The Right Demographic

Scripture: Mark 7.24-37; James 2.1-10, 14-17


As a young minister I was asked by a funeral director to hold a graveside service for a homeless man, with no family or friends. The funeral was to be held at a cemetery way back in the country, and this man would be the first to be laid to rest there. I was not familiar with this area and quickly became lost.

I finally arrived, but I was an hour late! I saw the backhoe and the crew, who were eating lunch, but there was no hearse or funeral director in sight. I apologized to the workers for being so late and stepped up to the side of the open grave where I saw a vault already in place. I assured the workers I would not hold them up for long but that this was the proper thing to do. The workers gathered around, still eating their lunches, when I began my graveside sermon. I poured out my heart and soul. I preached and I preached. I even got a few “Amens” and “Praise Gods” from my “congregation.” I closed the lengthy service with a prayer and began walking to my car when I overheard one of the workers say to another, “I’ve never seen anything like that before, and I’ve been putting in septic tanks for twenty years.”

It was a case of mistaken identity. Obviously that was not the constituency I had come to serve. It was sort of like that when Jesus came into the region of Tyre. It was one of the few times Jesus ventured outside of Israel in his ministry. It was one of the few the majority of the people in the area were not Jews. Matthew’s account of this story says he was approached by a Canaanite woman. Mark calls her a “Syrophoenician woman.”
Scholars tell us there was some underlying enmity between the Gentile inhabitants and their Jewish neighbors.

It was also one of those times that Jesus is seeking to get away by himself for rest and meditation. He needs a break from the constant demands of his ministry. But the scripture says, “He could not escape notice.” This gentile woman has a daughter who is demon-possessed. The woman begs Jesus to come and cast out the demon from her daughter. Jesus answers her, “Let the children be fed first, for it is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.”

He just called her a dog. That was, then, not a hip way to address your friend, nor was it evocative of a cute and loyal companion. In that culture a dog was just one step up from a hog. Dogs roamed the streets in packs looking for garbage to steal. Jesus called her a dog. He was being rude, mean even.





This cuts against the common view we have of the Lord. We picture him as gentle and kind always – always smiling, always ready to come in time of need. We want Katie Couric to be perky and we want Jesus to be kind and gentle. We also picture Jesus as this Francis of Assisi type, wandering around helping the birds and the beasts and the people. That’s pretty much all he had in mind to do, right? But we also know that he never journeyed outside of Palestine, rarely outside of the borders of Israel. He didn’t go to Rome like Paul and Peter would later do. Though he could have. And contrary to what you may have heard, Jesus didn’t journey to Asia or India. Though he could have. He could have spent his ministry traveling the civilized world, getting his message and name out to as many people as he could. But he didn’t. He stayed in Israel.

He did this because he had a plan. Jesus ministered with a purpose. He had the first “purpose-driven” ministry, if you will. That was his idea. The purpose was that he would call a remnant of Israel to come to him and declare His kingdom message. Through him and his disciples they were declare this first to Israel and then to surrounding Gentile nations.

What Jesus is saying to this Gentile woman is, in effect, this is not part of the plan. I am here for Israel, God’s chosen people. It is not my purpose to go beyond that. It is not yet time. You are not the kind of person I am supposed to minister to. You don’t fit the demographic.

It’s interesting how wrong this sounds and feels when it comes from Jesus. Of course, we think this way all the time. We are very comfortable with dividing people into groups and demographics from most to least promising. We began meeting last Spring to make plans for our Saturday evening worship service. Right up front we said we wanted to reach unchurched people with this service. We took stock of our assets and talents, our creative ideas. We thought about the name of the service and thought it would be cool if it was in Aramaic, since that was the primary language of the New Testament. We had a piano player, but his specialty is ragtime. So we thought if, in Altoona, there are rag-time lovers who speak Aramaic, well, we’ve got’em hooked. That’s our demographic.

It’s easy to lose sight of real people when we look at groups of people as the object of our marketing, the fodder for our plans. What is amazing about Jesus is that he always keeps his priorities straight. He never puts plans before people. He never forgets to do His Father’s business; and yet he is never in too much of a hurry to be a little delayed by some stranger’s need. Maybe the delay is his Father’s business.

There was once a missionary sent to preach the gospel in India near the end of WWII. After many months it came time for his furlough back home, so his church wired him money for passage on a steamer. But when he got to the port city he discovered a boatload of Jews had been allowed to land temporarily. These were the days when European Jews were sailing all over the world looking for a place to live, and these particular Jews were now staying in attics and warehouses all over that port city.

It happened to be Christmas so the missionary went to one of the attics where many Jews were staying. He walked in and said, “Merry Christmas.”

The people looked at him curiously and said, “We’re Jews.”

“I know that,” said the missionary, “What would you like for Christmas?”

In amazement they responded, “Why, we’d like pastries, good pastries like the ones we used to have in Germany.”

So the missionary went out and used the money for his ticket home to buy pastries for all the Jews he could find staying in the port. Of course, he then had to wire home asking for more money to book his passage back to the States. Not surprisingly, his superiors wired back asking what happened to the money they had already sent.

He wired that he had used it to buy Christmas pastries for some Jews.

His superiors wired back, “Why did you do that? They don’t even believe in Jesus.”

He wired back, “Yes, but I do.”

The Book of James exhorts us to not show partiality to the rich and the powerful, that to do so shows a lack of faith and belief in Jesus. We are instead to show our faith by good works done for the poor, the undesirable, the desperate. This is not easy to do, certainly not in our culture and country today. But we must be about our Lord’s business.

There is song by the group U2 that has this lyric:

Well, you speak of signs and wonders but I need something other. I would believe, if I was able. But I’m waiting on the crumbs from your table.”

The strength of our witness – the strength of the church resides not in our buildings, our programs or our plans, but in the acts of mercy and justice we share with rich and poor alike, satisfied and desperate alike, in Jesus’ name.

“Sir,” she said, “even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs.” And he said to her, “Woman, great is your faith! May it be done for you as you wish.”

May we be sidetracked by the things and people Jesus’ was sidetracked by. May we do our best to give honor and praise to “the One who does all things well.”

To Make Things

Scripture: Mark 7.1-8, 14-15, 21-23; Psalm 8; James 1.17-18


Think of a few of your favorite things. Maybe you think summer at the beach; Friday night football. Maybe you’re thinking a walk in the woods; maybe you’re thinking Arby’s. I’m thinking pie, lots of pie.

What we don’t often think is, “What makes these things good?” What makes a blueberry pie a good thing? Well, it tastes good. But why does it taste good? Why do we have good taste? Why should anything taste good or be a pleasure?

Many people spend a lot of time asking, “Why do bad things happen to me?” Very rarely do we ever ask, “Why all this pleasure? Why the good stuff?”

Scripture and the Church have an answer for that question, both those questions really. But before I get to that let me talk about two lies.

The first lie is that the Church doesn’t know anything about evil. You know how it goes. Christians are naïve. They don’t live in the real world. They live sheltered lives and don’t understand how things work. They don’t understand the real problems ordinary people face.

Really? Occasionally I have people come to me with problems and their approach is pretty uniform. What I mean by that is they don’t usually come and say, “Pastor, I know you’ll understand because you’ve probably heard this from many people before. In fact, you’ve probably experienced it yourself.”

No. Usually, a person will come to me and say, very hesitantly and reluctantly, “I have this problem that I need to talk to someone about. I don’t know, maybe I can tell you.” Then they confess their problem or their transgression, and I say, “That’s horrible! You disgust me. Get out of my office!” Kidding.

No, they wait for me, I think, to do something like that, to express shock and outrage. When I don’t seem visibly upset, they look at me like, “Did you just hear what I said. They may even say something like, “Has anyone ever told you anything like that before?”

I assure them that I have heard worse. Remember, I’m also a priest. Remember, the Church has been around awhile. We know who the Devil is. In the years and seasons when it is fashionable in societies to say there is no objective evil or good, that it’s all perspective; the Church says, “Woe to those who call good, evil, and evil, good.” When the academic or cultural elite say that the worst sin is the sin of intolerance perpetrated by religious fanatics – the Church reminds the world of Auschwitz and Treblinka. The Church says “We battle not against flesh and blood but against the principalities and powers, against this present darkness. . .”

That’s the first lie. The second lie is like unto the first. It goes: The Church doesn’t know much about good and having a good time. The Church says food is bad, drink is bad, sex is bad. . .It ain’t no sin to be glad you’re alive, is it?


This is a common caricature of Church and church people to say that they don’t want anybody to enjoy themselves. It’s a stereotype that has a sliver of historical basis. The Pharisees in Jesus day were known for their passion for the Law and living out a rigorous obedience to the Law in the smallest of details. They took it not only to extreme but so out of context as to misunderstand God’s will for his people. They started with a good intent – purify yourself before God – and turned into a bad thing – most of you other people can never be pure. What started as God’s invitation to everybody to come to him was turned into a barrier so that no one could come to Him.

Jesus and his disciples lived differently. They ate and drank and lived like they actually enjoyed it. And they broke a few rules and traditions in the process. But Jesus reminded the upset Pharisees that they misunderstood God’s Law. He reminded them that everything in the Creation is good, because a good God made it.

“Hear me and understand: there is nothing outside a man by which going into him can defile him; but the things which come out of a man are what defile him.”

“Out of the heart of man come evil thoughts, fornication, theft, murder, adultery, coveting, wickedness, deceit, envy, slander, pride, foolishness. All these evil things come from within, and they defile a man.”

Since this teaching, the Church has always taught that the Creation is good, but the stain on Creation, the problem, is with a human nature corrupted by sin. We are a curious mixture of good and evil. Will we rightly enjoy God’s good gifts to us or will we distort and abuse them- gifts like food, drink, sex, the natural world?

But to say the Church doesn’t know goodness and the good life is a lie.

The people of God are characterized by Joy and joyously asking the question, “Why all is the pleasure? What did we do to deserve all this good?”

“When I look at thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars which thou hast established; (I ask) what is man that thou art mindful of him, and the son of man that thou dost care for him? Yet thou hast made him little less than God and dost crown him with glory and honor. Thou hast given him dominion over the works of thy hands.” Psalm 8.3-6

“Every good endowment and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change. Of his own will he brought us forth by the word of truth that we should be a kind of first fruits of his creatures.” James 1.17-18

We are not only created by a good God but we are entrusted to be stewards of the Creation. We are invited to be in a sense, co-creators with the Spirit of God to continue bearing good fruit and doing Kingdom work.

I remember my grandfather fondly, not the least for his ability to be a creator. He created many wonderful things as a gardener, a carpenter, a maker of homemade ice cream.
As a kid, it seemed almost magical to me that my pap could produce things from the ground like potatoes and corn in such abundance. He could make things!

It is the simple things that we create with our hands, from birdhouses to blueberry pies, that remind us perhaps most directly that indeed “Why all this pleasure!”

“There is no greater thing to be said of God Himself than that He makes things.” G.K. Chesterton

We have a marvelous opportunity and potential do good things, to make good things in our lives. God has gone to great lengths, breaking the body of His own Son, so that we can make life abundantly through him. Let us come to the Table of Life together.

A Hard Road

Scripture: John 6.56-69; 1 Kings 8.27-30, 41-43


A man once moved from his hometown to another city. Outside the city the traveler encountered a old man sitting by the side of the road. The traveler asked the old man,
“Do you live here?”

“I do,” said the old man.

“I am thinking of moving here. What is this town like?” the traveler asked.

“What was it like in the town from which you came?” the old man asked.

“Oh, it was great. The town was busy and exciting. The people were friendly and loving, do anything for you. I hated to leave.”

“That’s how you will find this town as well,” the old man said. And the traveler eagerly journeyed on into the city.


Not long after that, a second traveler came along that same road and saw that same old man sitting by the side of the road. The traveler asked, “Father, do you live in this town?
“I do,” the old man said.

“I am thinking of moving here. What is this town like?” the traveler asked.

“What was it like in the town from which you came?” the old man asked.

“It was a vile place. Too much noise and traffic. Nothing good to do. The people there were stupid and dull. I couldn’t get out fast enough,” the traveler replied bitterly.

“That’s how you will find this town as well,” the old man said. And the second traveler trudged on, but took another road away from the town.









What we expect to find can determine what we see and how we see it. What were those crowds of people expecting to hear and see whenever Jesus stopped to preach? Were they expecting to see miracles, the lame walk and the blind see? Or were they expecting a free meal like they had heard Jesus could provide? You can see this progression in the Gospel as you follow Jesus’ ministry. He starts out very small – he calls a few fishermen, who tell a few friends; a tax collector who tells his friends, and so on and so on. His teaching is good. His reputation begins to precede him. Word is, he’s worth making a special trip into the country to go see him. There are reports of miracles and the reputation grows bigger. And so do the crowds. It gets to the point where Jesus and the Twelve can’t get any sleep, the people follow them everywhere.

Until today.

It’s like any other day for the disciples. They are by the sea of Capernaum and a huge crowd has followed them there. So Jesus begins to preach. He talks about bread – but a different kind of bread. You eat this bread and you’ll never be hungry again! It sounds good. It’s going well. The people are saying, “Lord, we want this bread!”

And then the metaphor changes. “Eat my flesh. Drink my blood.” If you do you will live with me forever. If you don’t you will die. People in the crowd begin to mutter. “Did he just say what I think he said?”

Even the disciples are scratching their heads. This sermon is no longer going well. They’re not getting what he’s saying. Like a bad rock band, it’s almost unlistenable. People are starting to leave.

This is not what everyone came out to hear. This is not what they expected. They wanted to be spiritual. They wanted to feel good, like he had made them feel good before. They wanted good teaching. They wanted the next step in the program. The program was, in their minds, “How to be a good person and get your ticket punched for heaven.”

Stephen Spielberg’s “Munich” is based on the story of the 1972 Olympics and the kidnapping and murder of Israeli Olympic team members by Palestinian terrorists known as “Black September.” The movie tells the story of the retaliation by the Israeli government through a clandestine group whose job it is to hunt down eleven key Palestinian leaders responsible for Munich. What’s striking about the story is how relatively inexperienced are the Israeli assassins. They are chosen for their anonymity rather than their prowess. But they manage to do the job, mostly. One by one, they track down and kill the Palestinians on their list. But such deeds come at a great personal cost to each of these novice assassins.

There is a scene in which one member of the group has had enough. He can’t take the killing any longer. He sees no end to it and won’t be a part of it any longer.

He tells the group leader:

“All this blood comes back to us. We are Jews. Jews don’t do wrong because our enemies do wrong. I don’t know that we were ever decent. Suffering thousands of years of hatred doesn’t make you decent. But we’re supposed to be righteous. That’s a beautiful thing. That’s Jewish. That’s what I know. That’s what I was taught. Now we’re losing it. We lose that – that’s everything. That’s my soul.”


Do you understand how important it was and is for Jews to follow the rules, to obey the law, to be righteous. We sometimes look down on that as a bad thing. It really is a beautiful thing in its intention. We should be so decent. But it ultimately fails in its effect.

Jesus is teaching the Jews, “Your righteousness (what he means by your flesh) just cannot help you. My spirit, my life (taking part of his flesh) is the only thing that will give you life.”

Jesus is asking for something far more than we are used to giving – total abandonment to his control and leading. “Eat my flesh. Drink my blood.”

The crowds began to turn away, en masse, from following after Jesus. It was too hard. It was too much for him to ask. But at least they were honest. They didn’t pretend they were still followers just going away on vacation or taking a smoke break. They said they were going to stop following him and they did.

It’s a hard road, the road a disciple must take. But really, there is no other road to follow Christ. There is no “Easy Pass.” And that’s what most of us have been trying to take in our Christianity, an easy pass. We are looking for the minimal requirement, the most convenient time and situation.

Dallas Willard asks the question, why is it that we look upon salvation as a moment that we began our religious life instead of the daily life we receive from God?

God has yet to bless anyone except where they actually are, and if we faithlessly discard situation after situation, moment after moment, as not being ‘right’, we will simply have no place to receive his kingdom into our life. For those situations and moments are our life.”

There is no ideal time or context to follow Jesus. . .except, maybe, here and now. There is no other kind of Christian than the “disciple” kind. And a disciple follows the moment the Master calls.

What hard teachings and practices have you been ignoring in your life? What will you do with Jesus’ word to live his life?