There’s a huge discomfort that arises in me when I hear Jesus
call the unnamed Gentile woman a “dog.” So
let’s go through the story closely and see what we have to learn from this
strange passage.
In chapter 7 up to this point, Jesus has been haggling with a
group of Pharisees about what constitutes “clean” and “unclean.” To our ears those categories don’t mean
much—we tend to hear “washed” or “unwashed,” and ask, “What does that have to
do with the life of faith?” But in the
Judaism of Jesus’ day, those categories had the connotation of “sinless”
(clean) or “sinful” (unclean). They were
ways of understanding what the boundaries were in Jewish life.
Jesus resists these categories—these boundaries—and attempts
to re-define them. We heard him say last
week, “It is not what goes into a person that makes her unclean, it is what
comes out of the human heart.”
Now in this morning’s reading, the Gospel writer Mark will
show us in two healing stories just what this erasure of boundaries means.
Jesus is wearied by his argument with the Pharisees and seeks
to get out of town and get some rest. He
goes so far as to go into territory that is almost exclusively non-Jewish. Tyre and Sidon were coastal towns northwest
of Galilee in what we now call Lebanon, and there is evidence that there was
open hostility to Jews in this region.
Jesus clearly wants to get away!
He has tried to get away before and it hasn’t worked, and it
doesn’t work here either. If he thought
he was an unknown quantity in this foreign territory, he was wrong.
A woman seeks him out.
And not just any woman. All kinds
of boundaries get crossed here. She is a
woman seeking to talk to a man, someone unknown to him approaching him after
barging into his residence. The Greek
word used implies she has some status.
She is a “lady,” probably well above Jesus’ peasant status. Boundary two crossed. She is a Gentile. Boundary three crossed. By any definition of Jewish law at the time,
she is “unclean.”
She asks for healing for her daughter. Jesus replies, “It is not right to take food
from the children and throw it to dogs.”
Full stop. Did he just
say that? Did he just compare that woman
and her sick daughter to dogs? For those
of us who think of Jesus as perfect or as sinless, this is more than a little
jarring.
The woman may have remained as a beggar at Jesus’ feet, but
she rises up into her full self and resists.
“Yes, but even the dogs get the crumbs that fall to the floor.” And Jesus changes his mind, “Go, you will
find your daughter well.”
What’s going on here?
My mentor Verna Dozier used to say that if you are unsure what a passage
means, you should ask yourself, “Why did the early Christian community want to
pass on this story?” It’s an important
question because each Gospel writer obviously picks and chooses which story to
tell and how to tell them. For instance,
Matthew also tells this story (15:21-28) but tries to add some clarity. Jesus is not alone with the woman in
Matthew’s telling. His disciples are present. He also changes Jesus’
declaration at the end, from a very neutral and almost begrudging, “For saying
that you may go—the demon has left your daughter” to a wildly positive, “Woman
great is your faith! Let it be done for you as you wish.”
The Gospel writer Luke decides not to even touch the
story. He doesn’t include it.
So why is this story here, especially if it seems to put
Jesus in a bad light? I think it is
this. The communities for which Mark and
Matthew are writing are struggling with these boundary issues. Both are
probably majority Jewish still and the inclusion of Gentiles is a divisive
issue. The old habit of dividing up the
world into “clean” and “unclean” is hard to get over. It was deeply ingrained in the Jewish soul.
Mark and Matthew want to show that even Jesus struggled with
this. It is a hard business this erasing
boundaries.
And so it is, even for us who think we’ve got this
inclusiveness thing down pretty well.
And compared to the church of the past we have come a mighty long way.
But our instincts—well, we can find them in a very different
place. It is easy to slip into the old
saying that many people assume is in the Bible but it is not: “Charity begins at home.” Or, “Family comes first.”
But Jesus had to learn himself and we have to continue to
learn that for his followers there are no hierarchies of need. Of course, I must love and care for my
family. But also, of course, I must care
for the stranger, or even the just plain strange. And that is why this is so hard because in
the Jesus movement there is only one family, which means the next stranger I
meet is as much my sister or brother as is my sister or brother. We should not pretend that does not cut
across the grain, that it is in anyway easy.
Because it does cut across the grain and it is not easy.
But it is our high calling, our exquisite purpose, the great
and joyous gift we have to give to the world.
There are no outsiders. There is
no one who because of who they are or what they do forfeits their dignity,
which is God-given not human-given. And
this is the best news there can be, even if at times it seems impossible. And if you don’t think we need, and the world
around us needs, this good news then you are not paying attention.
The church shows so many signs of becoming irrelevant and
slowly dying. But we need to reach deep
down for some Holy Spirit, gospel strength because if we do not live the
message that God has wiped out every boundary, every division marker, that
disagreements do not make us enemies, and if it does we are in need of some
good old-fashioned conversion to the ways of God.
So that story is there to challenge us—as Jesus himself was
challenged—to drop all the boundaries and follow Jesus in learning to love our
neighbors—every son or daughter of God—as ourselves.
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