Sixteenth Sunday after Pentecost | 09/08/2024 | Mark 7:24-37 | Paula Murray |

The Holy Bible, English Standard Version® (ESV®) Copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.

[²⁴{Jesus} arose and went away to the region of Tyre and Sidon. And He entered a house and did not want anyone to know, yet He could not be hidden. ²⁵But immediately a woman whose little daughter had an unclean spirit heard of Him and came and fell down at his feet. ²⁶Now the woman was a Gentile, a Syrophoenician by birth. And she begged Him to cast the demon out of her daughter. ²⁷And He said to her, “Let the children be fed first, for it is not right to take the children’s bread and throw it to the dogs.” ²⁸But she answered Him, “Yes, Lord; yet even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs.” ²⁹And He said to her, “For this statement you may go your way; the demon has left your daughter.” ³⁰And she went home and found the child lying in bed and the demon gone.] ³¹Then He returned from the region of Tyre and went through Sidon to the Sea of Galilee, in the region of the Decapolis. ³²And they brought to Him a man who was deaf and had a speech impediment, and they begged Him to lay His hand on him. ³³And taking him aside from the crowd privately, He put His fingers into his ears, and after spitting touched his tongue. ³⁴And looking up to heaven, He sighed and said to him, “Ephphatha,” that is, “Be opened.” ³⁵And his ears were opened, his tongue was released, and he spoke plainly. ³⁶And Jesus charged them to tell no one. But the more He charged them, the more zealously they proclaimed it. ³⁷And they were astonished beyond measure, saying, “He has done all things well. He even makes the deaf hear and the mute speak.”

Scripture interprets itself, and today’s readings are one of the best examples of this truth. It might be better to say that Scripture is self-referential, the books of the Bible talking to one another, revealing depths that would otherwise go unseen, and prying open meaning we might otherwise miss. Reading the various books of the Bible, Old Testament or New, in isolation as recommended by some teachers of the Bible or homiletics, robs us of a deeper and richer experience with God’s Word. So, let’s not do that, but rather let’s put the pieces of today’s lectionary puzzle together to get a grander view, I hope, of what God says to us today.

And also, to take the sting out of the day’s Gospel reading from the seventh chapter of the Gospel of Mark. We have just recently returned to Mark in the lectionary. Before last week, we spent several weeks in the sixth chapter of the Gospel of John hearing of the feeding of the five thousand and then receiving the Bread of Life texts, where Jesus told the crowds surrounding Him that they should seek a miracle of a different kind than that of five barley loaves feeding five thousand Jewish men. Instead, they should seek the bread of heaven, the bread of life, which gives them life not just for the day they ate it but eternally. “I am the bread of life,” Jesus said to the crowds, some of which left Him after He said it because it was a “hard saying.”

It is impossible to read the New Testament without understanding that much of what Jesus says is a “hard saying.” Today’s Gospel text is no different. Before we begin, it is best to shed or set aside any nonbiblical lens by which we hear the Gospel. It has been some decades since our viewpoints were last thoroughly biblical. These days, even those of us who attend church weekly and read our Bibles daily are indoctrinated (infected?) with world views that are political or ideological and indifferent or even hostile to the Bible. The world in which Jesus preached those days He walked the face of the earth was substantially different from our own, and we do ourselves as much as Christ Himself disfavor when we try to interpret Scripture by way of contemporary philosophies or ideologies. This is the case whether the interpretative lens we use is that of the old Civil Rights movement, feminism (first wave, second, or third), current Marxist intersectionality, scientism, or any other way of thinking that does not arise from Scripture itself. Scripture is interpreted by Scripture, and this is the case even when we provide a commentary or a sermon to clarify what the Word of God tells us.

Since Scripture interprets Scripture, we also cannot do away with those hard sayings of our Lord or the Father almighty just because we do not like them. The holy library that constitutes the Bible is not ours to do with as we will. It is all canon, that is, accepted holy literature. Even Martin Luther could not get away with cutting out the New Testament books that curled his toes, the books of James and Revelation. Luther thought both books led people astray, away from the Gospel, or were misused by people with unholy purposes, so he wanted to take them out of the Bible as it was printed. Reverence for Scripture helped win that argument, so you still have both those books available for your growth in the grace of God. So, we cannot, as one of our lectors on his way to the ambo was told by a faithful sister in Christ, remove the second reading from Ephesians 5 even if he thoroughly disagreed with what he thought it said about women. It is the word of God.

So, putting aside, to the degree we can, nonbiblical perspectives that might get in the way of a faithful and helpful interpretation of the story of the Syrophoenician woman, what can we say of this text, some of which appears rude if not downright mean? First, we have a boundary issue here, and not so much a boundary issue between Jesus, born a Jew, and a Gentile woman, but with geographical boundaries. After having fed five thousand Jews, reprimanded Jewish Pharisees and Scribes for confusing human tradition with God’s Law, and declared all foods clean, Jesus, apparently alone at least for a day or so, left Israel and walked into the home of a Gentile in Gentile territory. He was in the area of Tyre and Sidon, which had been settled by the Canaanites long before Israel moved into the Promised Land, and which Israel had never been able to conquer and hold even though they believed it a part of the land promised to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

Jesus walked out of Israel into this other land, and made Himself at home, literally, after dismissing the Jewish purity laws around food that had for generations separated Jews and Gentiles at the dinner table. Immediately, a Greek lady, meaning a woman from the area who was culturally Greek and of high status, threw herself at His feet and begged Jesus to exorcise the demon that had taken over her daughter.

As a woman myself, I see no need to squirm concerning the language Jesus used in what turned out to be an important theological argument. He did not throw the divine version of a hissy fit when confronted by this desperate mother. She was the reason He had walked out of Israel and into Gentile land. Jesus is never depicted in Scripture as one whose primary concern was to be nice or to model a shallow form of compassion. He willingly suffered the cross for us, and again, hard sayings, told the brutal truth about human sin and death. Jesus’ response to her plea for her daughter takes us modern types back because it does not sound nice. He said, “Let the children be fed first, for it is not right to take the children’s bread and throw it to the little dogs.” Packs of dogs were dangerous in the ancient Middle East, and calling people dogs was an insult. But Jesus softened that insult by adding the word that means “little” to it. By little dogs Jesus may have meant small dogs kept as pets. The children to whom He refers are the children of Israel. But the Syrophoenician woman was no mean theologian herself, for she in return said, “Yes Lord, yet even the little dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs.” Note, she took Jesus’ own words and used them to substantiate her plea for her daughter’s health. The little dogs are fed by the hands of children the remnants of their own meal. Salvation does indeed come from the Jews, but it is God’s gracious will to extend that salvation to other peoples.

To further prove His point, Jesus spent more time in the area around Tyre and Sidon, healing a man who was profoundly deaf and largely mute. “Be opened,” our Lord demanded, and the deaf man’s ears were unstopped, opened as we open a bottle of wine, and he could hear. Still later He went up to the Decapolis, also a Gentile area, and fed four thousand Gentile people with seven loaves of bread with seven baskets of bread left over when all had eaten their fill and were “satisfied.” Only then did Jesus return to Israel, that He might prophesy for the first time His crucifixion and resurrection. Shortly, thereafter, He turned His face to Jerusalem and the cross.

The healing of the Syrophoenician’s daughter and the deaf man were not examples of “social justice,” but of divine mercy and love. The middle section of a Gospel is often an important turning point in the Gospel story. Jesus turns His face away from Galilee, the place of His birth and much of His early ministry, towards the cross and the fulfillment of God’s plan for our salvation, and by “our” we mean all who love the Lord regardless of place of birth, gender, ability, or anything else.

We know this because Scripture interprets Scripture. Today’s reading from the book of Isaiah shows us that a mark of the coming of our salvation is the opening of the eyes of the blind and the ears of the deaf. We are to show no partiality, says the writer of the book of James, speaking of the division between rich and poor, for God has chosen the poor “to be rich in faith and heirs of the kingdom, which He has promised to those who love Him” just as we are to show between one person and another. We are all God’s children, and the work He has entrusted to us is to spread that truth as far and as wide as we can. Go and preach the Gospel, ye children of God.

Paula Murray