Malcolm Rogers on Mark 7:24-37, 7 September 2003
Our reading is about two healings, but I am only going to focus on the first one – because it is a story that brings us up sharp. The Jesus we meet is very different to the Jesus we might expect to meet.
Last week we had the archbishop of Canterbury and Tom Wright, soon to be Bishop of Durham. This week, you have got me!
Our reading is about two healings, but I am only going to focus on the first one – because it is a story that brings us up sharp. The Jesus we meet is very different to the Jesus we might expect to meet.
Jesus has gone to Tyre. And that is unusual. Up to now, he has stayed in Jewish territory. He has worked only among Jews. But Tyre is in the Gentile world. There were not many Jews there. And Jesus, it seems, does not go to Tyre to preach or to heal. Maybe he goes to rest, spend some time with his disciples, to pray – we don’t know.
What we do know is that he didn’t want people to know that he was there. But word gets out, and a woman who has a daughter who is possessed by an evil Spirit, comes to Jesus – and begs him to heal her. And we are told very clearly that this woman is not a Jew. She is Greek, a Syro-Pheonician. And she asks Jesus for help. And Jesus does not say “Yes”. Not at first anyway. In fact, he seems to be downright rude to her. [v27]
And it is not really helped by the fact that the word Jesus uses for dog is actually a special word for small dog or little dog or household pet, and not the word that you would use for the mangy, half starved things that would roam the streets. To call someone a dog was, and still is, a supreme insult in the middle east. And the Jews regularly called Gentiles “dogs”, and no doubt Gentiles regularly called Jews, “dogs”. So here is Jesus, calling this woman a dog. But she takes it, gives a witty answer [v28], and because of her witty answer her daughter is healed.
That is how it might seem. But there is something that is going on here – something that is much bigger – and something that we might be able to apply to our own lives, and particularly our experience of prayer.
1. The woman comes to Jesus, despite all the opposition that she knows that she is going to get
This woman knows that what she is doing is quite exceptional. A Greek woman asking help from a Jewish rabbi. Add to that the fact that Jesus is not receiving visitors. Everything is wrong. She knows she is going to face opposition. She will get opposition from her own people: “She’s gone to see the rabbi – she’s going Jewish”. She will get opposition from Jesus followers: what are you doing coming to see our master. I suspect that she knows that she will get stick from Jesus: he may not even be prepared to see her, let alone listen to her or do anything for her. But the woman is desperate. She has heard that Jesus heals, that Jesus casts out demons – and she is willing to do anything for her daughter.
For many people today, coming to Jesus will involve opposition. For some of you, its what our parents always hammered on about – and coming to Jesus is like coming home. But for others, coming to Jesus is like coming into an alien world – and you find it possibly strange and different and a bit threatening. You look around at other people and think, “Help, is this for me. I’m the only person like me here”. (CS Lewis in The Screwtape letters). And some of you will get stick from your own family or friends for coming to Jesus. At best, they’ll think you are infected with a disease that you’ll get over: “You’ve got religion”.
It could be worse: Other people can feel betrayed when a person becomes a Christian. “Who do you think you are – going to church – looking for God. You think that you are better than us. You’re trying to improve yourself. It’s OK for other people (those middle class people or for those people from Africa and the West Indies) – but not for people like you. You are betraying your background, your culture.” And that sort of thing does not just happen in other places (in Nepal: Ros and Nick) – it happens here in Holloway.
And if we are serious about coming to Jesus, we need to be willing to face up to that sort of hostility – and like the syro-phoenician woman, we need to be willing to go to places that we would not normally go – and to be with people that we would not normally be with.
We often say that Jesus is immediately available. You can turn to him anywhere, and he is there for you. That is true. But there is another side. He is there, but sometimes we have to be prepared to overcome barriers to get to him – and it is not just the hostility of friends and family.
We may have to overcome our own prejudice; or we may even have to overcome prejudice and hostility from his followers (In Matthew’s version of this story, the disciples want to throw the woman out). People who say: “I came to look for Jesus, but the church rejected me”. That is awful. I long that as a church we would be a place which accepts people, and gives them space and time to discover God. BUT that rejection is also inevitable – because we are all human. And we need to be willing to be like this woman: to persevere despite the followers.
Many of the first generation of people from the West Indies say that, when they first came to this country, they went along to local churches. But it was made very clear that they were not welcome. I am so grateful that so many of them persevered, despite the rejection of the church, because their contribution, and the contribution of their children has been probably the single most important factor in saving the church in this sort of area.
And not only that. This woman has to overcome prejudice not only from Jesus followers, but it seems from Jesus himself. She has to overcome what seems to be a “no” from him: “It is not right to take the children’s bread and throw it to the(ir) dogs.”
It is very easy to give up. To say, “I prayed but nothing happened. In fact it seemed as if I got a slap in the face. So that is it. God is not there, or God is prejudiced against me: I’m not one of his favourites”. That is not true. Jesus emphasises time and time again the love of God for all: “God so loved the world”, “who wants all to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth.” (1 Timothy 2.4).
But Jesus does emphasise our need to persevere – to keep on praying. He told the story of the widow who kept on pestering the unjust judge in order to get justice. In the end he gave it to her – not out of choice – but because she wore him out. And Jesus says, “God is not like that unjust judge – but we do need to be like that widow”. Going on! Persevering!
2. This woman recognises the mystery of God’s election, of God’s freedom to be God
Jesus seems to say “no”, but when we look closer, he does not say no. “First let the children eat all they want, for it is not right to take the children’s bread and toss it to their dogs”. What Jesus is saying is that he has come first as the Jewish messiah, because the Jews are God’s chosen people. They are the children who were invited to the table.
In Paul’s words, “Theirs is the adoption as sons; theirs the divine glory, the covenants, the receiving of the law, the temple worship and the promises. Theirs are the patriarchs, and from them is traced the human ancestry of Christ, who is God over all, for ever praised!” (Romans 9.4f). God has an order of salvation. First the Jews and then the non-Jew. And Jesus, when he came, came first as the Jewish messiah. He concentrated on working among the Jews – and then, through them, he reached out to Gentiles.
We might want to say, that is unfair. Why does God choose one set of people, one race, and not another? Why does God choose one person and not another? And I have no answer – apart from to say that he does, and that we need to trust him, to allow him to be God – and to trust that his choice of one person and not another is actually in the interests of all. In other words, God does not choose one person instead of another. God chooses one person for the sake of the other.
Think of Abraham in the Old Testament: God chose Abraham and his descendants, so that “through him, all nations would be blessed”. I suspect that if this woman was around today – she would be told: “Tell Jesus where he can put his prejudice. Stand up for your rights. Go on an assertiveness course. You are as good as the next person. What right has he to call you a dog”
But she doesn’t. She accepts God’s freedom to be God. She says, two incredibly significant little words: “Yes Lord”. We need to learn those words. They are complementary. You cannot say “No Lord”. But we need to say “yes Lord” even when what it is that he is asking of us is very difficult. She says, “Yes I am a dog in comparison to the children”. She recognises that the Jews are God’s chosen people, and that Jesus has come first as the Jewish messiah. And in her submission, she receives the healing power of God, and the awareness of the love of God. And if we really mean business about coming to Jesus, we need to learn to let God be God. We need to learn that God’s foolishness is infinitely greater than our most brilliant minds. We need to learn that God’s purposes for us are so much higher than we could possibly imagine. We need to learn that God’s love for us is far more wonderful than we could possibly dream. And when we can do that, it brings incredible freedom and healing.
3. This woman calls out to the divine mercy
The woman says, “Yes Lord”, but she carries on: “But even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs”. It is a remarkable reply. She recognises that Jesus priority is for the Jews. She recognises and accepts that as they are the children, so she is the dog. But she also says, “Yes, but let some of the goodness that is for them – the children – overflow to me, the dog”.
She is not giving up on the goodness of God. She is not giving up on God’s mercy. And she got it right. She got it right theologically. Jesus came for the Jews in order that Israel might fulfil her historic mission to bring salvation to the world. Many rejected him, but some accepted him – and through the Jewish people, and through the Jewish messiah – God’s forgiveness and promises and power and peace are available to all. And she got it right personally: because Jesus answered her prayer. He did not heal her daughter because her reply was witty. He answered her prayer because it acknowledged that he was God, that he was free to be God, and because she trusted that he was merciful.
And the amazing thing is that because of the Jews, because Jesus came as the Jewish messiah, the people who were once dogs – us, you and me (unless you happen to be a Jewish Christian), have been invited not simply to eat up the crumbs, but to sit at the table, to become children of God. And we acknowledge that at every communion service: “We are not worthy to eat up the crumbs under your table. But you are the same Lord, whose nature is always to have mercy”.
I’m finishing: How desperate are you for God? For something specific – a healing, a desire to be satisfied, a longing to know the life that he gives. Let’s learn from this woman:
- She wasn’t going to be put off
- She discovered the freedom of letting God be God
- She said, “Yes Lord”
- She put her trust in the mercy of God