Mark 7:24-37
James 2:1-10, 14-17
Comedian Mike Birbiglia has a great line. In the early years of his comedy it became a sort of signature line in his particularly vulnerable style of story-telling. In one version of a set called “My girlfriend’s boyfriend” he’s interrupted a story about a woman he recently dated to talk about the first girl he fell in love with in high school.
I find that when you fall in love, you tend to overlook certain red flags. One of them was that she would say really mean stuff to me, but then she would pull it back. She’d be like, “no one likes you at all. Only kidding.” Or, like, “you’re like a nerd, but you’re not even smart. Just joking.”
Second red flag with Amanda was that she was a liar. And I don’t… I don’t mean that in an offensive way.
The final red flag with Amanda was that she told me not to tell anyone that she was my girlfriend.
I know. I’m in the future also.1
It’s brilliant. He’s telling a story that sets up a joke, and then he gets to that key plot twist where everyone in the audience is wondering “Does he know how awful that is?”2 And he let’s you into his mind. “I know. I’m in the future also.”
We just had this kind of moment – when Jesus said the 1st century part out loud in his response to the Syrophoenician woman. We’re horrified! Because we know the end of the story! “I know. I’m in the future also.”
What Jesus said to the Syrophoenician woman about letting the children be fed first rather than throwing good to the dogs, while it almost takes our breath away it sounds so shockingly outside of what we would expect, it would have shocked exactly no one in that house in Tyre. It was 100% what everyone there would have expected from a man… from Galilee… who was also a Jewish religious leader. That’s not a slam against men, or people from Galilee, or Jewish religious leaders. It’s simply a description of the reality of life in 1st century Galilee.
Sometimes when we’re reading texts cross-culturally – from 21st century life in the United States of America to 1st century life in a province of the Roman Empire – we don’t necessarily pick up all the contextual hints dropped in the story. Maybe you’ve had this happen even when you’ve traveled cross-culturally in the same century. I sure have.
Last month when I was at the Iona Community Abbey, my fellow retreat participants and I were enjoying each other’s company and stories last one night in the Common Room. One of my new friends friends from Oxford, England was telling a lively story about a football match he had recently been to. I knew enough to know we were talking about soccer, at least, but there was a whole lot more of the story that I was NOT following. With great animation he was throwing around names and nicknames of players and teams and cities that many people in the room understood, but I was just sort of sitting there half smiling along while knitting a hat in ignorance. When everyone erupted in laughter at the end, I joined in simply because it was infectious, but I had no idea what we were laughing at. I had missed all the important cultural references, simply because it wasn’t my culture.
This can happen when we read scripture sometimes, as well. The stories are our stories by faith. The people and names and some of the places sound familiar, but even still, some of the details and the meaning behind the meaning can slip right by us because the cultures and histories, the customs and geographies, they aren’t engrained in us and our shared knowledge.
The opening line to these two stories of restoration that we just heard would have grabbed the attention of listeners in the ancient world – those familiar with the politics of people and place in these biblical lands.
“From there” Mark starts, “he [Jesus] set out and went away to the region of Tyre.”
“There” is the region around the Sea of Galilee. The last specific place mentioned was Gennesaret, a town on the northwest edge of the sea. This region is the place most of us probably bring to mind when we think about Jesus’ ministry – whether we know it or not. By the water, it’s the setting of the famous stories of Jesus calling the disciples to leave their boats, nets, and families to follow him. A little further inland, it’s where olive and fig trees are in abundance, where farmers sow their seeds, where Jesus teaches from mountain and hillsides, bread and fish are shared in abundance, where he speaks in synagogues.
From there, that there, he set out and went *away* to the region of Tyre. Now, that “away” is doing a lot of work in that sentence. It’s a location term, but it’s also a bit of a cultural or religious term. Jesus is leaving more than a city or a region when he goes away to Tyre. He is leaving a culture. While there are Jewish people in this region, and house he stays in is likely a Jewish household, this region beyond Galilee is mostly a Gentile region. He has moved beyond the political borders of Jewish Palestine and beyond the reach of the Jewish majority culture.
That he would even go there would pique the interest of his early followers who understand him as rooted in Jewishness, teaching about Judaism, pointing to the God of Israel, and teaching and healing and serving this god’s people. That someone with his background might say something to clarify his mission to a woman from this other region, this other faith, devoted to these other gods would not have been surprising, even if the way he said it compared her and her daughter to dogs under a table.
It shocks us, however, because we know the rest of the story. We know. We’re in the future also, right? We know a Jesus who is not as bound to a particular geography and culture, but a Jesus who has transcended those restrictions both in his ministry and even more so in his resurrection. We know because we have so much more information available to us that the folks in that house did.
We know that Jesus has already redefined his understanding “who is in” by redefining his definition of family to include any who do God’s will. We know We know, or at least we can know, that the teaching immediately before these stories of restoration, put these words on the lips of Jesus, “There is nothing outside a person that by going in can defile, but the things that come out are what defiles.” In other words, there are no clean and unclean people, as Jesus on people believed about the Gentiles. We know that he does eventually cast the demon out of this woman’s daughter, without ever seeing her, based on her mother’s theological arguments. We know that he then cures another person in Gentile territory, this time in the Decapolis region on the other side of Galilee. We know that he teaches that “any” can become his followers, if they deny themselves and take up their cross. We know that Jesus promises the blood of the covenant is poured out for many. We know that it is a Roman centurion who is the only witness to the crucifixion who recognizes Jesus is God’s son. We know he commissions his followers to be his witnesses and to welcome into the story of redemption all people to the ends of the earth. We know the teachings of evangelists like James, who instructs us *not* to show partiality, who insists that saying the right things, but doing nothing reveals a faith that is no faith, a faith that is dead.
We live in the future, so we know these words he utters are not indicative of the full arc of his ministry and mission, his life, death, and resurrection. We know they are not his only words and that they don’t capture what we know of the compassionate, expansive love of God we know in Jesus Christ our Lord, and they shock us because of what we know.
But they are not the part of the story that would shock the 1st century people in the room, or those who heard the story when it was told and retold like a children’s game of telephone. They are not even what would shock the first hearers of Mark’s gospel 50 years or so later. What would shock these audiences would be the actual exorcism. The way that Jesus, who spoke words that were a product of his context, provided the restoration this Gentile mother came begging for. The way he accepted her argument and her reasoning and let his position be moved. Maybe even the way he simply declared the demon was gone without needing to see the girl with his own eyes, touch her with his own hands, or speak to the demon with his own words.
They would have been shocked that when he left Tyre he went to another Gentile region and took on another opportunity to show the power of God to restore people to community in an unlikely setting. They would have been shocked that he had tried to keep his power a secret, that he had found a private setting one which to open the man’s ears and release his tongue. They would have been shocked that he asked them *not* to tell anyone what he had done, that he didn’t seem to want glory or credit or bragging rights for his powers.
They would have been shocked by the places he went, the boundaries he broke, the partiality he left behind from his 1st century mindset and culture
- as he went to communities across the border – even if it meant encountering people who on paper looked at odds with him culturally
- As he paid attention to the people in front of him – even if they were the wrong people religiously
- As he heard their requests and healed them in they way they asked – even if it wasn’t how he understood his own purpose.
Friends, we are not without our own cultural baggage when it comes to
- who we think is in and who we think is out,
- who we think is worthy of our time and attention and resources and who we *might* be willing to give our leftovers to,
- what boundaries we heed and what borders we are willing to cross,
- Who we will give the prime seat to and who we will relegate to the back or to the floor.
But we are also not without the example and the witness of Jesus who more than overcame the constraints of his human cultural origins, who overcame the prejudices imprinted on him by his context, who overcame the most restrictive power we know in overcoming death. We are not without the power of the Spirit that has been given to us to overcome this baggage and to do what we are called to do, be who we are called to be as the Body of Christ.
How will we be his Body in the world? How will we be his witnesses? What borders will we cross unexpectedly? What people will we encounter? Where will we be about the restoration of community rather than the divisions of partiality in ways that shock everyone who is steeped in the same lies we have been told about who is good enough, who is holy enough, who is like us enough to deserve God’s love?
These are the questions we need to be asking ourselves and these are the works we need to be about as we proclaim our belief in the Lord Jesus Christ, as we seek to live a faith that astounds beyond measure. Amen.
For Some Reason 