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Morning Devotion for the Season of Epiphany

January 30, 2023

Invitatory

I will give you as a light to the nations, that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth.

Glory be to the Father, and to the Son: and to the Holy Ghost;

As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be: world without end. Amen.

Reading: Mark 7:24-30

And from there he arose and went away to the region of Tyre and Sidon. And he entered a house, and would not have any one know it; yet he could not be hid. But immediately a woman, whose little daughter was possessed by an unclean spirit, heard of him, and came and fell down at his feet. Now the woman was a Greek, a Syrophoeni′cian by birth. And she begged him to cast the demon out of her daughter. And he said to her, “Let the children first be fed, for it is not right to take the children’s bread and throw it to the dogs.” But she answered him, “Yes, Lord; yet even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs.” And he said to her, “For this saying you may go your way; the demon has left your daughter.” And she went home, and found the child lying in bed, and the demon gone.

Meditation – Peter Vanderveen

The best intentions are often the ones that go awry. We become so enamored of the good we expect will come about that we lose the critical capacity to see, as well, the lesser results that might happen – quite apart from our purposes. Every action and every expression has some shadow side.

In the effort to show itself to be maximally welcoming and hospitable, many Christians have increasingly adopted a series of slogans that emphasize both the expansiveness of God’s favor and the inclusivity of the church. This is manifested in the language of universals: God loves us all, and God loves in this way all the time. This is the promise given to everyone, and, thus, everyone and all are invited to join in this joy. Such statements are true, but, especially in the continual repeating of them, they begin to sound banal. Rather than generating surprise and interest, they open room for a vast indifference. Terms like all and everyone flatten the innumerable distinctions that make life fascinating and worthy.

If God loves us all, that love loses its vibrancy. It becomes, instead, a principle or rule that gets dispassionately applied. We can shrug it away, as something that is strictly routine and already destined. If everyone is invited, then it really makes no difference who attends. For God loves us all the time, and that means that there will be time enough, maybe even far down the line, to take notice and respond. But for today, and tomorrow, and for all the days within the range of our planning, other more pressing opportunities take priority – for they might not come again.

Universals erase particularity. It means little to say that God is love; what’s striking, what’s astonishing, and sometimes, what’s scandalous is to recognize that God might love this person or that; God might love even a viscerally unloveable individual, someone who can be named, someone who might confront us as spiteful or evil. God might love him or her. Or – each of us might discover for ourselves – that God shows himself to be God by actually loving me, not in general, but in the fullness of my own challenging idiosyncrasies. I, precisely as I am, am not erased by a rule or, worse, by a slogan.

Jesus might have responded to the Syrophoenician woman by exclaiming the very same thing we tend to believe he was saying to everyone else: “God loves everyone, no exceptions!” Yay and Hooray! How dull this story would have been then. It would have been just more of the same, exhausting in its tensionless repetition. This, however, was not Jesus’ witness – to replace God with a principle. His reply was blunt and shocking evidence that he knew exactly who it was who was standing before him. He saw her. He knew her. And the seeming offense of his response was its grace. I imagine that his gaze was no less piercing than his words. And she, in turn, gave as good as she got. She let Jesus know, unquestionably, that she knew who she was addressing. She saw him. And seeing him, she saw God. Her gaze was no less direct and no less particular. This is the power and the beauty of this encounter. It’s completely free of platitudes.

The weakness of the church stems, in large part, from our willingness to be awash in generalities of the blandest sort. They seem kind. But they give us a convenient excuse not really to see one another; which gives others the easiest excuse not to see us either. And the Gospel is, thereby, displaced by a rather vapid wishfulness.



The Lord's Prayer

Our Father, who art in heaven,

     hallowed be thy Name,

     thy kingdom come,

     thy will be done,

         on earth as it is in heaven.

Give us this day our daily bread.

And forgive us our trespasses,

     as we forgive those

         who trespass against us.

And lead us not into temptation,

     but deliver us from evil.

For thine is the kingdom,

     and the power, and the glory,

     for ever and ever. Amen.