Jesus Did What?!

Scripture: Mark 7:24-30

Let’s just start by saying this was not one of Jesus’ better days.  This passage really is as bothersome as it seems to be. Jesus was rude to this woman.  He addressed her with a bias and prejudice we don’t experience from Jesus anywhere else in the scriptures.  For that alone, we either want to ignore this passage or explain it away somehow.  But today, we’re not doing either of those things.  We are starting a new sermon series based on the theme, “Our God Did What?!” We are going to take some of the scriptures that challenge our most central beliefs about God head on.  So, here we start with a passage that highlights the more human part of Christ.  Let’s walk through this passage and see what we find.

·         Jesus is heading to Tyre, which is northwest of Galilee (north, north west of Jerusalem if that’s where your mental map takes you). Tyre is known as a region of Gentiles, non-Jews—and probably would have been avoided by faithful Jews.  Jesus heads to Tyre, and at least initially is not trying to be with the people.  The scripture tells us, he didn’t want anyone to know he was there. 

·         He went into a house hoping he was undetected. I can imagine him tired, weary, people’d out, and ready for some “me” time.  (now, I’m not sure how you go into a stranger’s house in a strange land not expecting to be noticed, but I think we have to chalk that up to just one of those things)

·         BUT he WAS noticed. And this unnamed woman, desperate to find help for her daughter, sought him out, disrupted his “me-time” and pleaded her daughter’s case

·         I think there are a handful of things worthy of note about this woman

o   The scripture underscores that she is a Greek Syrophoenician, most likely meaning her ancestors, or maybe she herself, were from the southern parts of modern Syrian, and her religious and linguistic heritage was Greek. 

o   She bows at Jesus’ feet when she addresses him. This is an act of reverence, usually reserved for gods and kings.  This suggests she believed him to be more than just another magician or healer. Also of note, up to this point in the book of Mark, only powers and principalities (meaning spirits and demons) have recognized the Lordship of Christ, which doesn’t mean she was a demon, instead it makes her the first human to recognize him as such.

o   She begs Jesus to heal her daughter.  She doesn’t ask. She doesn’t suggest. She doesn’t request.  She BEGS him. 

o   This woman is humbled and convicted that her daughter needs healing and this man can do it. She begs him for help.

·         And then, in a way that is completely counter to what we expect from Christ, 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.”  Do what?!  That’ll make you do a double take.  Jesus, the one who teaches us to love and be compassionate and care equally for others has this ugly racial slur just fall right out of his mouth. 

·         To which the woman replies, “Lord, even the dogs under the table get the children’s crumbs.” 

Wow! That’s a stunning moment.  For those unfamiliar with Christ, they might be stunned by the moment he touched a leper or not running away when he knew he would be betrayed, or staying quiet in in the face of Pilate’s accusations.  To someone unfamiliar with Jesus’ life and works, these moments are stunning.  But to us, those who clamor for the love and acceptance of Jesus, this passage is shocking.  And it can become impossibly hard to wrap our minds around.

Fortunately, it ends with some kind of redemption. Jesus says, “For saying that, you may go—the demon has left your daughter.”  Thank goodness he wasn’t a total jerk.  I mean, he had us going for a moment there. At least he healed the girl, right?!   

This moment is stunning. This glimpse at the life of Jesus is shocking.  It’s no wonder Luke didn’t include it in his Gospel—you know the one about reaching out and helping all no matter what stands against you. If I were Luke, I would have left it out too.  This does not look good for Jesus.  But it’s here, in both Mark and Matthew. It was place there and left there for a reason and I don’t think it’s there to provoke us.  So what does it teach us?  What relevance does it have? How do we make sense of it? 

At the very least, it reminds us that Jesus was human.  Yes, we call him perfect, but we must not fully understand what that means, otherwise, based on this, he would be excluded.  If we hold to the claim that Jesus was perfect, then we have to understand that being perfect allows us to get angry, to get frustrated, to get worn down, and to be influenced by the culture that surrounds us.  To be perfect, as Christ is perfect, does not preclude these things.  Now, certainly, we are not promoting racism or prejudice.  To be clear and to be fair, Jesus didn’t create this idea, or promote it to others. But he did absorb it and somewhere in him, knowingly or not, he bought into it. 

Jesus’ challenge with racist notions should teach us something about our own. The reality is, we all hold racist beliefs.  Some we can name and some we can’t. Some have been subtly woven into our psyche by news broadcasts, literature, and media and others are overt and ugly and have been spoken freely by people we know and love.  Either way, the ideas are still racist.   That doesn’t make us bigots or full of hate. It makes us human, just as Jesus was human.  We are influenced by our culture and our culture is biased.  Please don’t be insulted. I’m not trying to offend anyone.  I’m trying to help us all take an honest inventory in light of this passage.  Some of our racist notions are innocuous, but just because they don’t hurt, doesn’t mean they aren’t prejudiced.  Let me give you an example.  My senior year in seminary, my friend Shively and I went to the movies together.  And, so the scene is clear, Shively is African American and I’m white.  So, we went to the movie and got out late.  It was winter and cold. We got in her car to go home and I was still chilled, so I cranked the heat. She looked at me and asked what I was doing. I said, “I’m turning on the heat, I’m cold.” She replied, “You’re white! White people don’t get cold!” “What?! What do you mean white people don’t get cold?!”  She said, “If you go to their houses, it’s always cold inside. White people don’t get cold!”  So I replied, “Well, I’m white and I’m cold, so I’m turning on the heat!”   Shively’s belief wasn’t harmful. It wasn’t hateful.  It didn’t undermine me or diminish my personhood. But it was still prejudiced.  She had a set of beliefs about an entire race of people based on some limited experience of a few white families who kept their houses cold.  It was harmless, but it was still a bias that needed to be challenged, if only for the practice of challenging the “norms” we hold that are based on prejudice, injustice or discrimination. 

But then there are other beliefs, beliefs that are so laced with hate that we are ashamed or angered just to have them mentioned.  For the sake of being honest and transparent, let me share another example.  To be clear, I am not proud of this example.  It is shameful to me that I allowed such ugliness to corrode my thinking and I have worked hard to push back against it.  As background, I grew up in a small, rural town.  The main people group was whites, followed by Native Americans, and then Latinos.  The number of Asian, black, and “other” families could be counted on your fingers.  So, when I moved to UCLA to go to school, there was a bit of a culture shock.  I wasn’t raised to hate, but in classes that devoted themselves to unearthing prejudice and tearing down white privilege I learned a lot about the beliefs I held without even knowing it.  One such belief was that I was at risk of being attacked by a black man when I went to my car at night.  I didn’t think it or say it out loud. It wasn’t that kind of belief.  Instead, it was a subtle belief, one that made me walk with more caution, or hold my purse closer, or look over my shoulder if I passed a black man on the street, behaviors and rituals I did not do if the man was white.  Once I became aware of what I was doing, and the ways I reacted to men with dark skin that I didn’t react to men with light skin, I had to question my motives. I had to question why on earth I would react in such a way when I had never been hurt or assaulted by ANY man, let alone a black man.  And then I learned the statistics, I learned that I was no more likely to be attacked by a black man than a white man, statistically, the crime rates are comparable.  Do you know what’s different?  Black men are in the news more, and they are jailed more.  But they aren’t more guilty.  Statistically speaking, I was no more likely to be hurt by a black man than by a white man. And that meant 1 of two things either a) I had to be on guard as much for white men as I was for black men, or b) I had to relax around black men as I did around white men.  For me to fight the prejudice, I had to be cognizant of my actions and treat all men equally, one way or the other.  And I chose to live without fear.  I worked hard to relax regardless and only do what was appropriate and safe regardless of whether I was passing a man or a woman, a black man or a white man. 

Prejudice and racism prevent us from seeing people as people.  Prejudice allows us, encourages us even, to label groups of people based on limited information or experience of a few.  We label entire groups as dangerous, others as lazy, others as pretentious, and others as super smart.  But no behavior applies universally to a group. People are varied and different and unique. Each one is created and loved by God regardless of their skin color, or what city they grew up in, or what language they speak, or their immigration status, or their sexual orientation.  Each person is a person and must be understood as an individual.

I believe the Syrophoenician woman reminded Jesus of that.  She didn’t read him the riot act. She didn’t call him on the carpet. In some ways her “argument” was no argument at all. Listen to it again. Jesus says, “It is not fair to take what belongs to the children and throw it to the dogs.”  And she replies, “Yes, Lord, but even the dogs get the crumbs that fall on the floor.”  She didn’t argue for a place at the table. She didn’t try to convince him she was equal to the Jews. She didn’t fight.  All she said was, “even the dogs get the scraps.” 

Hardly a witty retort or a winning argument. She didn’t fight.  But she won. The power and truth of her message challenged the injustice of Jesus’ belief.  He was forced to take inventory. He was forced to see how unfair it was to help one and not the other.  He was forced to let go of a culturally informed bias for the sake of this woman and her daughter.  And he did something even more incredible—he healed the daughter from a distance.  No spit and mud.  No laying on of hands. No touching of his robes.  Instead of display of power, a miracle even greater than those done for “the children”, and all of it offered to an outsider, to one of “them.”  He righted the inequality of his bias by pulling her in and blessing her as an equal. 

Jesus was human.  He fought the worst of what we fight in our humanity: loneliness, rejection, betrayal, and prejudice. And he overcame. He didn’t allow narrowly informed prejudices to define his compassion and mercy.  And I believe we are called to do the same.  We can’t negate the presence of such bias—it’s inherent to cultures everywhere. But we can allow ourselves to be challenged by the truth, to see and value people in their individuality, and to not let those prejudices limit the compassion and mercy we offer those around us.

Let us pray.