Jesus In Other Communities --- A Sermon from Mark 7
Christianity is a worldwide religion. It’s quite diverse in its
theologies, practices, and its cultural and social backgrounds. The Christian
story begins in a region known as Galilee. This is where a man named Jesus got
his start in ministry. While Galilee had a significant Gentile population, it
doesn’t appear that Jesus spent much time with Gentiles. Instead, he focused
his attention on the Jewish community.
I imagine that most of us expect Jesus to be open and welcoming
of everyone—Jew or Gentile. After all, he was often criticized for the kinds of
people he hung around with. Besides that, he also taught us to love our
neighbors as we love ourselves and even love our enemies. That’s the Jesus I
know and love. You might say that in his life and teachings, Jesus provides us
with the human face of God. Theologian Karl Barth put it this way:
Thus in his oneness Jesus Christ is the Mediator, the Reconciler, between God and man. Thus He comes forward to man on behalf of God calling for and awakening faith, love, and hope, and to God, on behalf of man, representing man, making satisfaction and interceding [The Humanity of God, p. 47].
If Jesus is the human face of God, who represents us to God and
God to us, then what we read in Mark 7 about Jesus’ encounter with the Syrophoenician
woman has to come as something of a surprise. So, what should we make of Jesus’
response to the Syrophoenician woman who came to him hoping he would deliver
her daughter from an unclean spirit? Instead of reaching out to her with
compassion as we might expect, he treated her rather rudely.
I’d like to conduct a thought experiment this morning by
suggesting that this encounter between Jesus and the Syrophoenician woman
opened his eyes to a world lying outside his own Jewish community. This
encounter might have revealed a blind spot that Jesus hadn’t dealt with to that
point. While Jesus likely encountered Gentiles before this moment, since he was
born and raised in Galilee, which was full of Gentiles, maybe he didn’t spend
much time around them. In a parallel story to this one in Matthew’s Gospel,
when a Canaanite woman called out to him as he entered the Gentile city of
Tyre, Jesus told his disciples that he was called to minister only to the “lost
sheep of the house of Israel” (Mt. 15:24). Therefore, the Canaanite woman and
her daughter didn’t fit with his mission.
If we step back to the opening verses of Mark 7, Mark provides
us with some interesting background to this story. Before Jesus headed to the
coastal city of Tyre, he had a lengthy conversation with a group of Pharisees
about what makes someone or something clean or unclean. Remember that the girl
in the story is afflicted by an unclean spirit. The conversation with the
Pharisees started when they noticed Jesus’ disciples didn’t properly wash their
hands. In the tradition of the elders, everything had to be properly washed or
it was unclean. Jesus told them that it’s not the externals that make something
unclean, it’s what is on the inside that makes something unclean. In other
words, it’s a matter of the heart, not the hands! (Mk. 7:1-23)
We go from Jesus’ conversation about what makes something
unclean to the city of Tyre, which is filled with unclean Gentiles. This is
where Jesus encounters the Syrophoenician woman who wants Jesus to deliver her
daughter from an unclean spirit. So, could this encounter have revealed
something about Jesus’ cultural learning curve? Could he have viewed this woman
as being unclean? If so, what happens next is truly important because it can
speak to our cultural learning curves.
Mark doesn’t tell us why Jesus went to this predominantly
Gentile city, but it doesn’t appear that he went looking for Gentiles to hang
out with. Nevertheless, that’s what happened.
You might call what takes place in Tyre a conversion event. At
the very least it appears to be an eye-opening event in which the Syrophoenician
woman taught Jesus a lesson about his own ethnocentrism. In teaching Jesus this
lesson, might she teach us as well?
Mark doesn’t tell us why this woman approached Jesus. Maybe she
heard Jesus was a noted healer who could cast out demons. Perhaps she also had heard
that he was rather compassionate and welcomed everybody into his midst. If that
was true, then why wouldn’t he help her? Indeed, if Jesus was truly loving, how
could he turn away this mother and her daughter in their moment of need?
Despite our assumptions about Jesus’ character, in this case,
he shows a very different side of himself. Perhaps he was tired and when we’re
tired we can be grumpy and say things we later regret. So maybe Jesus went to
Tyre not as a missionary but looking for a bit of peace and quiet. Whatever his
reasons for going to a largely Gentile city, even though he was called to
minister only to the “lost sheep of Israel,” in this moment he exhibited a bit
of ethnocentrism. It can happen, even to the best of us.
Now, remember this is a thought experiment and I’m probably
pushing the evidence far beyond what Mark had in mind. Nevertheless, at least
on the surface, Mark reveals a side of Jesus that doesn’t fit the typical picture
of a loving, compassionate, and welcoming Jesus.
Now, as for this woman, it would have taken a lot of courage to
go up to Jesus and ask for help. So, it had to be discouraging to be rejected
by him. Yes, when this unnamed woman begged Jesus to cast the demon out of her
daughter, Jesus insulted her by telling her that the children must be fed first
because it’s “not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the
dogs.”
You heard that right. Jesus called this woman,
along with her daughter, a dog. While many modern Americans consider dogs, and
maybe even cats, to be part of the family, that wasn’t true in the first
century. So, this isn’t a term of endearment!
At this point, the Syro-Phoenician woman could have walked away,
but she was a mother with a daughter who needed help. She wasn’t going to leave
until she got what she came for. So, she pushed back, and her relentless spirit
surely got Jesus’ attention. She was undaunted by Jesus’ insult and told him
that even the dogs get to eat the scraps from the table. He could insult her
all he wanted, but she wasn’t going to leave until he freed her daughter from
this demon. That’s exactly what happened. He recognized her faith and her
courage, and so he told her to return home where she would find her daughter free
from her affliction. That’s good news. But it leaves open the question of how
this encounter affected Jesus’ view of the world.
Now, other Gospel stories give us a different picture of Jesus’
interactions with folks outside his own community. The Gospel of John tells the
story of Jesus’ conversation with the Samaritan woman which was deeply
theological (John 4). Luke offers us the famous parable of the Samaritan who
served as an example of what it means to be a neighbor. So, maybe this story is
an outlier. However, Mark’s story of Jesus’ encounter with the Syrophoenician
woman gives us the opportunity to consider our own proclivities toward ethnocentrism.
As we ponder Mark’s story of Jesus’ encounter with the
Syrophoenician woman, which doesn’t put Jesus in the best light, how might this
story open our eyes to a very diverse world? This is especially important for
citizens of the United States who often speak of this country as being exceptional.
We hear politicians talk about “America First,” so is it possible that Jesus
imbibed an “Israel-First” vision? Might this encounter have changed his
perspective? Might it change ours as well?
I confess that I am grateful to live in the United States. It’s
a good place to live, but as the hymn suggests:
This
is my song. O God of all the nations,
A
song of peace for lands afar and mine.
This
is my home, the country where my heart is;
Here
are my hopes, my dreams, my holy shrine;
But
other hearts in other lands are beating with
Hopes
and dreams as true and high as mine. [Lloyd
Stone, 1934].
As we ponder the message of this story, I invite you to join me
in pondering those experiences in life when your eyes were opened to a larger
world. I have to admit that I was well into adulthood before I truly began to
encounter this larger world. It was after I got to know Jews and Muslims, and
then Hindus and Buddhists, that I began to rethink God’s love for the world.
Might God have a larger vision of the world than I did?
My prayer this morning is that each of us, as we ponder the message of Jesus, which includes the command to love our neighbors as we love ourselves, that we will understand that our neighbor might be someone very different from ourselves. Therefore, might we take to heart God’s openness to the other that breaks down barriers and opens us up to new relationships that extend well beyond our own backyard? As the third verse of the hymn above reads: “In peace may all earth’s people draw together; and hearts united learn to live as one.” [Chalice Hymnal, 722].
Preached by:
Dr. Robert D. Cornwall
Pulpit Supply
Northminster Presbyterian Church
Troy, Michigan
July 16, 2023
Image Attribution: Koenig, Peter. The Daughter of the Canaanite Woman, from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN. https://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=58530 [retrieved July 15, 2023]. Original source: Peter Winfried (Canisius) Koenig, https://www.pwkoenig.co.uk/.
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