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.
