Mark 7:24-37
So welcome this week to the
start of our Season of Women here at St George’s. I know we have been stopping to notice great
women when they appear in our lectionary all year, but now this fall we really
get to dedicate ourselves to this task because the lectionary includes many of
the great women of the Old Testament in its readings over the next 2
months. So we really get to dig in and experience
these stories together. And we are going
to get to revisit a bunch of what I would consider our Sunday School greats,
Eve, Esther, Deborah, Mary & Martha, characters you are probably pretty
familiar with. And man, I wish we could
have kicked off our series with one of them, with an easier story to talk
about.
But alas, we are beginning our
journey someplace else, in the New Testament with the story of Jesus and the Syrophoenician
Woman. And trust me this would not have
been my first choice because this story is weird. Jesus’ behavior today seems so out of
character. How can this man who has
always been known for his outreach to outsiders, to the poor, to women and to
anyone else who society deemed as less than, be so rude to this woman? Jesus helps other women, Jesus helps other
gentiles. Jesus’s longest recorded
conversation is with a Gentile woman at the well in Samaria, that is the kind
of story I want to talk about, yet here today, he is just mean and dismissive.
But her is the thing, there is
an important difference between these people and the woman we encounter
today. This woman is rich, privileged,
special and chances are Jesus and his disciples really don’t like her. Mark makes a special point of telling us that
she is not just a gentile but a Helleen,
a Greek speaking elite, and of special Syrophoenician origin. For the Greek speaking Syrophoenicians were a
special Roman merchant class that ran the Mediterranean port cities Tyre, Sidon
and Ptolemas. They collected
exorbitantly high rents and taxes of grain from the native Jewish, Samaritan
and Aramean residents of the area and used them to run an incredibly profitable
export business. Ships set sail from
Tyre to far flung parts of the empire filled with grain, while the people of
the Galilee were left to starve. There
were real reasons to be suspicious of her.
What a remarkable reversal it
must have been to see Jesus tell this woman, so accustomed to literally taking
food off of Galilean tables, that he would not honor her request. But what is even more remarkable is her
response. We might expect someone like
her to fall back on position in a time like this, to answer rudeness with
rudeness, to offer money or threaten Jesus with censure or arrest if he failed
to meet her demands. But she does none
of these things. She answers him with
total humility. Instead of falling back
on her supposedly superior wealth and position, she sets it aside, and leans
into their shared humanity and God’s abundant grace.
Yet this is what makes this
story so special. Here we witness a
truly magical moment, where this act of humility and trust changes the very
mind of God. Often scholars like to talk about this story like it was a set up
by Jesus, like he knew all along he would help her. Jesus is perfect. He is without sin, so he can’t
possibly be wrong. Therefore, he must
have known all along what he would do, perhaps it was all a test for this woman
or a teaching moment for the disciples.
But maybe the lesson here is different.
Perhaps this story tells us something else, something far more
important. That it’s not a sin to be
wrong. It is not a sin to learn
something new and change your mind. It
is not a sin to listen to others, to overcome prejudice, even if its deserved, to
learn and grow and show compassion for someone and to let that encounter change
your beliefs. In fact, doing so is in
the very nature of God.
Because this story is not
actually as odd as we might think. The
healing of this Syrophoenician woman’s daughter stands in a long tradition of
examples of times when people convince God to act in favor of mercy. For God’s mercy often trumps God’s
justice. Remember Moses arguing with God
over the destruction of Sodom. Or when
God spares Nineveh after Jonah’s preaching, or how the prophets successfully
intercede between God and the people of Israel to stave off destruction time
and time again.
Often, we are way too quick to
judge people who change their minds. In
politics, we call them flip-floppers, or think of them as someone with poor
convictions or weak beliefs. But that is
not true at all. It takes great strength
to be willing to learn, change and grow.
To be willing to show compassion for others and form new relationships
across difficult boundaries. To let our
experiences in the world shape and change us.
And it almost always takes far more work to really change than staying
the same. But it is exactly what Jesus
does in this passage and exactly what God calls us to do as well.
And it all starts because she
is willing to take the first step, to make a connection across a difficult divide. When Jesus initially insults her and dismisses
her needs, the logical choice would have been for her to fight back, to use her
power and privilege, to try to win the argument prove him wrong. To make it an all or nothing proposition. And likely she would have failed. And her daughter would have suffered for it.
But instead, she does something
astonishing, instead of pulling back she moves closer. She uses connection, she forms a
relationship. She understands she doesn’t
need to win, she doesn’t need everything, that even the crumbs of God’s love
are sufficient for the salvation of the world.
And this action, this act of humility and love, this moment of
connection is so powerful that it literally changes the world. Because it changes Jesus, it changes the very
mind God. And so not only does she get
her desired healing for her daughter, but it starts off a chain reaction that
changes the course of Jesus’s ministry.
Because the two stories we
heard today and the one that follows are paired for a reason. The second story that we heard is a demonstration
of the change that happens in Jesus.
After the encounter with this woman Jesus leaves and heads toward the Sea
of Galilee, but he doesn’t go the most direct or safest route, instead goes the
longer gentile way and stops in the Decapolis, in Greek colonial territory
rather than returning to the Jewish Galilee.
And here he heals a deaf/mute man.
I don’t think it is a coincidence that the first recorded thing he does
after meeting the woman is to take radical action to restore the ability of Jesus
and this gentile to hear and speak to each other, to form a meaningful and
understanding mutual relationship, to connect across the divide. And then despite being told to keep it a
secret, the man goes and speaks to everyone, everyone. And then a crowd comes, and Jesus has
compassion on them, and he repeats the miracle of the feeding the 5000 he performed
in Jewish territory by feeding 4000 gentiles.
How is that for the crumbs off
the master’s table? 4000 people eat
their fill with much leftover from the crumbs this woman requested. All because she led with humility and
connection not power and control.
So to start our theme of Lead
like a Woman, what can we learn today from this particular biblical woman? What would it mean to follow her
example? To lean away from power and
control and towards compassion and connection?
To resist the urge to hit back or meet rudeness with more rudeness, the
urge to debate our neighbor in order to score a win, the urge to repost and share
that cutting meme? And instead to try
for connection, compromise and love. To
get curious about others, to ask questions, to extend love and compassion. And to remember that love ripples. Jesus is never very nice to the Syrophoenician
woman, she leaves without even knowing the outcome even for herself for certain,
but 4000 people on the other side of the country get fed because she made the
effort. If this simple action has the
power to change God’s mind, imagine what could it do for the person sitting
next to us? Amen.
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