I got distracted yesterday. Sermons at rural Grace Church, where I serve a couple of times a month in my retirement, have become conversations. One can do that with a very small congregation. Our conversation about the Syrophoenician woman in Tyre and the deaf mute man in the Decapolis swerved around to the importance of doing good things for people less fortunate than us. That sort of doing is always important, but I think we missed the point. We can do good for others but fail to extend hospitality. We are particularly poor at extending the sort of radical hospitality to which I think these stories point.
Radical hospitality is what this is about. Mark’s narrative brackets Jesus’ Galilean ministry with the gentile territories of Tyre on the one hand and the Decapolis on the other. In each he extended the ministry of radical hospitality to those outside the comfort zone of Galilean Jews. The difficulty with which he responded to the Syrophoenician woman becomes for us an object lesson to guide us through the breakdown of our own prejudices. The comfort and ease with which he healed the Decapolis man is where we are headed. Each of them is outside of the allegorical comfort zone of Galilee, wherever our own Galilee might be.
As long as I’m stretching a point, I’ll go on to say that these healing stories are not so much about physical healing as they are about restoring wholeness of being at two levels: within the local context of one’s life, and between one’s self and God. Note that Jesus did not ask the woman or the man to follow him, become Jews, move to Galilee, or anything of the kind. Each was honored in the place where they were and made whole in the context of that place. We don’t know what the woman did, but it is said that the man went about enthusiastically exclaiming his new way of being in relationship to himself, his community and God.
From that point of view, radical hospitality honors the other without trying to make them over into something else, something more like you and me. Radical hospitality opens up the possibility of exploring new ways of being within the context of authenticity. That is to say, within the context of one’s community, ethnicity, history, family, etc. I think that is a huge step beyond merely doing good for someone less fortunate. It’s also a huge step beyond our usual sort of hospitality that opens our doors to others if they want to come into our space to become as one of us. In my case that means to become a North American rooted in northern European ways nurtured by various Pagan mythologies encased in the Anglican tradition of the Christian faith as expressed by the Episcopal Church.
OK, that’s enough rambling. The whole train of thought needs some reflection and development.
Sometimes we miss the point if we think about doing good \”to\” others. The other person becomes merely a recipient of some work of charity, while we're called to respect the whole person. We have to do good \”for\” the other, and that sometimes means that we can only hope that the good we do bears fruit for the other person.
Karl,I suspect that good Christians leap to doing good partly out of anxiety over what radical hospitality might mean. As one parishioner said out loud, \”Bag ladies scare me, I avoid them,\” not that there are a lot of bag ladies in Dayton, WA. It's not just bag ladies, it's anyone who is significantly different. A friend of mine once served a racially homogenous but multi-ethnic parish in the LA area. It disintegrated into barely concealed warfare between peoples who would not and therefore could not understand each other, and they were all good Christians. Locally, St. Pat's has a large Anglo congregation and a huge Hispanic congregation, but getting them together is unlikely. After all, it took aeventy years for them to get the Irish and Italians to worship together.CP
Radical hospitality – a beautiful concept. Fear of the \”other\” holds us back, I think. Your statement re Jesus not expecting the healed in Tyre or Decapolis to become one of his followers was a strong point for me to read – it makes so much sense that we meet people where they are, not where we want or expect them to be. It's perhaps rather like arguing a political issue and listening to the \”other\” with who we disagree, WITH open ears, not expecting that they'll become or believe as we do but that they will understand we respect their standing as a child of God…..yeah?
Oh, oh, I think SS is telling me I can't get snarky about people being stupid. That is going to cost me a demotion in the Guild of Curmudgeons. Can I still yell at the television?
Ah, very good post, and good questions.It is easy to do good if we think of ourselves as coming from an advantaged or superior position. It is easy to DO good as it is an action that may or may not lead to communion as fellow members in creation and if \”communion\” begins to get too close we can back off. DOING implies something to give or provide that an other needs, desires or could benefit from thus allowing the view of gifting thus the current view of evangelizing as TELLING the good news.Communion is a very different thing, being with requires cleanliness of self, honesty to our best ability, a personal nakedness if you will. AND the ability to not judge what the other brings. Humility is much harder than superiority for the self to bare.
Your essay this time touched on the sociology of religion, which involves both social class, which in America usually is defined as \”income group\”, and ethnic origin. In Utah, where the dominant culture is Mormon, each ward (=parish) is a neigborhood geographically, but really also a social/income and sometimes ethnic origin group(there is a German-speaking ward, and several Spanish-speaking wards). There is a sizable group of Greek Orthodox, descended from Greeks brought a century ago to work in the mines. The downtown Orthodox parish is of older, working class Greeks, the newer one, in the suburbs, is of the much more prosperous (and more assimilated)Greeks (often intermarried with non-Greeks). In the past, they sometimes tried to have one priest serve both, but this did not work, sort of like the Irish and the Italians at St. Pat's and St. Francis in Walla Walla, (and now the Hispanics). The gospel readings about the Syro-Phoenician (Lebanese) woman and the deaf-mute of the Decapolis (the 10 cities of Greek speaking Gentiles across in the Transjordan) is a good reference point for this phenomenon. Dr B
Your essay this time touched on the sociology of religion, which involves both social class, which in America usually is defined as \”income group\”, and ethnic origin. In Utah, where the dominant culture is Mormon, each ward (=parish) is a neigborhood geographically, but really also a social/income and sometimes ethnic origin group(there is a German-speaking ward, and several Spanish-speaking wards). There is a sizable group of Greek Orthodox, descended from Greeks brought a century ago to work in the mines. The downtown Orthodox parish is of older, working class Greeks, the newer one, in the suburbs, is of the much more prosperous (and more assimilated)Greeks (often intermarried with non-Greeks). In the past, they sometimes tried to have one priest serve both, but this did not work, sort of like the Irish and the Italians at St. Pat's and St. Francis in Walla Walla, (and now the Hispanics). The gospel readings about the Syro-Phoenician (Lebanese) woman and the deaf-mute of the Decapolis (the 10 cities of Greek speaking Gentiles across in the Transjordan) is a good reference point for this phenomenon. Dr B
Sorry about the doubling of my comments! I must have pushed the Publish button twice! Dr B