Backtalk - The Rev. Dr. Herschel Wade

Sermons from the Episcopal Church of the Redeemer

Are you beset with gloom? Gloomy because someone like me refuses to accept your dehumanizing dream, crushing his nose for an answer? Oh well, still I rise. Maya audacious, defiant backtalk is a sassy refusal to accept the life restricting consequences of the denials, discrimination, and oppression by a dominant center and patriarchal system. Today we hear of a similar sassy refusal to accept a denial of life in our Gospel reading. Here too, we hear backtalk to someone in a position of power, supernatural power, that is, whose denial of life and wholeness is also one of discrimination and exclusivity. The episode is tense, upsetting and complicated. I cannot speak for you, but such is certainly true for myself and in fact, the same appears to be true for the author of the Gospel of Mark who locates a tired and possibly quite aggravated Jesus in the region of Thyre, a Gentile dominated territory. It is hard to imagine Jesus being at ease. He is alone, attempting to go unnoticed in a house in a region in which there is some history of animosity between the Jews and the Gentiles.