Sermon 9-7-03
Jesus, is that You? - Mark 7:24-37, James 2:1-10, 14-17
(view lectionary notes for this text)
Our two scripture readings today are both so powerful that it was difficult for me to decide how to approach them. On the one hand, they are both so full and rich with teaching and meaning that it seems a shame to try to address both in one short space of time. On the other hand, they are both so full and rich with teaching and meaning that it seems a shame not to address both and give voice to both lessons.
In our epistle lesson, we return to James. This passage is so direct it hardly needs elaboration, and it is so straightforward that it doesn't leave us much room to pretend that we don't understand what it means or how it applies to us. James urges us strongly not to show partiality to people because of artificial reasons, as Christ also shows no partiality in us. He wraps it up with some of his most famous words: "What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if you say you have faith but do not have works? Can faith save you? If a brother or sister is naked and lacks daily food, and one of you says to them, 'Go in peace; keep warm and eat your fill,' and yet you do not supply their bodily needs, what is the good of that? So faith, by itself, if it has no works, is dead." We'll come back to James, but let us turn our attention to the gospel, another compelling passage.
In Mark, we read two stories of Jesus healing, the first of which we'd often rather forget or skip past altogether. We hear about Jesus traveling to the region of Tyre, wanting some privacy. But "he could not escape notice", so known was he for his work by then. And a woman, a Gentile Syrophoenician woman, approaches him and asks him, begs him, to heal her daughter. And then the bad part happens. Jesus responds to her begging by answering "let the children be fed first, for it is not fair to take the children's food and throw it to the dogs." She persuades him, though, by responding, "Sir, even the dogs under the table eat the children's crumbs." Impressed with her faith, Jesus tells her her daughter will be healed. The passage goes on with the story of the deaf and mute man's healing, but it's hard to hear any of that, as we're still trying to absorb the first part of the lesson.
What can we make of Jesus' interaction with this woman? I personally find it, at least at first, deeply troubling. How can Jesus be so rude to her? Many commentators try to explain away his actions by saying that 'dog' was just a term of endearment, a pet name, so to speak. However, the truth is his calling her a dog was just as offensive then as it can be today. In fact, dogs were less warmly regarded then - they were not pets as often, they were not part of families. They were scavengers, trying to live of the crumbs that others overlooked. The only way Jesus softens the blow of the insult is by using a diminutive form of the word, not quite puppy, but more like, "dogette." Still, the insult is still an insult.
I read sermon after sermon, commentary after commentary of people trying to explain this passage, and all seemed to fall short, simply justifying Jesus' words with some fancy footwork. Even one seminary professor, speaking about this passage, said she just didn't believe this story at all. "That's not my Jesus," she insisted. But being faithful God's word means that we have to confront passages that are hard to understand. We don't have to view them as literal truth, but we also can't reject them altogether. We need to search for what they mean to our Christian journey.
Let's look more closely at the passage. First, we need to understand that Jesus was in a region inhabited predominately by Gentiles, Gentiles who were considered unclean. Why would he choose to go to such a place? And then we have to consider the position of the woman - not only was she unclean because she was a Gentile, but she was also a woman, making her status lower in that culture. She also chose to initiate the conversation with Jesus, and it was unheard of for a lower-status, lower-race woman to address a higher-status man. The woman was bold and audacious, breaking customs by even speaking to Jesus. And Jesus would not have been expected to respond to her at all, to even entertain her questions and pleadings.
But Jesus does indeed answer her, even though it is with the words that offend our senses at first: "let the children be fed first," he says, "for it is not fair to take the children's food and throw it to the dogs." You might remember that a few weeks ago I talked about how the early Christians saw their role of mission as for the Jews and the Jews only. They had no idea that they should share God's word with anyone else, any unclean Gentiles. Is Jesus simply confirming that behavior here, showing that he, too, wanted only to reach the Jews?
Actually, it is through looking at it the other way around that we finally see Mark's point in this account of Jesus. Again and again in Mark's gospel, we are shown Jesus who crosses boundaries of clean and unclean, Jesus who is opening the circle to include everyone, Jesus who tells us that our ideas about who belongs and who doesn't belong are not open enough yet. Yes, Jesus, a Jew himself, worked primarily among his own people. But he always had room to extend God's grace outside that familiar circle. The words we hear Jesus speak to the woman make us uncomfortable, but we should look at the conversation by taking a step back. If Jesus was so insulting to her, why did it take only one more witty response from her to get him to change his mind? If Jesus was so set on who his mission was for, who his healing was for, why did he relent so easily? Why was he in a region full of those considered unclean? Why would he respond to the woman at all if he really thought so little of her?
This Syrophoenician was brave, reminding Jesus of the boundary-breaking work he was all about. "Sir, even the dogs under the table eat the children's crumbs." Two authors share this reflection: "Jesus' refusal [to the woman] is based on the prior right of the Jews, but it is so cleverly circumvented by the Gentile woman and so easily set aside by Jesus that we must conclude that it is a straw man. This is not an assertion of Jewish priority but rather its repudiation." Jesus is not enforcing the separation of those deemed clean and unclean. He is, through a brief exchange of sentences, tearing them down, widening the circle of God's grace. There is no exhausting God's grace. The woman says as much, and Jesus knows it too, and shows it by healing her daughter, the daughter of an unclean foreign woman, bold enough to break the customs that kept her in her place.
So what can we make of all this, this abundance of God's grace, these never-stable boundaries that humans set up, only for God to knock them down around us? What are we called to do? It is here that we can turn our attention back to James's letter. James asks us, have you not made distinctions among yourselves, and become judges with evil thoughts?" James refers specifically to the attitude of many toward the rich and toward the poor, the treatment of those with money as first-class citizens, and the treatment of those without as barely worth notice. But the key is really the close of the passage: "So faith, by itself, if it has no works, is dead." We should not misunderstand - James is not saying we have to earn God's grace and love or do enough good things to 'get into heaven'. But faith, real faith, naturally works for the well-being of others. Real faith naturally tries to include and not exclude, it tries to bring others closer to God and not push others away.
The story from Mark today catches our attention because we're not used to hearing such crisp language uttered from Jesus' mouth. But let us not be distracted from the heart of the message - don't be so caught up in how Jesus addressed this bold woman that you miss the bold things Jesus did for her. He crossed a boundary, and reached out a hand, and extended God's grace, where no one else deemed the people worthy of receiving it. We are called to do likewise, to act with living faith, faith that makes changes, faith that cares for the oppressed, faith that transforms lives, the lives of our neighbors, and our own lives as well. Amen.