Jesus was casting out a devil, and it was dumb. And it came to pass, when the devil was gone out, the dumb spake; and the people wondered.

This morning I speak to you in the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. I can do so because I was ordained 21 years ago into the Apostolic ministry that goes all the way back to Jesus’ chosen Apostles. I did not receive Apostolic order from the faculty of Duke Divinity School. A Bishop who had been consecrated by other Bishops who themselves had been consecrated by other Bishops in Apostolic Succession ordained me. This is why I, and our other priests and deacons, may speak to you in the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. I say this because so much of our text today revolves around the question: “by what authority does Jesus teach and act?”

As your priest, one of my driving concerns is to build up your trust in the Bible and especially in the New Testament. Not because the Old Testament is secondary but because the New Testament is a precious and reliable collection of Apostolic memories, of eye-witness recollections, of the life, death and resurrection of our precious Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. And in his life all the Prophets and the Law has been fulfilled. I am as certain of this – of the authenticity, of the candidness, the truthful history of the New Testament – I am as certain of this pulpit I stand in, of this parish church that shelter us, of the ground under our feet.

And in addition to that objective truth, I am concerned to teach you a hermeneutic, that is, a way of interpreting these weird and undomesticated narratives that have been handed down to us. Mainly I want you learn not to read them apart from the Common Prayer of the Church. It is Common Prayer that provides us with the hermeneutical grid we must have to “rightly divide the Word of truth.”

The great New Testament scholar E.C. Hoskyns described the proper end of New Testament studies: “You look down your critical microscope at the New Testament text with a view to describing the religious life of the first-century Christians, and you find that God is looking back at you through the microscope and declaring you to be a sinner.” That is why I am just as concerned that you present yourself to the these narratives as a pliant and living sacrifice. In short that you and I open our life to the living Word of God, so that this text may interpret, may judge, and may form our life according to the will of him who loved us and died for us on the Cross.

Now let us look today’s text.

Jesus was casting out a devil, and it was dumb. And it came to pass, when the devil was gone out, the dumb spake; and the people wondered.

There is no question that a demon came out of the person and the person spoke. No one denied that. What Luke wants us to see is that this miracle did not automatically win the people over. Some said out loud that Jesus was able to do what he did because he was in leagues with Beelzebub – The Lord of the Flies – Satan. Others were more cautious, and yet wanted to see more miracles before they made up their minds. Jesus answered that Satan’s kingdom, like any other kingdom, would fall apart – house falling upon house – if it were divided against itself. Besides that, there were sufficient miracles already to make up your mind about Jesus.

To get some perspective we need to back up to Luke Chapter Four. There is recorded the occasion when Jesus was preaching in a synagogue in the city of Capernaum. The people were astonished at his teaching because he spoke with authority. Luke is literally describing the way the people were taking his manner of teaching. But just then a man in the synagogue began shouting at Jesus. Luke tells us that he was possessed by a demon and it was the demon speaking:

“Let me be. I know who you are Jesus the Nazarene, the Holy One of God! You have come to destroy us!”

Jesus said: “Be quite and come out of him!”

Luke says that the demon immediately came out without harming the man. Luke underlines this point: “without harming the man.” Here is the point I want you to get: Jesus came into this world to save us, but the demon was right: Jesus was intent upon the total destruction of the demonic world. To save mankind he had to tear down, he had to bring devastation upon the invisible demonic kingdom. That is exactly what Jesus and his disciples were doing.

From our text today just back up one Chapter of Luke’s Gospel and there you will read of our Lord sending out his disciples to teach, to heal and to cast out demons. When his disciples returned to him they were saying, “Lord even the demons are subject to us in your Name!”

And He said to them, “I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven. Behold, I give you the authority to trample on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy, and nothing shall by any means hurt you.

Jesus said, later on in our text:

“And if I by Beelzebud cast out devils, by whom do your sons cast them out? Therefore shall they be your judges.”

The “your sons” Jesus is referring to are his own disciples, true sons of Israel. I want you to understand that Jesus’ reputation as a healer and teacher was due to his reputation as an exorcist. Remember last week that the healing of the Gentile woman’s daughter involved casting out a demon. Israel had never seen an exorcist like Jesus. Everywhere he went, before he even said anything, the demons cried out in great agitation. And please realize that Luke and the other Evangelists and Apostles, and Jesus, understand these events to be literal, historical events. The occasion described in our text for today is not an artful metaphor or parable designed to speak about evil on the level of the pre-modern folk in Jesus’ day. His assumption was that he had entered a world through the incarnation that was infested with unclean, spiritual entities – demons that fed on human destruction. How weird is that? So how does your worldview compare to Jesus’ worldview?

“When a strong man armed keeps his palace, his goods are in peace: but when a stronger than he shall come upon him, and overcome him, he taketh from him all his armor wherein he trusted, and divides his spoils.”

What is Jesus talking about? This is a description of a specific act of binding. The Strong Man who has a guarded kingdom is Satan and the palace and the armor represent his kingdom. The Stronger Man is Jesus and he is saying that he has over run Satan. He has laid siege to that kingdom of evil, he is stripping away the armor, which represents Satan’s power, and he is bringing it down. And Jesus is dividing the spoils with his own disciples. The “spoils” of this war are the benefits of salvation through Jesus Christ: forgiveness of sin, the gift of the Holy Spirit, eternal life with God, and the souls of men and women set free from bondage to the devil.

The initial act of binding was Jesus’ defeat of Satan at the temptation in the wilderness. Jesus established his authority over that evil kingdom and then he began to delegate his authority to his disciples. The exorcisms demonstrate that the Kingdom of God has come upon the world. And now, in our day, with his death and resurrection, this little band of disciples we see here has become his Church. And through the gift of the Holy Spirit, by forgiveness, through the grace of the sacraments, we are equipped to live according to the will of God.

Jesus is a man of miracles and an exorcist. That may embarrass some people, but it is still the truth. His life makes no sense without the miracles and his exorcisms. He raised children from death. He gave sight to the blind, speech to the dumb, hearing to the deaf. The lame walked. He walked on water. Demons fly from his Presence. Miracles spontaneously burst forth when Jesus is Present. All that torments men and women, all that bends us down, all that breaks us, all that snatches sight, sound, happiness and wholeness from God Creature of Man – in the presence of Jesus all any of them can do, burning within, is to bow before him and declare: “Thy will be done…”

Throwing the Children’s Bread to the Dogs

And, behold, a woman of Canaan came out of the same coasts, and cried unto him, saying, Have mercy on me, O Lord, thou son of David; my daughter is grievously vexed with a devil. But he answered her not a word…

As disturbing as this scene is, it gets worse before it gets better. “He answered her not a word?” Imagine that: Jesus “answered her not a word.” And when it became clear to everyone that she was not about to go away the King of Love spoke:

“It is not meet to take the children’s bread, and throw it to dogs.”

 

Mark’s Gospel:

“Let the children be fed first, for it is not right to take the children’s bread and throw it to the dogs…”

Sometime back I told you that one of my chief aims as your priest is to encourage, to help advance your personal belief and confidence in the Catholic Faith, and that means to deepen your trust in the Bible. I want you to discover the wholeness, the connectedness, as well as the sometimes embarrassing and strange nature of the New Testament narratives. I said then that I want us to get over the picture of Jesus as the tamed teacher of wisdom living one day at a time cheerfully accepting everyone just as they are and bringing the best out of one and all. If there is any passage that reveals that romantic picture of Jesus to not square with historical reality – this is the one. And for that I am grateful.

To understand what is going on here and to find some application to our common life, if any exist, we need to attend to the context. Set and setting, text in context, is always the place to start. Chapter 15 of Matthew begins with an argument between Jesus and a delegation from Jerusalem over what had become a major irritant for the Pharisees. The delegation stated their complaint:

“Why do your disciples transgress the traditions of the elders? For they do not wash their hands when they eat.”

 

This was not a disagreement over etiquette; it had to do with the worship of God. Every meal is a meal of thanksgiving, an act of worship, from the point-of-view of the Pharisees. They wanted to bring Temple holiness into the streets. To forsake ritual purification was tantamount to disrespecting God. But Jesus challenged the ritual purification pushed by the Pharisees on two grounds: First this ritual is not a requirement of Moses’ Law, and secondly these Pharisees have loopholes to avoid the Laws they don’t like. “Furthermore,” Jesus spoke directly to the delegation, “you all are hypocrites.” The word he used was first applied to actors who performed behind masks. In other words, he accused them of practicing the art of appearing to be what they were not. Jesus disciples were concerned that he had publically shamed these important and influential men from Jerusalem.

This account is found in Mark Chapter 7 as well. Mark’s account is older. And tradition has it that Mark’s Gospel is Peter’s Gospel. Irenaeus wrote that after Peter’s death, one of his disciples, named Mark, “did also hand down to us, in writing, what had been preached by Peter.”

Notice this is all about food. In the argument with the Pharisees, once Jesus dismisses them – to their face – as hypocrites he unloads this bombshell:

“Not that which goes into the mouth defiles a man; but that which cometh out of the mouth defiles a man.”

 

Why is that a bombshell? Sounds rather ambiguous doesn’t it? Not really. Mark interprets this saying of Jesus for us:

“There is nothing from without a man, that entering into him can defile him…”

 

Then comes the meaning in verse 19, the bombshell:

“Thus he declared all foods clean!”

 

Let’s stop here for a moment. Please see the unity, the agreement – this canonical bond of harmony – that is part of the New Testament. There has been way too much made of the conflicts between Peter and James and Paul – some going so far as to assert they represent two diametrically opposed versions of Christianity. Not true! Right here Peter has drawn the radical conclusion that Jesus has done away with the Law in Leviticus 11-15 regarding unclean foods. Peter, like Paul, understood that, from now on, no food is unclean. Yes, it took decades for the Church to understand this; yes it took decades to work it out practically – but here it is, plain as day, in the first written Gospel. Paul learned this, not in some night vision, but just like Peter learned it – from the teachings of Jesus himself.

And now we are ready to move on from the discussion of purity to our Lord’s encounter with this Gentile woman. Having declared Leviticus 11-15 null and void, Jesus then traveled to Gentile territory for some rest and private teaching time with his chosen band.

Nothing I have said lessens the harshness of what Jesus said to the woman. She was a Gentile. “Heal my daughter, please!” she pleads. Jesus snubbed her. But she would not give up. She was desperate and she believed with all her heart that Jesus could and would heal her daughter – she would not take “no” for an answer.

Jesus’ disciples wanted him to heal her daughter in order to get rid of her. Jesus answers his disciples:

“I am not sent but unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel.”

 

The woman then fell on her knees and worshipped him:

“Lord, help me.”

 

Jesus addressed her for the first time:

“It is not right to take the children’s bread, and throw it to dogs.”

In the Mark’s account Jesus said:

“Let the children first be fed…”

Then the woman, on her knees, said:

“True, Lord. But even the dogs eat of the crumbs that fall from their master’s table.”

Jesus concludes the event by addressing the woman directly:

“O Woman! (The word he used to address his Mother! A title of respect.) O Woman! Great is your faith! Your daughter is made whole!”

I am absolutely convinced that this happened just the way it is described in Mark and Matthew. There are some who say that the story was made up by the early Church to justify the Gentile mission. If the Church were going to make up stories, she could have done a better job. For starters, remove that detail about Jesus calling a Gentile woman a dog. You don’t need a workshop on how to win friends and influence people to know that calling someone a dog is not going to win their hearts. No one made this up. We have entered into an authentic apostolic memory of life with Jesus – odd, weird, and disturbing as it is. This is the genuine article!

This still does not soften what Jesus said. Well meaning scholars have offered explanations for his use of the word “dog,” none of which really satisfy me. Here is what we know from the text: Jesus does not address the woman directly till the end. Earlier, he directly addressed the delegation from Jerusalem: “You are all hypocrites!” He did not address this woman in that manner. He did not say, “You are a dog.” He is certainly stating (to his disciples?) there are two categories: the children (Israel) and dogs (Gentiles). The statement to the Pharisees is unmistakably personalized. The statement to the woman is abstract, generalized. Why?

Jesus is in Gentile territory. Can you recall any occasion when a crowd of Gentiles came to Jesus seeking to worship him? No? There is one occasion in the New Testament. All the other crowds, in the wilderness, pouring out of the little villages of Galilee, filling the highway to Jerusalem – all those crowds are Jews. All but one at the very end. After his triumphal entry into Jerusalem, only hours before his arrest and passion St. John records this:

“Now among those who went up to worship at the feast were some Greeks. They came to Philip: “Sir, we would to see Jesus.” Philip told Jesus. And Jesus answered, “Now the hour has come for the Son of man to be glorified…”

He did not receive the Greeks. He was crucified instead. What is my point? Timing has a lot to do with this. Had Gentiles come to him earlier, in Gentile territory, like Tyre and had he received Gentiles as a group, his identity as Israel’s Messiah would be in doubt. His first duty was to keep God’s covenantal promise to the Israel. As St. Paul would write: “To the Jew first and also to the Greek.” Over and over again Jesus heals and blesses individual Gentiles who come to him, but he does not receive a group of Gentiles because his mission, at this time, is different:

“I am not sent but unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel.”

Jesus, the Messiah of Israel, said that when he was rejected by Israel and nailed to the cross, he would draw the whole world to himself. At the end of Matthew’s Gospel, the resurrected Lord of Life commissioned his Church to go into the whole world and make disciples. Gentiles like us became heirs to the Promises made to Abraham. But God has not made us his pets – his lap pups. We are transformed, not into the Children of Abraham, but the unthinkable has occurred – we are now the Children of God, the siblings of Jesus Christ our Savior.

“O Woman! Great is your faith!”