Mark 7:24-37
PENTECOST 16 | SEPTEMBER 8, 2024 | Mark 7:24-37 (RCL) | David Zersen |
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, but a woman whose little daughter had an unclean spirit immediately heard about him, and she came and bowed down at his feet. Now the woman was a Gentile, of Syrophoenician origin. She begged him to cast the demon out of her daughter. He 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.” But she answered him, “Sir, even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs.” Then he said to her, “For saying that, you may go—the demon has left your daughter.” So she went home, found the child lying on the bed, and the demon gone.
Then he returned from the region of Tyre and went by way of Sidon towards the Sea of Galilee, in the region of the Decapolis. They brought to him a deaf man who had an impediment in his speech, and they begged him to lay his hand on him. He took him aside in private, away from the crowd, and put his fingers into his ears, and he spat and touched his tongue. Then looking up to heaven, he sighed and said to him, “Ephphatha,” that is, “Be opened.” And immediately his ears were opened, his tongue was released, and he spoke plainly. Then Jesus ordered them to tell no one; but the more he ordered them, the more zealously they proclaimed it. They were astounded beyond measure, saying, “He has done everything well; he even makes the deaf to hear and the mute to speak.”
FINDING GOD THROUGH CHRIST
There are many situations that we find difficult to understand. I’m intrigued by what are called “reels’ on the internet that appear periodically and pose a situation that one may find troublesome. A bum is begging on a sidewalk, and the viewer can notice someone taking the money out of his cup and running off with it. What does one do? Perhaps fill the cup with some of her/his own money. Perhaps, run after the thief! No one is asking you to do anything, except, perhaps, your conscience. Something presses you to find a solution. It’s a unique approach to moral instruction.
In today’s Gospel lesson, two miracle stories ask challenging questions. “What’s going on here”? we can wonder as we watch the action and listen to the dialogue. In the first story, a woman with a serious family problem—her daughter has some psychological issue—hears that Jesus has cured people before. Although he’s hiding in a house to get away from the crowds, she perhaps knocks on the door and asks for his help. In the second story, a beggar who can only mutter is healed, but told to tell no one (as if he could).
Pushing people to ask the right questions
In the first story, it’s good to be aware that this woman is not a Jew, is from a region that belongs to Syria, and probably believes in several household gods who may have seemed to solve her problems in the past. Not this time, however! So bringing her cultural background with her, she boldly finds Jesus and asks for help. The dialogue is very problematic for us, so it’s worth repeating it. She asks for healing for her daughter. Jesus responds that the children should be fed first and their food should not be given to the dogs. She comes right back at Jesus with the words, “Even the dogs get the scraps from the children’s table.” And Jesus responds, “For saying that, you can go home now, and your daughter is well.”
This is a surprising interaction. It seems to make Jesus into a condescending, self-centered right-wing Jewish ideologue who has no use for people from other cultures. Using today’s language, it’s racism at its worst. What are we to make of his comments? Theologians have wrestled with this dialogue and tried to understand it through the years. Elton Trueblood, the great Quaker New Testament teacher, and chaplain at Harvard University, in his book The Humor of Jesus,said that this was an example of Jesus‘ humor. He was joking with her and wanted to see where the conversation would lead. N.T. Wright, a famous contemporary Anglican theologian, believes that although Jesus speaks to the woman, his message is for the disciples who were always with him. They need to hear that in God’s kingdom, favoritism now goes by the wayside. Jesus is pressing the disciples to be more inclusive, their Jewishness notwithstanding. Another view, espoused by those participating in the Jesus Seminar, a group of textual critics from the 1990s, is that this passage was added to Mark’s Gospel, and it could never have involved the historical Jesus who was unlikely to have been in Syrophoenicia or to have reached out to non-Jews. They believed that it was added by some who felt that Jesus should be more accepting of those outside of Judaism.
Personally, I prefer to regard the text as belonging to the Gospel acc. to Mark, and believe that in this setting, Jesus is fully aware of what he hopes to achieve with his comments. I think he’s pressing the woman to think through her relationship to him and when she does make a commitment, he commends her and meets her need. Instead of asking questions of the woman, Jesus challenges her to rethink who she is, who he is, and how she can belong at the table, as it were.
It used to be true that clergy wanted to be sure that those gathered at the Communion table understood very clearly what was involved in the eating and drinking in the Eucharist or they should not be admitted to the table. That view has changed in many Lutheran settings worldwide, where all are invited to accept the “crumbs that fall from the master’s table” The very fact that people are being pressed to consider their worthiness, whether Jesus is himself doing the inviting, whether union and communion with Jesus is even desirable—those are questions that take us to the heart of a personal understanding at the table.
I believe that in this seemingly complicated story, Jesus pressed the woman to say what was important to her, namely that all had a right to what was shared at the master’s table. In doing so, Jesus used a unique approach to bring a seeker to find wholeness and healing through him.
Pressing our Christian understanding to its full depth
Sometimes we may be pressed by circumstances to lay claim to a deeper faith than we currently possess. I’d like to give you an example of a situation in which this once happened that is so radical, it may trouble you. It may also call you to a deeper understanding of the faith that you currently cherish.
This is a story about Jochen Klepper, a Lutheran poet and journalist, who lived during World War II. He married a Jewish woman who already had children. They now raised them together as their own. As the racism and antisemitism of the Third Reich came into full sway, Klepper had to decide how his wife and daughters could be saved. The wife converted to Christianity, and Klepper served in the German military in the hopes that his service might give him a more secure status with the regime. Adolph Eichmann himself reviewed the case and refused to offer any clemency to the family. The concentration camp and execution were now the only possibilities. After the decision, Klepper and his wife prayed about it, acknowledging the inevitable. He wrote in his diary, “We are going to our deaths together tonight. Above us in the last hours stands the image of the blessing Christ, who struggles for us. Our lives end in the sight of it.” That night Klepper and his family took the only way out that seemed appropriate for them, given the alternative of persecution and execution. The family’s decision may be regarded by us today as shocking, given our traditional understanding of suicide. In some ways, however, it also pushes us to a deeper understanding of the full depth of faith to which Christ calls us.
Klepper is remembered by the church as one of the greatest German-language hymnwriters. His famous hymn, “Die Nacht is Vorgedrungen” (“The Night is Almost Over”, tr. by Herman Stuempfle) is found in The Lutheran Service Book in the Advent section. In the 5th verse, it sings about a God who abides in darkness, inscrutable to us in so many ways. Yet in Christ, a light comes that provides what we need to know about the unfathomable, inscrutable ways of our God. So often we are overwhelmed with the challenges and horrible aspects of life in our world, and those who are not immersed in the words of God’s love for us in Scripture find it easy to discard the faith and reject any notion of God. I have always appreciated J.B. Phillips 2004 book entitled Your God is Too Small. It challenges those who find it so easy to reject God because what we know of God doesn’t seem compatible with the realities we experience in our lives. Yet the very nature of what God is or can be is by definition so far removed from human understanding that all the words used to TRY to describe God are certainly only anthropomorphic, a fallible creation of human understanding. The language in Klepper’s hymn is helpful to me because it says that although God dwells in what is darkness to us, Christ’s words, his life, death, and resurrection, help us make sense of the otherwise incomprehensible, whether the result be suicide or negative words to a woman who is being pressed to say and to see what previously could not have been understood.
In the second miracle story in the text, the healing of the deaf man who also had a speech impediment (fascinating detail given to us), it’s mysterious that Jesus tells those who experienced the miracle to tell no one about it. Surely the deaf man with a speech impediment could only have mumbled his amazement. One solution is to think that Jesus used the technique to market his ministry, and, if that were the reason, it was quite successful. However, I think that a better reason is Jesus’ insistence that faith, as in the woman’s situation, could only be achieved personally. Jesus achieves his results with us by engaging us in a personal confrontation. We still wander about in darkness concerning the things of God if we merely see faith working in others. When we are pushed beyond just chatting about religious matters to engaging ourselves in a personal conclusion about how darkness becomes light in Jesus, insights occur. When that happens, we no longer need to wonder why Jesus said this or that to a desperate woman or a deaf man. That may be just chit-chat. We don’t have to ponder whether a concept such as God can be real to us or anyone. We don’t have to struggle with whether the actions of others are right or wrong. We simply accept then, when the burden of our guilt or the lifestyle that makes better sense is found in Jesus, there is a light that overcomes darkness—and it overwhelms us. Then Jesus and his Father are one, in and for us. We will have been pressed by our faith-filled experience to know what Jesus has wanted for us all along—that life can be rich and full. Even abundant.
Hymn: “The Night Will Soon be Over” Lutheran Service Book, 337.
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David Zersen, D.Min, Ed.D., FRHistS
President Emeritus, Concordia University Texas
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