Backtalk - The Rev. Dr. Herschel Wade

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.