Sunday, August 15, 2021

Crumbs under the table 

Mark 7:24-30

This week we're skipping a bit of Mark's story of Jesus, moving to a story about Jesus on some kind of retreat into the region of Tyre. 

It's important to note that the last thing that has happened in Mark's story is that Jesus has been in a dispute with the religious authorities about what makes one "unclean" -- religiously outcast. You can read that story here.

It is from that dispute that Jesus travels north, into border territory, even across the border, into the region of Tyre. In Jesus' time Tyre was an important seaport in the Roman Empire. Speaking of unclean...

For reasons not made clear by Mark our storyteller Jesus is trying to remain secluded, entering a house. But we already know from Mark's story that people are often are able to find Jesus wherever he has gone.

The woman who finds him this time is Greek by birth, a Syrophoenician. She is not one of Jesus' own people. And Jesus is not in the home territory of this own people. The whole situation reeks of "unclean". This could be awkward.

The woman begs Jesus to throw a demon out of her daughter. But Jesus replies

The children have to be fed first. It isn't right to take the children's bread and toss it to the dogs.

The implication, of course, is that Jesus has come for his own people, and not for others. If Jesus is indeed Messiah, the one who will establish the former glory of Jesus' people as it was in the time of king David, then the woman, who is not one of Jesus' own people, is out of bounds.

It is hard to hear Jesus say these words. It's not what we expect from "gentle Jesus, meek and mild". It seems downright cruel of him. Many have tried to claim that Jesus is simply testing the woman, that he actually has compassion toward her. But would compassion lead Jesus, or anyone, to test a woman whose child is in desperate need?

The woman has an answer. She must really be desperate, because in that society a woman would hardly dare say this to a man with any authority:

Lord, even the dogs under the table eat the children's crumbs.

The folks who first heard or read this story would expect Jesus to strike the woman for her insolence.

Instead, Jesus commends the woman for her answer, telling her to go home to find her daughter already demon-free.

A question: Did Jesus just lose an argument to a woman who isn't even one of God's intrinsic people? Did Jesus just change his mind because of what the woman said? We don't want to think so. We want to "protect" Jesus, or at least protect our image of him. But what did Mark our storyteller mean for us to hear?

However that may be, the next thing we read in Mark's story tells us that Jesus travels into truly Gentile, truly unclean territory. There he heals a man, and then... Well, that's coming next.