Scandalous! - James 2:1-17; Mark 7:24-37

September has arrived, which means that on weekdays, my brief morning commute to the office now includes a few extra minutes in a school zone. Last week, as I sat idling a few cars back from the crosswalk from the student parking lot to the main campus, a strange thing happened. One lane over and about a car’s length ahead of me sat a man in a convertible smoking a cigarette. As he finished, he flicked the cigarette, likely expecting it to land on the ground. It didn’t. It landed on the hood of my car, where it sat, staring at me, the last little bit of smoke trailing away until the final student crossed the street and we could all accelerate. 

I was so offended. I was offended that the man was smoking so close to children. I was offended that he littered his cigarette butt, even though I know how common this practice is. I was offended that he made me complicit in the littering, because technically, the cigarette fell to the ground off of my car. Frankly, I was scandalized. I couldn’t believe that both this man and I occupy the same society, with one of us thinking this behavior is acceptable and the other finding it reprehensible. It put me in mind of that line from old westerns: there ain’t room in this town for the both of us!

The theme seemed to carry through the week. The Gospel passage for today is about Jesus and the Syrophoenician woman. Talk about offensive! This is one of the most controversial passages in all of scripture. While traveling through an area in which Jesus and his friends were definitely the ethnic minority, perhaps even the enemy, a local woman, a Gentile, approaches Jesus and asks for healing for her daughter. Not only does Jesus resist helping her, he responds with an insulting aphorism. 

Many Christians, scholars included, have been offended by this behavior. If Jesus had spoken to me that way on the morning of the cigarette incident, I would have been tempted to smack the sass right out of him! It is so hard to imagine that the man who treated the Syrophoenician woman so poorly is the same man who ate with tax collectors and sinners, and went on to literally die on their behalf. There ain’t room in the town of my heart for both sides of Jesus. I’m scandalized. 

I found it much easier this week to focus on our portion of the Letter of James. This exhortation sounds much more like the Christianity I know and love: a God who loves and favors the poor and outcast; a community that shows no partiality among its members; mercy triumphing over judgment; a faith that begets loving behavior. Part of me finds joy in imagining that if this letter had been around a little earlier, the Syrophoenician woman could have quoted it to Jesus in the midst of their tiff and absolutely dropped the mic. 

But if we look closer, the message from James might scandalize us, too. James makes no bones about it: wealth is not a virtue. God has a special love for the poor, and therefore so should we. And James isn’t just talking about how we vote or where we donate our money. James is talking about showing the same treatment to the poor people we encounter day to day as to the wealthier people. 

We don’t like to admit it, but often, this is not what we want to hear. We are offended by it. When walking down the street on our way to lunch, we would much rather accidentally bump into someone who looks as though they are in or above our socioeconomic class than someone who looks like they might be in need. The same is likely true in other spaces like the grocery store, at school, and perhaps even here at church. We are much more willing to have an encounter with wealth than with poverty. 

This is because poverty scandalizes and offends us. It hurts our feelings. As it should. May we never see the day with the image of someone suffering and in need brings us joy. But we are mistaken if we think we can rid ourselves of the scandal by donating money and used clothes or voting for political candidates who promote expansive social services. In the same way, I am mistaken if I think I can rid myself of the scandal of Jesus’ harsh words by turning towards an easier to swallow message in the epistle reading. 

Because the only way to prevent partiality and marginalization, as both Jesus and I learned in this passage, is to engage with people. As theology professor Micah Kiel wisely puts it, “the Gospel is not about advocacy or social programs, it’s about encounter.” This is what James is calling us towards in his letter, and it’s what the Syrophoenician woman reminds Jesus about in Mark’s Gospel. Once Jesus enters into dialogue, into relationship with the woman, his whole worldview changes. 

Of course, this doesn’t make Jesus’ initial response to her any less offensive. In one of the other Gospels, this story might seem out of place, but not so in Mark. In this earliest Gospel, Jesus and God are not always 100% in sync until after the Resurrection. Mark seems to understand the kind of Kingdom Christ is proclaiming, but he can’t quite get his head around it. He, too, is scandalized, but by a theological problem that is quite the opposite of ours. Mark doesn’t understand how gentiles could possibly be saved by the Jewish Messiah. We don’t understand how Jesus could possibly leave anyone out. 

In both cases, the message is the same. Salvation will always be scandalous. If we seek to bring the Kingdom of God into the world, we will always run the risk of being offended by its breadth and its challenge. But we will also have a choice. We can turn away from what offends us, pushing it to the margins and showing partiality to wealth and ease. Or we can lean in and seek encounters with the people and places that scandalize us. Jesus shows us the faithful choice in today’s Gospel, if we are brave enough to follow where he leads. 

As I passed the school and went on my way towards the office this week, I thought of about a million things I could have said to the man who tossed his cigarette butt onto my car. Many of them were angry and hateful. Few of them would have invited a true encounter. After reading about Jesus’ encounter with the Syrophoenician woman, I wonder in what ways my assumptions about the smoking man might have been wrong. I wonder what I could learn from him and from his vantage point of the Kingdom. I will likely never know. But I look forward to my next opportunity for true encounter, especially if it’s scandalous. Amen.