Today’s gospel deals with two miracles performed by Jesus, and this is reflected too in the psalm, which is also a link to the other lessons.

On the face of it, these two miracles appear to be very different from each other, and quite out of keeping with Our Lord’s normal approach.  What unites them though is the fact that Jesus is clearly anxious to avoid publicity, and to stay out of the public gaze – he didn’t want people to believe merely because they had been fed, and seen miracles.  That was not the essence of faith!  To this end he had entered a house in the hope that his presence would go unnoticed but, as with modern ’celebrities’, this was well-nigh impossible.  In this case he was not being pursued by the ‘paparazzi’ – the press corps which so harassed people such as the late Princess Diana, but by the crowd, which quite simply had followed him in the hope, and also the expectation of seeing him perform some miracle.  Such was the general sentiment that it is hardly to be wondered at, that Jesus simply wanted to ‘disappear’ for a little while, until the excitement had died down!

Clearly this was a vain aspiration and doomed to failure from the outset, and so the Gentile woman of Syrophoenician origin, whose daughter had a demon, tracked him down and presumably entered the house unbidden in her desire to have her daughter exorcised. The Church has always regarded these evil spirits as ‘fallen angels’ – modern medicine might well deem such people to be schizophrenics, but the condition can often be very frightening to those faced with dealing with them, as I know only too well from first-hand experience, so naturally the mother was very anxious to seek Jesus’s intervention.

As we read on, it would seem that Jesus really didn’t want to be bothered with her at all.  He was sent in the first instance to the Jews, and this woman was not one of their number, hence the remark that ‘it is not right to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs’. The sentence began, ‘Let the children (of Israel) be fed first’, so then the whole thing then might be deemed rather insulting.  Jesus though, as we have seen on previous occasions, was always looking for evidence of faith and, you will doubtless recall, wasn’t able to perform miracles in his own home town of Nazareth ‘due to their lack of faith’.  After such a put-down from Jesus, most of us would have simply slunk away, with our tail between our legs, but no– this woman was made of sterner stuff, and was well able to argue her case in retorting, as an extension of the original remark, “Sir, even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs!”  That was ‘game, set and match’ as far as Jesus was concerned – the Gentilewoman had proved her faith convincingly, and so Jesus granted her request immediately, without even going to see the girl himself!  Normally the person was present when Jesus performed a miracle, but in several instances this was not so – further evidence, if ever that were needed, of the absolute power of God!

After this event, Jesus then returned to ‘home ground’ in the Decapolis region of the Sea of Galilee, and was confronted with a deaf man with a speech impediment being brought to him.  Quite what that might have been isn’t immediately obvious, but could suggest he had a bad stutter or stammer; in which case though, how had he learned to speak in the first instance, unless the deafness hadn’t afflicted him until later in life?  As in the earlier situation, Jesus was still anxious to avoid ‘the public gaze’ and so took the man aside and in private, away from the crowd.  In the former case there was no need for a physical ‘sign’, but here Jesus put his fingers into the man’s ears, spat (we’re not told where) and touched his tongue before raising his own eyes to heaven in prayer, using the word ‘Ephphatha’ or , ‘Be opened’!  The result was instant – there was no having to wait for the medicine to work!

Jesus, doubtless fearing that he would be besieged with hundreds of people seeking cures from lifelong infirmities, tried to prevent news of what had just happened being broadcast far and wide.  He didn’t go in for ‘mass cures’, but people were far too excited to heed such a request, such was their amazement and wonder at what had been done – presumably though, they hadn’t actually seen the miracle themselves, but merely the outcome!

In the New Testament reading from Paul’s Epistle to James, we are reminded that God has no favourites, and that entails treating all people as equals, no matter what their physical status.  How difficult that is for most of us when some people, at first sight at any rate, are so repulsive when others have an immediate appeal – we must love our neighbours as ourselves, and the poor have always been dear to, and close to the heart of God.  Partiality is a sin of which it is just so very difficult not to be guilty, as I’m sure we all know only too well!

We were thinking a few moments ago about the centrality which Jesus gave to ‘faith’, but then Paul reminds us that we can’t be justified by faith alone, unless it is reflected in works, in other words, in our deeds and actions.  We try here at St. George’s to do our little bit towards relieving the suffering of the poor and hungry, of whom, in a country which is largely lacking in anything which might loosely be deemed a ‘Welfare State’, there are far too many.  Pattaya, even in ‘normal’ times, has more than its fair share of such people, and we must thank God for the work done here in the Fr. Ray centre, and for organisations such as MERCY and the outreach that they have.

We have been so very blessed this past year, in that the advent of Lloyd, with all his media skills, has enabled us to raise our profile and improve our outreach very considerably, and for this we thank God.  As a result of these developments, we are now ‘known’ in many parts of the world by people who would otherwise be wholly ignorant of our existence.  On the ‘down’ side though, the pandemic has prevented us thus far from reaping any tangible benefits from this, and at the same time undermined our own ‘home base’ here in Pattaya.  On the face of it then, this can all seem very discouraging, but if God be  for us, then who can be against us, and once the world in general, and Thailand in particular, learns to live with Covid, rather in the way we manage influenza, which kills a significant number each and every year, then we will hope to be able to capitalise increasingly on these new opportunities, which would have been unthinkable only 18 months ago!

Inevitably our congregation here will be predominantly ‘in the twilight of life’, but we urgently need renewal as our original flock, who numbered in excess of 30 when first I came on the scene at the end of 2006, die, return to their home countries, or else become too infirm to worship with us any longer. However, God now has no hands on earth but our hands, no feet but our feet – pray then that we might be shown the best way forward, so as to be enabled to live out our faith in action, and thereby advance the coming of his Kingdom, here in the unconducive environment of Pattaya!

Amen.