Common Ground
Proverbs 22: 1-2, 8-9, 22-23
Mark 7: 24-30
A Communion Meditation by the Reverend Odette Lockwood-Stewart
Epworth United Methodist Church, Berkeley
 
Some of you know that I make it a practice to acknowledge E-tickets whenever I see them.  I don’t mean E-tickets for flights or films. I’m talking about E-tickets. Disneyland.

In 1955 Disneyland sold ride tickets or coupons.  A rides were cheaper slow rides, B rides were a bit more exciting, Cs were best.  Later D tickets were added. And in 1959, exactly fifty years ago, E-tickets were created.

With E tickets you could do anything!  You could go on the newest, most popular and exciting rides in the park. An E-ticket signaled status for rider and ride. Rides could be moved down from an E to a D, or even C ticket when newer more prestigious rides came along.  

Ride tickets ended in the 1980s, but continued to be a symbol. When Sally Ride, the first American woman on the Space Shuttle, was asked to describe the launch, she said it was a “real E-ticket ride.” And Disneyland Hotel’s concierge lounge is called the E-Ticket Club.

Now I say “E-ticket” whenever I see entitlement in action.  E for Entitlement -- from economic advantage, power, privilege, race, gender, class, sexual orientation, E tickets can be found in exclusive neighborhoods, expensive cars, politically correct communities, expansive egos, and honor societies.  My mom and dad were working class folk of immigrant parents who did not espouse complex political theory or Biblical hermeneutics, but as in the parables of Jesus they recognized bosses and workers, landowners and peasants.  A and E tickets.

As an E ticket holder, you see others, especially those with A tickets, as less than yourself. North Berkeley neighbors support summer youth programs as long as they are not in their backyard:  E-ticket! E ticket holders are everywhere. Where do you see E-Tickets?

Our Gospel lesson today contains one of most disturbing images of Jesus in the Bible.  Jesus had fed thousands of people, he had taught, healed, confronted religious and civil leaders. He was weary.  He traveled into the region of Tyre, a northern territory not inhabited by as many Palestinian Jews.  He sought solitude among the Gentiles.  He went into a house and “did not want anyone to know he was there.” But -- a Syrophoenician woman,  a Gentile, came to him, knelt at his feet, and begged Jesus to help her little girl.  This desperate mother begged Jesus to cast out a demon to heal and free her daughter.

And here comes the disturbing part.

Jesus rebukes and insults this woman.  He tells her that “it is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.” This pagan foreign female pleading for her daughter’s life is told... by Jesus... that she is a dog and not worthy of immediate help and attention.   

Scholars and preachers try to explain this disturbing image of a rejecting, insulting, E-ticket Jesus. Some scholars point out that it was Gentile landowners who controlled the wealth of that region, so Jesus’ rebuke was a way to side with the poor peasants of Palestine.  Some have actually written that Jesus didn’t precisely say “it is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs,” that a more careful translation would be “and throw it to the puppies.” I’m not sure how that is better. My favorite is “sources agree that Jesus’ words were not harsh and he may not have said them at all.”

But I think Jesus may well have said this because he was... fully human. He was tired and on an urgent focused mission.  Mark’s Jesus feels human feelings, listens, is convinced by the prophecy of a foreign woman, and... he changes!  

The Syrophoenician woman argues with Jesus.  As a Greek and Phonenician, she acknowledges that to this Jewish man she may be a dog, but even dogs get crumbs from the table! She defends the rights of her people to be fed, her daughter to be liberated. Jesus tells her that, “For saying that, you may go – the demon has left your daughter.”  Jesus, who fed 5000 is converted to deeper abundance, greater inclusiveness by a Gentile. Jesus taught by parable, signs and wonders, ethical teachings, and here he teaches by his human willingness and capacity to change.  May his turning teach us to ask:

Who is entitled and who is not entitled - to food, money, healing? Who has a seat at the table?

God’s will for our lives and for our world has everything to do with entitlement, everything to do with the real world of economics, power politics, challenging our E-tickets of every kind. Hundreds, hundreds of passages in the Bible call us to justice for the poor. I hate, I despise your feasts and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies, but let justice roll down like waters, and right relationship like an everflowing stream.  May our work this Labor Day be to recognize, expose and name our own E-Tickets, our own sense of entitlement before God and neighbors whose plight we do not deem worthy of attention or action.

In a 20 year study of its member countries, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development said wealthy households are not only widening the gap with the poor, but .... they are also leaving middle-income earners further behind.  The U.S.. has the highest inequality and poverty of the 30 nations of the OECD after Mexico and Turkey, and the gap has increased most rapidly since 2000.

We are called to love neighbor as self.  This call goes beyond individual acts of loving charity.  The realities of the global economy are that money is mobile, workers are expendable and the gap between the rich and poor is growing ever faster.  Who is worthy to be fed, who deserves to be cared for, who is entitled to abundant life?

Our text from Proverbs speaks -- of esteem over entitlement, of rich and poor meeting before the God who created them both, of reaping loss when we sow or sustain economic inequity, of a heavenly court of justice where God will be prosecutor and judge on behalf of the poor and the most vulnerable.

Proverbs is wisdom literature that forms character in community.  Our work together for economic and restorative justice, for basic human rights, for peace arises from the Biblical truth that we all stand on common ground –fellow creatures, neighbors, brothers and sisters.

No E-tickets in God’s realm. None.  Not one.  

At my favorite restaurant, Barbara’s Fish Shack, there is a sign I love:  “If you have a reservation, you’re in the wrong place!”

No reservations. No VIPs.. No head table.  No E-tickets. All are equal and accountable before God. All are welcome.