Crumb-like Faith
James 2:1-5, 14-17; Mark 7:24-37
Of course you have heard the phrase, “treated like a dog.”! Our dog Roscoe is living his best life. Cuddles, treats, baby talk, taken for walks, car rides - ears flapping in the breeze. Someone prepares your food. He has the best fuzzy blankets. The softest bed – a bed in every room! A place on the couch designated for him! Everyone is reluctant to take his spot. Clothes for every occasion. Sleep all day except when you want to play, go for a leisurely walk, and eat. What a life!
Once again, Jesus is on the move – to the territory of Tyre - a town northwest of Galilee on the Mediterranean sea. Perhaps he is trying to get away to breathe the sea air, relax on the terrace for the weekend. Jesus is back in Gentile territory (only) for the second time in Mark’s gospel.
You’ve heard the scripture read. Where are you in the stories today? Two healings take place. First, we have the healing of a young girl, who had been overtaken by an unclean spirit. Jesus speaks the word and the spirit leaves her. Second, Jesus heals a man who was deaf and could hardly speak. His ears were opened, and his twisted tongue was released so that he could immediately speak clearly.
Two miraculous healings! One in person and one from a distance. The man who was deaf was brought to Jesus by a group of friends, maybe they were his deacons? We only hear them described as “they.” But They believed that Jesus could help him, if anyone could. So, Jesus takes him off to the side, puts his fingers in his ears, looks up to heaven with a deep exhale, and then says, “open up!” I wonder how the Pharisees, hung up on their handwashing and purity laws, would have reacted to Jesus spitting and touching the man’s tongue?! Would they have been disgusted… or filled with wonder, like those who witnessed the man being completely healed and immediately able to speak clearly.
At the end of the day, deep in Gentile territory, God has the last word and that word is “all people belong to God.” All people are worthy of God’s compassion and healing grace. All people are worthy of salvation. But before we get there, there is this exchange between Jesus and the woman, “a Greek, Syrophoenician by birth.” This repetition is a literary technique that Mark uses to get the hearers to take special notice.[1] This woman is an outsider, a foreigner, an immigrant. “Just when you thought this Jesus was safe,” Emerson Powery (Messiah University) writes, Jesus has a slip, a slur, a tease, a test, a riddle.
He says to the woman, “First, let the children be satisfied, for it is not good to take the bread for the children and throw it to the little dogs.”
I get stuck here! I have a hard time remembering that at the end of the day God has the last word. And “all people belong to God,” because THIS. Because calling this woman a dog just doesn’t sound like the Jesus we know. Don’t you wish you could have heard him say it so you could know the inflection in his voice and know what he meant exactly when he called this woman and her kind a dog. THIS isn’t the kind of rhetoric we have come to expect from him.
The woman “steals the scene.” She comes back with some sass. The kind of sass women of color have been using not to be funny, but to survive: “Even the pups down under the table eat some of the little crumbs of the children,” she replies. Jesus, initially, refused her request, and this also seems out of character. In Mark, Jesus has consistently responded to requests for healing with care and concern. Perhaps he is tired. Weary of the crowds. But what he said to her is inexcusable. Despite the efforts of preachers and teachers to clean up Jesus’ response by arguing that it’s merely a put-on statement (tongue in cheek) to test the woman’s faith, other scholars argue that Jesus is steeped in his own religious up-bringing. AND His response is a reflection of the way he understands his mission which is directed to the Jews first. Like his ‘good news’ is not as far-reaching as one might have hoped.[2] Without knowing how his comment was nuanced and just taking it at face value, what we can see is that Jesus is portrayed here as having a genuine change of mind.
And – Rather than judge Jesus on this one scene, we must consider the greater narrative in Mark of Jesus’ interaction with the Gentiles. In Chapter 4 (before this scene takes place), Jesus crossed the lake in a storm after teaching a huge crowd by the sea. When he arrived in the Decapolis (known Gentile territory), he was confronted by a demoniac from whom he removed a legion of demons. All the people there were frightened of Jesus and responded by pleading with him to go away! So, he left the Gentile territory, following his own advice he would later give to his disciples: “whatever place does not receive you or hear you, go away from there…” (6:11). The first time he goes to the Gentiles, they run him out of town for healing a man! That might explain Jesus’ reaction to this Gentile woman. Jesus could have had the view that Gentiles were not ready to receive the benefits of the kingdom. I don’t want to let him off the hook too easily, but it is a rationale for Jesus' initial refusal to even listen to the Gentile woman.[3]
But based on what happens next, perhaps the deaf man’s ears weren’t the only things “opened up” on this trip into Gentile territory.
The woman’s clever quip back at Jesus impressed him. She is gutsy and persistent. She has riddled him with her own parable! And he heard what she meant – when she essentially said, “Even now, the Gentiles who live in Israel should benefit from some of the works of power – these healings, exorcisms, restorations, resurrections, miracles – benefits of the Kingdom intended for the Jews, shouldn’t we?”
Jesus is convinced! His response is as good as, You win! But most significantly, it’s not her cleverness that changes Jesus’ mind: it’s that she awakens him to the fact that she’s a person, not a stereotype. He recognizes his inherent bias and chooses otherwise. [Friends,] This is the work of anti-racism. This is the process we go through in overcoming bias around race, gender identity, poverty, mental illness and other forms of discrimination. We recognize our inherent bias, acknowledge how it hurts others and choose otherwise.[4]
You live. You learn. Thank you, Alanis Morisette. Two things for us to take away after all of this. First, We learn. We grow. We should not define Jesus by this one scene with a Gentile woman, but consider his whole body of work among women, among outcasts and outsiders. Isn’t that the same grace that we want shown to us? (and that our neighbors deserve?) Someone remembers that one thing we said long ago and wants to label us with that scene forever. WE are more than our labels. With God’s help we can grow out of these hand-me-down identifiers, moments in our history when we said something, were associated with or believed something else, or made someone feel small because of the way we understood the world at the time.
Second, the least likely person Jesus expected to teach him something became his teacher. A Syrophoenician woman became his Rabbi. His point of view was cracked open! His ears were opened to hear her. His heart was opened to her request. The flow of compassion opened between him and this desperate mother. The opportunity for healing was opened up for this little girl and she was made whole. Jesus’ own tongue was untwisted from a biased point of view, and he was able to offer words of hope.
If Jesus can grow, my friends, so can we.
Where are you in the story?
Do your ears need to be opened?
Your voice, your speech to be given? To be untwisted?
Do you need to be heard?
Do you come to God desperate on behalf of someone you love?
Do you need to have your bias checked?
Are we, Church, open to having our mission revised by the needs before us?
There are people in this world who have only ever been told they are worthy of crumbs. I remember a man (Anthony) who came into the church off the street looking for help. He wanted to get off the street so badly. Yet there were so many obstacles to that being a reality. I’ll never forget that he said, if I was a dog, somebody would take me in. Only worthy of the crumbs. Friends, let us remain OPEN to what we CAN do for those who are “othered” in our culture. We can avoid labeling them. We can listen to them so they know they are heard. We can honor their humanity. Because despite our prejudices, and our crumb-like faith – At the end of the day, all of us belong to God.
[1] Rhoads, David M. Jesus and the Syrophoenician Woman in Mark: A Narrative-Critical Study 2020
[2] Power, Emerson B. True to Our Native Land, An African American New Testament Commentary
[3] Rhoads, David M.
[4] Garnaas-Holmes, Steve Unfolding Light Worship Resources