Sunday 8th September – Family Service led by Anne Walton
With Anne’s Services there’s always a potential challenge. This week we spent quite some time establishing that at least one church member was a fan of superheroes and Marvel movies before we got to the first real challenge – whether Jesus could be called a superhero.
The reading was from Mark 7, and Mark packed more action into his short Gospel than in any Superhero movie. In the first six chapters, Anne told us, Mark had painted a picture of a mythical superhero. Jesus was depicted as a man of the people, with abilities, sensibilities, wisdom, knowledge and kindness that were beyond us – and most certainly beyond those of any of the superheroes that we had identified earlier in the service. Jesus might be called a superhero’s superhero.
Anne felt that in many ways this picture of Jesus as a superhero could prevent us from understanding just who this itinerant preacher who somehow managed to change the world really was. And as long as we saw Jesus as a superhero or superhuman, following Jesus was no more demanding than following our favourite superhero in a comic strip.
Fortunately for us, there was more to Mark’s story of Jesus. Mark’s Jesus was also of flesh and blood, a down to earth, fallible, occasionally short-tempered and even sometimes narrow-minded human being – very much like most of us?
Now, after teaching and feeding a huge crowd, he was undoubtedly tired, so he headed off in search of a nice quiet area to rest in the region of Tyre and Sidon. But he couldn’t escape the crowds of needy people seeking his help, nor the religious authorities who were constantly questioning him and trying to catch him out.
When a Syrophoenician woman, ignoring the rules of propriety of the time, had forced her way into the house where Jesus was resting and begged him to cast a demon out of her daughter, she had been given the ‘brush off’ by Jesus. He snapped back at her, insisting that the children (and for children read Jews) must be fed first. It was not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs (and for dogs read Gentiles).
At this point the woman had engaged him in a debate, and suddenly Jesus had had to rethink his position. It seems that Jesus had realised for the first time that his mission wasn’t just to the Jewish people. He was also expected to meet the needs of foreigners – even those whose habits and customs might actually be offensive to him.
Jesus had had to think the unthinkable through his encounter with this particular persistent woman and query his own attitude towards those of other races. Then he had had to make a decision which required great courage, because he would have known that if he associated with this woman, and with Gentiles in general, he would be despised by the religious authorities and run the risk of being judged unclean.
And so we got a glimpse of another Jesus – the all too human one. Gone is the brilliant debater, the energetic, miracle-working, wise, kind, gentle, softly spoken superhero. Here instead the weary rabbi who finds himself accosted by yet one more needy person who, according to all the rules, he shouldn’t deal with. So human, that for the only time in the Scriptures, as far as Anne was aware, he loses an argument. And Jesus was changed by his experience with the Syrophoenician woman.
Anne finds it so much easier to identify with this human Jesus. But there was a danger and a challenge in identifying with this all too human Jesus. After all, none of us can be expected to walk in the footsteps of Jesus, the superhero.
Our challenge was to open our hearts and minds to the needs of those around us and, like Jesus, to dare to think the unthinkable. To hear the cries of our sisters and brothers and participate in their healing, just as Jesus did.
Amen.
(Anne does not challenge Mark’s description of a superhero/divine Jesus living alongside the very human Jesus we encounter here. How the two co-exist seems to defy explanation and simply requires acceptance, she feels.)
Potters Bar United Reformed Church 