September 8, 2024 Sermon
Sermon title: “Crumbs for the Gentiles?”
Scripture: Mark 7:24-37
(Other lectionary suggestions include Proverbs 22, Psalm 125, and James 2:1-17.)
Mark 7:24-37
The Syrophoenician Woman’s Faith
24From there he set out and went away to the region of Tyre. He entered a house and did not want anyone to know he was there. Yet he could not escape notice, 25but a woman whose little daughter had an unclean spirit immediately heard about him, and she came and bowed down at his feet. 26Now the woman was a Gentile, of Syrophoenician origin. She begged him to cast the demon out of her daughter. 27He said to her, “Let the children be fed first, for it is not fair to take the children's food and throw it to the dogs.” 28But she answered him, “Sir, even the dogs under the table eat the children's crumbs.” 29Then he said to her, “For saying that, you may go—the demon has left your daughter.” 30So she went home, found the child lying on the bed, and the demon gone.
Jesus Cures a Deaf Man
31Then he returned from the region of Tyre, and went by way of Sidon towards the Sea of Galilee, in the region of the Decapolis. 32They brought to him a deaf man who had an impediment in his speech; and they begged him to lay his hand on him. 33He took him aside in private, away from the crowd, and put his fingers into his ears, and he spat and touched his tongue. 34Then looking up to heaven, he sighed and said to him, “Ephphatha,” that is, “Be opened.” 35And immediately his ears were opened, his tongue was released, and he spoke plainly. 36Then Jesus ordered them to tell no one; but the more he ordered them, the more zealously they proclaimed it. 37They were astounded beyond measure, saying, "He has done everything well; he even makes the deaf to hear and the mute to speak."
For me, today’s Scripture lesson is one of the most interesting in the New Testament. There are several reasons, and I feel I may have preached on this passage fairly recently. So, if some of it sounds familiar, I apologize.
Perhaps the first thing that grabs my attention is the fact that Jesus has left his own country for a little rest and relaxation. And we are told that he did not want anyone to know that he was there! Does that fit with your picture of Jesus? Somebody who might be hiding out? It doesn't fit mine, until I realize that Jesus was fully human, and that means he needed to rest, and he needed some time away.
But we are told that a woman recognizes him, and we are also told that she is a Gentile, a non-Jew. (Just in case you never realized it, Jesus was JEWISH, okay? You probably knew that, but just in case....!) It turns out the woman recognizes Jesus, and she begs him to heal her daughter.
What I find so interesting and also so delightful is what Jesus says to the woman: “Let the children be fed first, for it is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.” Do you get that? Jesus was calling her a DOG! Lots of Jews thought of the Gentiles as dogs, and here was Jesus reiterating that prejudice! Jesus, Lord and Savior of the world, the lover of my soul, called this Gentile woman a dog! That would be TERRIBLE if the story ended right there, but it doesn’t! The non-Jewish woman says to the Jewish rabbi, “Sir, even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs.” Do you see what she was doing? SHE knew some Jews thought of the Gentiles as dogs, and she knew that Jesus knew! So, what was going on here was a little banter back and forth, and Jesus must have LOVED it! Look what he said: “For saying that, you may go - the demon has left your daughter.” In one of the other Gospels, Jesus exclaims, “I tell you I have not seen such faith, even in all of Israel!”
So, for me, Jesus enjoyed a little back-and-forth. He was HUMAN enough to enjoy a little humor. And he was even human enough to use the current prejudices of his day: Gentiles are dogs, and we Jews don’t like them. And Jesus had to enjoy the woman’s sense of the prejudices of the day, and HER ability to make fun of them! If she had NOT been aware, she might have left in a huff because of Jesus’s perceived insult. But she didn’t. She threw it right back at him, and I think Jesus loved it!
Is anything else going on here? I think so because in a way Jesus was only half joking when he was bantering back and forth with the Gentile woman. He really did think he needed to get his message out to his own people FIRST, and that was why he made that crack about crumbs under the table. Jesus realized that the Gentiles would eventually be offered the Good News and welcomed into the young church, and they WERE. But right now, he was more concerned about getting his message to his OWN people who would have understood all the Messiah language in what he had to say. But I would like to point out that Jesus granted this non-Jew’s wish even if that wasn’t his primary purpose. That’s a great thing about Jesus: he may have had other things on his mind, but if he could relieve suffering, he would, for Jew and non-Jew alike.
Earlier I mentioned that for me today’s Scripture lesson is one of the most interesting in the New Testament. What I would like to ask YOU now is this: did Jesus grow spiritually on this trip to Tyre? (He certainly didn’t think it was time to RE-Tyre, did he? Har, har!) But seriously.... did his encounter with the Gentile woman “push” him a little bit into welcoming non-Jews sooner than he had expected? There is really no way to answer this, but I do wonder: was the Son of God capable at this stage for growth? This isn’t biblical, but in Nikos Kazantzakis’s “The Last Temptation of Christ,” written in the earlier part of last century, Jesus GROWS into being God’s Anointed One. The way Kazantzakis tells it, Jesus isn’t really excited about doing his Father’s will until he experiences some terrifying things at the hands of the Holy Spirit. The spirit is almost like some giant bird of prey who harasses Jesus until he accepts his role. Again, it’s not Biblical - but the Kazantzakis view seems to be that Jesus took some convincing before he was willing to say, “Not my will be done, but THY will be done.”
Back to today’s reading: did Jesus achieve some growth in his encounter with the Syro-Phoenician woman? I like to think YES! But you know me: I’m always happy to emphasize the more human side of Jesus! He struggled, the same as you and I struggle. And if he didn’t struggle, what kind of Savior would he be?
As far as the deaf man with a speech impediment is concerned, I think the author of Mark is trying to get his listeners to think back to Isaiah, where there is this quote in Isaiah 35: “Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf unstopped; then shall the lame man leap like an hart, and the tongue of the dumb sing for joy......” That’s a hopeful part of the prophet Isaiah, and the idea here is that Jesus is the fulfillment of that prophecy. In Isaiah, the Lord himself is coming to liberate Israel. Mark is hoping that his readers will make the connection: God liberated before, and now the Son of God is liberating again.
I like the way N. T. Wright ends his commentary on this passage: “When Mark urges his readers to follow Jesus, he envisages, not a boring life of conventional religion, but things happening that would make the people astonished. If we’re still too deaf to hear what he’s saying, the problem is perhaps with us, rather than with the message.” I’ll go along with that! Amen.
Pastor Skip
