Dear Friends,

This week I write to you from my childhood home in California for a time of retreat and celebration of my niece’s wedding. I am grateful for this time away, as hard as it is to get away, because I know we all need to retreat from time to time – to step back, survey the field and listen for God’s whisper. This sometimes involves being open to discomfort, challenge, and change. I think we need both.

In our reading from the Gospel of Mark for this week, Jesus wants retreat. He’s gone to the beach in Phoenicia, to get away from pressing crowds. Our gospel writer says he didn’t want anyone to know he was there. But then a local woman comes to beg a favor. She wants Jesus to heal her daughter. There goes the vacation.

Haven’t we all been there? Longing for a break? Some time alone? A soothing afternoon by wind and water? Cellphones left behind and nothing scheduled? Like breathing in, we need time alone to pause, reflect and connect at a deeper level, to gather energy for the work that’s waiting for us.

But no, this foreign woman breaks in to ask Jesus for a miracle, what she’s heard he can provide. He tries to protect his privacy. He’s snippy and cold, using language close to a racial slur: “Let the children be fed first, for it is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.”

She swats back: “Sir, even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs.”

With that wake-up call, Jesus himself is changed. His world expands. His time away for rest has produced something unexpected. Suddenly he sees with new eyes, hears with fresh ears. He drops an old view, accepts a new reality: “For saying that, you may go—the demon has left your daughter.” He’s not giving her crumbs any more. He has been changed on the way.

To confirm his new understanding, Jesus walks into the Decapolis region, south-east of Galilee, mainly inhabited by Greeks. There, without resistance, he heals a deaf-mute man. He’s on the road to a new and broader ministry, beyond to borders of his Jewish world. Pilgrimage will do that. Shift focus. Explode prejudice. Reveal God in a new way.

Whatever you are doing these last weeks of summer, I hope you will find some time for retreat, not just for the time to rest and reflect, but for the unexpected interruptions you encounter, and the chances for change.

In Christ,

Amelie+