident, at the beginning of chapter 7, Jesus dismisses Jewish rules about hand-washing and unclean foods.

So in that light, it is reasonable to assume that this foreign woman was coming to Jesus because she had heard he was a healer and also because he was a taboo-breaker.  She knew what she wanted was a long-shot, but what mother with a mentally ill daughter would NOT beg Jesus to cast the demon out?  And what does he say?  27“Let the children be fed first, for it is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.”  Some scholars believe that since the word he used here means “little doggies” or “puppies,” he was either trying to be funny, or to be nicer.  Who knows?  He may have called her sick daughter a “little puppy” for the benefit of the crowd, because he wanted to upset their racist world-view – by implying she was good enough to be a beloved house pet under the family table, and not a dirty stray. 

The thing about this story that is most remarkable to me is the relationship Jesus shows us between the two of them – between the Jewish Messiah, and a foreign woman.  People must have been shocked such a great rabbi would take time to talk to her, when he and his disciples had come to Tyre on what was essentially a vacation – to find a place where the crowds wouldn’t find them.  And not only does she interrupt, this is the one story in all the Gospels where anyone has a real argument with the Lord – a back-and-forth debate where Jesus yields the point and actually changes his mind.

What a model for us!   This story can show us the relationship our God in Christ invites us to have in our own prayers – that is, we are free, and even invited, to argue with God.  In fact, arguing with the Lord has a long and distinguished history in the Bible – from Adam’s whining, as he came out of hiding in the bushes – Remember? “[But] the woman whom thou gavest to be with me, she gave me fruit of the tree, and I ate!” There’s plenty more where that came from, too, like today’s Psalm 123: 

3Have mercy upon us, O Lord, have mercy upon us,
for we have had more than enough of contempt.
4Our soul has had more than its fill of the scorn of those who are at ease,
of the contempt of the proud.

Have you ever been fed up enough with the injustice and pain in your life to pray that prayer?  I know I have.  And it sounds to me a lot like this poor Lebanese woman. Many of the Psalms are full of complaints and real demands for help.  From Psalm 4, “Answer me when I call, O God of my right!  Hear my prayer!” to Psalm 6, “O Lord, heal me, for …  I am weary with my moaning; every night I flood my bed with tears; I drench my couch with my weeping.  My eye wastes away because of grief.”  Have you ever been there?  I know I have.  Many other Psalms question God’s apparent apathy about wrong-doing and cry out for justice, like Psalm 10, “O Lord, why do you hide yourself in times of trouble?  In arrogance the wicked hotly pursue the poor; let them be caught in the schemes they have devised. …”  Can’t you just hear Bernie Madoff’s victims praying that one? 

Jesus did his share of bargaining too – especially the last night of his life, in Gethsemane.  Remember in Mark 14 (v. 36) how hard he prayed? “Abba, Father, all things are possible to you; remove this cup from me….” That was an intense prayer, and one he repeated, even if he softened it with “yet not what I will, but what you will.”  Even to the end, Jesus felt free to complain to God on the cross.  His last words in Mark 15 are from the first line of Psalm 22, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?”  Have you ever felt that, the absence of God?  I know I have. 

It was on Labor Day weekend 17 years ago today that after 4 years of trying to conceive, I was finally two months pregnant.  Only I was having a miscarriage.  My despair on that Sunday was so deep that I had no words for God.  It felt like I was falling through the black void of space and the whole universe was laughing at me – here I was, just finishing the last semester of seminary, when clearly, obviously, God did not exist.  If something this unfair could be happening to me, life must be random and meaningless.  The doctor could only suggest I go to bed and wait.  And pray for a miracle.  But I’ll tell you something.  I did not pray a nice prayer.  I was through begging.  I did not plead for a miracle.  I was so mad I wouldn’t give God the satisfaction.  Instead I demanded an answer.  My prayer was just, “Why?  What did I ever do to you?”  And that night I had a dream, which is why I’m still here – why I became a pastor after all.  It went like this:

John and I were shopping for a car in an outdoor lot where the cars were parked in two rows – you know, lined up like the teeth on a zipper.  One row was blue cars; the other was red.  I was backing a red car out of its parking space, to test drive it, but John was parallel parked behind me.  It didn’t look like I had enough room to back out, but the salesman (who looked, by the way, like a cartoon version of a slick and dishonest car dealer) was waving me out as if I had plenty of room.  And I probably did have room – only the brakes failed, and I crashed into John’s parked car.  As I jumped out to check on things, that slimy car salesman was all over me – blaming me, calling me a stupid woman driver, claiming I didn’t follow his directions, and on top of everything, telling us that “we broke it, we bought it.”  He said we had to pay for both cars, which were totaled.

Well, as you can imagine, I was furious.  The car dealer started back up the hill to his office, saying we had to fork over the money, or he’d call the cops.  I told him, it was not my fault; it was all his fault.  The brakes had failed, and besides that, I was following his instructions exactly.  I was running after him, yelling.  Finally, he stopped and whirled around and looked at me hard, and he said, “So it’s all my fault?  You’re absolutely sure you did nothing wrong?”  “Yes!” I said.  “Good,” he said then, and he smiled and threw his arms around me in a big hug.  “Does that answer your question?”  I woke up laughing: Moses saw God in a burning bush – me, it was in a used car salesman.

But I was still skeptical.  When I got to the doctor, I had to have a real explanation, a scientific explanation.  So I asked her the same question I’d asked God, “Why did this happen to me?” “Well,” she said, “What happens is that the two lines of chromosomes – yours on one side and your husbands on the other – line up kind of like this (she puts her two hands up with the fingertips almost touching).  And they’re supposed to fit together kind of like a zipper.  But sometimes one pair of the chromosomes doesn’t line up right, like one is turned, and they kind of crash and fail to connect properly.”  Who knew God understood genetics, much less would really give such a straight answer to a question?

And it was exactly 3 months after that that I conceived my son Jacob.  I was leading an Advent prayer class for women in my church who had grief issues over the loss of a child, or infertility, and we were praying many of these Psalms, like 123:

2As the eyes of servants look to the hand of their master,
as the eyes of a maid to the hand of her mistress,
so our eyes look to the Lord our God, until he has mercy upon us.
3Have mercy upon us, O Lord, have mercy upon us….

People of faith, we can cry out to God in our pain, and even in our disbelief, and demand help, demand answers, and our Bible reminds us that – no matter how distant we feel from God, or how unworthy or unclean we are – we may not get exactly what we want when we want it, but we will be heard.  And we will all be welcome at our master’s table.

Thanks be to God for this Good News.  Amen.

 

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Psalm 123

1To you I lift up my eyes, O you who are enthroned in the heavens!

2As the eyes of servants look to the hand of their master,
as the eyes of a maid to the hand of her mistress,
so our eyes look to the Lord our God, until he has mercy upon us.

3Have mercy upon us, O Lord, have mercy upon us,
for we have had more than enough of contempt.

4Our soul has had more than its fill of the scorn of those who are at ease,
of the contempt of the proud.

Mark 7:24-30

24From there he set out and went away to the region of Tyre. He entered a house and did not want anyone to know he was there. Yet he could not escape notice, 25but a woman whose little daughter had an unclean spirit immediately heard about him, and she came and bowed down at his feet. 26Now the woman was a Gentile, of Syrophoenician origin. She begged him to cast the demon out of her daughter. 27He said to her, “Let the children be fed first, for it is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.” 28But she answered him, “Sir, even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs.” 29Then he said to her, “For saying that, you may go—the demon has left your daughter.” 30So she went home, found the child lying on the bed, and the demon gone.