Sermon for September 9, 2012 Readings: Isaiah 35: 4-7a; Mark 7: 24-30 Rev. Doug Moore " " Sometimes people assume that preaching works this way: a preacher prepares a sermon during the week, finishes it at some point - maybe Friday afternoon or Saturday night - and then gets up and preaches the finished product in worship on Sunday. This may be the way it appears on the surface, but experienced preachers know better: sermons are never actually finished. There are always loose ends, questions that could have been pursued in more depth, stones left unturned, intriguing aspects of the biblical text unexamined, thoughts not quite fully baked, and untidiness at the heart of things. At some point, though, preachers have to take what they have, stand up, and speak. Preachers do not preach because the sermon is finished; they preach because it is Sunday. The time has come. (What Shall We Say?, p. 114, by Thomas G. Long) Today there is "untidiness at the heart of things, there are stones left unturned, and loose ends abound in our text. But, it is Sunday morning and time to preach. Let's see what we have. Jesus is tired and wants to be alone. He is in the land of the Gentiles, of the unclean and the strange. Rowdy crowds pursue him eager for another miracle. All Jesus wants is a little peace and quiet. So he enters a house where he hopes no one will find him. As Jesus sits alone in the house, a woman shatters his solitude. We are not told where she found the audacity to intrude on this man who clearly wants to be alone, but there she is suddenly in a room alone with Jesus. She has a lot going against her: She is of course a woman. She is alone. She is foreign, a woman of Syrian and Phoenician stock. She comes from a long line of bitter enemies of the Hebrews. Mark tells us she is Greek, meaning a pagan, a nonbeliever to be avoided at all costs. And finally, we know Jesus wants to be left alone. A lot is going against the woman as she enters the house where Jesus sits. The woman wastes no time asking Jesus for help. Her daughter, her little daughter is seriously ill. As Mark writes, she is "possessed with demons" that only Jesus can drive out. Won't he please, in his goodness and power, drive the demons out and save her daughter? Jesus has helped before, he has driven out demons before, he has helped and healed women and children before - surely he will help this woman and her child.
As we watch Jesus our expectations are clear: Jesus will help. Jesus will put aside his desire to be left alone, to find some peace and quiet. After all, Jesus is the Son of God who came to preach good news to the poor, to fulfill the ancient prophecy: Then will the eyes of the blind be opened and the ears of the deaf unstopped. Then will the lame leap like a deer, and the mute tongue shout for joy. Water will gush forth in the wilderness and streams in the desert. The burning sand will become a pool, the thirsty ground bubbling springs. (Isaiah 35: 4-7a) Surely, Jesus will help. The woman throws herself at his feet and begs Jesus to save her little daughter. But, almost before her words are out, Jesus responds: First let the children eat all they want, he told her, for it is not right to take the children s bread and toss it to the dogs. (Mark 7: 24) Such harsh, insulting and degrading language. Jesus refuses to help because the woman is not a Hebrew. She is the enemy, one of the dogs. Her little girl is also a dog unworthy of being fed by Jesus. Jesus says he came to feed the children of God, not to waste his precious power and goodness on the dogs who do not know God. Watching Jesus as he rejects the woman is hard to do and even harder to understand. To hold to our vision of gentle Jesus the kindly shepherd as we watch Jesus attack this woman and her child is very hard to do. There is deep untidiness at the center of things. Preachers and commentators have tried for generations to make these words fit into the Jesus we know, the Jesus we want. Some argue he's on vacation and so his guard is down as the woman approaches. Others claim Jesus is just kidding, playing with the woman whom he intends to help all along. More modern, angrier explanations try to impose a racist or sexist bias in these words. Most say Jesus has a more important mission: to bring the Kingdom of God to the Jews first and only then to share the good news with the gentiles; only then, after Israel is fed will he share the scraps with the Gentile dogs. But none of these solutions change what we witness as we watch Jesus and the woman. Jesus silences her and insults her deeply. This should have been the end of the story. The
woman should now quietly and meekly leave the house, leave the angry and harsh rabbi alone. This is her only proper course of action in the face of this angry man. But this woman does not leave; she does not quietly exit the scene. Instead, she takes Jesus' own words and throws them back in his face: Lord, she replied, even the dogs under the table eat the children s crumbs. If we are watching Jesus, what do we see? What is the look on his face as he digests the woman's words? Perhaps this is the first time Jesus has actually seen her, the first time he has taken stock of her presence. Maybe now he sees a person in need, a person willing to go beyond the bounds of propriety to help her daughter. Perhaps Jesus is slightly smiling as it dawns on him that he has been bested in a sharp debate -bested for the only time in the New Testament by this alien woman.jesus changes his mind. He tells the woman, For such a reply, you may go; the demon has left your daughter. Watching Jesus in the encounter what do we see? We see him insult a person in need; we see him bested in an argument, and we see him grant her request. Is this the Kingdom of God? It must be. Is this the good news Jesus came to proclaim? It must be. This is a miracle, but it is messy, untidy at the center and hard to explain. This is a miracle that comes only after pushing and shoving, insults and in-fighting. This is a miracle that is dragged out of Jesus by the woman's courage and determination and her refusal to break off her engagement with the Son of God until she gets exactly what she came for - her daughter healed. This is our Jesus the Christ. He is not the Sunday School Jesus or the friend we have in Jesus or the one who walks and talks with us in the garden. This is not our kind and predictable personal savior. But this is the Christ we are given: unpredictable, at times strange and so very human, and not always eager to jump at our beck and call. Being around him may not always be pleasant or perfect but, as Peter said if too was leaving Jesus, "Lord, to whom shall we go? You (alone) have the words of eternal life." (John 6:68) Holding onto Jesus the Christ can be a difficult and frustrating experience because we do not control the Christ. We can watch him, we can listen to him, we can engage him but we cannot control him. We can assert our claim for a piece of the Kingdom he brings. We can refuse to leave the room where he resides. We can refuse to take "No" for an answer. We can come to him, bearing all the grit and determination we possess, and we can say, "Let's talk."..
Out of all the explanations and rationales for why Jesus insulted and denied the Syro-Phoenician women and only to change his mind, the best I know of comes from a pastor describing a Bible study group: Just this week this passage came up in adult Sunday school. The ladies there wasted no time explaining to me that, after all, Jesus was human. He was probably just tired and said something he shouldn't have said. But boy did that woman set him straight. She wasn't mean, but she stood her ground and wouldn't take "no" for an answer. Taking "No" for an answer, walking meekly away from Jesus as if our needs make no claim on his authority, slinking quietly out the door so as not to disturb our Christ - none of these seems to be what we are to do. As untidy as it may be we are to hang in there, arm in arm with the woman who would not take "No" for an answer. --------------------------- On line resource for last quote re: women I have identified six basic responses to the problem: 1) Jesus is on vacation, 2) Jesus is playing, 3)Jesus has a more important mission, 4) Jesus is bested in debate, 5) Jesus is racist, and 6) Jesus is sexist. These are by no mean exhaustive of all possibilities, nor are these responses mutually exclusive. Most interpreters will employ more than one of them to help explain Jesus words and actions. In the end, I conclude that none of these six attempts to understand Jesus in Mark 7:24-31 is particularly satisfying. Clarifying the Problem Before moving on, let us take a moment to identify the problem in a less anecdotal fashion. This will also help us to define what a satisfying interpretation might look like. I see the problem as consisting of three questions: 1)W hy does Jesus refuse the Syrophoenician woman s request for exorcism? 2) Why does Jesus indirectly refer to her as a dog? 3) Why does Jesus change his mind and grant her request? Any satisfying interpretation must convincingly answer these three questions and must also prove itself to be consistent with the rest of the context of Mark. The first question why does Jesus initially refuse the request? presents a problem not only for contemporary faith-conceptions of Jesus, but also for understanding the narrative characterization of the Markan Jesus. Christian faith, as we have seen anecdotally above and as we will see later in interpretation, wants to maintain that Jesus answers and helps everyone who calls. But even if we set aside the Jesus of faith, we are still left with a narrative problem inside Mark. Nowhere else in the gospel does Jesus refuse to perform a healing or exorcism when --
Just this week, at a different church, when this passage came up in adult Sunday School, the ladies there wasted no time explaining to me that, after all, Jesus was human. He was probably just tired and said something he shouldn t have. But boy did that woman set him straight. She wasn t mean, but she stood her ground and wouldn t take "No" for an answer. D. D. M. King 3 "Jesus and the Syrophoenician Woman"