Nevertheless, She Persisted
Fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost, Year B
Rev. Dr. Laura Norvell
Let’s talk a little bit about Jesus.
You know – the guy who snuggles lambs and sits on bucolic hillsides teaching to the crowds.
Or maybe not. Today, we’re going to think about a more prickly Jesus.
Stick with me.
Our gospel passage for today is from Mark – and for most weeks between here and Advent, we continue to study Mark’s gospel. Since we’re going to linger here for some upcoming Sundays, let’s review a bit of Mark’s style and context.
Mark is “lean of expression” you might say. Compared to Luke or Matthew, details, descriptions and explanations are thin, action and movement are central.
Mark’s is the earliest recorded gospel and also the shortest. You can read Mark in a sitting – and the story moves quickly and sometimes abruptly. Matthew and Luke’s gospel’s likely used the content of Mark as a launching point, picking and choosing, reordering and expanding on the general flow of events and teachings found in Mark.
Mark’s gospel may have fewer words, but that means that the action and meaning packed into the words and the white space between the words is vitally important to deepening our understanding of who Jesus was and what Jesus does.
If we had focused last week on the gospel lesson from Mark, we would have heard a shocking teaching in which Jesus lays out his understanding of purity.
He explains to the Pharisees who are nitpicking his disciples’ hand-washing habits that it is not what is outside of us that makes us unclean, but rather things that come out of us that are unclean.
He suggests pretty boldly for his time that all of the standing purity laws might not matter nearly as much as the way one actually treats other people and moves in the world.
It is also important to note that just two chapters earlier, Jesus’ ministry has been doubted and tested and expanded quickly. He was run out of his hometown as a prophet without honor, he sent his disciples out to heal and teach, Herod slaughtered John the Baptist and Jesus fed a huge crowd and then topped it off by strolling across the water. That’s a lot of action in just a couple of chapters.
So…jumping back to that teaching Jesus offers about impurity coming from us into the world, in the text you heard today, Jesus treats a woman in need pretty badly.
We could argue that there is some unclean stuff coming out of his mouth in this passage. At the very least, Jesus isn’t being very thoughtful or kind.
He’s actually being kind of boorish.
Sometimes preachers candy-coat this story and suggest that Jesus refers to the woman as a puppy, a cute diminutive thing, rather than a dog. But let’s be clear – Jesus suggests that the Syrophoenician woman begging for her daughter’s exorcism is not worthy of his attention at that moment.
His initial response to her plea is biting. "Let the children be fed first, for it is not fair to take the children's food and throw it to the dogs."
One commentator suggests that there is an economic tension at play in the geography of this text. Tyre, the place to which Jesus has retreated, is a distance from Galilee. As a port city, it would be more diverse – economically, ethnically, spiritually.
Peasant farmers from the upper region of Galilee produced food goods that were sent to port cities like Tyre and Sidon to feed the larger populations there. In hard times, the pressure was on the peasant farmers to keep producing for the bigger market, perhaps meaning that Jewish peasant families of Galilee went without some of life’s necessities.
So Jesus could see this woman’s station and be commenting on how folks like her in the big city are ultimately taking food from those peasants who produce the food.
But more often, and I think more accurately, this text is understood as something of a conversion – of Jesus.
Jesus is suggesting that his work is not for her but rather for the children of Israel. He doesn’t completely close the door on the gentiles – let the children be fed FIRST. But right now, to do as this woman asks, Jesus suggests, would be throwing good food to the dogs.
But the woman, a desperate mother, doesn’t give up. She hears the refusal (and the insult), receives it and she lowers herself even further, turning his words to her advantage.
Yes…we of course have to feed the children first – of course you came to save the children of Israel – but even the dogs are able to benefit from the crumbs that fall from the children’s meal, she says.
She expresses a willingness to accept being nothing but a dog under the master’s table, scrambling for the crumbs.
Because even the crumbs would be enough.
You see, even up here in Tyre, even among the gentiles, Jesus is kind of a big deal. This woman, this mother of a suffering child is happy for the crumbs. Happy to be the dog begging under the master’s table. Because even the crumbs would be enough.
Jesus has a reputation and this woman knows what he is capable of doing for her daughter. She is not just willing to ask for his help, she’s willing to argue with him for that help. She is taking risks. She is staying in the fight.
Because she loves her daughter that much.
And because she has faith that this man can cure her daughter. That this man has amazing power.
So she’s willing to take the risk and stay in the conversation with Jesus.
Earlier in Mark’s gospel, Jesus heals a woman and a girl – a woman with a hemorrhage and then Jairus’ daughter. After the woman with the hemorrhage touches Jesus’ clothes and receives healing, he says to her – your faith has made you well. And when Jesus arrives in Jairus’ home, he tells those gathered not to fear… “only believe.”
Jesus says no such thing to this gentile woman in Tyre. First he refers to her as a dog and then he credits her argument for her daughter’s healing – “for saying that, you may go – the demon has left your daughter.”
He credits her wit, her tenacity, her turn of rhetoric.
This woman has stayed in the conversation because she knows the crumbs will make a difference.
This story transitions abruptly to yet another healing. In the style of Mark’s gospel, it is peculiar in its details, but I want to lift up a few things here.
Once again, like the woman asking for her daughter’s healing, others are petitioning Jesus on behalf of someone. The people bring a deaf man and beg Jesus to help. Jesus takes the man to a private place, touches him and he is healed…opened, as the text says.
Jesus then tells “them” – not just the man – to tell no one.
But they do tell, they proclaim, zealously.
In this healing, Jesus heeds a request made on behalf of another, and then uses touch – direct and earthy – to help a man gain his voice and his hearing.
Remembering that Mark’s gospel is densely packed and intentional, I think these two stories are held together in important ways that offer us some good news and give us some things to think about and act on.
First, both are stories of someone approaching Jesus on another’s behalf. And it works.
How is it that we are committed to the healing of those with the greatest need? How is it that we are taking the needs of others to Jesus? Not just in prayer, but in advocacy and action – with tenacity and spark and inspiration. There is a precedent for folks chasing after Jesus’ power for family members, for neighbors…arguing and bargaining and lowering folks through the roof. Will we do that for others?
Second, what faith in Jesus do we bring to our petitions for help? Do we show up to Jesus expecting to be made whole? In the case of the Syrophoenician woman, even though she knows she is not Jesus’ intended audience, she also knows he has power and strength and can make a difference for her daughter. She believes even the scraps are enough to make a difference. Do we believe that? Do we believe there is enough for everyone?
Finally, I want to dwell in that first story. How often are we willing to stay in a place of argument or disagreement or humility in order to keep the conversation going? I am struck that this woman knows Jesus can make a difference and she is not going to let her ego get in the way of a relationship that makes her daughter whole. She’s also going to bring her best effort to the debate. That is powerful stuff. Are we willing to wrestle with God (like Jacob) or argue with God on another’s behalf (like Moses and this woman) in order to claim wholeness for those in need?
I pray it is so.
The psalmist writes:
Do not put your trust in princes,
in human beings, who cannot save.
When their spirit departs, they return to the ground;
on that very day their plans come to nothing.
Blessed are those whose help is the God of Jacob,
whose hope is in the Lord their God.
May we persist, with great faith in the hope and help Jesus offers.
Amen.
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