“Sir, even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs.” (MK 7:28)
In today’s Gospel Jesus is far from home. While Mark does not tell us why Jesus has left Israel to go to Tyre, an area well north of either Samaria or Judea, that is where this narrative begins.
Tyre was an ancient city by the time of Jesus, having been one of the original seaports of the mighty Phoenician empire which would seed their civilization across the Mediterranean along with their system of writing which would eventually give way to first the Greek and later the Roman alphabets. While the residents of Tyre would probably have identified themselves as Phoenicians, for the most part they were ultimately part of a larger Canaanite culture out of which Israel and Judah had also arisen.
“He Could Not Escape Notice”
What’s important to note here is that Jesus is in a place
that would not be terribly friendly to the Hebrew religion of which he is a
prophetic voice. And that is critical to understanding what occurs next.
Jesus enters a house in Tyre and Mark notes that Jesus does
not want anyone to know he’s there. And it’s unclear why that is. Perhaps he
was seeking downtime from his non-stop ministries of healing and teaching.
Perhaps he anticipates that these residents of Tyre with their
Phoenician/Canaanite religion will be disinterested in what he has to say if
not hostile. Or perhaps he does not want any of his followers to know that he
is engaging Canaanites, residing in their home, eating their food, all of which
would probably make him unclean given the strictures of the Judaism of his
time.
A Mother Desperate to Heal Her Child
Michael Cook, ‘Crumbs of Love’ (2009)
And so he is sought out by a Syrophoenician woman, a
resident of this Canaanite culture in Tyre. She is a Gentile, a non-Jew. And
Mark tells us something else that is critical to the story: She is the mother
of a child possessed by an unclean spirit. She has heard that Jesus has the
power to heal such spirits and she has come to see if he can help her. Perhaps
Jesus was her last resort. But her willingness to break the cultural taboos of
engagement here suggest she was desperate.
Put yourself in her shoes for just a moment. You dearly love your daughter. You have tended her for awhile now as she spiraled down into what today we might well call chronic depression or perhaps something more severe like a form of psychosis. Watching her suffer must have been agonizing for this mother.
And so when she hears there is a renowned healer who has come to town, she wastes no time getting down to speak with him on behalf of her daughter. The fact her cultural traditions prohibit such interactions give her little hesitation. Her daughter’s health is her only concern. And she is willing to deal with whatever blowback she might get from her fellow Syrophoenicians to secure her daughter’s healing.
Jesus Gets Called Out
Robert Lentz, OFM The Syro-Phoenician Woman
What she probably did not anticipate was that the blowback would come from Jesus. When she begged him to cast the demon out of her daughter, he said to her, “Let the children be fed first, for it is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.” Not only does Jesus deepen her woundedness here with his refusal to help her daughter, he adds insult to injury by denying her very humanity. “It is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.”
Not only has Jesus failed to recognize the image of the Divine in this woman, he is operating out of a couple of common social prejudices. Everyone knows the Canaanites are not fully human. And women can never be the equals of men. Initially, it’s a pretty disappointing performance by Jesus. We expect more of him than a statement that evidences little more than tribal bigotry and sexism.
Fortunately for us, that is not the end of the story. But its hero will not be Jesus, it will be this mother of a seriously ill daughter who was unwilling to take no for answer. She responds to Jesus, “Sir, even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs.” This is truly a gutsy woman. She has just called Jesus out on his prejudices.
An Unexpected Response from Jesus
To his credit, Jesus is actually able to hear this woman. More importantly, he is able to do something we rarely attribute to Jesus: he repents.
At a basic level, Jesus recognizes that he has been unkind in his response to her, a comment that was incredibly thoughtless. Ironically, Jesus finds his own words coming back to indict his behaviors here. In the verses that immediately precede this one in Mark, he tells his disciples that it is not what goes into people that makes them impure, it is what comes out of the human heart that defiles them. Defilements like common social prejudices.
Jesus realizes he has given her a flip response, speaking without thinking, his words emerging from his cultural background, training that has taught him to look down on non-Jews and women, to see them as inferior. Maybe he was just tired and irritable. But to his credit, he recognizes that not only were his words hurtful, he was simply wrong. And so he quickly seeks to heal this mother’s wound he has just deepened. He says to her, “For saying that, you may go—the demon has left your daughter.” And Mark tells us she went home, found the child recovered, the demon gone.
Perhaps the notion that Jesus could have repented is troubling to us. While we have long declared Jesus to be fully human and fully divine, since the Council of Chalcedon made that declaration in 451 CE, the truth is that we’ve never been fully comfortable with Jesus’ humanity. And when he acts out of that humanity, with all its imperfections as he does here, we don’t know what to do with it. Christianity has always had a strong tendency to discount if not ignore Jesus’ humanity entirely while emphasizing his divinity even as the church long ago declared such understandings to be a heresy called Docetism.
Modeling Behaviors He Calls Others to Follow
So while this story is unsettling, I think we can learn much from it. Here Jesus is willing to admit he could be wrong. He is willing to rethink understandings that he inherited from his culture and simply blurted out without thinking causing harm to another in the process. He is able to see that such thoughtless behavior could be hurtful to another child of G-d and then sought to rectify it. Jesus realizes the need to grow. In short, Jesus is modeling the very behaviors that he calls his followers to engage.
It’s also important to note what Jesus does NOT do here. He does not lapse into egocentric self-recriminations over his failings. There is no indication here that Jesus ever thinks for one nanosecond that his stumble in dealing with this woman, another child of G_d bearing the divine image, has damaged his relationship with the G-d he calls Abba, Daddy, much less broken it. He simply looks at his behaviors, reconsiders the attitudes that gave rise to them, realizes his need to grow and acts to repair the damage he has done. These are actions that define the practice of repentance. And in the end, he learns from his mistake and moves on to the next village.
Second, we can learn here from how Jesus
deals with his human failings – he owns up to the harm he has done and
reconsiders his attitudes, words and behaviors. He doesn’t spiral down into
self-recrimination. Somehow I can’t imagine Jesus ever saying the Prayer of
Humble Access and I would guess he’d probably wonder why any of his followers
would, either. Jesus simply does not frame his understanding of our connection
to G_d in terms of worthiness. He observes a G-d from which all things come,
who makes the rain to fall on the just and the unjust alike, a G-d who acts out
of divine love for the Creation.
Healing Occurs Once We Get Past The Prejudices
Finally, there is the matter of the Syrophoenician mother and her daughter. The girl’s healing came as a result of her mother’s willingness to trust a complete stranger, a foreigner she had been taught to hate. But that only happened when both the mother and Jesus got past their prejudices. And in the end, the result was a healing that was hardly predictable at the beginning of their engagement.
So, can we become aware of the unbidden prejudices that find their homes buried deep in our own souls and confront them? Can we recognize that behaviors we wander into thoughtlessly are capable of harming others even when we don’t intend to do so? Can we embrace the humility that is required to say to another, “I’m sorry. I did not mean to hurt you but I know I did. Can you please forgive me?” Can we embrace our humanity, with all its warts, owning our own Shadow, knowing that there is no part of us that G_d, our Creator, does not love? And can we accept that we do not need to engage in self-deprecation and obsess over our own worthiness to return that love?
I believe we can. And I believe that Jesus is betting that we will.
I find the words of our patron saint, Richard of Chichester, to be right on target for responding to today’s Gospel and so I close with them. Let us pray:
O Jesus….redeemer,
friend and brother,
may we know thee more clearly,
love thee more dearly,
and follow thee more nearly,
day by day. AMEN.
N.B. One of my parishioners said to me after the sermon that she had grown up saying the Prayer of Humble Access and that it was second nature to her. She loved it. I am sure that is true of many. The Book of Common Prayer’s Rite I Eucharistic texts are cast in elegant Elizabethan English. I, too, can recite them from heart stemming back to my earliest days as an Episcopalian. I often describe this rite as containing both beautiful language and wretched theology, the Humble Access prayer being a prime example. But I do get why people still love it and willingly recite it. And I thank my parishioner for prompting me to think further about this. - hsc
This was a sermon presented at St. Richard’s Episcopal Church,
Winter Park, FL on Sunday, September 8, 2024. You may watch it as presented at
this link beginning at 23:30
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1yTgxbr68DA&t=2s
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Harry Scott Coverston
Orlando, Florida
If the unexamined life is not worth living, surely an
unexamined belief system, be it religious or political, is not worth holding.
Most things worth considering do not come in sound bites.
Those who believe religion and politics aren't connected
don't understand either. – Mahatma Gandhi
For what does G-d require of you but to do justice, and
to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your G-d? - Micah
6:8, Hebrew Scriptures
Do not be daunted by the enormity of the world's grief.
Do justly, now. Love mercy, now. Walk humbly now. You are not obligated to
complete the work, but neither are you free to abandon it. - Rabbi Rami
Shapiro, Wisdom of the Jewish Sages (1993)
© Harry Coverston, 2024
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