Enemy Lines [Proper 18B]
The Rev. Jeremiah Williamson
Mark 7:24-37
Enemy Lines
Why, Jesus, why? Why did you have to go and say such a
terrible thing? And to a woman? To a desperate, heartbroken woman? She wanted her daughter to be made well. She begged.
And you called her a dog.
This is a tough Gospel. It is hard to understand; commentators and
preachers offer a variety of explanations – for me, every one leaves nagging
questions unanswered.
One of the problems is that it is
difficult to square this episode with what comes before and what follows it in
Mark's Gospel. In the lectionary today,
the story of the Syrophoenician woman is paired with the healing story that
follows it. After the encounter with
this woman, Jesus heals another gentile – also in gentile territory – but
without a negative word, without hesitation.
And you might remember from last week's reading that before Jesus'
encounter with the Syrophoenician woman, Jesus is schooling the Jewish
religious leaders because they care more about rules and traditions than they
do about people. In the sermon Jesus
preached right before escaping to Tyre, Jesus told his listeners, “It is what
comes out of a person that defiles.”
And then in the very next passage, his next interpersonal encounter,
Jesus calls a woman and her daughter “dogs”. So what is going on in this story?
Many of you are probably “dog”
people. Not in the way Jesus uses the
phrase “dog people”, but you
know, people who really like dogs. That
wasn't a thing back then. Some of you
have pet dogs that you love very much.
You buy them food – perhaps
even fancy human food. You might take
them to be professionally groomed or even massaged. They might have a little bed in your
house. You might consider your pup a
member of your family; in some cases you might like your dog better than most people. That would make you very strange in 1st century Palestine.
Jesus does not mean “dog” as a
compliment. Comparing a person to a dog at that time, in that place, was a huge
insult – in this
case, an ethnic slur. It was a dehumanizing remark. Jews then considered dogs
to be shameless, unclean scavengers. They wandered the streets begging for
scraps. They ate disgusting stuff; they were covered in sores and flies. If one
wanted to insult another person, “dog” was an excellent choice. It stung;
it hurt. And Jesus said it.
And I find that troubling. Now, I don't personally need Jesus to be nice
all of the time; it's not that. There
are situations that require truth and justice to trump nice; there are times
when nice only gets in the way of the radical nature of God's love. We see that in the Gospel. Jesus is not always nice to other people; he
throws down with the religious leaders; he rebukes the disciples; he embarrasses
his family; his hometown crowd threatens to throw him off of a cliff. So Jesus doesn't always say the “nice”
thing. But his motives are always pure;
he speaks the truth; he stands for justice; he challenges others with the
inconveniently huge reality of God's love and the inconveniently huge demands
of that love.
I'll admit: I have a hard time
reconciling the picture of Jesus we find in today's Gospel with the many times
in the gospels when Jesus transgresses boundaries and violates social mores for
the sake of love. And yes, the story has
a happy ending. But it still has a
really rough starting point. And I don't
think we should ignore that. I tell
people I'm counseling – especially
in pre-marital counseling: be careful with your words; you can't unsay
them. So maybe the woman changed Jesus'
mind; maybe she convinced him to see her humanity; maybe Jesus didn't even mean
what he said. But it's still there. Two-thousand years later, we're still trying
to make sense of this strange conversation – without the benefit of vocal tone
or facial expressions.
Beyond the actual content of the
text, there lingers another unsettled question: why would Mark record this
episode? We know that not every minute
or encounter of Jesus' life and ministry are recorded in the Bible. And Mark's is the most economical of the four
gospels. He says very little beyond what
is necessary to get his message across.
His message is laid out clearly in the very first verse of his book: “This is the
beginning of the Good News of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.” Mark is writing to convince his readers that
Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God. So
why include a story in which Jesus reflects the prejudice of his time – and in the
context of showing that Jesus' mission includes gentiles? In fact, after the healing of the deaf
gentile, which we heard this morning as well, Jesus will go on to perform a
feeding miracle for a large crowd of gentiles.
I don't have a clear answer. I'm not sure there is one. I don't know why Jesus would use such harsh
language. And I don't know why Mark felt
compelled to include Jesus' initial response to this mother's desperate plea in
his Gospel. If you are so inclined,
there are many folks on the internet who have this gospel, and most everything
else, all figured out. But, at least for
today, I do not.
All I have is the struggle, the
struggle with the obvious prejudice that is preserved in this text. Whether Jesus said this sincerely. Or
whether, as some suggest, that Jesus intended his comments to test the woman – which
opens another series of hard questions.
Or whether Jesus' comment was intended to mimic and challenge the biases
of his earliest followers. I don't
know.
What I do know is that the tension
is real. The hatred and suspicion that
existed between the Jews and Gentiles at that time had deep roots – this
passage preserves that strife. Mark's
Gospel was written down around the year 70 CE.
That is the year the Second Jerusalem Temple was destroyed by the
Romans. It was destroyed because of the
Jewish Revolts against the Empire that began just a few years earlier. Late scholar Marcus Borg reports that at that
time, in some cities, especially those controlled by Gentile majorities, Jews
were massacred.[1] One of the cities in which these massacres
took place was Tyre – the city
Jesus finds himself in today, talking with a citizen of that region, a gentile
talking with a Jew.
And for me, this makes this passage
very real. I can imagine such a scene
taking place in our times. And I imagine
a woman married into ISIS, a woman with a sick daughter, asking a Syrian
Christian for help. And I imagine how
painful it would be for the Christian to offer God's love in that situation – even to a
tearful mother, even to a hurting child.
Hatred, suspicion, enmity: real violence played out in human lives – not a
theological exercise but the struggle of living the Gospel in a broken
world.
We live so often as enemies – creating
division, erecting boundaries, by our violence and prejudice. The walls that separate us make it almost
impossible to recognize our common humanity – to remember that our enemies laugh
and cry, hope and love, like we do. It
can be hard to imagine a love strong enough to cross those borders, strong enough
to transgress those boundaries, strong enough to find a place in the chaos of
our violence.
Jesus' response to the
Syrophoenician woman captures the tension and the pain of life in a violent
world. Maybe that was the point. As much as Jesus was God, Jesus was also a 1st century Palestinian Jew. His people were suffering; his people lived
under oppression. They were ruled by an
Empire that did not share their values or understand their ways. Like so many minority populations they
experienced little injustices daily – injustices that chipped away at
their souls. And maybe, at least for a
moment, this woman represented all of that when she barged into Jesus' private
vacation space.
But into that encounter she carried
more than just difference; she carried her vulnerable humanity – in the
form of the deep love she had for her sick daughter – a love
that compelled her to cross the borders, a love that drove her to appeal to the
enemy for help, a love that endured the insults. In just a few verses she journeys from enemy
to exemplar.
None of the larger issues, those
being played out on the world stage around them, are resolved. But none of it matters – not in
that moment. The love of God crosses our
enemy lines.
Maybe that is such a radical idea
that even Jesus had to learn it. Or
maybe he already knew and took the loss, played the fool, so that we could
learn it. I don't really know.
What I do know is that the
prejudices and hatreds in human hearts are real. We are witnesses to this. We see it in the news everyday. We see it in our conversations, and our blog
posts, in the memes we post to justify our prejudices, in the comment sections
of a million web sites. In the secret
thoughts of our hearts that we would never dare confess. We have to be better – especially
those of us who are the Church. We have
to be better – to repent
of our cherished hatreds, to open our hearts to our enemies, to open our eyes
to the image of God that is stamped on each and every person, even those we
treat like dogs – especially
those we treat like dogs. Our racism,
our sexism, the way we despise those who don't share our orientation or values
or faith. Our hatreds are killing us – crushing
our hearts and destroying our world. Our
hatreds get in the way of the healing God wants for this world.
The love of God crosses our enemy
lines. And if we intend to be about
God's business, we need to start erasing those lines.
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