Last week we heard from Pr. Ireland how the Bible thumpers a.k.a. as the Scribes and Pharisees of First Century Judaism, found Jesus and beat him over the head with Scripture. Passages which Jesus and his disciples had chosen to ignore, especially the ones about hand-washing and dishwashing…

“Why do your followers not live according to the tradition of the elders but eat with dirty hands?”

Well, Jesus gives it right back to them quoting a few Bible vss. of his own… from the Prophet Isaiah.

This people honors me with their lips but their hearts are far from me, in vain do they worship me, teaching human precepts as doctrines and holding to human tradition.

As was pointed out in the children’s sermon by Pastor Ireland, there is good reason to wash your hands. Tradition is not always a bad thing… but it should never be a substitute for love…

In today’s lesson from the Gospel of Mark, Jesus moves from being confronted by Bible believing Pharisees to a confrontation with a heathen Greek, sometimes referred to in scripture as ano-mous-- those without the Law.

Mark gets specific, not only about the non-religion but also the nationality, geography and gender-- of the adversary.

Mark being the shortest of the four Gospels doesn’t waste words… So we need to pay attention. What Mark is telling us is, that Jesus not only is willing to break down the dividing walls between those who put more emphasis on ritual, tradition and ceremonial purity than might be warranted, but also those who use religion to keep their distance from all those who threatened their myopic world view of God.

Mark tells us that Jesus walks into the heathen territory of Sidon by way of Tyre…

Tyre at one time was on the Mediterranean, but today when sediment and settlement has moved it inland…

Jesus goes for some R&R. We are told “he entered a house and did not want anyone to know he was there. Yet he could not escape notice.”

It was a long Labor Day Weekend.  Jesus went to Atlantic City for some rest and relaxation where he was accosted by one of those foreigners that businesses hire to push their wares.

We are told that she was a woman - wrong gender

She was a Gentile – wrong religion.

She was Syro-Phoenecian – wrong race.

And that her daughter had a demon… wrong illness!

In Jesus' day demon possession could be anything from being oppositional defiant to all the other classifications in the DSMIV …take your pick.

None of them would have endeared the girl to a Bible-believing First Century rabbi.

So the Word of the Lord for this Sunday is a continuation from last week.

We move from unclean hands and hearts to unclean geography…

Geography has to do with boundaries.

Boundaries come in many shapes and forms. They all have one thing in common, they keep some people in and others out. Think of all the boundaries that exist:

Economic, Religious, Race, Color, Sexual orientation, Education…

Good fences make good neighbors it has been said… but if the fences are too high or too long the results can be devastating.

Just ask a Palestinian who has to go through daily check points between Israel and Palestine . . . Just ask Rosa Parks, who was told to sit at the back of the bus… or a 10 year-old who just came to America seven years after the end of WWII and the word was “hatzy tatszy a little Nazi.”

 I could stomach the Nazi part but the “little” got to me.

All of us at one time or another have experienced boundaries that kept us out… children can be especially cruel.

It took Peter, a man of the Good Book, a dream in which God told him to go and baptize Cornelius a man without the Good Book, a non-Jew before he could bring himself to do it, without first wanting to circumcise him.

While on the surface the Gospel has two healing stories, it is also about a God who breaks down boundaries.

Deafness and mental illness are both boundaries that limit the growth of human potential…

The year was '78 the War in Vietnam. 

That war left many scars both here and over there.

It was the wrong war, in the wrong place, at the wrong time.

I was pastor of a congregation just outside of Charleston, SC. At that time Charleston was the home of three military installations. Air Force, Navy (the trident subs were stationed there) and Marine…Parris Island is located only a few miles to the south.

A large percentage of the congregation was made up of military personnel. I received a call from the immigration refugee service telling me they needed help in placing a Vietnamese family.  I thought about my own status as an immigrant and God said do it ...and I said “yes.”  I was young, impulsive and idealistic. The Social Ministry committee agreed to bring it to Council… Council reminded me that there were members of the congregation who had lost family in Vietnam, others had served there.

Besides these people needed a place to live, clothes, a job, food, transportation, medical care… they knew little English. The congregation held a meeting and as you can imagine there was much discussion…

Someone called for the question.

At that moment an elderly man asked to speak -- his name was George Segelken.

 “I have been a member of this congregation a long time. My wife Evelyn taught many of your children and probably many of you. I came to this country in 1949 right after the War. Before I came we were shooting at each other ...  probably.

But you welcomed me. I was homeless and you gave me a home.  I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was hungry and you fed me... I was without clothes and you gave me a suit. I knew then that Jesus was in this church. And now 30 years later I believe He is still in this church.

There was not a dry eye in the house.  Two months later Mr. George, Ms. Evelyn and several of the Leadership Team stood on the tarmac at the Charleston AFB

to welcome Cong and his wife, two daughters and sister-in-law.

A few weeks later I received a frantic call from our new adopted family. . Father Fege, (we later learned they were Catholic) come fast, come fast… much trouble. When I got there the sister-in-law, pointed to her abdomen and said “baby”…

The son-in-law was at work and the sister needed to be home for the two girls…

As my VW van sped down I-26 toward Charleston I prayed for a trooper to catch me speeding…

She delivered a healthy baby girl only five minutes after I took her to the waiting room. The doctor came out and said that she could go home the next day…

Today’s Psalmist “Happy are they who have the God of Jacob for their help…

Who gives Justice to those who are oppressed and food to those who hunger.

The Lord sets free the captive

The Lord cares for the stranger

The Lord sustains the orphan and widow… 

We could add, “even a Syro-Phoenician Woman from Tyre – a Gentile or a Vietnamese refugee or a Mr. George or any of us for that matter are not beyond his care.

Even if the human side of Jesus first puts her off with “It is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.”

 But this is a mother whose child is hurting. And we all know you don’t mess with a mother whose child is hurting!

  Mark gives us the details - from Tyre by way of Sidon toward the Sea of Galilee in the region of Decapolis.

Jesus is again in Jewish territory…

“They brought him a deaf man who had an impediment in his speech…” And Jesus looked up to heaven and sighed and said to him ‘Ephphatha’ that is, be opened.

He sighed…

I looked it up “To exhale audibly in a long deep breath, as in weariness or relief, a sort of groan.”

Jesus is about widening the circle and so are we.  That is what it means to be the church as God’s people…

 A sighing Ephphatha People. Amen.