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| "Jesus and the Woman of Canaan" by Michael Angelo Immenraet Flemish artist (1621-1683) Note the doggie! |
I
have a sneaking hunch Donald Trump would not approve of the gospel lesson
appointed for this Sunday in the Revised Common Lectionary. Here we have in
Mark 7:24-37 two examples of Jesus’ power to heal and cast out unclean spirits.
The first of these two examples, the healing of the Syrophonecian woman’s
daughter, might be a little uncomfortable for a couple of reasons.
The
miracle story in verses 24 – 30 shows Jesus’ radical inclusivity. Here’s Our
Savior, just coming off feeding the five thousand, walking on the water, and
reaming out a bunch of uppity Pharisees (were there any other kind?) just looking
for a little R & R on the nearby foreign island of Tyre. It was sort of
like taking a weekend in Bermuda or Puerto Rico—you can get away and nobody
knows who you are so they won’t bug you. Unfortunately, if you happen to be the
Only Begotten Son of God and Savior of the World, folks just won’t leave you alone. Some needy foreign
chick with a demonically possessed child (don’t you hate it when that
happens..?) comes nosing around the hacienda in hopes that Jesus would cast the
demon out of her little daughter. Jesus’ reaction to this is a bit disconcerting:
“He said to her, ‘Let the children be fed first, for it
is not right to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.’” (v.27)
Now,
if your image of Jesus is that blond, blue-eyed, gentle soul carrying a lamb on
his shoulder, the harshness of this reply to a desperate mom might seem a bit
shocking and out of character. Of course, if you’re Donald Trump, you might be cheering,
“Right on, Jesus! No free exorcisms for non-citizens! And who cares if you call
her a dog? There’s too much political correctness in this country!”
But
good ol’ Jesus has to go and show compassion to this undeserving foreign woman anyway. Isn’t that just like him..?
There he goes, throwing good healthcare away on the unentitled!
So
what do we do with this story? How do we interpret Jesus’ initial reaction to
the woman’s supplication? I guess we can take a little solace in the way Jesus
words the response—at least in Mark’s version. Here he says “Let the children
be fed first,” suggesting that maybe
he had a plan to include everyone all along once he got his own people on
board. Or, we could challenge our orthodoxy a little and say that the human
Jesus, a man of his time and culture, really believed that God’s blessings were
intended only for God’s chosen people, but, moved by compassion and the great
show of faith by this foreign woman, changed his mind and embraced this unheard-of
inclusivity. Either way, we have to go away understanding that Christ’s mercy supersedes
our notions of entitlement, race, gender, nationality, or what have you. Mark’s
version of the story doesn’t even explicitly praise the woman for her faith. It
is just an example of mercy and compassion as the way of Jesus.
Of
course, we tend to get hung up on who deserves our compassion and who doesn’t.
My parish, I am proud to say, is a participant with Interfaith Hospitality
Network. Last month we hosted three young, single, and homeless mothers in our
church basement. We provided them and their children with a safe and reasonably
clean living quarters and a family-style meal every night. Unfortunately, there
are some who complained of the squalor produced in our church basement by hosteling
three families for a month’s duration, to say nothing of the noise made by five
rambunctious little kids—any one of whom could’ve been taken for the demonically
possessed child in our gospel story. There were some who opined that it was too
much of a disruption to the church to welcome these homeless folks under our
roof, and have suggested that we stop our participation in this program.
Fortunately,
the majority of volunteers understand that mercy and generosity to people down
on their luck is not contingent on their good housekeeping or their children’s
behavior. After all, how can we, who are sinners, ever claim to decide who is
worthy of compassion?
I
always try to ask myself who am I in the gospel story? Perhaps I should cast
myself in the role of the deaf man in verses 31-37 (another foreigner, by the
way). I need to be brought to Jesus so that I will be touched and my ears will
be opened and I will really hear the radical message of the gospel. Love
transcends taxonomy every time. Jesus is telling us all, “Be opened!”
Finally,
I have to throw out a thought about the “Messianic Secret,” which ends this
gospel selection. Throughout Mark, Jesus tells his followers not to tell anyone
that he is the Messiah—an order they constantly disobey. Why doesn’t he want
this known? To me, the simplest and most obvious answer within the context of
the story would be that “Messiah” was understood in the society to designate an
earthly ruler and a military liberator from Roman occupation. Making a fuss
over Jesus as the Messiah would only bring down Roman wrath and put a quick end
to Jesus’ ministry. Perhaps Jesus knew that in seeing the marvelous works of
healing and compassion the crowds saw not God’s love and desire for wholeness but the instrument of their own political agendas. And this is also our
challenge, too. We always have to wrestle with our sinful nature—trying not to
make Jesus into who we want him to be, but make ourselves into who he wants us to be.
I’m
always glad when you stop by. I hope this essay gave you a little something to
ponder as you go about living in grace.
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