Wow, this is a rough text this morning. These are the weeks I wish I was not a lectionary preacher. I felt it last week but even more strongly this morning, I am not ready for this abrupt jump back into the heat of Mark. After five long weeks pondering one speech of Jesus, the fast-paced, abruptness of the Markan narrative feels harsh and abrasive. Just about every reading from here to the end of the year will start “then he went, then they traveled, when they arrived,” etc. Jesus is on the move in Mark’s Gospel, and the best we can do is hold on for the ride.
This constant travel is tiring, and this morning we encounter a Jesus who is tired. He’d just finished scolding the Pharisees for their manipulation of the law, and now he set out to go to Tyre to get away from the crowds for a bit, to take a break. The text tells us he entered a house and didn’t want anyone to know he was there. But the crowds found him anyway and a woman whose little daughter had an unclean spirit came, bowed down at his feet, and begged for healing. Even on vacation, Jesus cannot catch a break. And on top of that, the woman was not even a Jew; she was a Gentile, of Syrophoenician origin. She was not a part of Jesus’ direct mandate to the people of Israel.
But all of this justification still doesn’t explain what happened next. The woman came and knelt at Jesus feet and begged for healing for her daughter, and Jesus sent her away. “He said to her, ‘Let the children be fed first, for it not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.’” I read a lot of commentaries this week, trying to make sense of this sentence, and let me tell you what, there’s no easy way to make sense of these words. There were a couple attempts to make a plea for economic justice, the Jews were the farmers of the region, whose food was often taken and given to the wealthy, or there were efforts to soften the word “dogs.” Well, he meant like a joke, like with a twinkle in his eye, or like a house pet, like a puppy. But, really, that’s not what that means, and softening it doesn’t make it better. Most commentaries don’t even make an attempt to explain it. “Jesus gets caught with his compassion down,” one quipped.
And as both a preacher and a person of faith, I don’t know what to do with this text. I don’t know what to do with this very human Jesus, who seems ready to turn away from someone in need because she does not look like him, because she is not from his same ethnic background. We shouldn’t, theology professor Micah Kiel wrote, be surprised to find ethnic tension or problematic gender dynamics in patriarchal early Christian writings.* But I am surprised, because Jesus. So what then? What to do with this text?
Enter the Syrophoenician woman. She is not amazed or surprised at the response to her, but when it comes, she also doesn’t accept it. Instead, she stood up to it, flipped the slur on its head, and reclaimed it as her own, saying, “Sir, even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs.” Call me what you will, but even if your words are true there is enough here for me as well. So give me what I am due and heal my daughter. And Jesus, who normally overwhelmed his opponents in any verbal sparring match, demurred. “‘For saying that, you may go—the demon has left your daughter.’ So she went home, found the child lying on the bed, and the demon gone.”
The Syrophoenician woman stood up to Jesus and demanded that he see in her her full personhood. That he see in her the full worth of the glory of God’s creation. That he see in her his mission to the world, his creative, redeeming, sanctifying mission of love and grace and truth. The Syrophoenician woman demanded that Jesus act on what he already proclaimed to be true, that the kingdom of God was about border crossing and boundary breaking, and the Son of Man was the savior for all of humanity.
This text makes me uncomfortable, and I think that is its purpose. I think the purpose of this text is to force me to ask the question of who are the marginalized voices in our world today that are speaking out, that are demanding to be heard. And am I hearing them? Am I, like Jesus, allowing their words to enter into my heart and remind me of God’s glory and God’s grace and God’s expansive love? Or am I pushing them aside? Am I waiting until “the children” get fed, and missing the obvious abundance that goes uneaten at the banquet of the Lord?
What the Syrophoenician woman points out to us is that there is enough grace, healing, abundance, at the banquet of the Lord for everyone. Even after the children are filled, the remnants pour out across the floor such that the real waste is not sharing it; the real waste in fact, is thinking there is any need to wait at all, the real waste is restraining it, is setting any limitations on who or in what order grace should be obtained.
I still wrestle with this text. But when I wrestle with this text or any text, I remember that we have a God whose love is bigger than our understanding. There are stories in the Bible that I just do not get, and that’s OK, because God is vaster, more mighty, more wonderful than me. I don’t know what Jesus is doing here, I don’t know what message I’m supposed to take from Jesus actions, and I tell you what, explaining this story will be on the short for questions I hope to have answered someday when all knowledge is revealed. But, the good news I take from this text is that it’s OK to be wrong. What Jesus gives us in this text is a beautiful model for how to admit our errors and move forward. To hear a word of grace that was different than I may have realized, and to adapt, to change my perspective by the meeting of another. One commentary I read wrote that “The miracle [of this story] is the overcoming of prejudice and boundaries that separate persons.”** And isn’t that, in a world of increased borders and boundaries, separation and division, a miracle that our world so desperately needs.
So be uncomfortable. Lean in to the spaces and places where you don’t know if you fit. Question and wonder and welcome. Clearly and directly and specifically. And if you fail, and we will fail, it’s part of the wonderful brokenness of humanity, don’t be afraid to change your mind. Don’t be afraid to expand your thinking. God is waiting in our questions, with abundance that spills out over the table, and there is enough, enough grace, enough love, enough healing, for everyone.
* Micah D. Kiel, “Commentary on Mark 7:24-37,” Working Preacher, 6 September 2015, < http://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=2624 >, accessed 2 September 2015.
** Pheme Perkins, “The Gospel of Mark: Introductions, Commentary, and Reflections,” The New Interpreter’s Bible: Volume VIII, Abingdon Press: Nashville, TN, 1995, pg. 611.
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