Mark 7:24-37; James 2:1-10 and 14-17; Proverb 22:1-2, 8-9, 22-23
The scripture from Mark is one of those that if it was on me, I would like to remove it from the Bible. My personal reasons are simple, I do not like what Jesus did; I do not like what He said to this woman; Jesus was rude. This Syrophoenician mom did nothing to deserve that insult; she came to Jesus begging him to cure her daughter of an unclean spirit. Nothing wrong with this. This woman came to him bowed down, in the posture of worship. And yet, He rejected her, refused her request and casted her aside. Not only that, what He said, was an insult, He called her dog. And the question that has been asked for centuries is, why? Why the loving and caring long expected Messiah treated this poor woman the way He did. Is this a contradiction of Jesus’ message?
Tradition has tried to interpret this passage in a pious way to protect Jesus’ good reputation. In their eagerness to do this they say that Jesus was not actually rejecting her, but rather testing her. According to this interpretation the insult, the rejection are not real at all, Jesus did not mean it, he was trying to get her best and with what he said he tested her faith, to see if she really, really believed in him. And, of course, she passes with a good grade, and she got what she was asking for.
Even though it’s a pious explanation, many scholars do not agree with this interpretation for a couple of reasons,
1) nothing like it occurs anywhere else in the Gospels. Many people came to Jesus –including gentiles, the Roman centurion is one of them – they came asking for healing and He did not “test” their faith to give them what they came asking for.
2) There is no mention of testing in the story, like for instance in the Book of Job. We know from the beginning of the book that he is being tested by God.
3) It creates a cold-hearted picture of Jesus, contrary to what the rest of the gospel portrays and
There is another interpretation not to pious as the previous: In Jesus’ time most -if not all- of the Jews referred to Gentiles as “dogs.” Therefore, according to this interpretation, in his interaction with this woman Jesus was using the common vernacular, as he often did to be understood by the common people.
Let me try to share with you some thoughts about what I think about this passage of the Gospel according to mark. There are moments in history considered moments of transition, changing moments. Before and after events: in world history for instance the French revolution can be one of them; in national history the independence war marks a before and after in the life of this country. Jesus himself is one of those events too; He divide history in two, before and after Jesus and that makes Jesus a person who change the moment, a person that changed our history. With his changes he brought heaven and earth. He changed the old order of sin and death into the new one of hope and love.
The encounter between the Syrophoenician woman and Jesus is a moment of change in Jesus’ and his disciples’ ministry. When this alien, this foreign woman came to Jesus, interrupting his nap, he acted in an unexpected way; he acted and spoke as a traditional Jew does. This is the “before change moment.”
However, if Jesus’ reaction to the Syrophoenician woman was unexpected, the Syrophoenician woman’s reaction was even more unexpected, she did not back off… on the contrary, she humbled herself even more; she accepted her condition as a gentile (a dog), and did something remarkable, she showed Jesus and his disciples that gentiles can have faith in the God of Israel. Jesus was moved by her faith, and he healed her daughter. “For such a reply, you may go; the demon has left your daughter.” Jesus said. That is the other side of this changing moment. The “after moment.” The Gospel of John has a moment like this too with Jesus and the Samaritan woman.
The changing moment described by Mark sometimes goes unnoticed. You see when this woman believed that Jesus could do the miracle, she was accepting Jesus as God’s messenger. That kind of faith changed the status of this woman. John 1:12 says “Yet to all who did receive him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God.” Paul in Romans and Galatians makes it clear that we are God’s children by faith. Galatians 3:7 says, “Understand, then, that those who have faith are children of Abraham.”
The faith of this Syrophoenician woman change her nationality, she was not a foreign anymore, she was a daughter of God by faith. During this moment of change Jesus showed his disciples the reason he came to this world. “For he himself is our peace, who has made the two groups one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility,” Ephesians 2:14.
The story of the Syrophoenician woman was a moment of transition, of change in the history of salvation. What Jesus did first was the old order, it was the way Jews acted; what He did last is an example to follow; it was the change he came to make; it was a glimpse of God’s kingdom.
We, the Church of Jesus Christ, as Jesus our paradigm are also people called to make changes. We live in between what the world wants us to do and what God is expecting us to do; we live in between this world rules and the rules of God’s Kingdom. We live in between the voices of this world and the Voice of God, and we must -with everything we do- be the change God wants to make in the world.
Jesus was Jew among Jews, so he acted as one, but he is also the Good News that came from above; He is an agent of change, he is the example we must follow. When Jesus came to this earth he brought with him God’s kingdom; when Jesus healed the Syrophoenician’ daughter he was opening his kingdom to everybody, his kingdom is an inclusive kingdom. Everyone is welcome, everyone has a place including Syrophoenicians women.
Remember, if Jesus our paradigm is a person that change the moment and change history, we, his people must be then persons who change the moments too, because while we live in this world, we are citizens of God’s kingdom, and while we live in this world and be light and salt and with our lifestyle we must show other the most excellent way, as Paul says in 1 Corinthians 12:31.
We are people of change because with the knowledge we have on God’s Kingdom and His will, we have to leave our comfort zone and go into this world and Where there is hatred, spread love; where there is injury, pardon; where there is doubt, faith; where there is despair and fear, hope; where there is darkness, light; where there is sadness, joy. That is our mission. May God give us strength to do it and may God help us to make His kingdom visible this week.