Mark 7:24-37
We are all familiar with aphorisms, those terse
little gems of folk wisdom that get passed down from one generation to the
next. They include sayings like, “A bulldog can whip a skunk, but sometimes
it’s not worth it;” “Anyone who doesn’t think there are two sides to an
argument is probably in one;” “If at first you don’t succeed, skydiving is not
for you.” The Israelites had plenty of such sayings: the Book of Proverbs is
filled with them. And Jesus is probably quoting one in our Gospel today: “Don’t
take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.” That could be applied in a
number of ways, but in this context it seems to say: “Take care of your own
before you take care of others.” People don’t like this passage. Whenever it
comes up, someone invariably tells me that Jesus is being mean. I understand
how you could think that, but we really can’t know that. The story does not
describe the look on his face or the tone of his voice. We don’t know if he’s
smiling or frowning, if his approach is teasing or harsh. Mark doesn’t add a
smiling face emoji to help us out here. The only thing we can be certain of is
that Jesus is not surprised. He can’t be: he’s in the city of Tyre. He’s left
Galilee and gone north to Syria, into one of the great ports of the ancient
world. It was from Tyre that Phoenician traders explored the entire
Mediterranean Sea and beyond, as far as Britain. And it was a major commercial
hub, populated not only by Syrians and Phoenicians, but Romans, Greeks, and
people of other nationalities as well It
was, in other words, Gentile Central, not the kind of place a good Jewish boy
would go to stay pure. So it is not shocking when a Syrophoenician woman comes
up to Jesus: he’s surrounded by Syrophoenicians and Gentiles of all stripes. He
obviously went there for that reason.
What would have been shocking for the disciples
with him was the way he cared for that woman. She wants her daughter healed of
a demon; Jesus quotes that adage; the woman replies, Even the dogs eat the children’s crumbs, and Jesus is delighted.
Apparently he has gone into Gentile territory to make that very point. The
Israelites were keen on using circumcision, purity laws, and food regulations
to stay separated from “dirty” Gentiles, with the idea that God clearly favors
morally upright, religiously observant Jews over all others. But over and over
again, Jesus says, Not so! He not
only teaches that God makes his sun rise
on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the
unrighteous (Matthew 5:45): he lives it. Lepers and prostitutes? They’re
acceptable. Tax collectors and Roman soldiers? They’re included. The woman
caught in adultery and the criminal crucified next to him? They’re forgiven.
Human beings want to draw lines and establish limits: someone has to be
excluded, someone has to go to hell. Right? But Jesus will have none of it: he
crosses every line and violates every boundary. There is no limit to God’s
love: everyone is included in God’s mercy. No wonder they killed him! He
threatened everything. But after they crucify him, he blows the stone door off
of that tomb, leaving it empty and showing that not even death itself will
curtail God’s love. We can build all the walls we want; we can hate and kill
all the people we want, but God’s mercy will not be limited and it will not be
stopped. In the end, the Kingdom will come, and it will include everyone who
wishes to be in it. Everyone. No exceptions.
The implications of this are manifold and
far-reaching. It obviously shapes, or should shape, the way we understand and
treat immigrants and foreigners, the way we interact with people of other races
and religions, with anyone who is different than we are. But I don’t want to go
there right now. I want to stay with this story. When I first encountered this
passage decades ago, I heard it from the outside, like I was watching this
scene unfold before me, maybe the way Jesus’ disciples watched it. Whatever I
felt about it, I was reacting to how Jesus treated this foreign woman. But over
the years, my point of view has changed. I can no longer hear this story from
the outside. That woman is me, and I am that woman. It took me awhile to get
there because I’m an educated white male in a system that is rigged in my
favor: it would be easy to view her plight from some safe, objective distance.
I did that when I was 27; now that I’m 57, I just can’t. The more I have come
to see and understand my own brokenness and need, the more I have struggled
with the unavoidable pain of living, the more I know that I am just like her.
She has no claim on Jesus other than the most basic claim of all: she’s hurting
and she needs help. She is completely dependent on his love and mercy. And so
am I. And so are you.
Growing in faith inevitably means dropping all
our defenses and our pretenses and accepting the truth: we are all sinful and
flawed human beings who are precious in the eyes of God. I’ve said it before:
we are all broken people being loved into wholeness. Like that woman in this
story we all depend on the unlimited love of God, on a mercy that will not be
contained or constrained by anything. We resist that at times: I’ve listened to
people tell me that if everyone gets mercy, then they’ll just take advantage of
it and abuse it. And no doubt that will happen sometimes. But in my experience
the people who do the most harm and cause the most destruction are not the
people who have been shown mercy. The greatest damage is done by those who have
never experienced mercy themselves, and don’t know how to give it to others. We
cannot share what we do not have. If we are going to convey the Good News of
God’s limitless love and mercy to a hurting world, we need to let ourselves
experience that love and mercy in our own personal lives and realize to the
core of our being how much we all depend upon it every single moment.
And if we let that sink in, then maybe we can
actually understand the end of this Gospel. The Syrophoenician woman says that
even dogs deserve to eat the crumbs that fall from the table, but when it’s all
over, she doesn’t get the crumbs: she gets the whole feast. Her daughter is
healed and made whole. There are no
second-class citizens in the Kingdom Jesus proclaims. The unlimited love and
mercy of God are poured out equally on everyone, regardless of whether they
deserve it or not, because no one deserves it . . . and everyone gets it.
Everyone. Even me. Even you.
No comments:
Post a Comment