Tuesdays with Mark (7: 24-37)

“From there he [Jesus] set out and went away to the region of Tyre. He entered a house and did not want anyone to know he was there.” (7: 24)
Have you ever felt like you didn’t want people to know where you are? Have you ever been glad to be in a place where your cell phone doesn’t work anymore? Have you ever looked at your computer and breathed a sigh of relief when you saw that you didn’t have any messages?
I imagine that this is where Jesus was at that moment that he didn’t want anyone to know where he was. He was tired, spent, exhausted.
But that was not going to happen for him. “Yet he could not escape notice,” the scripture tells us. He wanted a break, but no break was to be had for a woman whose daughter had an unclean spirit came to him and asked him to cast it out. This is a woman, a Gentile of Syrophoenician origin—in other words she was someone who was pretty far removed from Jesus’ background and origins. She knelt before him and begged him to heal her daughter and Jesus said, “Let the children be fed first, for it is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.” The children he is talking about are the Jews; the dogs he is talking about are the Gentiles.
This is, for me, a very challenging piece of scripture. It would seem that Jesus dismisses her, that he ignores her plea, that he insults her, that he doesn’t really see her or the little girl’s need.
When I pointed all this out to the folks this morning in bible study, one person said that he had heard from a biblical scholar that when Jesus is using the word “dogs” here that he is not referring to mongrel dogs, but to pet dogs, lap dogs, so that his words to this woman were really not quite as derogatory or dismissive as may seem. I then asked all of the gentlemen how the women in their lives would respond to being called any kind of dog. That seemed to end that part of our conversation.
One way into this piece of scripture is to know that there is indeed some evidence that Jesus did see that his mission was first to the Jews so that he could then remind them and reignite them to embrace and live into their mission to the world. (See more on this in Matthew 10:5.)
I think another way into this piece of scripture is to ask whether or not Jesus was just having a bad day, and that this interchange was displaying his humanity. Now, this may seem a little controversial or challenging. We believe, we proclaim, that Jesus was “truly God and truly man” in the Chalcedonian Definition (see the Book of Common Prayer, p. 864). Since New Testament times it has been a challenge for the church, for all of us, to hold together both truths—that Jesus was both totally God and totally a human being. Most often in the last two thousand years the church has leaned more towards his divinity than his humanity. When we do that, though, we are denying one important aspect of the doctrine of the Incarnation, that Jesus became flesh of our flesh, bone of our bone. There was an understanding in the early church that went this way: Jesus could only save what he became, what he took on, what he assumed. Which means that if he were not fully one with us he would not be able to fully and completely redeem and forgive and save us.
For me this is a very important piece of scripture. I do think that Jesus was tired, that he didn’t see this woman, that this was not one of his finest moments, and that the woman changed his mind. When Jesus denied her request, she said, “Sir, even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs.” Jesus then healed the little girl.
I think that this woman is one of the most important and influential characters/persons in scripture. She bested Jesus in the debate, and she called forth the universal mission that we see Jesus live into from this moment forward.
Seeing what I would call Jesus’ humanity gives me more hope with my own. If he can change, if he can have a bad day, if he can turn on folks and not “get it” the first time around, then he will understand and have mercy when I don’t.
This woman had moxie. Jesus liked that. You can almost see him wryly smile by the end of this interchange. She is a model of faith for us. Look and see what she does and ask yourself how it might speak to you and your faith.
Little theological caveat: by emphasizing the humanity of Jesus in this passage, please don’t hear or think that I am for one moment denying his divinity or that he is the Son of God. I do, though, think that holding both his humanity and his divinity together in tension is important for us.