“On Children, Dogs, and the Kin-dom
of God
Rev. Janet Parker
Rutgers Presbyterian Church
September 10, 2000
Isaiah 56:3-8
Mark 7:24-37
The New Testament Lesson is taken
from the gospel of Mark, chapter 7, verses 24-37. In the passage which precedes this text, Jesus has been
healing people in the region of Galilee, and engaging in debates with the
Scribes and Pharisees. In our text,
Jesus withdraws to the region of Tyre, a Gentile area, apparently desiring some
time apart for rest and reflection, and hoping to avoid the crowds that had been
following him in Galilee. But
intruding into his privacy, a Gentile woman comes and begs Jesus to heal her
little girl, who is suffering from an “unclean spirit.”
Jesus’ surprising response follows…
Scholars have suggested three theories to explain the harshness of
Jesus’ response to this Gentile woman. The
first theory simply dismisses Jesus’ response as inauthentic. This is quite convenient of course. If one doesn’t like what Jesus says, one simply decides
that he did not in fact say it. We
can’t prove that he did say it after all, so let’s just assume he
didn’t and we’ll all sleep better at night.
Fortunately, most scholars are unwilling to take such an easy way out.
A second proposal tries to smooth over the harshness of the saying by
arguing that Jesus was just repeating a local proverb that meant something like
“Charity begins at home.” The
reference to dogs was not meant to be mean, but was just a part of the saying
that you don’t think too much about, just like we might say “kill two birds
with one stone” without really intending any harm to our feathered friends.
This
attempt to rationalize Jesus’ response misses the point.
Even if he didn’t intend to be abusive, he still refuses her request
because she is not Jewish, affirming the priority of the Jews in God’s plan of
salvation. This leads to the third
suggestion made by scholars to explain Jesus’ reply, which is that Jesus
believed that his mission was solely to the Jews.
Now this is a much more probable explanation, because in Matthew’s
version of the story, Jesus says to the woman, “I was sent only to the lost
sheep of the house of Israel.”
There
is lots of evidence in the gospels that Jesus did understand his mission to be
directed exclusively toward the Jews. When
Jesus sends forth the disciples in Matthew 10, he tells them, “Go nowhere
among the Gentiles, and enter no town of the Samaritans, but go rather to the
lost sheep of the house of Israel.” This
explanation of Jesus’ behavior makes more sense; at least it is logical, and
supported by other biblical texts, but it still makes us uncomfortable.
What are we to make of this? Did
Jesus really have an exclusivist mission, this Jesus whom we have always been
taught was the very model of inclusivity?
This
is the same Jesus after all, who was constantly getting into trouble for
breaking the ritual purity laws of Israel.
He touches and heals unclean women, such as the woman with the flow of
blood, he heals lepers, he shares meals with prostitutes and sinners…in other
words, he is constantly in contact with the dregs of Jewish society…the
unclean, the immoral, the unwanted, the outcasts.
This is the same Jesus who challenged at every opportunity the religious
conventions which placed piety before people and legalistic interpretations of
the law before human mercy. In the
passage just previous to the one we read, Jesus argues with scribes and
Pharisees when they criticize his disciples for unclean eating practices.
Drawing upon the prophetic tradition of Isaiah, Jesus says, “You
abandon the commandment of God and hold to human tradition.”
Calling together the crowd, he teaches them the true meaning of piety and
moral cleanness, saying, “there is nothing outside a person that by going in
can defile, but the things that come out are what defile.”
Bravo,
Jesus. Right on!
This is the Jesus we know and love….overturning moralistic laws which
exclude and divide people while restoring the true meaning of faith through his
gospel of love and inclusiveness. So…what
happened? How can it be that in the
next passage, Jesus seems to be doing exactly what he has criticized others for
doing, looking at the externals, this woman’s ethnicity and religion, instead
of what is inside her heart…her faith in Jesus and her love for her daughter?
Which brings me back to my original question….Can Messiahs have blind
spots?
This
is a tough question, and one that I would probably be wise to avoid.
But since I never claimed to be wise, let’s plunge ahead!
The answer to this question depends on your answer to the central
question of the Christian faith, the question that Jesus asks Peter in the very
next chapter of Mark…. “Who do you say that I am?”
We all know the traditional Christian answer to that question:
Jesus is fully God and fully human.
As modern people, living in a semi-secular society, at the beginning of
the 21st century, I think most of us believe that the hardest part of
this formula for us to accept is that Jesus is fully God. Well, maybe that’s
true for non-Christians. But, on
the contrary, I think that for Christians, the hardest part of this affirmation
of faith, the one we have the most trouble accepting, is that Jesus was and is
fully human.
Somehow
most of us have this deeply ingrained, unexamined belief that we were taught
since the first day of Sunday school that Jesus must have sprung from the womb
perfect in every way. He never
disobeyed his parents, he never fought with the other children, and some of our
Christmas carols insist that “the little Lord Jesus, no crying he makes.”
Apparently, in order for Jesus to be the Messiah, the incarnate Child of
God, he had to be so morally perfect that he would be virtually unrecognizable
as a human being. Am I making you uncomfortable yet? This is an uncomfortable topic, because we have been taught
that to question Jesus in any way is taboo, but what does it really mean to
claim that Jesus was fully human? Does
it only mean that he was physically human, but emotionally, mentally, and
psychologically, he was all God? What
would it mean to explore the idea that Jesus was fully human in every way,
including in his emotional, mental and psychological makeup?
Would we have to allow room for the fact that Jesus might have made
mistakes, that Messiahs, in fact, might have blind spots?
Let’s
return to the story and take a closer look.
If we try to come at this story without some of our preconceived notions
about Jesus, what would we find? Biblical
scholars tell us that this story is an example of a “controversy narrative,”
in which Jesus engages in an argument with someone.
The most striking thing about this passage is that it is the only
controversy narrative in the entire gospel of Mark where Jesus loses the
argument! And what’s even
more odd, is that Jesus loses this argument not to one of the scribes or
Pharisees, in other words, not to an equal, but to a Gentile woman, who
in every way, would have been considered inferior to Jesus in his society.
In a classic reversal, this unclean Gentile woman, mother of a child with
an unclean spirit, becomes Jesus’ teacher.
Having just taught the religious authorities a lesson about not judging a
person by externals, he now has to learn the same lesson from a Gentile woman. He has to learn that there are ways in which he himself might
be “abandoning the commandment of God and holding to human tradition.”
So
how does the clever Syrophoencian woman win the argument? She takes Jesus’ argument, stands it on his head, and makes
a theological claim about the abundance of God’s messianic table.
In essence, she seems to be saying, “there is room for everyone at the
table, those considered children and those considered dogs in our unjust
society, for the abundance of God’s inclusive love and healing power levels
all distinctions and invites all to share equally in God’s festive banquet.”
We can only imagine Jesus’ reaction at hearing these words.
Perhaps
he recognized at that moment his own best self in the woman, as he remembered
all the times he had included the outcast in table fellowship.
Perhaps in one blinding moment he realized that God’s kin-dom, the
radically inclusive fellowship of all children of God, was not limited to the
outcasts and rejects of Jewish society, but extended beyond all ethnic and
religious boundaries. Perhaps this
moment planted the seed for the future Christian mission to the Gentiles.
In any case, we know that Jesus graciously accepted her gentle rebuke,
and healed her little girl. And in
this change of heart, I believe, we see Jesus’ messianic stature.
In
this moment, you see, Jesus becomes a fully human Messiah, a Messiah that we can
understand and hope to emulate. In
this moment, Jesus becomes relevant to our lives. As Jesus opens himself up to the teaching ministry of the
Syrophoenician woman, as he recognizes and expresses willingness to move past
his blind spot, as he shows moral and emotional maturity in his response to this
woman, he becomes for us a true exemplar of faith.
If Jesus had emerged perfect from the womb, how could he teach us how to
become moral human beings? If Jesus
were made of moral steel, what could he evoke in us except shame at our own
fallible humanity? And shame makes
a poor teacher. Instead, this story
shows us the human side of Jesus, balancing out the emphasis in much of the New
Testament on Jesus’ divine power. In
the encounter with the Syrophoenician woman, we meet a Jesus who can inspire us
to examine our own blind spots, a Jesus who is open to new insight, a Jesus who
is able to learn and grow. Through
following this Jesus, through being engrafted to this Christ as members of his
Body, we are empowered to grow and develop as moral beings, and thus, to be
redeemed from petty prejudice and blind convention.
And how we need to be redeemed. So
much violence and bloodshed and hatred continue in this world because of false
divisions between people. Humans
seem to excel at finding reasons to fear and reject one another.
Whether it is within the church, within our larger society, or between
nations, we find reasons to exclude and hate.
This person is gay, so he can’t be ordained in the church.
That person is an immigrant, and we don’t want her living off our tax
dollars and stealing our jobs. Those
people are religious fanatics, they all support terrorism, and worse yet, drive
up oil prices, so let’s go to war.
As
many of you know, I recently took a trip to Guatemala for my dissertation
research, and I was stunned to see firsthand the effects of the most brutal
genocide imaginable against indigenous people.
In the first half of the 1980s, the Mayan people were subjected to an
extermination campaign by the Guatemalan military, a military directed by a
government who was headed by an evangelical Christian.
General Rios Montt. When he
assumed power, Protestants flocked to support him, hailing him as the Guatemalan
messiah. In a campaign of terror
that sought to eradicate the Mayan people through a direct attack not only upon
their bodies, but upon their religion and culture, Rios Montt claimed to be
carrying out the will of God. In
that instant, the space of 500 years vanished and Guatemala was plunged back
into the age of the Conquistadors…convert, conquer and kill.
And once again, Christians took the lead.
Of course, Christians don’t have a monopoly upon violence, religious
intolerance and prejudice, we just seem to sometimes.
It is a profoundly human disease. A
disease so deeply rooted in our history and collective culture that we need a
fully human messiah to show us a new way…a messiah who has experienced
firsthand our human foibles and has modeled for us a life of radical love.
The most important part of the Markan story is that Jesus did listen to
the Syrophoenician woman, and he did heal her daughter.
Jesus had the moral courage to move beyond the social and religious
boundaries which were all that he knew, and to open his heart and his healing
messianic power to a woman who stood outside the community of the chosen.
His final answer—come on in. Join
the messianic banquet, for you too are a child of God.
Let us pray:
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