A Sermon preached by the Rev. Michael Anderson Bullock
[Isaiah 35:4-7a; James 2:1-10, 14-17; Mark 7:24-37]
On several occasions I have seen a small sign that caught my attention with its short, blunt message. The message is: “Dogs Welcome. People tolerated.” As a dog lover, I can identify with this sentiment. In fact, I have often reflected on the fact that I prefer my dogs’ company to many people I have encountered. I say this because I have found that dogs are an unassuming reflection of the God-life. With a modicum of care, they are loyal, affectionate, and good company. More to the point, the dogs I have had have exhibited the closest thing I have ever experienced to unconditional love. Even in my worst moments and behaviors, my dogs forgive me. They don’t hold a grudge. To them, being connected with me is what matters. That’s real God-life stuff.
So with my personal canine experience, I need to ask: What’s with Jesus and dogs? Why does he seem so down on pooches? More significantly, why did he seem to dismiss – even denigrate -- the Syrophoenician woman with such an apparent dog-slur?
Every time today’s gospel lesson comes up and we read of the encounter between Jesus and the Syrophoenician woman, I think of my seminary homiletics professor. Mr. Muehl, a practicing lawyer who won prizes for his trial arguments; was (in fact) the most tenured member of the renowned Divinity School faculty. Not ordained, he was an astute and publicly recognized preacher and (as I personally experienced) an equally good man. I appreciate him and his influence to this day. Yet, when this gospel story comes up (and it does, once in the year when we read Mark and then again in a second year when Matthew1 is the gospel track) – when this story is read in worship, I always think of Mr. Muehl and his confession that he thought that this passage was the most difficult in the entire New Testament. I agree. So, risking stomping where angels fear to tread, I have two points to make about the story of the Syrophoenician woman and Jesus – dogs notwithstanding.
The first point has to do with how we interpret things. What’s the process of interpretation? What goes into the way we try to understand things? I ask this because very frequently our tendency is to interpret things based on our own experience. Then we use those familiar lenses to evaluate (in this case) the biblical text in our own image. Yet, doing this not only places our perspective as the standard for interpretation; but it also avoids the essential interpretive question: “Does the text – or does this situation -- mean what we mean? So, in the case of the gospel about the Syrophoenician woman, we need to ask: did Jesus mean what we mean or what we heard him say?
In terms of our scriptures and this gospel lesson in particular, I am saying that we need to explore the context in which Jesus acted in order to glean a deeper meaning than we might expect or even want. And I believe that a second question provides the necessary focus for our understanding and incorporation of this gospel text. That question is: What was Jesus’ life’s purpose; and to what extent was that sense of his purpose active in this encounter with the Syrophoenician woman?
To begin, let’s honestly acknowledge some aspects of our own reaction to what we see and hear in this specific gospel. I can think of four concerns we moderns might understandably have. One reaction from folks like us is to wonder if Jesus was being racist in this encounter? A second is, was Jesus being sexist? A gentler inquiry is, was Jesus in need of learning something from this gentile woman? And most compassionately, was Jesus just having a real bad day?
Because the issues of racism and sexism are crucially important in our time and to us, hearing Jesus’ response to the woman’s request (to heal her daughter) causes us to register some alarm at what we perceive Jesus’ role being in this episode. In our social and historical context, we have to wonder if Jesus’ comment about feeding the “children” first and leaving the crumbs for the “dogs” is an expression of racist tribalism or sexist hierarchy or just plain mean-spiritedness. And for followers of Jesus, we rightly wonder, how can our Jesus, God’s Son, be so callous and apparently off-base?
What is going on here?! And so, left at this level, two polarized camps arm themselves for the battle. There are those prosecutors of Jesus who say: “I told you so. Another Christian abuser in religious clothing!” On the other end, there are many of us who want (and perhaps need) to defend the trustworthiness of Jesus as our Savior and Redeemer – not to mention the possible concerns of the ASPCA.
Personally, I admit that I feel the pull to defend and explain Jesus and his words to the Gentile woman; but such an attempt at justification would only add fuel to the fire, changing nothing that might move us off the battle lines. Nonetheless, without intending to defend Jesus or attempting to explain or justify his comments, I do believe that there is a question (the one about Jesus’ identity and purpose) that has the capacity to help us see and hear something beyond our immediate concerns. Specifically stated, Jesus’ purpose was not to be an itinerant missionary healer, a spiritual “Good Humor” man, driving his ice cream truck throughout the neighborhoods, bringing sweetness to all. Rather, Jesus’ purpose was to inaugurate the kingdom of God, to demonstrate through his own life what life is like on God’s terms. Given this clarifying fact, what’s going on between this woman and Jesus? Moreover, what does this encounter say to us about our faith in God’s Christ?
First, let’s give credit where credit is due. The Syrophoenician woman is something special. She has “moxy”! She is also obviously a mother – a momma-bear of a mother -- whose love and care for her sick-unto-death daughter is willing to suffer any and all expense – even to approach a Jewish man (a cultural and religious enemy) who is widely known as a healer to ask for his help. From appearances, both Jesus and the woman come from competing tribes. Even to call her tribe “Gentile” is an ethnocentric term from the Jewish experience of “them” (that is, Gentiles: everyone who is not Jewish). In addition, she is a woman in a patriarchal and social culture where women are not “created equal”. So, as I say, she has “moxy” in confronting Jesus and doing so publicly; or as Hebrew speakers might say, she has “chutzpah”.
Breaking just about every human barrier that stands between the two figures, the Syrophoenician woman stands face-to-face with Jesus and tells him what she needs from him. No beating around the bush! Mark tells us that she “begged” Jesus to cast the demon from her daughter. Desperation, coupled with passionate love, creates a formidable presence. And more than being “one of them”, (which in her Gentile background meant someone whose heritage did not include Covenant awareness nor the heritage of the Law and the Prophets) the question remains: Why did she ask Jesus for help?
On the one hand the answer is plain: Jesus heals and this ability has spread throughout the region. He can’t even get away into the remote Gentile territories for a break without someone confronting him with their need for healing. We also see this fact in the second part of today’s gospel: Another healing—by my count the seventh in the first seven chapters of Mark. Try as Jesus might to keep this aspect of his life relatively quiet, everywhere he goes people flock to him for healing. But being a healer is not Jesus’ purpose, his reason for being. Again, a question: What are we meant to glean from what stands behind all the healings? Would there be, could there be an awareness beyond the miraculous to see the power of the presence of God?
This is the point at which Jesus’ purpose and identity come into play. He is inaugurating the Reign of God in the peoples’ midst, thereby turning everything upside-down or (from God’s perspective) “right-side up”. When Jesus says, “Let the children eat first, for it is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs”, the possible harshness notwithstanding, this is not a slur. Rather, it is a proclamation of his purpose and the ordering of his actions. He is harkening back to the Covenant, where the purpose of Israel was to be “the light of the world”, to bear God’s light so that all the world would ask what the Covenanted people of God know that they do not. First things first. The promises to the “children”, to those whom God has called out to be God’s Holy People for the sake of the world – those holy promises must be fulfilled so that everyone might be filled. Again, first things first.
Jesus’ reference to “dogs” (I believe) is not a slur. If the roles were reversed and a Jew asked a Phoenician for aid, the Jew would be seen as the “dog”. The point is that with Jesus the dogs ( who – like my dogs – need me to feed them – with Jesus, the “dogs” get fed. First things first, though.
It would seem that this perplexing gospel confrontation has its revealing roots in the Feeding of the 5000 (which we addressed a month ago), where those who were present – ostensibly all Jews – came away with full bellies; but when all the “children” had been satisfied, Jesus directed the Twelve to gather up the left-overs. And that gathering filled twelve large baskets. Ever wonder what they did with the food in those baskets?
At the level of the symbolic, those left-overs were for the “dogs”, those who had no reason to expect – much less hope for – inclusion at God’s Table. And yet, the crucial point of feeding the “children” was so that the “children” in turn would share what they had been given. Purpose. Mission. Stewardship. Sound familiar?
In my occasional attempts at humorous jousting, I have said, with as much seriousness as playfulness, that I want to return as one of my dogs. My dogs are cared for and treated better than an overwhelming percentage of the world’s children. They have food, a safe, warm place to sleep, and a lot of caring love that more than a few kids in this world ever hope for. In this, I was reminded this past week about the dogs I have seen in El Salvador. Some dogs belong to people and have homes, but most appear to be feral. These dogs are always skinny, their ribs bulging under their coats. Foreign visitors (like me and you) initially comment on the dogs; but after a while, when the sights and sounds of the country refocus a visitor’s attention, the dogs no longer are so visible. What then a visitor unavoidably sees are the skinny, mal-nourished kids. So, what do you do when you have a fat dog and a skin and bones kid?
Crumbs fill baskets. And when we remember that in the God-life there is enough for everyone, it is “first things first”. The “children” become the servers at the table; and even the “dogs” are fed. Amen.
1. Matthew 15:21-28
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