September 9, 2018
Pentecost 16, Year B
Mark 7:24-37
In last week’s gospel reading, Jesus set the Pharisees and scribes straight about their ideas of impurity, reminding them that it wasn’t about following the rules but about the heart. Now, as if to prove his point, Jesus heads off into “impure” territory across the Sea of Galilee and into the Gentile region of Tyre.
At this point in his ministry, Jesus is exhausted and looking for a bit of down time. We know this because it says he “entered a house and did not want anyone to know he was there. Yet he could not escape notice” (Mark 7:24). Even in this Gentile region people know about Jesus. Everywhere he goes people demand his healing power.
A woman approaches Jesus and not just any woman, a foreign woman. Mark doesn’t give us details about her except that she is “a Gentile, of Syrophoenician origin” (Mark 7:26). This mean that by the traditional religious standards, she is impure and unclean. She’s outside the land and religion of Israel and so she’s outside the law of Moses. She’s a descendant of the ancient enemies of Israel. Furthermore, she shows up without a husband or male relative, which was the norm. And she pushes her way into a conversation with a foreign man—Jesus—at a house to which she wasn’t invited. These are all major taboos. She’s so far out of line it’s hard to explain. Oh, and her daughter is possessed by a demon. Exactly how it’s affecting her, we don’t know but demon-possession usually made people act in very anti-social ways.
You can see, then, that this woman is an outsider. And Jesus lets her know this. When the woman falls at his feet and begs him to heal her daughter, he says, “Let the children be fed first, for it is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs” (Mark 7:27). The “children” in this statement are the children of Israel and the “dogs” are everyone else, which would obviously include this woman who has just come to him begging for help.
Wait a minute! Did Jesus just call this woman a dog?
I’m afraid so. It makes it a difficult text to tackle. Preachers—at least the ones I know—really wrestle with it. At our minister’s text study on Tuesday, a pastor showed up late and asked: “What IS our gospel lesson for Sunday?” We told her it’s the Syrophoenician woman that Jesus calls a dog. She took a deep breath, then hung her head with a long sigh. We laughed because it demonstrated how we all felt. It would have been so much easier on us if Jesus hadn’t said such thing. I mean a dog? That was a racial slur.
But why?! Why does he say it? Mark doesn’t tell us. Scholars have offered various explanations over the years. Here are a few of them:
• Jesus is testing the woman to see if she has enough faith and indeed, she passes the test with flying colors.This doesn’t seem likely because he never says it was a test and it would certainly be a mean trick to play on her if it were.
• Jesus is just super tired and grumpy. You know, we all say things we probably shouldn’t when we’re worn out. I mean traveling around healing the world is really takes it out of you.
• Jesus was towing the company line by quoting Jewish folk wisdom. This isn’t meant to be a put-down as much as it was religious tradition.
• Jesus is human and because it is early on in his ministry, he hasn’t quite grasped the scope of his own mission. Even the son of God can’t get a handle on the expanding kingdom he’s come to proclaim.
While we don’t know for sure what Jesus was thinking, it is clear that when approached by the Syrophoenician woman, Jesus’ immediate response is to appeal to the limits of his mission, his call to serve his own people. In Matthew’s version of this story, Jesus begins by saying, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel” (Matthew 15:24).
But back to the woman. She’s just been called a dog. What would you do if that had happened to you? I’d expect her to burst into tears and run away. Or perhaps she could get angry with him and read him the riot act for being so insensitive. Instead, she is persistent. She wants healing so desperately that she uses his metaphor against him. I’m a dog? Fine. Have it your way but Lord (and by the way, she’s the only person in the entire gospel of Mark that calls Jesus Lord). Have it your way, Lord, but even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs. She believes there is enough for everyone even if it is only crumbs. That’s how abundant God’s kingdom and God’s mercy are.
She’s sharp. Jesus can’t argue with that. He responds: “For saying that, you may go, Jesus says. The demon has left your daughter” (Mark 7:29). Jesus can only agree that God’s love and healing power know no ethnic, political, or social boundaries. “So she went home, found the child lying on the bed, and the demon gone” (Mark 7:30).
It certainly does look like the woman changed Jesus’ mind, doesn’t it? I mean what does he do next? He heads off to the region of the Decapolis, also Gentile territory with a new and expanded vision of his mission. Again, he’s met by people in search of healing. “They brought to him a deaf man who also had an impediment in his speech, and they begged him to lay his hand on him” (Mark 7:32).
Like the Syrophoenician woman, this man is an outsider. He is cut off from the world by his inability to hear and communicate with others. This time Jesus doesn’t hesitate to respond to a request. He takes the man aside, puts his fingers in the man’s ears, spits, and touches the man’s tongue, and then says “Be opened!” Immediately, the narrator tells us, “the man’s ears were opened and his tongue was released, and he spoke plainly” (Mark 7:35). This man can now communicate with those around him. Not only is he physically healed, he is also restored to his community.
Be opened. Mark places these stories back to back for a reason. Jesus encounters the Syrophoenician woman, then says “be opened” to the man who needs to hear. It seems to be the “be opened” is as much about Jesus’ own heart as anything else. Could it be that this unnamed Gentile woman has just opened Jesus—opened him to truly understand the ever-expanding mission God has given him? We don’t know but Mark thought it was significant enough to include in his gospel.
If Jesus can be opened, I think we can too. Where is the surprising kingdom of God, the reign of God, expanding for us today? Where is God pushing us to be more generous in sharing this abundant grace mercy? We are starting Sunday school and confirmation today. It’s a priority to nurture our children but our congregation’s mission can’t end there. Like Jesus himself, his disciples are continually called to a larger vision of mission—one that aims to embrace the outsiders and not only to embrace them but to value them and learn from them and be changed for the better.
That’s what we want from our faith, right? We want to be changed! I’m not sure that’s always true. Change is hard. It means laying down our old ideas for new ones. It’s hard to wrap our minds around things like that, even painful. This year, the ELCA Youth Gathering in which 31,000 youth and adult chaperones came together in Texas to encounter God. The theme was “This Changes Everything.” That theme was picked up by Sugar Creek Bible Camp for it’s summer programing as well. The point is that if we are followers of God, we have to prepare ourselves to change completely, to be utterly transformed by the Spirit, even if that means laying down our old prejudices and dearly held beliefs. If Jesus can change, we can too.
We must never forget that we are all beggars at the table, and it is by grace alone that we are fed. But it’s an amazing table, one that is larger than we can possibly imagine. May we be opened.
© 2018 Laura Gentry
