Being Bold with Jesus

Mark 7:24-37

Rochelle A. Stackhouse

September 10, 2006

Now that was one bodacious woman. She didn’t care what the world wanted her to be because she was black or a woman in 1851. She knew who she was and who Jesus was and that was all she needed to know. She was determined against all the odds (and those odds were profound) to bring justice for herself and others like her. And she would not take no for an answer. She knew God and powerful men had a blessing she needed. She would pester those in power on earth as well as God until they listened to her.

As did this woman whose name we don’t know in Mark’s gospel, this bold and bodacious woman who wouldn’t take no for an answer from Jesus. She didn’t care that it wasn’t “right” for a woman to approach a strange man. She didn’t care that he had a different religion than she did or came from another country. She didn’t even care that he insulted her, and insult her he surely did. She only cared that he had a blessing in his power to give, a blessing she needed for her daughter. She would do whatever it took—even if it meant this verbal wrestling with a hostile Jesus—to make her daughter well. She would not take no for an answer. She wrestled a healing out of him for her child.

Dwelling with this woman in my head this week has revealed to me how often I have become willing to take no for an answer from powerful people and do nothing about it. Dwelling with this woman this week has helped me see how I use my busy-ness, my calendar and its commitments, too often to keep me from boldness and action. That ever happen to you? There’s a lot of powerful people out there in this country, in this world, who are keeping healing from children, the way Jesus almost did with this woman’s daughter, and too many of us are willing to turn away and let them get away with it. When the Congress spends hours of speeches about how the only way we can raise the minimum wage in this country is if we also make sure to give a large tax break to the wealthiest Americans, most of the citizens of this nation figure it’s just political compromise and we have to “let the system work.” In the meantime our neighbors here in New Haven who are working minimum wage jobs have to go to soup kitchens and food pantries in order to feed their children and stand in long lines at clinics and in emergency rooms to get them health care.

And then I heard this weekend that this same Congress couldn’t pull it together to vote on an amendment that would have required our military to refrain from using cluster bombs in civilian areas. The Senate said, “No, we won’t restrict the use of this horrible weapon because after 9/11 we are in a war on terror with people who don’t play by the rules.” So the killing of 3000 civilians five years ago is used for an excuse to kill and maim other civilians. We just saw what these bombs, made in the U.S. and supplied to Israel by the U.S., can do in Lebanon where children picked up the brightly colored bombs thinking they were toys and then were killed and maimed along with their playmates when they exploded sending shrapnel for hundreds of yards. Who will be bodacious and bold enough to speak for the children of Tyre as this woman of Tyre spoke for her child so long ago?

But you know the more I thought about this text, the more I became convinced it is not just telling us that we need to be bold with powerful people in claiming healing and life that is theirs to give. I think it is also telling us that we need to be bold with God, as this woman was with God-in-flesh in Jesus. I read in scripture stories about people like the Syro-Phoenician woman, like Abraham pestering God until God agreed to spare Abraham’s nephew Lot from the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, like Jacob wrestling with an angel until getting a blessing, like Hannah weeping in prayer all night long yearning for a child. And I think my prayer life has become so weak. Unlike our sister in Tyre, I fear I am too willing to take God’s silence, or even God’s “no” without complaint, long-suffering in silence because I think that is being faithful. I heard someone on the radio the other day use the word “Protestant” as a synonym for bland and spineless, and I cringed. Is that who we have become, we the descendents of those like Martin Luther whose prayers competed with lightening bolts in their intensity? If we are bold with the powers of this world on behalf of justice and healing, are we also bold with God on behalf of the same causes? The great preacher Gardner Taylor once said that he believed the whole city of New York could be turned around by the earnest, bold and heartfelt prayers of one strong congregation, and New Haven is smaller than New York!

Will you help me to think about how we can make our prayer life here stronger? Will you commit with me to making our prayer life as individuals stronger? Can we, in our boldness, like our sister in ancient Tyre, find the words that will move the powerful on earth and in heaven, wrestling healing for all the children as she did for hers?

I take as my modern inspiration for this boldness all those who have marshaled their political and spiritual boldness since the 1980’s to fight for justice and healing for those with AIDS. The playwright Tony Kushner’s powerful Angels in America includes an astounding imagining of a moment of boldness between a man named Prior, suffering from AIDS, and a council of angels in heaven. They tell him earth is going to end in flames and offer him the chance to stay in heaven, avoiding more suffering for himself and avoiding seeing the suffering of others. Prior tells them no, he tells them he wants to live. And he tells them that the plague should stop, now. Then he claims the blessing he has tried to wrestle out of his personal angel. She says, “who asks of the order’s blessing with apocalypse descending?” And Prior replies, “Bless me anyway. I want more life. I’ve lived through such terrible times and there are people who have lived through much, much worse. When they’re more spirit than body, more sores than skin; when flies lay eggs in the corners of the eyes of their children, still they live. We live past hope.” In the face of the angels’ surprise, Prior continues, “If I can find hope anywhere, that’s it, that’s the best I can do. It’s so much not enough; it’s so inadequate, but still, bless me anyway, I want more life.”

For this woman of Tyre, crumbs under the table were so inadequate, but still she sought Jesus blessing for her child. And the crumbs became a feast of life.

Can we all, like Sojourner, like the woman of Tyre, like Prior, find in us this boldness of bodacious hope and go out today ready not to take no for an answer? Amen.