Razor Planet



How to Be Wise Without Being a Wise Guy

“Suit Up and Show Up”

James 2: 1-10, 14-17

Mark 7:24-37

Over the years since its founding in 1935, the 12 Step groups which include Alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous and AlAnon have developed a set of slogans that you will often hear at meetings. These slogans are none other than the wisdom sayings of the recovery movement, just like the scriptures have wisdom sayings in Proverbs and Ecclesiastes and the book of James. Some of the most often used sayings among folks in recovery are:

One day at a time

Keep it simple

Easy does it

Let go and let God

It works when you work it

But my favorite one is the slogan that says, “Suit up and show up.”

Like all folk wisdom sayings, the meaning seems obvious. That is why wisdom sayings get woven into our culture because upon hearing them, you immediately know what they mean, and you know they are right.

Suit up and show up. It means, get up and do it. Keep showing up. Just keep moving and doing the next right thing. Do it when you feel like it and especially when you don’t. This wisdom saying reminds us that it is better to do

the right thing even without enthusiasm than to allow your lack of enthusiasm to keep you from doing what is right.

We will not be excited about every single thing we need to do. Do it anyway. Just suit up and show up.

We will not get immediate gratification from showing up for all the things we need to attend:

School PTA programs

Church services

Church meetings

Civic functions

Community service or mission projects.

Attend anyway. Above all—suit up and show up.

The epistle of James is chock full of stern, no-nonsense advice. Wisdom. “Just get up and do it,” our reading for today would seem to say. Don’t ponder and reflect to the point there is no doing. Doing is important. Matter of fact, it is so important that it is one of the vital signs for faith. James would seem to say that if God put a stethoscope up to our faith and did not hear the thump-thump of some activity, there would be just cause for pronouncing our faith dead on arrival.

That doesn’t mean we get to proscribe or make judgments about what other people ought to be doing, does it? No. People have different callings—different talents—different amounts of health. Besides, the folk wisdom doesn’t say, “Suite somebody else up.” It says, “You. You suit up and show up,” for whatever you are being called to do.

Our gospel lesson today gives us a front row seat to watch what happens when people do show up where they are supposed to be and speak up for the right thing. There may be some surprises in this lesson, so I ask you to listen carefully to the narrative from Mark 7:24-37. Would you please stand in honor of the Gospel.

Mark 7:24-37

24From there he set out and went away to the region of Tyre. He entered a house and did not want anyone to know he was there. Yet he could not escape notice, 25but a woman whose little daughter had an unclean spirit immediately heard about him, and she came and bowed down at his feet. 26Now the woman was a Gentile, of Syrophoenician origin. She begged him to cast the demon out of her daughter. 27He said to her, “Let the children be fed first, for it is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs. ”28But she answered him, “Sir, even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs.” 29Then he said to her, “For saying that, you may go—the demon has left your daughter.” 30So she went home, found the child lying on the bed, and the demon gone.

31Then he returned from the region of Tyre, and went by way of Sidon towards the Sea of Galilee, in the region of the Decapolis. 32They brought to him a deaf man who had an impediment in his speech; and they begged him to lay his hand on him. 33He took him aside in private, away from the crowd, and put his fingers into his ears, and he spat and touched his tongue. 34Then looking up to heaven, he sighed and said to him, “Ephphatha,” that is, “Be opened.” 35And immediately his ears were opened, his tongue was released, and he spoke plainly. 36Then Jesus ordered them to tell no one; but the more he ordered them, the more zealously they proclaimed it. 37They were astounded beyond measure, saying, “He has done everything well; he even makes the deaf to hear and the mute to speak.”

So, last week, as we took our lesson from the first part of the 7th chapter of Mark, Jesus was preaching and teaching—standing up to the scribes and Pharisees who wanted to pin him down to the fine points of tradition and chastise him for letting his disciples eat without sanctifying their hands. He took the challenge. He spoke back and clarified for them what it was that was important. “It is what is inside that determines what makes one holy or ordinary,” he said. Don’t worry about the outside stuff so much. Now, the scripture is just such a minimalist accounting of what went on and what was said that there is a whole lot that we don’t know, but what we do know is that after that encounter, Jesus went from Gennesaret to Tyre. You may be more of a geography fan than I am, but I always have to look these things up—not only to find out where one town is in relation to another, but to see if I can figure out why the location was important enough to get mentioned. It turns out the re-location from Gennesaret to Tyre is significant. Gennesaret was Jewish territory. Well, it was all Roman territory, but you know what I mean. The Jews had a strong presence in Gennesaret. It was Jew-friendly and the worship of YHWH would have been the predominant religious observance there. So in today’s lesson, we see that Jesus up and leaves a town in which he would have fit in and goes to a town that was not a Jewish town at all. Tyre was a Gentile town, and although a lot of Jews lived there, they were the servants—the slaves—and they had no social standing there at all. They were the invisible workers that kept the houses of rich Gentiles running. So why do you suppose Jesus went there? Well, I get a clue when it says in v. 24 that upon arriving, he entered a house and did not want anyone to know he was there. So what do you think? The man was tired, is what I think. He needed some retreat. Some respite. Some recharging. And he hoped that by taking some time off and going out of town, he might be able to slip beneath the radar and just be. But, nope! His reputation proceeded him, and we don’t even know if he got a nap before there was the knock on the door.

Knock, knock.

Who’s there?

Gentile woman

Gentile woman, who?

Gentile woman, I’ve got a sick little girl I want you to get up and heal.

Can’t you just feel it? Haven’t you been there? You are exhausted and just want to be left alone, and there they are—those precious, pesky kids, or that needy neighbor, or someone who thinks you need to share your time with them. So what’s your response when you are beyond tired and think you have carved a small wedge of time for yourself only to find out someone has suited up and shown up and is standing right in front of you wanting something? Well? Are you always happy about it?

So perhaps we can understand Jesus when he responds less than compassionately here. His first response to her is designed to shoo her off—to let her know she doesn’t have a claim on his time or energy. Perhaps he just woke up—I don’t know. What I do know is that I know exactly what he felt like in that moment. Thanks be to God that scripture has not recorded for the ages all of the things I have said or thought when someone wanted one more thing than I thought I had to give. I suspect you, too, are thankful no one has been recording your thoughts for all to see and read about.

But Jesus, hoping for a break, wanting to be left alone for a bit, is brusque with this woman. Most of us would say that he was rude. . .except that it’s Jesus and we are not used to thinking about Jesus as rude. But let’s think about that for a minute. Does Jesus get to make a mistake? Does Jesus get to be human? Does Jesus get to be incomplete and in need of formation, just like I am? Just like you are?

Well, yes, if we are to hold to the traditional Christian doctrine that Jesus was fully God and fully human. Being fully human means that you change as you go through life, right? No one thinks it is odd that a 2 week old needs to be carried, but we would find it strange if a 6 year old could not walk. There is a normal, expected growth curve involved in being human, isn’t there? No one expects a child to be perfect—to know everything they need to know—to be in control of their feelings or behaviors in quite the same way we expect adults to be in control of their behaviors.

And yet. . . . I’m an adult, and you catch me on the wrong day when I haven’t’ had enough sleep and I may be fighting off a cold and I know that I’ve got a few hard days coming up, and you interrupt the only hour of rest I might have, and you may not get a real adult response from me either! Our humanity implies that we are not finished yet. . .that we are always on the road. . .that as long as we are moving toward greater maturity as we live, we are doing exactly what humans do, even if we haven’t reached perfection yet.

So why would we think Jesus would be different? I personally think he would have been a rather strange child and a rather strange adolescent and a rather strange man if he had known everything from the get-go. I am not sure I would have felt comfortable being in the room with him if he never had a need to observe, reflect and learn. Although we don’t get to see very much of what went on behind the curtain in Jesus’ life, I think we get to see enough of it to know that he was, indeed, fully human, and his fully human response to this Syrophoenecian woman included a desire not to have to deal with her.

But notice two important things. First, Jesus repented from his first response. He was convicted in his heart and changed his direction. And second, it was the presence of the woman, who DID suit up and show up and speak up, that brought him to the place he needed to be. He may not have started that conversation in the right way, but he stayed in it—he remained engaged--and he ended it up in the right way. And that right way? The right way is always to share grace when you’ve got it . . .to extend hospitality no matter who is asking. . . and to be a healing presence in all interactions. It is not sin to make a mistake—to make a mis-step—to be in need of growth. But it is a sin to walk away from growth when it is right in front of you. It is a sin to refuse to share what you have when someone in front of you needs it. It is a sin to be arrogant and refuse to be corrected--to remain undeveloped. Jesus was never guilty of sin, but if he was human, I can guarantee you he made mistakes.

If you believe, like I do, that when Jesus’ life ended in the Passion and crucifixion, he was much wiser than he was when he was 12, or 21 or 30, that he had reflected upon mis-steps and mistakes and learned from them, that he had allowed the spirit of God to mold him and refine him to a place of perfection, then I would say that you can recognize the necessity of suiting up and showing up for your own life—just like Jesus did for his.

If Jesus needed to learn, to develop, to be in a process of becoming wise, then how much more do we need to allow ourselves to be in that same process and to show up for it every day? If Jesus needed to start as an ignorant, dependent baby and day by day—one day at a time--become mature and wise, then how much more do we need to expect

• that we will always have changes to make

• attitudes to be addressed

• opinions in need of change

• barriers between ourselves and others to be dismantled?

If Jesus had to come to earth and live among us and be totally human rather than just phoning it in, then I suppose that is a pretty strong indicator that we better show up and be fully present for our own lives as well.

I have heard it said that the world is run by those who show up. You know, I think that’s true. It was certainly true in this narrative today. Look who showed up—Jesus and a Gentile woman with no relationship to Jesus except that she was desperate and he had what she needed. Look who showed up in the next story—a deaf and mute man who was brought by his friends. In both cases, a physical presence was required. Somebody had to move their feet and get from one place to another. A request had to be made. Someone—or several someones—had to make a decision to choose one thing over another. And they decided to make a difference. To, as they say, suit up. . . and show up.

So, I am going to encourage you—live your own life. Don’t miss a thing. And by that, I don’t mean, “Grab all the gusto you can,” like it said in the beer commercial. What I mean is make sure you don’t miss it. Your own life. Your own mistakes and the lessons available to you from those mistakes. You’ve been given a life. God has a plan for that life. God has a plan for the universe that you have a little piece of—a piece that won’t get done if you don’t do it. So, let’s have the courage to show up—in all humility—and be willing to make mistakes, and not know it all today, or maybe ever. Let’s take those steps we need to make to show up where we need to be and learn the lessons we need to learn. To say the things that need to be said and to repent from our mis-steps when we see them. That’s what Jesus did. If we would be wise, can we do less?

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