Lectionary 23B paradoxology

Chased from his home region by a needy, misunderstanding crowd of followers, Jesus turns his face toward the land of the faithless to find faith. Mark ch. 7 has Jesus come to a house in the region of Tyre and, in spite of his attempt to "escape (the) notice" (v. 24c) of those seeking healing, is approached by a woman asking that a demon be taken away from her daughter. Subsequently, Jesus visits another region of infidels, there to receive and heal a man who could not hear nor speak; a man therefore, living in the very condition of faithlessness itself.

Jesus meets a woman of an alien race, a man unable to hear or speak and bestows upon both the salvation that is faith. The woman is doggedly determined to claim her place before God. The man closed off from God and others is opened to both by the word of Jesus.

Healing and salvation seem so far away from us. We are closed off from hope. The oppressed so remain. The blind continue to see nothing. The bowed-down further crushed. We appeal to rulers and pundits to tell us of a salvation produced in self-deluded imaginations and imposed by totalitarian methods.

Faith in the God of Jesus Christ bestows on us the gift of place and voice. We stand before Him, eating the crumbs that are the completeness of all that we seek and desire. Our ears are opened to hear his Word, our tongues released to give voice to the praises of the God "as long as (we) live."

Apart from the paradoxological change that brings sight to the blind, justice to the oppressed, and a lifting of the bowed-down, these texts bring us a Jesus who brings into the people of God a woman excluded as a member of an infidelic race and gives voice to a man - and the witnesses of his encounter with Jesus - a desire for zealous proclamation, even after they are "ordered" to keep quiet.

There is an elephant in the room of our self-deceiving desires for easy solutions and cheap fixes that masquerade as our hopes and dreams. Think of a Jesus who would discard us for flimsy human reasons and discover a Jesus who unconditionally draws us to Himself in faith and indiscrimately places the power of His love and forgiveness in our midst. Think of Jesus who tells people to shutup after the experience of his healing and know a Jesus who gives us a message of faith in the midst of this dry and chaotic time. Let water spout up in the midst of the wilderness. Let streams appear in the desert. Let the sand become a pool, in the thirsty ground let springs spew forth.

Astounding, (counter-intuitive?), certainly evoking paradoxological praise. Dead and buried in baptism's drowning waters, we are made alive by the new life of Christ. Crumbs to the unworthy dogs become the feast of heaven made present in the hellish situations of today. Given the voice of praise, we have the radical confidence that the programs of rulers and propagandists are not the definers of our lives, but rather our paradoxology expressed in a confident faith in God.