Mark 7:24-30, from Proper 18 (23).
If you want your Jesus scrubbed clean of his humanity, if you prefer him not only sinless but sin-proof, if you think the line in Hebrews about his having been tempted in every way we are couldn’t possibly mean he ever felt like asserting his rights, going his own way or at least telling God, for pity’s sake, to just hold on a minute, then don’t read Mark 7:24-30.
You won’t like it.
There are ways to explain away the harshness with which Jesus responds to the Greek woman from Syrian Phonecia who falls crying at his feet and begs him to drive the demon out of her young daughter. When Jesus tells the woman his mission doesn’t include ministering to “dogs” like her, maybe he is just trying to shock the racism and nationalism out of his disciples, who are watching. Or maybe he’s testing the woman to see whether her pride will get in the way of her concern for her daughter.
But the likeliest explanation, to me, is the one Mark seems to be waving in front if our faces in verse 24. Jesus went – “withdrew,” in Matthew’s version – to Tyre, a gentile area north of Galilee, on the shore of the Mediterranean. There, he “entered a house, and did not want anyone to know it.” If Jesus was, as we read in Matthew’s account, “sent only to the lost sheep of Israel,” why is he hiding out in a house in gentile territory, with nary another Jew in sight?
If you’ve ever spent any time in ministry, I’ll bet you know exactly why.
Jesus is exhausted. In this and the previous chapter alone, he has been rejected by the people he grew up with in Nazareth (and nearly thrown off a cliff by them); has lost his cousin, John the Baptist, to King Herod’s executioner; has miraculously fed a crowd of more than 5,000 people, only to end up arguing with them; and has made enemies out of Israel’s religious elites. And he has done all of it while healing an endless stream of people suffering from a staggering array of maladies, sometimes by his own choice and other times by getting more or less mugged of his divine power. He is done. He wants a break. He wants his life back. So he has run away to hide, if only for a few, precious hours, so he can get a square meal, a hot bath, a full night’s sleep and maybe even a lazy morning with a real breakfast, a cup of coffee and the paper.
And the plan is working just fine until this gentile woman shows up with – what else? – a hard luck story and an urgent problem only he can fix. Worse, he knows exactly what will happen if he helps her. Instead of getting chased around the country by one horde, he’ll soon be getting chased around the country by two hordes, and he’ll have no place to get away from either of them.
You’ve been there, haven’t you? Say one, little “yes” to God, and before you know it, you’re in for way more than what you bargained for. It’s like taking a kid to a toy store and handing him your credit card. In no time, you’re getting gleefully and obliviously dragged up and down the aisles, the cart is overflowing, and your bank account is way past empty. God takes and takes and takes. And when you’ve got nothing left, he asks for even more. And you know the asking is a sham, because he has your card. In fact, he has all the cards, as both he and you know. Somewhere in the rush, your willingness to go along with all of it buckles, survival mode kicks in, and the “you” in you finally decides to stand up for itself and tell God that you’ve had it, that enough is enough.
That’s the point Jesus almost gets to, here. Almost. He just wants this woman to go away. First, he tries ignoring her. Then, he tries insulting her. But she doesn’t budge, and the divinity in him finally makes him realize why: She has nowhere to budge to. She is bereft of any option besides lying in a sobbing heap on the floor in front of him and pleading for her hopeless daughter’s healing. It breaks his heart, his defiance evaporates, and he says “yes,” not only to her, but to vastly expanding a mission he thought had already gotten unbearably vast.
You or I wouldn’t have done it. You or I would have picked her up, tossed her outside, slammed the door and bolted it. I think Jesus wanted to, because I think that’s what being tempted in every way we are means. Perhaps you love him less for that. I love him more for that. It means he understands how hard it is to say “yes” when you know you should but have no idea how you’ll ever cover the cost. I’ve chosen to do it as a stranger, a friend, a colleague, a son, a husband, a father, and a Christian. But much more often, I’ve chosen not to. Jesus chose to say “yes” every single time, including the time, still to come, when he would say “yes” to being stretched out on a cross and surrendering the last of what little he had left by then.
Ultimately, I think that is the reason Mark chose to tell us this unsettling story. As much as we’d like to cast ourselves as Jesus, stoically rallying to obey God over the objections of our flesh, that’s not the role for us in this drama. We’re the woman, of course. When Jesus says “yes” to her, he says “yes” to all the rest of us gentile mutts who come to him with nothing and ask him for everything. You’d think he’d get tired of it. Maybe, sometimes, he still does. But his answer never changes.
Next week: Proper 19 (24)
