A colleague of mine shared once that she did the math, and that if a preacher responded with a sermon after a school or mass shooting in America, they would be preaching every single week on the epidemic of gun-violence. Every single week. Last week we were blessing backpacks, praying for those who headed back to school. This week, we mourn the death of 4 children of God, the injury of 9 others, as well as hear of similar threats here in the UP that caused schools in Crystal Falls and Eben Junction outside of Munising to be closed on Friday. We sit in an all too familiar grief—a grief that is layered with defensiveness and conflict avoidance, as we know that this is an issue that causes more argument, more distance, more disagreement, more division— as the empty words or hopes for thoughts and prayers wash over us.
Our Gospel gives us today the story of two miraculous healings. The first is that of the Syrophonecian woman; a mother, a Gentile, non Jewish, woman who is seeking the healing of her daughter. The second is the healing of a man who is deaf and with a speech impediment; the man is brought to Jesus by the crowds, and Jesus draws him away, perhaps confirming his desire to be healed, and then heals him.
These stories are both complex in their use of intersectional identities and issues: ethnicity, gender, economic status, Jew and non Jew, disability—these all come into play when dealing with the details, the context of these stories.
Perhaps an overlooked or underrated contextual element of these healing stories in Mark, one that connects these and all stories of healing in Mark, is the presence of shared, communal trauma. This trauma— often presented and manifesting in Mark’s gospel as physical ailments or as demonic forces—is the result of living under Roman imperial rule, a violent presence that impacted almost every aspect of life. It was also part of what Jesus came to overturn: patriarchal systems of empire, which impacted the wellbeing and wholeness of all those living under its rule, by inflicting fear, violence, and division.
Perhaps what we have a harder time admitting, or recognizing, is that we live in a time that is not yet free from that kind of trauma and hurt. We experience tragedies like the shooting at Appalachee High School, and wonder why the world is getting worse, or why we can’t go back to when things were better. And while these situations are maddening and heartbreaking, if we are honest with ourselves and our understanding of our shared world history of violence, colonialism, imperialism, empire—we would likely be hard pressed to find any other time in history where there was not this kind of hurt and trauma happening somewhere in the world. And that, is a part of the problem.
Trauma, researchers have found, is experienced generationally and the effects and impacts of trauma on the body are passed down biologically. Within our bodies, we carry the impact and memory of things that occurred as near to us as this week, and as far away as the Middle Ages in England, where the plague ripped through the population, and violence torture were used as an instrument of the government. “Many of the English who fled to America were victims or first-hand observers of this brutality. Others were desperately trying to get away from poverty, starvation, overcrowding, and the Great Plague. It seems likely that many of the English colonists who made their way to America were deeply traumatized—and brought their trauma with them.”[1] And this trauma spread, manifested particularly in the way Indigenous and black enslaved peoples where mistreated throughout the history of this country.
We may wonder—what does any of this have to do with the Gospel, or with the tragic event at Apalachee highschool this week? The sad truth is that this same trauma lives in the body of the 14 year old boy who carried out this horrific act. He reveals to us the incredible harm and indeed, trauma, of loneliness and abandonment. He, and all of us, carry the weight of deeply rooted beliefs of violence as a means of control and safety, of individual survival over community care, of years and generations of systems telling us we should fear or hate or distance ourself from those different from us rather than love and work to understand them.
What we are seeking, and what God is calling us to, is the healing of a deep trauma, generational trauma, trauma that is so prevalent we might not know to even recognize it as such. It’s a hurt that runs deep, so deep that we often feel like the historical weight of this hurt is not on us to fix, that it isn’t our fault our ancestors did what they did or experienced what they experienced, that we find ourselves defensive of things we didn’t ourselves do. But we need not feel ashamed of this kind of generational trauma—while the impact and cause varies from person to person, it is a communal wound. One that we are invited to be curious about, curious about how we might end patterns of harm, unlearn responses we think are natural or inherent. More so, God wants to be invited and to accompany us through this unlearning, this healing.
In the Gospel story that highlights the Syrophoenician woman, there are many ways that the exchange between the woman and Jesus can be interpreted. Indeed, many scholars find this to be a reading that reveals the reality of a savior who is fully divine and fully human. Jesus is far from perfect in his initial response to the woman: he ignores her request for healing, and calls her a dog—which may be a downright insult, or could be a shared metaphor for the relationship between Jews and Gentiles at the time, depending on how you understand the passage.
Scholar and writer Andrew McGowan, moved me this week when he shared:
“The woman herself, while demonstrating a striking willingness to engage Jesus beyond social norms, actually accepts the premise of the difficult metaphor rather than challenging it..”
When facing Jesus with her prayer, her request, her need, and because of “her desire to have Jesus’ power exercised to heal her daughter” this woman does not deny that there has been trauma, pain, division between her people and Jesus’ people. Instead, she names a desire to receive even the leftovers of Jesus’ healing grace, for she understands that that would be sufficient to address the trauma, to mend the wound, to be rid of the demon. Further, Jesus admires her action of faith, what she find the courage to say to him, and names that this is what will heal her daughter.
When we consider how we might be able to authentically invite God to mend the wounds, the deeply rooted trauma we all carry, I wonder if the Syrophoenician woman might be a guide for us. To recognize, and not deny or be defensive of the ways we have been impacted by the deep traumas of violence, colonialism, empire, and individualism. To accept that these -isms, and others like them, have led to division, contempt, and even hatred or our neighbor. To understand that the healing of these wounds often seems to go beyond what we—on our own—can even begin to address. So that is exactly where we deeply need God’s grace and healing. Through the saying outloud of what we believe that God can accomplish, through the actions of faith that would share the hope that mending of wounds, and healing of deep, generational trauma is possible—with God’s help. That we are invited to a different way of being, a way that doesn’t expect us to inflict violence and hurt upon one another, but to care for the vulnerable; doesn’t expect us to prove we are better or more self sufficient than our neighbor, but live within the vulnerabilities and imperfection of community; a way that can liberate us from the deep hurts, heal the trauma that is entrenched in our bodies, grant us the courage to act in the world out of justice seeking faith, and draw us nearer to a full life of grace with God and one another.
[1] Menakem, Resmaa. “European Trauma and the Invention of Whiteness.” MY GRANDMOTHER’S HANDS: Racialized Trauma and the Pathway to Mending Our Hearts and Bodies, Central Recovery Press, Las Vegas, NV, 2017.
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