Karen Hollis | July 30, 2023
Syrophoenician Woman and Jesus
Psalm 146
Mark 7:24-37
From there he set out and went away to the region of Tyre. He entered a house and did not want anyone to know he was there. Yet he could not escape notice, but a woman whose little daughter had an unclean spirit immediately heard about him, and she came and bowed down at his feet. Now the woman was a Gentile, of Syrophoenician origin. She begged him to cast the demon out of her daughter. He said to her, ‘Let the children be fed first, for it is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.’ But she answered him, ‘Sir, even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs.’ Then he said to her, ‘For saying that, you may go—the demon has left your daughter.’ So she went home, found the child lying on the bed, and the demon gone.
Then he returned from the region of Tyre, and went by way of Sidon towards the Sea of Galilee, in the region of the Decapolis. They brought to him a deaf man who had an impediment in his speech; and they begged him to lay his hand on him. He took him aside in private, away from the crowd, and put his fingers into his ears, and he spat and touched his tongue. Then looking up to heaven, he sighed and said to him, ‘Ephphatha’, that is, ‘Be opened.’ And immediately his ears were opened, his tongue was released, and he spoke plainly. Then Jesus ordered them to tell no one; but the more he ordered them, the more zealously they proclaimed it. They were astounded beyond measure, saying, ‘He has done everything well; he even makes the deaf to hear and the mute to speak.’
May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts be reflections of your word to us today, in Christ’s name we pray. Amen
I grew up a sister denomination of the United Church, the United Church of Christ, , who are famous for their comma shaped logo with the corresponding tag line: never place a period where God has placed a comma, God is still speaking. Growing up in the “still speaking” church taught me that God is always in process . . . the world and everything around me is still in process. I wouldn’t have articulated this way, but they were teaching openness. This is a familiar posture in the United Church, as well. We are often curious about what the Spirit is doing here and now. We wonder what is emerging or what other are churches trying. We proclaim that God speaks to us through people, through events, through challenges, through ideas – you name it . . . God speaks. Our part is to practice opening ourselves: opening our eyes and ears to perceive what God is doing . . . opening our hearts to the movement of the spirit in our midst. While we never said openness would be easy . . . it is a path we have chosen . . . it is also the way of Jesus and today’s gospel reading is an example.
Today’s depiction of Jesus is alarming to all of us. Preachers, commentators, and theologians have tried to soften his insult to the Syrophoenician woman, but there is no softening it. He calls her a dog. Why does he do that?
Jesus is fully human and fully divine . . . our tradition holds him up as God incarnate . . . if we’re going to do that, we also have to also let him be human . . . just as human as we are. Jesus grew up in first century Palestine and was taught that women are second class citizens. They aren’t supposed to do anything themselves outside of the home, and certainly not barge into someone else’s house and talk with a man. Jesus was also taught to look down on Gentiles, to keep separate from them.
As much as he is a product of his culture, he also differentiates himself from his culture and challenges it. He sees their corruption and brokenness and feels urgently called to bring them back to God’s love. He’s laser focused on his mission. In the scene before this, Jesus calls out a group of Scribes and Pharisees for rejecting God’s commandments so they can hold to human tradition. He challenges his followers to his progressive approach to spiritual community and builds a movement that is inclusive of all and affirms women in leadership roles. In today’s story, we see Jesus in process . . . he’s not exempt from his own teaching and it seems he does his personal work as much as any human is able.
Through the spirituality he practices and teaches, he knows things that cannot be seen or heard, but only known with the heart, within a space he calls the Kindom of God . . . a space where we experience the oneness that unites us all. In that space he knows all are equal, no matter their gender, religion, ethnicity.
I like to think Jesus comes to his interaction with the Syrophoenician woman, knowing that Gentiles are fellow humans, but without having fully processed what that means . . . without reconciling that truth with his call.
The interaction between them is brief. We can only imagine the contexts they each would bring to this moment. We can imagine that Jesus is on a retreat of sorts. His ministry has been non-stop and he has traveled some distance to get away and be by himself. As we well know, ministry takes a lot of energy, so perhaps he needs some space to recharge.
Here in this gathering there are many mothers, many parents. What will a mother not do for her child at a moment of life and death? This particular mother appears to have fully embodied her desperation and determination to make her child well.
She rushes in to see Jesus, even though she is Gentile, and doesn’t take the time to find a male family member to do it for her. She asks for healing; Jesus quite rudely and narrow mindedly tells her no; she responds by reminding him that in the end all are fed, all are included. At this point in the story my mind wanders between the words. How long would it take our human Jesus to respond? Would he walk around the room for a moment or sit quietly in prayer? Would he reel inside as he realizes she is correct? Would it take him only a split second to process and realize she has schooled him at his own gospel?1
The beautiful thing is that he allows himself, in the words of theologian Debie Thomas, to be opened to the full, glorious, and uncomfortable implications of his gospel.2 He has a conversion moment of sorts. In this mother, he encounters in a way the Universal Christ, who is larger than the person of Jesus and is the embodiment of inclusion, healing, wholeness, justice, and love. God speaks through her. His response indicates that Jesus is changes inside.
Now, at the end of this scene, author known as Mark uses a convention in the writing, which is common in the gospels. They add a scene that makes explicit what happens implicitly within Jesus. In the next scene Jesus is traveling again and performs a healing on a man who is deaf and tongue-tied, completely closed in on himself. Talk about explicit: Jesus actually says the words “be opened” and the man is physically opened and healed – such that he can speak and hear. First there is an internal opening in Jesus and then an external opening in the man who is healed. It feels true to me that openness and transformation begin within and then manifest outward. It feels true that being opened by the grace of God through truth-telling or physical healing is not an end to itself, but an invitation to use our new freedom and perspective as Jesus did to serve others.
I watched a couple of interviews recently with Heather Hamilton, author of a new book called Returning to Eden: A Field Guide to the Spiritual Journey. In the book Heather describes a mystical experience that changed her life. She explains how she was raised and formed in conservative evangelical Christianity. It was her whole world. Then, after the birth of her second child, she had what would commonly be known as a nervous breakdown. For weeks she struggled with back-to-back panic attacks as she tried to care for her newborn. While those in her sphere of support wanted to help, none of them understood what she was going through, nor could they be present with her in her needs. So, one night that was particularly bad, she told her husband that she was going to call 911 because she just didn’t know what else to do. When the medics arrived, Heather opened the door and recognized the woman on her porch as transgender. At first, she wasn’t sure how to trust someone she had always been taught was lost – how could someone who was lost help her? – but she explains that there was nothing else to do but talk to her. As Heather began semi-incoherently talking about her breakdown, this woman was fully present and truly saw her. Heather felt the two of them become enclosed in this bubble of love . . . time fell away . . . she felt like the two of them were suspended in eternity and she felt the palpable essence of Christ coming off of the paramedic. God spoke to Heather through her presence. Heather’s world burst open . . . she healed from her breakdown, unpacked the experience she had on the inside that night, and on the outside, transformed her life. She wrote a book and offers a space for people to find community as they question their own world view or follow the cracks in what they’ve always believed, and ask hard questions about God and life.
Openness is bold, because Christ may indeed come to us and challenge our perceptions and structures of belief such that we perceive the world differently and with eyes and ears more open than ever before, what will our ministry become? Open our eyes, God, we want to see Christ in another . . . show us where we are blind . . . heal us and call us to serve.
