The Master Becomes the Learner
Proper 18B
Mark 7:24-30 (31-37)
September 9, 2012
Mark 7:24-30 (31-37)
September 9, 2012
Rev. John M. Caldwell, PhD
First United Methodist Church
Decorah, IA
First United Methodist Church
Decorah, IA
At this point in the
Gospel of Mark Jesus’ ministry was well-begun, maybe even too well-begun. He couldn’t go anywhere without attracting a
crowd. Very early he developed a
reputation as a man who could give healing to those who needed it. And many people needed healing: a multitude
in every town, village and district.
The news of Jesus’
ministry spread like wildfire and it always brought out the afflicted. Every family that had an unproductive mouth
to feed would bring their sick and disabled to Jesus, hoping against hope that
he would heal them too, and rescue them from the shame of having to disown a
member of their own family, casting them out onto the mercy of the community as
a whole.
Despite Jesus’
popularity, there had been some troubling events. Crowds were willing enough to see or benefit
from his healing, but they were less willing to take what he had to say. The people in his hometown of Nazareth had
rejected him. His family failed to
understand what he was about. The
disciples were slow to catch on. And, to
make matters worse, he had attracted some opposition. It wasn’t just the local religious
authorities, jealous of Jesus’ popularity, perhaps, and worried about their own
place in their communities. Jerusalem
itself had taken notice and it was not pleased.
Maybe it was time to
let things cool off a little, put a little distance between himself and the
uproar, get out of town for a few days.
So Jesus took his
disciples with him to Tyre. Tyre was a
seaport city on the Mediterranean. In
Jesus’ day, like many seaports, Tyre was a kind of melting pot. There were the Phoenicians, of course, a
Semitic people long-settled in that region.
Since Alexander’s time it had also become very Greek. We say that it was Hellenized. Tyre also had a significant Jewish
population.
Maybe it was that
combination that commended the city to Jesus.
He would be a stranger there, but would be able to find a place to stay among
the city’s many Jewish households. In
any event he intended for his whereabouts to stay a secret.
But the rumors about
him had moved faster than he had and they got there first. A woman, a Syro-Phoenician woman, had heard
about him and found out where he was staying.
We should notice some things about her.
In that hybrid city, she herself was a mix of backgrounds. In a day when ethnicity was much more
important than it is now and when people took their very identity from the
people from whom they had sprung, this woman was both Syrian and
Phoenician, a bit of an oddity. She was not
Jewish. The story hints that she was
rich. We suspect this both because she
is called a Hellene and because at the end of the story her daughter is
described as lying on a couch, rather than on a mattress.[1]
Her daughter had “an
unclean spirit.” What does that mean? I don’t know.
What is important for the story is that the little girl was afflicted in
some way that had been resistant to the treatments that her mother had at home,
could buy or hire. So she decided to go
see Jesus. What did she have to lose?
She went to the
house where Jesus was and fell at Jesus’ feet in the proper posture of someone begging a favor,
even though she was his social superior.
She asked that the spirit be cast out of her daughter.
Now here is where
the story gets interesting. Anna Carter
Florence, who is one of my favorite writers on the subject of preaching, said
something a number of years ago that I have never forgotten. She said, “The truth of a text depends on
where you are willing to stand and what you are willing to see.”[2] The truth of a text depends on where you are
willing to stand and what you are willing to see. The truth of a text isn’t something that’s in
the text. It’s in where we stand in
relation to the text and what is seen from that standpoint. And standing and seeing are not so much about
ability as they are about willingness. Biblical
interpretation is less about knowledge and smarts than it is about courage and
honesty. The truth of a text depends on where
you are willing to stand and what you are willing to see.
Where could we stand
in this text? Well, we could stand—or
perhaps kneel and bow with our heads touching the floor—with the
Syro-Phoenician woman, a cultured Greek-speaking mother with an afflicted
daughter who hears this Jew respond to her voluntary and unnecessary politeness
with an insulting dismissal: “It is not fair to take the children’s food and
throw it to the dogs.” Actually, what he said was “It is not fair to take the
children’s food and throw it to the puppies.”
Presumably, the woman’s afflicted daughter is the puppy in question, which
makes her a dog. Even today in the
Middle East, there is nothing more insulting than to call someone a dog, and
coming from a social inferior it was even worse.
But, you see, this
woman has already exhausted her other possibilities. If she wants healing for her daughter then
she cannot let even this insulting behavior stop her. Jesus has something she needs. She can insult him in return but what will
that get her?—a moment of satisfaction, maybe, but then she will go home and
her daughter will still be afflicted. For
the time being, at least, she must adopt the wisdom of the weak. We’ve all been there at one time or another. Even if your boss is a jerk, getting into a
shouting match with her will accomplish nothing. Even if your teacher is in the wrong, arguing
with him is unlikely to change things in your favor. Even if your mom or dad is being unfair—and
since they are often more interested in peace and quiet than they are in
fairness, that is not at all unlikely—even if your mom or dad is being unfair, going
toe-to-toe with them doesn’t mean that you win.
She must adopt
another method. He had talked of
children and puppies. Maybe, by mistake,
he had left an opening. He had sketched
a domestic scene: children at the table, puppies on the floor. No it wouldn’t be right to take the
children’s food away from them and give it to the dogs (although I have seen
children do it themselves often enough. I’ve
done it myself, in fact. Dogs, by the
way, are not all that fond of lima beans.).
But the logic of the scene reveals the puppies pouncing on anything that
falls from the table. And so her reply
is, “Sir, even the puppies under the table eat the children’s little
crumbs.” Checkmate.
Jesus’ choices are
two: He can give her what she has asked for, acknowledging that she has
outwitted him. Or, he can escalate his
rudeness, and everyone will know that she has outwitted him even though he
hasn’t admitted it. He chooses the first
option. When the woman goes home she
finds her daughter well and resting comfortably.
Now the hard thing
about taking this position is from here we are confronted with Jesus as a
flawed character. He gets beaten in a
verbal jousting match. His initial
response to her request was just rude. That’s
not the way we usually see Jesus.
Of course, there are
those who will try to wiggle out of this.
They will say that Jesus knew how this was all going to turn out—he is
God, remember—so there was no harm in using this situation to teach a lesson
about persistent prayer. This, I insist,
is an interpretive failure of nerve. If
you are going to adopt this woman’s position in the text, then you have to see
what she sees.
So, what we have
here is a strategy for dealing with the powerful. The way to get what we need and want from
them is to adopt the logic of their argument and then turn it against them, showing
that their own logic requires them to yield to our demands. Martin Luther King, Jr., was a master of this,
arguing for civil rights by showing that the logic of the American story
requires equal access for blacks.
Perhaps it applies
most of all to prayer. God, after all, sometimes
seems as dismissive to our requests as Jesus was to the begging woman’s. Find the logic of God’s program, take our
place within it and ask for what we need: “Your will be done on earth as it is
in heaven.”
That’s one place we
could stand and, while it may not be easy, this is what we might see. There is another place. We could take our place with Jesus, if we are
willing, and see what we might see from there.
Jesus, a
peasant-class Jewish healer and prophet, when confronted with this Gentile, Greek-speaking,
upper class woman, made a very common move.
It’s one we make all the time. We
make it when someone on the street asks us for money. We make it when we vote. We make it in our conversations when we talk
about our schools and our communities and the things that are going on in the
world. We draw concentric circles and
start with ourselves. We take care of
our own. Me and mine and then, if there
is something left over, you and yours. Charity
begins at home, we say. And it pretty
much ends there, too, if there isn’t enough to go around, we add silently.
“Let the children be
fed first,” we say. Jesus is for the
Jews first. And then, if there is any of
him left over, he can be shared with the Gentiles. God’s love is for me first. Then, if there is any left over, it can be
shared with you. And if there is still
some left over—and that doesn’t seem likely—we can share it with them.
Are we hard-wired to
make this move? It’s possible. And Jesus has even blessed this perspective
with an insulting proverb: “It is not fair to take the children’s food and
throw it to the dogs.”
And yet, as we have
already seen, the logic of this move is not iron-clad. This detestable woman—detestable because she is
“other” to the Jewish, peasant, male Jesus in so many ways: Gentile, upper-class,
female—but detestable most of all because she is right, this woman has punched
a hole in the logic by which we organize our world. “Even the puppies under the table can make a
feast out of the children’s tiny morsels.”
God’s love is bigger
than we are. This is gospel and it
doesn’t come from our lips. It comes to
us from the mouth of this “other,” someone whose only claim to speak the truth is
her daughter’s need, her willingness to humiliate herself, and her refusal to
take no for an answer.
We’re not entirely
sure this gospel is good news, not if it threatens our world of concentric
circles with us at the center. Can we
bear to hear it? What if the gospel we
need to hear is one we cannot speak? What
if the gospel we need to hear is one we do not know? What if the only person who can speak the
good news to us is a welfare mother with four children, living in a two-bedroom,
roach-infested mobile home? What if the
person with the gospel we need to hear is a Guatemalan immigrant and we don’t
even speak the same language? What if we
are not in charge of the message that we bear?
What if the gospel is not our possession?
The gospel story is
not a story we can take or leave; it is a story into which we have fallen, one
that will remake our world, but not before it unmakes it. Even Jesus could not keep the gospel under
control or harness its energies to serve his own interests. So what can we do?
If we do what Jesus
did, we will take to heart the lesson that the Syro-Phoenician woman taught
him. We will say no to the ghettos and
gated communities in our heads. We will
say yes to a love that honors no walls, fences, zoning ordinances, civil
jurisdictions, or national boundaries.
As I understand it, this
is what goes on at the heart of Christian Education. Yes, there are stories to learn and facts to
master. But done rightly, Christian
Education is a game that we play with God.
We say to God, “We’ll draw a circle and then you draw a circle and the
one who can draw the biggest circle wins.
And we’ll keep going until one of us gives up.” And then we see where that game takes us. We can be pretty sure it won’t be a place we’ve
ever been before.
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