In the name of God ☩ Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.
This passage that we heard this morning from Mark is one of the more challenging stories that we have about Jesus. The reason why it’s such a challenge is that what we are presented with is a side of Jesus that we don’t often hear about. When we conjure up images of Jesus in our minds, we usually think of Jesus as the nicest person we can imagine. But the way Jesus acts in this passage from Mark challenges that stained-glass version of Jesus.
Another reason why I find this passage so challenging is that it’s really easy to fall into heresies when thinking through the implications for this passage. I’ve been ordained for nine years, and never, ever, have I rewritten a sermon on Saturday night. But I did this one. This story of Jesus and Syrophoenician woman just wouldn’t let me go. I had written a good enough sermon on Wednesday. But on Saturday afternoon, I came to realize that the Spirit wasn’t finished talking to me; I hadn’t yet finished wrestling with the text.
And before I get to doing that, I just want to say a brief word about why I think it’s so important for the preacher to do everything within his or her ability to preach the Gospel of Jesus Christ on every single Sunday. This stuff that we’ve come here to do isn’t unimportant, it’s a matter of life and death. Church isn’t an appointment on your calendar to keep, it is partaking in your very salvation. So, for the preacher, there’s no such thing as “taking a Sunday off” or “phoning it in.” The Gospel demands our fullest and most faithful response. I don’t know where you all are in life – maybe you’re hanging by a thread, and if I have 14 minutes to tell you about God’s grace, it could be that God is able to pull you up by these words of mine. It could be that tragedy will come this week and this will be the last sermon that I ever preach or the last one that you hear. But even if that’s not the case and we’re all gathered together again next week, proclaiming the Good News of God in Christ is something that I take very seriously and strive to do clearly, persuasively, and faithfully. I realize that you might not think that every sermon I preach is an A+, and that’s fine, they’re not; but I’m not going to rest if my sermon doesn’t make clear that the love and grace of God are an A+.
But back to the text. This is a hard text because when a woman with a sick daughter comes to Jesus and asks for help, Jesus turns her away and refers to her as a dog before finally offering healing when this resilient mother persists. Now, there are ways that we can put our minds at ease about this. We can do a word study on the word “dog,” or we can say “well, Jesus was just tired,” or we might say “This woman summoned Jesus to grow in his identity.” And, in itself, those aren’t the worst possible conclusions to draw from this text. But such conclusions lead us down some paths that we might not want to head down.
As we read in 1 John: “If any one sins, we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous; and he is the perfect offering for our sins, and not for ours only, but for the sins of the whole world.” This story about Jesus and the Syrophoenician woman is hard, and sometimes when we wrestle with it, we end up contorting our views of Jesus as we struggle to figure out what’s going on in the text; and we end up with no other conclusion that Jesus acted out of sin. But I’m not at all convinced that a reading of this text that leaves Jesus as the antagonist is a faithful reading.
What I’m afraid happens when we make this text about Jesus learning a lesson about his identity or taking on the sin of cultural prejudice is that we end up missing the point. To be honest, I have no idea why Jesus calls this woman a “dog.” But I’m fairly sure that we do a disservice to our Lord and to ourselves if that’s where we spend the majority of our time in this story. The amazing part of this story is that Jesus saves the little girl. This is part of what it means for Jesus to be the Messiah – that he is engaged in a struggle against the forces of sin and evil. Just as he does on the Cross, he triumphs over those forces as he heals this little girl, and he does the same for us. That is the part of this story to hang onto, the part that is worth hearing if this is the last thing that you hear – Jesus saves.
Mark tells us that this encounter happened in the region of Tyre, which wasn’t a part of Israel. Tyre is about 35 miles from the Sea of Galilee and is closer to Damascus, Syria than it is Jerusalem. All that is to say, Jesus was not on his home turf. And the woman that comes to him is identified as being a Syrophoenician Gentile – meaning that she did not share Jesus’ gender, race, religion, culture, class, or customs. In nearly every conceivable way, this woman was different from Jesus; and yet, Jesus saves her daughter. She wasn’t Jewish, and so he was under no religious obligation to offer her any miracle. We know nothing of her life or her morality, so we cannot assume that because of her reputation that she deserved this favor. She was outside his sphere of concern. In the scheme of things, she was a nobody, she was undeserving, she was a dog. And yet, the grace of God is extended to her through Jesus.
As she responds to Jesus by saying, “Sir, even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs,” she shows us that arguing with God is a holy and faithful practice. Often, when Jesus heals someone, he remarks “Your faith has made you well.” But Jesus doesn’t say that in this instance. Instead, he tells the woman “For saying that, you may go – the demon has left your daughter.” Obviously, God is to be worshiped, obeyed, and adored. But God can also handle your frustrations, your doubts, your fears. There is a holy tradition of yelling at God, demanding from God, arguing with God, and challenging God. We ought not to be meek in our prayer lives, but bold, and this Syrophoenician woman offers a great model of this. It doesn’t mean that you’ll always get what you want, but it does mean that you never have to go at it alone. Whatever it is that you have to dish out, God can take and absorb into the arms of divine mercy.
What happens next is that Jesus sends the mother home, telling her that she will find her daughter healed. Whether or not Jesus changed his mind about helping this woman out, I really don’t know. But what I do know is that Jesus responded to her. God is not distant, closed off, or unaffected by us. Love is always a relationship of mutuality, and when Love Incarnate met this woman, Love could not but respond to her boldness.
What happens next is that Jesus sends the mother home, telling her that she will find her daughter healed. Whether or not Jesus changed his mind about helping this woman out, I really don’t know. But what I do know is that Jesus responded to her. God is not distant, closed off, or unaffected by us. Love is always a relationship of mutuality, and when Love Incarnate met this woman, Love could not but respond to her boldness.
In one of his letters, St. Paul writes “But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ.” This is the grace of God that we see in this passage – that even when we are far off in a place that seems removed from God, even when our lives have become a moral catastrophe because of the mistakes that we have made, even when we have walked away from the Church and from faith, even when we could be described as a dog, God comes near to us, into our territory and lives, and brings healing and mercy.
In another letter, St. Paul remarks that while we were still sinners, Jesus died for us, the ungodly. Or in the language of this passage, though we are nothing but dogs, we are still given the bread of our salvation. Part of our modern problem with this passage is that we assume that we aren’t dogs, we assume that we have a place at the table because we are good people. And though I’d happily vouch for you all that you are “good people,” it is only by the grace of God that we are given a place at the table. Instead of asking “Why was Jesus so mean to this woman,” the better response is “Thank God, does that mean I can come to the table as well?” God’s gracious answer in Jesus Christ is a resounding “yes.”
So you can stop worrying about if you deserve to come to this table, the answer will always be “no.” We don’t deserve to come to the table and yet we are graciously invited to do so, and that is Good News. Because it is not within our power to earn a spot at the table, it also is not within our power to lose our spot at the table. Rather, when Jesus’ arms of love are stretched out on the hard wood of the Cross, he draws all of Creation into the gracious salvation of God.
This amazing grace is at the root of the meal that we will soon share together. Through the mercy of God, we are given so much more than mere crumbs, we are invited by God to celebrate a feast; we are given the very Body and Blood of Jesus, the bread of heaven and the cup of salvation. As the Prayer of Humble Access prays, “We do not presume to come to this thy Table, O merciful Lord, trusting in our own righteousness, but in thy manifold and great mercies. We are not worthy so much as to gather up the crumbs under thy Table. But thou art the same Lord whose property is always to have mercy. Grant us therefore, gracious Lord, so to eat the flesh of thy dear Son Jesus Christ, and to drink his blood, that we may evermore dwell in him, and he in us.” Out of deep love for us and all of Creation, God came to us on our terms, taking on our flesh, was betrayed by human sin, and rose victorious in the New Creation. By God’s grace, though we were foreigners, outside of the realm of God’s saving grace, we have been brought near into the salvation of God.
I absolutely love the fact that we have this passage to wrestle with; that Jesus’ followers didn’t feel the need to clean up or erase this encounter between Jesus and the Syrophoenician woman. The disciples could have sanitized this story to be a generic one where Jesus heals a foreigner, or they could have left it out altogether, there are plenty of other healing stories already. Though it is a challenging depiction of Jesus, they trusted that it is also a story full of saving grace. Can we trust it to be the same?
