8 February 2024 Mark 7:24-30
The gentile mission is the very great gift that the Church very nearly threw away.
Jesus made it pretty clear that the gospel was for everyone. The first Christian missionary, the Gerasene Demoniac, was a gentile (Mark 5:1-20). The only two healings in the New Testament that were done at a distance were done for the benefit of gentiles – the Syrophoenician Woman (Mark 7:24-30), and the Roman centurion’s slave (Matthew 8:5-13, Luke 7:1-10, John 4:46-54). The Great Commission (Matthew 28:18-20) directed the Apostles to “make disciples of all nations,” and the Latin term for nations – gentes – made it emphatically clear that included the gentiles. Still, however, nobody saw the gentile mission coming. Nobody even thought about proclaiming the gospel to Samaritans and Greeks until – ironically – persecution thrust that upon them (see Acts 8:4-8, 11:19-26). Fleeing persecution from the Jewish leadership, Christians started talking about the gospel in the places where they had fled, were overheard by Samaritans and Greeks, and ever after the Church had to catch up to the Holy Spirit who was busy converting the people whom many of the Apostles had been ready to ignore.
There are four essential claims that Christianity makes that the world – and from time to time even some churches – have tried to throw away. And every time they have tried to throw them away, life has descended into absurdity and misery. Embracing them all, on the other hand, has given the world its only truly reliable source of help and hope.
1. God really exists – just one. It is the only way we can account for the existence of a universe of such delicate complexity and intense beauty. All rationality depends on the oneness of God. Rival truths cannot coexist. If it can be equally true that 2+2=4 and 2+2=5, then all rationality crashes and civilization is impossible.
2. God really does love us – all of us. He came to tell us so. He rose from the dead to tell us so. Christianity is the only world religious tradition that has penetrated deeply into every continent and every civilization of the world. Only a love as insistent and powerful as the love of God could take an instrument of torture like the cross and turn it into the most widely recognized symbol of help and hope that exists in the world today.
3. Objective moral values and duties really do exist – God insists on them. Greeks and Romans saw this, and found it far more attractive than the endlessly flexible morality of pagan civilization that demeaned women, devalued children, and enslaved anyone it could. The ideas of things like equal justice, human rights, the abolition of slavery and compassion for all are unthinkable apart from the thought world of Christianity.
4. There really is a Heaven – and a hell. Embrace the idea of heaven, and all the other essential claims of Christianity come into sharp focus – rationality, beauty, love, moral duty. Embrace the idea of heaven and civilization flourishes; it has a purpose, a direction, and a destination. Abandon the idea of heaven, and everything descends into chaos, absurdity and deep unhappiness. A little like things are right now.
Every time churches or civilizations have tried to throw away any one of these essential claims, disaster has followed, and civilizations have collapsed. Just ask the Romans. This was and is a message for everyone, everywhere. The Jewish leadership, and even the Christian leadership for a while, tried to throw away the claim that God really loves us, all of us. Fortunately, enough people decided to tell the story of the Syrophoenician Woman and the Centurion’s Servant instead, and the command, “Go and make disciples of all nations” has been blessing the world ever since.
Disposable to some, maybe. Crumbs and scraps to some, maybe. But still the hope of the world.
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