The Sacred Art of Talking Back to Jesus
Mark 7:24-30
24 From 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.
This story of the Syrophoenician woman, also called the Canaanite woman, is probably my favorite in all of scripture. If you know me at all, you can probably imagine why I’d resonate with and why I need a sacred story of women who talk back. I came of age watching powerful women like Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Ashley Banks in The Fresh Prince of Bel-air. I feel a profound kinship with those who don’t fit into their assigned boxes or stay in their lane, women who dare question and contradict imposed inferiority. Their witness of being is especially liberating in a society where “good” women are always portrayed as nice, courteous, and contained, encouraged and celebrated in their service to the comfort of others.
But my connection to such people and stories is more than a need to glorify rebellion. My soul has always longed for a God big enough to be challenged, who is not so fragile as to demand an unquestioning faith.
Katharina Schutz Zell came of age just as Martin Luther was stirring up the church in 15th century Germany. Inspired by Holy Spirit to pursue a radical grace, she became not only a follower of these teachings but a contributor to the reformation with her writings – producing pamphlets for the public to spread the Gospel. And I don’t mean that she simply echoed what the men were saying, reiterating their sanctioned talking points, but even contradicted them in pursuit of the grandiose God they proclaimed. She challenged the predominant notions of goodness not only with her words but her actions and with her whole being. Called by love, she was one of the first people to marry a clergyperson, even before Martin Luther got married, a pearl-clutching scandal in the eyes good Christians of the time. Five centuries ago she wrote: “I am convinced that if I agreed with our preachers in everything I would be called the most pious and knowledgeable woman born in Germany. But since I disagree I am called an arrogant person and, as many say, Doctor Katharina.” Rest assured that a woman being called Doctor in this way wasn’t a compliment, but a demeaning term implying presumptuousness. They called her uppity. In all this time, plenty of this sentiment remains for women who dare offer their God-given voice of faith so boldly. This woman refused to be dismissed and genuinely shaped the movement that forms my faith and I had never heard her name before this week.
Generations later, across an ocean, Antoinette Brown Blackwell was born in New York in the late 1800s and felt a call to ministry at an early age, preaching with her church even as a teenager. She would attend college at Oberlin and then lobbied to enter theological classes there that were previously not open to women. They told her she would be allowed to be present but not recognized. And if that doesn’t sum up the heart of the issue. They would passively tolerate her, but not empower her by actually awarding her a degree. Not only did she persist, she pursued. She would be the first woman ordained to a mainstream protestant church in the United States. It was her belief in an ever-widening God and gospel that fueled her fight for women’s suffrage and the abolition of slavery. And in fact, she was the only one of the first generation of suffragists who witnessed the passage of the 19th Amendment to the Constitution, a right she exercised on November 2, 1920, casting her first vote at the age of ninety-five, just a year before her death. She did not do this pioneering work in isolation but in community, gathered with other women AND men to effect change.
When the demon of racism possessed George Zimmerman and the system that dismissed his crimes, and a mother cried out for the life of her son, Trayvon Martin…Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors, and Opal Tometi responded by creating the Black Lives Matter movement and network to counter the continued systemic violence toward their community and the dehumanization of black bodies. These three women who together are black, queer, African, femme, Jewish – an intersection of so many things that our society would see as a liability and lesser-than – proclaim such as worthy of dignity.
The woman in today’s scripture proclaims to Jesus and all those gathered around them that Syrophonecian lives matter. The woman was a Gentile, of Syrophoenician origin. She begged him to cast the demon out of her daughter. Jesus calls her a dog.
When he says dog, he does not mean adorable puppy who is a member of the family. He means the same level of insult implied by the modern vernacular for female dog. It carries the same venomous weight of barbed words and names that aren’t names in order to diminish: doctor, bossy, flamboyant, vagrant, thug. It means the same dehumanizing dismissal as the whole litany of animal language used against those who are other-ed by racism and misogyny to declare them unworthy of care and indeed deserving of maltreatment.
Hearing it, out of Jesus’ mouth, is a punch in the gut that comes in the midst of a week where our sides are already sore from similar blows. Christians proclaim that Christ is fully divine and fully human, the fullness of God intertwined with the fullness of humanity - which seems endearing as a new born child in a feed trough and humbling on the cross, but this hits as just too human in our propensity to hurt each other.
Rev. Dr. Wil Gafney, a renowned black womanist theologian right here in Texas, has written this reflection and insight:
“Jesus was fully but not generically human. He was a first century Palestinian Jewish man who was religiously observant and a product of his culture, including its biases. Israel claimed God had given them Canaanite land, a notion the Canaanites did not share, and Israel occupied the land of Canaan every bit as much as Rome occupied Israel. Add to that the Israelite notions about Canaanites were no more generous than Roman ideas about the Jews. Perhaps more germane to us, as a Canaanite, specifically a Phoenician, she was a Gentile—like us—and Jesus is not shy about his opinions of Gentiles.”
She continues:
“You might be thinking, “I believe in the Incarnation, but this Jesus is a little too human.” To be human is not actually such a bad thing—I say from experience. For to be human is to be made in the image of God with something of her capacity to love, and to be human is to learn and grow and change, to open up our hearts and minds, expand our beliefs and relinquish our biases. I believe Jesus shares some of this with us else he wouldn’t be fully human.
This woman challenges the deeply-embedded notion that she is outside of God’s promises and their power to reconcile us to one another. She does not ask, but indeed proclaims that even her life and that of her child….matter. Where does this witness come from? Is it strength? Desperation? Wit’s end? I don’t know, but it’s divinely powerful. Some would say that she is redeemed by her humility because she lowers herself at Jesus’ feet or refers to him with respectful titles like “sir” and kept things civil and polite. This is misogyny with a religious façade. There is holiness not in her minding her manners but defending her divine dignity, not her deference but her defiance. The Gospel is not a reward for “good behavior” but a scandalously generous gift for all, especially those the world declares as unworthy. It is she, the outsider who would be sent away, who boldly preaches the Good News that in fact, she too has a place at God’s table.
We lay down beside her to proclaim:
- even desperate mothers at the border deserve basic life-sustaining medical care for their children
- even children who live outside prestigious zip codes deserve a quality education
- even transgender people deserve to be employed and sheltered
- even someone who’s high or drunk deserves food in their belly
- even those who for whatever reason cannot produce economic value deserve the basic dignities of life
- even the poor deserve protection from hurricanes
- even homeless black men killed by police in a moment of crisis, deserved our care not our bullets and at the very least, Julius “El” Keyhei, deserves to be named and mourned
- even those walking away from police deserve to breathe
- even those with rap sheets deserve to breathe.
- even those out for a jog deserve to breathe.
- even those reaching for their title and registration deserve to breathe.
- even those sleeping in their beds deserve to breathe.
- even those who take their outrage to the streets deserve to breathe.
- and yes, even a 17 year old boy possessed with the demon of racism that harms and kills others, deserves to breathe.
You know what? Actually, none of them deserve that. They deserve so much more. This is a sacred story about calling attention to but NOT about settling for the crumbs. When scripture talks about God’s goodness, it is a feast that never ends and a cup that overflows. This is not a Gospel that asks us to shrink smaller or think less of ourselves but to expect more of God because it is who God has promised us they are. The Gospel is that we are not created simply to be tolerated but embraced, and not only embraced but celebrated.
“Black Christ” by Rev. Canon Warner Traynham
This is what the woman gets Jesus to recognize, through contrast, about God’s own identity and call to ministry.
This story is told in two Gospels, in Matthew and well as Mark. In Matthew, the overall theme of the gospel is the inclusion of gentiles - outsiders and outcasts. In Mark, there’s an emphasis on profound and world-altering miracles like healing - healing even the entrenched and seemingly insurmountable barriers of bias the demean us all.
Continuing to reflect on what it means for God to be fully human, Rev. Dr. Wil Gafney writes:
“We are at our best as human beings when we listen to and learn from someone who is so different from us that everything in our culture and raising tells us she is other.”
….
“(The woman) left that place with her daughter (whom we never see and don’t know was even present) restored to wholeness, and Jesus left that place walking towards a whole new understanding of his ministry. …Jesus goes forward to proclaim a gospel in which all are welcome to the table.”
We are created in the image of a God who is big enough to withstand being wrong sometimes and strong enough to grow in relationship. And if God, the Creator, can change, surely so can this creation. This cosmic resurrection will bring both courage and conflict, and sustains us with faith:
- Courage to do a thing that’s never been done before and to clear a path for those who follow after, so they can pick up where the ancestors left off
- Faith to see the world not only as it is but also for what it can be, for how God promises it will be and is already becoming.
Amen.