Saturday, November 3, 2012

Who am I in this story?

Christ Church, St. Joseph, La., 9 September 2012                      
                                                                 

Who are you in this story?                                   

I mean the one about Jesus and the Syrophenician woman, the one he calls a dog.

Of course, it would be easier to skip right over that and go to the much lovelier story of healing a deaf-mute and being very modest about it. We admire that. But… we’re not going there just yet. Jesus’ obnoxious behavior has something to teach us.

You see, I don’t think there’s any way to gloss over what Jesus does in this story. In fact, in the context of his time, what he said was even harsher than it would be today.

Today we love our pets. Our dogs are part of the family. We pamper them with treats and toys. We are, perhaps, more willing to spend money on pet health care than in taxes to provide health care to poor people.

The American Pets Products Association estimates that U.S. Americans will spend $52.87 billion on their pets this year!

Source: Supply and Demand
 But in Jesus’ time, dogs were not pets. They were scavengers, as the woman in our story well knows and rightly states. Even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs, she says (Mark 7:24-37, NRSV).

While in the Dominican Republic in the spring of 2010, I and several other deacons from our group went for a walk to the seashore one evening. And while standing there enjoying an evening breeze, we watched a scrawny, mangy dog root through an overturned trashcan and hungrily consume every scrap of garbage that turned up.

It was sickening. But in a subsistence economy, as in Jesus’ time and in poor countries today, it is not uncommon.

Jesus calls the woman a dog and it was more scandalous then than it is now.

We are followers of Jesus. We seek to emulate him. We try to live our lives after his model. When we have a difficult decision to make, we might well ask ourselves, What would Jesus do?

Of course we know that Jesus understood his ministry to be to the Jews. But if you identify with Jesus in this story, you have to own his narrow-mindedness. His lack of empathy. His self-righteousness. His rather contemptuous treatment of the Gentile woman.

Or, perhaps you identify with the woman in the story? She was desperate! She certainly would have known the social class system of her day. She had no business pursuing a Jewish man into a Jewish home seeking his help. She had absolutely no rights in that situation and no reasonable expectation that this Jewish rabbi with healing powers, whom she had heard about, would give her the time of day, much less help her.

But she was desperate… not for something for herself, but for healing for her tormented child. If you identify with the woman in the story, you must own her desperation, her willingness to throw herself on the mercy of a stranger, and even her immediate acceptance of his humiliating treatment of her.

She does not resist. She claims no rights and expresses no anger. She says not a word about unfairness. Rather, devoid of ego and with humility she accepts her lowly state and asks again for mercy.

So… who are you in this story? The teacher and healer so sought after by the crowds that his popularity has gone to his head? Or the powerless woman under the table groveling for the scraps of his favor? Not a pretty choice, if you ask me!

But then something quite miraculous happens. The proud young man actually hears, sees and learns something… from precisely the poor, low-class woman he has been looking down on.

See, Jesus was not born knowing all he needed to know about God’s plan for the world. He was, after all, fully human. A wise, deeply spiritual human, our Scriptures tell us, but nevertheless, fully human. Therefore, he had things to learn, as all human do.

He knew he had been called to bring the Good News of God’s liberating love and grace to the Jewish people. This is not the only passage in the Gospels that reveals his awareness of that.

As a devout Jew, which Jesus was his entire life, the rules regarding his interaction with this woman were very strict. He could not touch her. He should not even be interacting with her. She was an obstacle preventing him from being about the work he knew he was called to do.

Yet, he was Jesus, who taught and modeled God’s love, compassion and mercy. Thus when the Gentile woman humbly accepts the lowly status he has conferred upon her but with a touch of chutzpah asks for the very scraps he has said is all she deserves, Jesus himself is touched and transformed.

It is as if Jesus himself sees the wideness of God’s grace and mercy for the first time.

As if Jesus realizes that the Good News is not only for the Jews, but for all people.

As if he understands that God loved the world, as his disciple John would write after his death, not merely the Jewish people.

Author Heidi Husted wrote about Jesus’ encounter with the Syrophoenician woman in an article published in Christian Century. She said this:

The day the gospel went to the dogs was the day it came to us. We are some of the “dogs” who have received the good news of the gospel! When Jesus opened himself up to mission to the whole world, he opened his church to the world. Now we are to open ourselves to the whole world in mission.

When was the last time you allowed yourself to be transformed by one of the people of the world to whom you are called to minister?

What have you learned about the width and depth of God’s grace and mercy from one who is poor? Lower class? An immigrant? Someone who does not live the way we good Christian folks live and think others should live?

May God bless us all—as He did Jesus—with the gift of a transforming encounter with precisely the person we are most likely to view with disdain.
AMEN
 

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