|
Rudeness
SERMON - 10.15am, Emmanuel Church, Pokfulam, Hong Kong
Sunday 10th September 2006
Revd. Matthew Vernon
Mark 7.24-37
"Talk to the hand, 'cos the face ain't listening."
There are many ways of being rude.
"What you looking at?"
Here in Hong Kong is often not words, but actions.
The door left to close in someone's face.
The rush for the MTR door.
A few months back a friend and I were approaching the top of an escalator in Citibank
Starbucks beckoned!
A man dived in front of us to reach the escalator first;
as if he saw the gap and not the people.
"Talk to the hand, 'cos the face ain't listening." has a certain style.
Then there are Jesus' words in this morning's Gospel,
speaking to a Gentile woman.
"It's not fair to take the children's food and throw it to the dogs."
It's clear that the children are the Jews and the dogs are the Gentiles.
What a way to speak!
Was Jesus being ironic?
Using a well know proverb as a kind of joke?
Some commentators think so.
I feel that lets him off the hook.
It strikes me that Jesus was being plain rude.
Dogs was as much a term of abuse as it is now.
But the woman is not put off,
responding "Even the dogs under the table eat the children's crumbs."
She's sharp and quick witted.
So much so that she changes Jesus' self-perception.
The way we talk about Jesus often suggests that his views were always the same;
that because he was divine he must have been consistent.
But he was human and was affected by other people.
And not just emotionally,
like when his friend Lazarus died and Jesus cried.
Also intellectually.
In this story Jesus leaves Jewish territory,
going to a place of foreigners.
In Tyre, he meets this Syrophoenician woman –
a Greek, Gentile woman.
We all know that travel broadens the mind.
There's nothing like meeting people from other cultures to change our perceptions of that culture.
Perceptions which, if we're honest, are narrow and informed by ignorance.
This happened to Jesus too.
Jesus had his view enlarged.
The Greek woman challenged his self-understanding.
Before he met her he saw his work as primarily with his own people, the Jews.
Of course he mixed with Gentiles and sinners.
Perhaps this interaction with a Greek woman, and other similar meetings, is why.
Since living in Hong Kong may awareness and affection for Chinese people has been greatly enriched.
As too has my perception of Pakistani Muslims, Hong Kong being such a melting pot.
That's thanks both to my friend Imam Arhad at Kowloon Mosque,
and Sammy who was the guard until recently where we live.
Jesus' inclusive beliefs are still radical two thousand years on.
We don't know how he came about them.
We do know that in his mature teaching,
he viewed all people equally as children of God.
Mixing with tax-collectors, Roman soldiers, prostitutes and lepers –
the people despised by the religious authorities.
And we know that this was reflected in the teaching of the first Christians.
St. Paul writes in Romans (1.16), "salvation to everyone who has faith, to the Jew first and also to the Greek."
And more famously, "in Christ there is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus." (Galatians 3.28)
Such inclusive attitudes are still radical; two millennia on.
And they are a powerful message on this eve of 9.11
10th September five years ago the world was a very different place.
The war of terror had not yet been conceived.
Terribly, the attacks of 9.11 had been conceived,
the twisted, horrific plan to kill innocent people and cause carnage
But all that has happened as a result was unimaginable on 10th September 2001.
Sadly, much of what has happened as a result has made things worse.
So many more innocent people have lost their lives in countries supposedly supporting al-Qaeda.
But now, what we've always suspected has been confirmed by the US Senate:
there was no link between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda,
despite President Bush's justifications for war.
How many other acts of war have been committed on such shaky foundations?
The "war on terror" –
so eloquently justified and ruthlessly enacted.
Its architects fail to understand the roots of the acts of terror:
the actions of Western countries in the Middle East during the 20th century;
the power wielding of Western States for self-gain at the expense of so many.
In Britain too:
Tony Blair denies that Iraq has anything to do with recent terrorist attacks.
Refusing to hear British Muslims, who know otherwise.
Which isn't to justify the terrible actions of terrorists,
but to suggest that all people are children of God
whatever country they are from,
whatever their religion,
whatever their race and ethnicity.
What's most distressing about this for me as a Christian is that Bush and Blair claim to be acting as Christians.
But then as actor Martin Sheen has said you can't have a pacifists President.
Martin Sheen who played President Bartlett in the wonderful West Wing, if you know it,
President Bartlett who was wise, generous-hearted and Democrat!
Martin Sheen said he couldn't be the real President because you can't have a pacifist President.
But you might hope for a President with a bigger, more inclusive vision.
And a Prime Minister who would help enlarge that vision.
Don't get me wrong,
America is a great country with so much to offer the world.
After all, it's the home of Starbucks.
And Britain isn't bad either.
I'm just saddened by what's happened in the five years since 9.11.
The people who died on 9.11 are not honoured by more violence and mayhem in the name of justice and self-defence.
I'll end with more radical thoughts from an editorial that said this:
We're all primitives at heart.
When people threaten our way of life,
we do as our hunter-gatherer forefathers did:
we strike back; we give rein to resentment, rage and revenge.
But in our complex modern societies, "outsiders" cannot be easily expelled
and the results of our feelings are destructive.
Reacting with rage to the attacks of a few glory-seeking jihadis,
we have magnified terror,
not defeated it.
How much better to have done something truly radical.
What if we'd checked our primitive impulses?
What if we'd turned the other cheek?
It sounds hopelessly naοve, doesn't it?
But a priest in Barcelona has inspired such a policy.
The most brutal gang in the city, the Latin Kings, has been legalized by the acting Mayor.
The priest, Father Luis Barrios, concluded that the alienated teenagers in the Latin Kings in fact wanted to escape their violent reputation and be more acceptable and respected.
The gang is now eligible for state aid
depending on the affects of their activities.
I hope Father Luis is right.
"Turn the other cheek" and "talk to the hand" couldn't be more different.
|
