February 8, 2015 Sermon Mark 7:24-30 Mark 7:24-30 Title: Pushing down the dividing wall HPMF Narrator: 24 From there he set out and went away to the region of Tyre. He entered a house and did not want anyone to know he was there. Yet he could not escape notice, 25 but a woman whose little daughter had an unclean spirit immediately heard about him, and she came and bowed down at his feet. 26 Now the woman was a Gentile, of Syrophoenician origin. She begged him to cast the demon out of her daughter. 27 He said to her, Jesus: Let the children be fed first, for it is not fair to take the children s food and throw it to the dogs. Woman: Sir, even the dogs under the table eat the children s crumbs. Jesus: 29 For saying that, you may go the demon has left your daughter. Narrator: 30 So she went home, found the child lying on the bed, and the demon gone. For Reflection: Never forget that justice is what love looks like in public Cornel West You have a fine way of rejecting the commandment of God in order to keep your tradition! Jesus (Mark 7:9)
This is an exceptional story in the Bible. It is a different type of story showing us a different side of Jesus. It is the only story we know of where Jesus changes his mind. A parent comes to Jesus and throws themself at the feet of Jesus, begging him to save the life of their child. This part, or course, is not exceptional. We see this a lot. Just two weeks ago our story we heard a very similar story. Jesus, in Mark 5 (just two chapters earlier) got off of a boat and immediately was met by another parent asking something similar. Jarius was this man, a leader in the Jewish community, his daughter was sick and he begged Jesus to heal her. And not only did Jesus answer this father s request, he rose that child from the dead. And so someone asking Jesus to heal them is nothing new or unique. A parent asking Jesus to heal their sick child is not unique, and by this point in the gospel of Mark, the halfway point, we begin hearing the stories like we already know what is happening (the way many of us read the Bible). We begin to hear a story and we think, oh, yes, I know that story. I know what that story is about. I know what is going to happen. For people who grow up in the church, this view of the Bible starts early on, by the time children are in late elementary school we will hear them saying things like, yeah, yeah, I know this story. So we are half-way through Mark s gospel and we know how it goes. Someone throws themselves at Jesus feet, or asks him for healing, and we know how it will end. He will say something about their faith, maybe spit on the ground or say something in Aramaic, and then they will be healed. But this story stops us. Or it should. It breaks this pattern. It breaks with our expectations. We might go so far as to say that it offends our ears. Jesus refuses. He turns this mother away. He tells her that the children must be fed first, and it is not fair to take the food that was mean for children and throw it to the dogs.
This is not Jarius. This is not a Jewish man making such a request. This story takes place in Tyre, a major port city on the Mediterranean, a city of Greeks. This is a pagan woman. A non-believer. An outsider. A second-class citizen. In the eyes of a first century Jew this woman is less than fully human. We know this because a common racial slur for a Gentile was dog, a Gentile dog. And Jesus refers to this very slur. He cannot take the Jewish blessings and hand them over to the Gentile dogs, we have rules here, there is an order that must be followed, there are guidelines. Jesus cannot waste his power for those outside of the Jewish community. This is what he tells her. But this woman persists. The love of a mother will not be turned away so easily. Of course, this is likely not the first time she has heard such words from a devout religious person they are a group that can be counted on to deliver such treatment. So, she might be prepared for such a response from a Jewish man this might be the place from which her strong and witty response comes from, Sir, even the dogs under the table eat the children s crumbs.
And then Jesus changes his mind. He agrees to grant her request and heal her daughter. But even this is a bit different. He doesn t say, your faith has healed you or great is your faith or anything of the sort. Instead he says, For saying that. It is because of her words. It is because of her logic, her theology, her perspective. And so why does this story offend our ears so? Why does it stop us, why does it give us pause. Is it simply because it goes a slightly different way than the other stories? Because the course to the healing looks a bit different, the words and phrases are different even thought the outcome is the same? It is easy to look at the outcome of the story and imagine that Jesus is just testing her, or, as some Biblical commentators say, that Jesus says this phrase about the dogs with a twinkle in his eye. Or that he is perhaps saying this just loud enough for the others in the house to overhear saying it to get them to pay attention and listen to this woman sort of setting the woman up in a nice way, giving her a softball question that she can crush with wit.
Of course, we have to begin by asking ourselves if Jesus is giving her a test, or if he actually changes his mind. This starting point determines how we view this story and its implications for us. So, while it could be a test, I feel largely unconvinced by the twinkle in his eye argument. I think that Jesus truly changed his mind here. The healings and movements after this incident show a change in who Jesus relates to, where he goes, and who he heals. The Gentiles are now more fully in the picture. So, maybe the reason it offends us so is because it offends our theological beliefs. In this story Jesus changes his mind. And Jesus is God. We are told that God never changes, which we assume means That God never changes Her mind. Therefore, by a logical principle I learned in High School Geometry, Jesus never changes his mind. One of my favorite songs in the green Sing the Journey book has a chorus that goes, God always faithful, you do not change. So, how can Jesus change his mind? Is it theologically possible? This story is a good reminder, though, that we should let the Bible tell us who God is, not theology. We should let the gospels tell us who Jesus is, not tradition, not theological phrases. While theology might tell us that God doesn t ever change, the Bible reports something different. God is reported to change His mind many times. For example, in Exodus 32 after delivering the Israelites from slavery in Egypt, God and Moses are up on Mt. Sinai and Moses is getting the law. While Moses is getting the law, the people, under the leadership of Aaron, make themselves an idol to worship, a golden calf. And we are told that God is so angry at them that She wants to destroy them all. But Moses reminds God that about the promise He made to Abraham and Sarah, how their descendants would be as
numerous as the stars of the sky. And verse 14 says, And the Lord changes his mind about the disaster that he planned to bring on his people. And in Jonah chapter 3, the prophet finally goes to Ninevah and preaches to the Ninevites that God is going to destroy them because of their wickedness. And the people are moved by Jonah s preaching and they change their ways just in case God might change God s mind about them and their destruction why send a prophet if you have no intent to change? And verse 10 says, When God saw what they did, how they turned from their evil ways, God changed his mind about the calamity that he said he would bring on them. There are many examples like this, where God is reported to be exceedingly angry with His people Israel, wanting to destroy them. And the prophet has to remind God that God s love is steadfast and great, slow to anger. And God changes God s mind. And if God can change God s mind than I think Jesus is entitled to such a change as well. Still, even though the Scriptures tell us that God changes God s mind from time to time, perhaps it is simply this act of mindchanging that makes this story so hard for us. We don t like our leaders to change course, ever. But, still, I think there might be more that offends us than just Jesus mind changing movement.
Perhaps it is so offensive to us because it is not Jesus who has the clever turn-of-phrase. The woman takes Jesus word of dogs and turns it on him. This is what we expect Jesus to do. He is our Savior, he is the Son of God. He is the hero of the story. And so we always want to see him having the last word, being the one who is the smartest. And of course he usually is. When he is talking with the powerful. With the scribes and Pharisees. With Roman soldiers. With his disciples. To lawyers and teachers of the law. In the temple. He always has a story ready, he has an answer he is able to do what we always wish we could do, to think of the perfect comeback in the moment (instead of the next day). But in this story it is a pagan woman who takes the place of the hero. It is the woman who turns the phrase and has the final word. And I do think that is hard for us to be okay with, for us to have someone who is not Jesus in the hero place of any gospel story. But as odd as this is, I think there might still be more.
I think that perhaps why this story is so hard for people like us to hear is because if this story is true, if Jesus wasn t just testing this woman or saying it with a twinkle in his eye, if he really changed his mind here, than we meet a Jesus who is not completely free of the powers of racism within himself. The difficulty of this passage particularly for a group of mostly white, progressive Christians is that we want Jesus to be colorblind. We want Jesus to be colorblind because that s what we want to be, or think we are. We think we are free of racist tendencies, or that we truly don t think we are superior because we are white or American or Christian or men or heterosexual or educated. We want to believe that we see all people the same and treat people the same. I want to believe that about myself. That I am free of racist thoughts and beliefs. I want to believe that about myself. But if Jesus, the Son of God has to recognize the racism moving within him, than I have to admit that there are probably many streams of racism and classism and sexism still running through me. Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God. And he is also a man, a product of his time and his culture. One of the prayers that Jewish men of Jesus time were to pray each morning was this, "Blessed are you, O Lord, King of the Universe, for not having made me a Gentile." "Blessed are you, O Lord, King of the Universe, for not having made me a slave." Blessed are you, O Lord, King of the Universe, for not having made me a woman. This is part of the system that Jesus is born into. These are some of the powers of oppression that existed in Jesus day. For his entire life he is told that Jews are superior. That men are superior. That God will redeem the Jews first and everyone else will come second. These cultural ideas and beliefs, they get in us. These messages, even when they are subtle, they
get into the crevices of our minds they work on us in unknown and unrealized ways. They become a part of us. Even when we try hard to move beyond such ideas and beliefs, even when we try to remind ourselves daily that all people are created in God s image with limitless potential, it is still a power in our lives a power that needs to be acknowledged and exposed. It is a power we have to work to overcome. If this story is true, than even Jesus had to work to untangle himself from the systems of oppression that existed in him, even when he believed that he didn t see color, and even if he had a Gentile friend, he still had to work to untangle himself from a lifetime of being told that Gentiles were less than human, that men were superior. That takes work. It takes time. We, all of us, are caught up in systems of oppression in ways we don t fully know or recognize. Jesus, given his embedded culture, could not be colorblind. And neither can we. But being part of a culture, however, does not make us evil, it does not make us overt racists. But it means that we still have work to do. We still have work to do to recognize those places where we still have streams of the power of racism running in and through us; where we still consider our ways better because we have an education; where we still shy away from those who are different; where we are blind to the fear and subtle oppression that others still face today in our own nation, our own state, and our own city. And we will meet people in our lives like this Syrophonecian woman who will help us see another part of that racist power moving in us. We will meet someone, or hear someone s story, or notice our reaction to a story on the news, and somewhere deep in us we will be thinking they got what you deserved or those people, or you should not have been out that
late or they must be guilty or they would not have been arrested, or what a dog. And when we notice that streak popping up, may we be so bold as our Lord and Savior. To not bury it or pretend that it does not exist. But instead to recognize it. To name it. To let it be exposed. So that another wall can come down. Only in exposing that stream can we move beyond it; only by exposing it can we work to push down another dividing wall, another barrier between where we are and being one people. One humanity. No longer Jew or Greek. Male or Female. Black or White. Educated or Uneducated. Israeli or Palestinian. Documented or Undocumented. Democrat or Republican. Jewish or Syrophonecian. Gay or Straight. American or Foreigner. Urban or Rural. But one in Christ. If even Jesus had work to do, than so do we. So do we. Amen.