1 post tagged “jesus was a jerk...”

After a restful vacation, there’s nothing like getting back into the preaching rotation with a Gospel passage like the one we hear this morning. The story of the Syrophoenician woman, as it is known in the Gospel of Mark. In the Gospel of Mathew this woman is known as the Canaanite woman. Historically, people have found this story profoundly uncomfortable. I admit to it making me squirm a bit – how about you? Let’s unpack the details and see what we can make of this surprising encounter between Jesus and the unnamed Gentile woman and what this dialog might be telling us.

In the opening scene of today’s Gospel, we encounter a Jesus who is hoping for a bit of an escape from his work. He’s just come from feeding a large crowd, performing healings and miracles among Jews and educating people about the importance of the heart when it comes to dealing with purity issues. So we can surmise that Jesus might be feeling a bit tired, a bit cranky and he’s seeking out respite that will allow him some perspective on his own people and an opportunity to recharge. In other words, Jesus is looking for his own Labor Day rest. Unfortunately, things don’t work out as he might have liked. He enters this house in Tyre – a region known for its extreme paganism – and he encounters a woman who does not let him fade into the background. Instead, she corners him, bowing down at his feet. This woman, we learn, is at her wits end. Her daughter is sick --- afflicted with a demon she says. We can assume that this woman has tried to seek help within her own culture and community, but to no avail. And so in her desperation she reaches out to Jesus, a man she might have heard works miracles and might just be able to heal her daughter. What ensues in the dialog between Jesus and the Syrophoenician woman is shocking. She begs him to cast the demon out of her daughter and he replies with this statement that suggests he is only willing to heal some and not others. In other words, Jesus flat out REFUSES to heal her child. The woman doesn’t miss a beat. She calls Jesus on his problematic, hypocritical position and offers him another way – a path that invites generosity, abundance, inclusive compassion. “Yet even the dogs under the table eat the children's crumbs,” she says. In response to her retort – her invitation – Jesus heals her daughter.

Interestingly enough, Jesus goes on in the following pericope (or piece of scripture that we read) to heal a deaf man. And in the process of this healing act, he utters this word “ephphata” – translated as “be opened.” It is perhaps an example of Jesus not only instructing others, but self correcting his own behavior. In this healing story, Jesus puts into practice what the Syrophoenician woman teaches him – that the old categories of clean and unclean need not exist, that one is to trust in God’s abundance, that there is enough for all.

The story of Jesus and Syrophoenician woman can be uncomfortable to us because it takes Jesus out of the boxes we so often put him in. You may know the boxes I am talking about:

• The box that highlights his divinity over his humanity.
• The box that keeps us thinking that Jesus is there solely to comfort and never to challenge us.
• The box that tells us that Jesus is always right, rather than a human being who like us, has limits, prejudices and flaws.

We should rightly wonder as one preacher has: “Who is this Jesus who is scornful of other nationalities and religions? What kind of savior doesn't want to heal a young girl simply because of who her family is? What are we to do with such an indifferent and despising Christ?” (Karen Keeley, The Witness) The encounter between Jesus and this foreign woman exposes Jesus’ humanity in way we are not accustomed to seeing. It’s kind of like those family secrets that can remain buried for decades or even a lifetime before being exposed. Upon learning the truth or in this case, reading about the truth, our response may range from discomfort and disgust to solace and comfort in knowing that we are bound to a God who himself struggles with the bumps in the road on the journey towards wholeness.

In the human tendency to avoid, rather than to wrestle with the troubling aspects of this passage, generations of preachers have encouraged a domesticated or sweetened version of this story. They prefer to point out for example that the dogs in this passage really refer to “small dogs.” The point this out, rather than grapple with the implications of Jesus’ behavior. But to borrow and redirect a great quote of our time, “Jesus came among us to both comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable,” so too must we apply this destabilizing spirit to our reading of this encounter and our reading of the Bible as a whole.

The exchange between Jesus and this woman most likely destabilizes the usual ways we think about Jesus. While it may not be readily apparent to us living in today’s world, the mere encounter between Jesus and the Syrophoenician woman destabilized the customs of that day – that Jews were not to associate with Gentiles, that men were not to associate with women, that women were not to speak to men with the authority this woman does, that one who was clean was not to touch one who was unclean.

The destabilization of our faith or any aspect of our lives for that matter, may not feel particularly comfortable, but it can be an opportunity for new growth to emerge. When we tidily box up God, we risk limiting ourselves to the fullness that relationship has to offer. “Trust in abundance and generosity; trust that there is enough,” the Syrophoenician woman tells us. “Ephphata” – be opened, Jesus implores us.

Each of us knows the places our in ourselves where we need to “be opened.” The parts of ourselves that feel tight – parts of ourselves that might benefit from being less anxious and more generous or compassionate.

The Syrophoenician woman points out to Jesus what we enact every Sunday – and that is, that we all gather around the same table to eat of the same food. The kid, the dog, the adult – we’re all there seeking nourishment, no one being excluded at the table. And as Jesus knows from his feedings of thousands of people, that we all need the same sustenance and that when we share, there is enough to go around.

We can be comforted by the fact that in times of fear, anxiety or simple exhaustion opening ourselves up to others is something Jesus knew the difficulties of all too well. That’s why we need God, the untidy texts of the Bible and one another to jolt us into a different posture when we have grown too comfortable or too closed off. As noted preacher Barbara Brown Taylor writes: “Jesus knows the truth about us and our judgments about one another, especially when we place some of God's children on the other side of a line that we draw…The danger is not out there, with the people who frighten and disturb us. The danger is in here, in the part of us that wants to cut ourselves off from them. There is actual evil in the world, no doubt about it, but until we meet up with the evil in ourselves, we cannot do battle. We cannot fight the shadow we will not own. Will our own hearts and minds, then, be opened up to receive God's abundant, overflowing grace?”

This week as we celebrate the ending of summer, the anticipation of another school year and the fruit of our labor, may we strive to “be opened” in new ways by God and the people around us.

The Rev. Nicole Janelle