The Sighing Jerk — Saturday Sermons from the Sidelines

Mark 7:24-37

Our text provokes far more questions than it provides answers. The NRSV calls this section “The Syrophoenician Woman’s Faith.” It could just as easily be called, perhaps, “That Time When Jesus was a Xenophobic Jerk.”

Or it could be called “The Desperately Persistent and Patient Gentile Mother.” Or maybe we should call it “Not as Smart as You Thought You Were, Eh, Jesus?” Or maybe…well, you get the picture.

What, precisely, is the story here?

In this encounter we can see that both Jesus and the Syrophoenician woman are each a bundle of intersecting identities. In this context, Jesus is a Galilean Jew in Gentile territory. He is a man interacting with a woman in a patriarchal culture. He is a religious teacher and healer in a place where someone needs what he has to offer. He is a poor man in a part of the world that extracts wealth from his people in order to live in luxury. Jesus is each of those identities and all of those identities.

The woman – unnamed, of course – is a Syrophoenician Gentile native relatively close to her home turf. She is a woman interacting on her own with a man in a patriarchal culture. She is a mother desperately seeking healing for her demon-possessed daughter who believes that Jesus has what her daughter needs. She is, perhaps, a wealthy woman who lives, at least in part, off the extractive economy that keeps the Galilee and Galileans poor and hungry. The woman is each of those identities and all of those identities.

The woman is perhaps well off and accustomed to being in charge, so her reply to Jesus is based in confidence rather than humility. But she is also in desperate need of what Jesus has to offer, and he’s not a mere peddler of faith-healing wares. So, when it comes to power in this situation, it’s hard to tell which foot the shoe is on at any given moment in the interchange.

All that being said, some of us still have to ask, “Why is Jesus being such a…jerk?”

What if our reading of this text is the problem rather than the solution? David King outlines six varieties of solutions to the problem of Jesus’ response to the Syrophoenician woman:

Jesus is on vacation.
Jesus is playing.
Jesus has a more important mission.
Jesus is bested in debate.
Jesus is racist.
Jesus is sexist.

The first three responses are variations of the theme I would call “Defending Jesus.” The last three responses are variations of the theme I would call “Teaching the Teacher.”

Mitzi Smith reads this text through a Womanist theological lens. She experiences the Syro-Phoenician woman as “sassy.” Smith writes that “sass” as a term is “usually applied to the behavior of persons considered inferior or subordinate, by race, gender, position, class, or age to the person toward the talk, back talk, gesture, and/or attitude is addressed” (page 97).

Obviously, Smith is on to something here. Through this lens, Smith sees the Syrophoenician woman as being considered inferior or subordinate due to race, gender, position, class, or age, as compared to the person being “sassed.” She defines “sass” as “when the oppressed name, define, call out, and sometimes refuse to submit to oppressive systems and behaviors” (page 97).

Smith argues that this Greek, Syro-Phoenician woman with a demon-possessed daughter “bears a triple stigma because of her race, gender, and status as a mother” of such a child. She “experiences racism, sexism, and classism as interlocking forms of oppression. All three forms of oppression are highlighted in the narrative,” Smith contends, “and they impact how Jesus responds to the woman” (page 101).

She argues that Jesus responds to the woman “in a way that betrayed his Jewish male bias.” More than that, he seems to communicate that Jewish lives matter more, at least for now, than do Gentile lives. That’s a potent rhetorical connection that I had not seen previously in this text. Now that Smith has pointed it out, I cannot “un-see” it.

All of these responses, however, assume that Jesus is in the position of social and cultural dominance in the conversation. I think we’d be well served by re-examining that assumption as we read the text. I found the 2010 article by Poling Sun to be very instructive in this regard.

“If the powerful one in this story, however, is not Jesus but the woman,” Sun argues, “or more accurately, not the woman as woman, but the Syro-Phoenician woman who symbolizes and in fact represents the powerful and real colonialism, the story and message would be entirely different” (page 385).

What if Jesus is not just taking a small sabbatical? What if, instead, he is hiding out from the agents of Herod Antipas and the Jerusalem elites until things calm down a bit? If that is the case, then the Syrophoenician woman has blown his cover. When she came in the door and put him at risk, does Jesus think, “Just another Gentile rich bitch coming to take what belongs to us Jews”?

That puts a different spin on his words in the text.

What if we come to this reading seeing Jesus as oppressed rather than powerful? How does that affect our experience of his initial words, and of his actual response?

More than that, what if we begin to see following Jesus as a path away from power? We read the text from a triumphalist perspective where Jesus has all the power (and therefore so do we). But, if Sun is right, that is not the situation It certainly wasn’t the situation for the Markan church. Jesus is one of the colonized, not one of the colonizers. If Jesus is suspicious, defensive, and reluctant, that makes sense. He is testing her sincerity, not her “faith.”

Can we mainline Christian types in America serve and witness from a non-dominant place? We are so addicted to triumphalism in the Western, White church that I’m not sure we can adjust. Can we submit to the leadership and wisdom of our Black, Brown, and Indigenous siblings in Christ to learn real humility in order to be healed? I’m not sure, but I hope so.

I think it points as well to vulnerability meeting vulnerability – the desperate desire of the mother for her daughter’s healing and Jesus’ awareness that the shadow of the cross extends even into the territory of Tyre and Sidon.

I don’t think that Jesus repents and is converted in the way that the “Teaching the Teacher” scenarios would have it. Sun’s analysis cuts through that conundrum. But I do think Jesus changes his mind about the woman who comes to him in her time of need. He commends her for her “word” of humble, self-effacing wisdom. She relinquishes her power. She “dies to self” in order to save her daughter. In a very real sense, she came not to be served but to serve.

Matt Skinner points to the woman’s response to Jesus’ words as the crowning description of her repentance and, dare we say it, faith. Skinner argues that Jesus does have a change of heart toward the woman because of the nature of her argument as a theological proposal. Even though Jesus is focused on his mission to Israel, there are still crumbs enough for her daughter to be healed, she pleads. Jesus agrees.

The incarnational dimensions of this story, however, go much deeper with a close reading of the story. Both Jesus and the Syrophoenician woman are complicated. Each is an intersection of both complementary and competing identities. Each is a bundle of contradictions looking for a self to serve as the center. That’s human existence. It’s not clean. It’s not very organized or consistent.

But it’s real.

Both Jesus and the woman experience changes of mind and heart in the story. That’s not troubling to me either. If there are echoes of the Jonah story in the background of this text (and I think there are), then the idea that both the hegemonic power and the Divine power experience repentance and reconciliation is old news.

We may find that news uncomfortable and inconvenient (just ask Jonah), but that doesn’t make it any less true.

Diversity is not a necessary inconvenience to be tolerated. Rather, it is the very glory of God and a gift to be celebrated. Will we bother to get into conversations where we are not the ones in power but rather the desperate supplicants hoping for a hearing? Will we “be opened”?

Be completely opened! And be set free from the previous constraints of the old ways of hearing, speaking, and seeing! Is this prayer really for the disciples? And for us? We have discussed this before, but it’s worth re-visiting here. Most congregations make the claim that “All are welcome.” The real work happens when that claim is converted into a question: “Are all welcome?”

The pragmatic answer in all congregations, in one way or another, is “no.” We generally are not open to persons from a range of socioeconomic situations. We generally are not open to persons from a variety of racial and ethnic backgrounds. We generally are not open to persons from a diversity of gender and sexual orientations. We generally are not open to persons with divergent political views.

Being thoroughly opened is hard work. No wonder Jesus sighed.

Text Study for Mark 7:24-37 (Pt. 6); September 5 2021

Being Opened

In the past few months, we have been reminded of how the writer of John’s gospel can use one word or phrase to some theological heavy lifting in several dimensions at once. I am sure that the composer of Mark’s gospel is an artistic equal in that regard to the writer of John’s gospel. One of the great oversights of scholarship in the Christian scriptures has been the minimization of the Markan composer as a full-fledged theologian in their own right. Only in the last fifty years has that oversight been remedied to some extent.

In Mark 7:34, Jesus looks up to the heavens, heaves a deep sigh, and issues a command: “Be opened.” The verb Jesus uses is reported in Aramaic, his daily spoken language. The composer of Mark’s gospel translates the term for his Gentile audience. It is “dianoigo,” which means to open up completely or fully. The opening takes place by completing the process necessary for the opening to happen.

The Greek term is used in the Septuagint to translate the same Aramaic/Hebrew word Jesus uses. The Hebrew word means to open by dividing or drawing asunder. It points to opening thoroughly what had previously been closed. In both Aramaic and Hebrew, the verb can also mean to be “loosed” or “released.” What a perfect command for the healing of a man who needed his ears opened and his tongue released from captivity.

Lincicum wonders who (or what) Jesus is commanding to “be opened.” The most obvious point of reference is the ears of the deaf man that need to be “unstopped” as Isaiah 35 would have it. But that’s not the only option.

Lincicum argues that in grammatical terms the most obvious referent here is “heaven.” While the command is in the singular, the man has plural ears needing opening. He notes that this could be a mere matter of style (or, I would add, Mark’s characteristic looseness with Greek grammar). There is precedent for commands to plural organs being addressed to the singular possessor of those multiple organs. But the expression is, at best, “awkward,” according to Lincicum (page 650).

Jesus “sighs” as part of the process, an action often directed toward heaven and a deity. The desire for the heavens to be opened and for God to come down among us is expressed at Jesus’ baptism. The heavens are torn asunder, and the Spirit descends. “In Mark’s cosmology, heaven is porously open to earth in blessing,” Lincicum writes.

“Jesus is here ordering the heaven to open in blessing for this deaf-mute, imploring the divine power to be used to heal a difficult ailment,” he continues, “and the clear proof that heaven has replied is offered in the corresponding ‘opening’ of the man’s ears, with the concomitant ability to speak and to proclaim what Jesus has done” (page 652).

It could also be that the sighing shows that Jesus is experiencing the work it takes for the “opening” to happen, whether that is of the man’s ears or of the heavenly access. The composer of Mark uses a more intensive form of the work in Mark 8:12 as he describes Jesus’ frustration with the desire for a further “sign” to authenticate his mission. Why, perhaps Jesus asks, is this generation not opened to the truth of what they have already seen?

We could, Lincicum argues, have at least two referents for Jesus’ command. The opening of heaven in divine revelation creates the “apocalyptic trope” mentioned in his title. The opening of the man’s ears reveals the openness of heaven to Jesus, and through him to us. So far, so good.

It’s obvious, however, that the Markan composer intends for us to connect this healing to the open/closed theme that comes through earlier in the chapter. Perhaps Jesus is also praying that the ears, eyes, and heart of the disciples would “be opened” as well.

This becomes clearer in the repetition the composer includes in Mark 8:22-26. If the preacher focuses on the Ephphatha story, then a connection to this later story is important for interpretation. In verses 14-21, the disciples demonstrate that they don’t understand the import of the feeding miracles.

Jesus wonders if they have eyes to see, ears to hear, and memories to encompass what Jesus has done. It appears they do not. “The healing of the blind man at Bethsaida is thoroughly intertwined with the preceding material,” Joanne Dewey writes, “it would not strike the listener as a new beginning” (pages 71-72). In fact, she notes that this is the first of four healings that “ring the changes on restoring hearing, speech and sight.” These healings illustrate the struggles of the disciples to hear, speak, and see the Good News in their midst.

The second of these stories is the healing of the blind man from Bethsaida. It takes two stages and a bit of work, but Jesus restores the man’s sight. That’s a prelude for the brief flash of insight the disciples get in Peter’s great confession at Caesarea Philippi. And it is an echo of the opening Jesus himself experiences in Gentile country. More eyes and ears need opening than those of the two men who are healed.

Be completely opened! Is this a prayer of reminder for Jesus himself? The Syro-Phoenician woman opens him to a much wider perspective on the potential and power of the Good News among the Gentiles. This was not an easy opening by any means. It cost the woman, and it cost Jesus. But the result was an openness to the world that had not been possible previously.

Being thoroughly opened is hard work. No wonder Jesus sighed.

Our facilities, despite some excellent efforts, are often still not accessible to the abled and disabled alike. I find the fact that churches are to some extent exempt from ADA accessibility standards to be reprehensible. We should be the first to embrace and embody such standards rather than the last to adopt them.

I have rarely done a good job of finding ways to welcome and serve the members of the deaf community through worship and education. Resources are readily available, but it takes work and financial investment to do it well. I’m still not very open to that effort in pragmatic terms, no matter how important I “think” it is.

Congregations are, unfortunately, heading “back” into their pre-Covid media shells to some degree. It’s been an opportunity to be opened to a larger world of worshippers and participants. Some congregations have embraced the opportunity, but many only took it on grudgingly as a temporary expedient. Will we be opened to what was forced upon us by Covid and has come to be a real chance for new ministry? The jury is out on that one.

I find it ironic that a text which commands “Be opened!” functions to close off our communities to the chronically ill and disabled. As Dr. Rolf Jacobsen points in in a recent “Sermon Brainwave” podcast, the healing stories in the gospel accounts create major roadblocks for the chronically ill and disabled. Why doesn’t Jesus heal me?

Our able-ist assumption as we read and speak these stories is that “abled” is good and “dis-abled” is not. The disabled need “fixing” somehow in order to fit into our dominant paradigm. Between the theological conundrum and the able-ist paradigm, as Jacobsen notes, the chronically ill and disabled are among the least-church people groups on the planet.

Physical conditions are sheer facts. How we manage, respond to, and evaluate those conditions – those arrangements are constructions that we choose. The choices may be so deeply buried in our culture that we think this is just “the way things are.” But that’s not right. We can make choices about what to see, say, and hear. We can make choices about how to arrange our buildings, our technologies, our communities, and our lives.

Will we be completely opened or not?

It’s a tough row to hoe for disciples, that’s for sure. Next week we come to another fork in the road in the Markan account. Peter will get a glimmer of insight, but the price of that understanding is clearly too high.

Not opened yet.

References and Resources

James Baldwin quote: https://www.npr.org/2020/06/01/867153918/-to-be-in-a-rage-almost-all-the-time.

Dewey, Joanna. The Oral Ethos of the Early Church: Speaking, Writing, and the Gospel of Mark. Cascade Books, an Imprint of Wipf and Stock Publishers. Kindle Edition.

Hurtado, Larry. Mark (Understanding the Bible Commentary Series). Grand Rapids, MI.: Baker Books, 1989.

King, David M. “The Problem of Jesus and the Syrophoenician Woman: A Reader-Response Analysis of Mark 7:24-31.” Journal of Religion, Identity, and Politics (2014). Pages 1-21. https://www.academia.edu/1353308/The_Problem_of_Jesus_and_the_Syrophoenician_Woman_A_Reader_Response_Analysis_of_Mark_7_24_31.

Lincicum, David. “Ephphatha (Mark 7,34): An Apocalyptic Trope?” Ephemerides Theologicae Lovanienses 91/4 (2015) 649-653. doi: 10.2143/ETL.91.4.3129673.

Liu, Rebekah. “A Dog Under the Table at the Messianic Banquet: A Study of Mark 7:24-30.” Andrews University Seminary Studies, Vol. 48, No. 2, 251-255. https://digitalcommons.andrews.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3082&context=auss.

Ruffin, Amber; Lamar, Lacey. You’ll Never Believe What Happened to Lacey . Grand Central Publishing. Kindle Edition.

Skinner, Matthew L., “”She Departed to Her House”: Another Aspect of the Syrophoenician Mother’s Faith in Mark 7:24-30″ (2006). Faculty Publications. 193. http://digitalcommons.luthersem.edu/faculty_articles/193.

Smith, Mitzi. “Race, Gender, and the Politics of ‘Sass’: Reading Mark 7:24-30 thrugh a Womanist Lens of Intersectionality and Inter(con)textuality).” https://www.google.com/books/edition/Womanist_Interpretations_of_the_Bible/J2esDQAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=mark+7:24-30&pg=PA95&printsec=frontcover.

Sun, Poling. “Naming the Dog: Another Asian Reading of Mark 7:24-30.” Review and Expositor, 107, Summer 2010, pages 381-394. https://d1wqtxts1xzle7.cloudfront.net/51627184/Naming_the_Dog.pdf?1486166793=&response-content-disposition=inline%3B+filename%3DTHE_GOSPEL_OF_MARK_Naming_the_Dog_Anothe.pdf&Expires=1629922639&Signature=fehZP7odtynKeFSy1fzAvFRtDVal6YS~V46kODdJJ02umisAs6dCxtI4~JSOJMfyk5qZZ2QufzBFgz8AJv2Xf88aUUSVI-9rHk2D144YJmmgp6tZgdGxYRQo06HC~8knVV6x-721~NKG9coCYxo4zVyk4Y5ostcsx4yFpZe7F8NpFOk8dxcbOPKuhncCX2MU8KY8EgjRJ9kzm3BwuDK~FZERu9k~ZhNvRff5K3jHSQ6-M78ndYjU9L3MzT7qoUMvZsoHQGnA2HNfeIR55mYi5zeCcQ4OD2bh15zlZBK3BjBR5VsN8PcFDGS9hN-Eh4~qOQg1CIz4~fmfS-sI4I1vaw__&Key-Pair-Id=APKAJLOHF5GGSLRBV4ZA.

Wright, N. T. Mark for Everyone (The New Testament for Everyone). Westminster John Knox Press. Kindle Edition.

Text Study for Mark 7:24-37 (Pt. 5); September 5 2021

So, She Went Home

Poling Sun writes, “The Syrophoenician woman comes as power…as Syrophoenician power, a dominant and oppressing group. Her coming and request could therefore be understood as an intrusion once again to the powerless.” I find this a compelling way to understand Jesus’ initial response to her. “Naming the dog does not refer to the woman as such,” Sun argues, “but the power and domination she embodies, i.e., the ethnic, social and economical status” (page 389).

The politically-charged name-calling is not, however, the end of the conversation but rather only the beginning. The crisis in her family requires her to sit with the protest speech. “Unlike the Gerasenes who asked Jesus to leave after the loss of the herd of swine,” Sun writes, “she knows that to cast out the demon, she has to listen to the shout and even to agree with it before she welcomes the healing power” (page 389).

The woman, Sun argues must repent. That is, she must change her mind and her frame of reference if she wants access to what Jesus has. Sun argues that Jesus does not repent, does not change his mind. There is no “Teaching the Teacher” in Sun’s interpretation of the scene. “Jesus does not change his mind,” Sun writes, “as if he has learnt a lesson from this woman that he should reach out to the Gentiles because he had been in the Gentile land before” (page 390).

Jesus is “the voice of those powerless to name the dog,” Sun continues. “It remains crucial for the power to discern the crisis and repent,” he asserts, “by listening to the cry and shout of those who have been silenced.” The kin(g)dom of God is a challenge to such power, in Mark’s gospel, to repent, to stay in the conversation, and to listen to the real Good News of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.

This is a significant way into the text and especially into Jesus’ harsh words to the Syrophoenician woman. But I think the story unveils a confrontation of power and power – the cultural, political, economic, and social hegemony represented by the Syrophoenician woman and the world-altering power of the Good News of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. I think it points as well to vulnerability meeting vulnerability – the desperate desire of the mother for her daughter’s healing and Jesus’ awareness that the shadow of the cross extends even into the territory of Tyre and Sidon.

“She does not appeal to standards of fairness or pity but makes a theological claim about the expansiveness and power of God’s reign,” Skinner suggests. “This, then, forms the first dimension of what we can justifiably consider her ‘faith’: her conviction that she does not need a seat at the table for her daughter to receive what she needs. If Jesus is for real,” he continues, “only a morsel can suffice” (page 18).

Skinner points to a second dimensions of the woman’s ‘faith,’ one that is enacted rather than spoken. She falls at Jesus’ feet in supplication and will not take no for an answer. “Her desperate, begging pleas and persistence do not represent alternatives to faith,” Skinner asserts, “they give added definition to what faith is, and what it looks like when expressed as dire supplications” (page 18).

There is, according to Skinner, a third dimension to the woman’s faith. Jesus speaks, and she goes home. We get to travel with her and arrive at her house. When she gets home, she finds her daughter resting comfortably, freed from the demonic possession.

Like the lepers in Luke 17, there was a healing “on the way.” The woman must take Jesus at his word and see if things worked out. Jesus “gives her what she wants, but it still will take an additional act of faith for her to realize this for sure,” Skinner writes, “The long-distance miracle therefore alters the woman’s circumstances and allows her faith to manifest itself once again” (page 20).

In some iterations, the “Teaching the Teacher” scenario for the story points to Jesus’ change of heart as deep evidence of Mark’s understanding of the Incarnation. I have spoken such words myself in sermons and bible studies over the years. I’m not at all troubled by the notion that Jesus doesn’t “know it all” from the get-go. I find quite attractive the idea that Jesus must learn as a human being and that he even has biases and prejudices to overcome just like the rest of us slobs.

I can imagine that this is one of the reasons the composer of Mark’s gospel includes this incident in the story. First, it seems to me that there must be some historical grounding for the story. Who would include such a story by choice in an account seeking to persuade Gentiles to follow Jesus? Perhaps I’m missing something here, but I don’t think this story is the best PR material the composer of the gospel story could have used. I think it was common knowledge and therefore unavoidable.

So, the composer used it in a powerful way. Perhaps this is the real experience of Jesus and his followers meeting potential Gentile converts. Some of them come from the dominant culture, with a measure of social, economic, and political power. The Christian movement has none of that equipment in the late first century. In fact, those powerful folks might have been experienced as a threat – an attempt to infiltrate and disrupt the little Christian churches just coming to be.

This difficult dance of riposte and reply, as we see in this text, may have been played out over and over again as curious Gentiles inquired about this Jesus following business. The overtures may have been met with suspicion, reserve, and even insult. If that was the case, at least some of these Gentile seekers must have sucked it up and stayed in the conversation long enough to make a connection.

These days, perhaps the dynamic is reversed, in part because the Church has been such a part of the power structure for so long. People regard the Church and Jesus followers with suspicion. We can be the butt of jokes and the subject of a fair bit of insulting language. In fairness, the Church deserves most of what we get in that regard. Will we stay in that conversation long enough to make a connection and get a fair hearing?

I like to be right. No, I really hate to be seen as wrong. That’s not a great personality trait for a pastor or a student, so I have battled that tendency for a lifetime. It’s hard to learn anything when you’re always right about everything. So, I struggle to sit and listen to different viewpoints, especially when they are rudely critical, as they sometimes are. But listen I must.

At the very least I can seek out other, contradictory viewpoints. The research behind these posts is often one attempt at such listening. Hearing the text read and interpreted from feminist, womanist, Black, Brown, Asian, poor, Queer, and non-American viewpoints is critical to a deeper and clearer appreciation of these texts. Without those viewpoints this week, our text would remain as opaque as ever.

This question gives us a way to understand the deeper significance of the second part of this week’s reading. Perhaps it’s not just another Markan healing story, transposed into a Gentile key. If the confrontation with the Syrophoenician woman is an illustration and enactment of the purity pronouncement, perhaps the healing of the stammering, deaf man is an illustration of an illustration.

References and Resources

James Baldwin quote: https://www.npr.org/2020/06/01/867153918/-to-be-in-a-rage-almost-all-the-time.

Dewey, Joanna. The Oral Ethos of the Early Church: Speaking, Writing, and the Gospel of Mark. Cascade Books, an Imprint of Wipf and Stock Publishers. Kindle Edition.

Hurtado, Larry. Mark (Understanding the Bible Commentary Series). Grand Rapids, MI.: Baker Books, 1989.

Ruffin, Amber; Lamar, Lacey. You’ll Never Believe What Happened to Lacey . Grand Central Publishing. Kindle Edition.

Wright, N. T. Mark for Everyone (The New Testament for Everyone). Westminster John Knox Press. Kindle Edition.

Text Study for Mark 7:24-37 (Pt. 4); September 5 2021

You’ll Never Believe What Happened to Jesus

But what if our perspective on reading this text is the problem rather than the solution? David King outlines six varieties of solutions to the problem of Jesus’ response to the Syrophoenician woman. We’ve explored some of those responses in detail in the previous posts.

In his analysis, King uses three questions to analyze representative responses. He does this using a technique of reader-response criticism called “gap filling.” This technique acknowledges that readers make assumptions to fill in the narrative holes that any story leaves unfilled. “In the case we examine here,” King writes, “the gap is created by the characterization of Jesus in his encounter with the Syrophoenician woman, a characterization which seems inconsistent with his characterization elsewhere” (page 3).

The six responses King identifies include: 1) Jesus is on vacation; 2) Jesus is playing; 3) Jesus has a more important mission; 4) Jesus is bested in debate; 5) Jesus is racist; and 6) Jesus is sexist. We have examined some of these responses in the previous posts. We have even analyzed some of the same N. T. Wright texts that King uses as examples. Based on the gap-filling analysis, King finds the examples of each response to be unsatisfactory.

We should note that most of us use some combination of the above responses with better or worse effect. For example, N. T. Wright uses a combination of 2) and 3) with a sprinkling of 4). In addition, the “Defending Jesus” perspectives tend to use the first three responses in some combination. The “Teaching the Teacher” responses tend to use the last three responses in some combination. It’s a helpful taxonomy and analysis.

He notes that the “Teaching the Teacher” response takes on particular resonance in the voices of Asian Feminist Postcolonial interpreters. However, he does not agree that the situations of Asian women under British colonial rule are directly comparable to the positions occupied in the story by Jesus and the Syrophoenician woman. “[T]hat missionary movements in the past made mistakes is simply undeniable,” Sun notes, “but to equate the Jesus of first-century Palestine with nineteenth century western Christianity is dubious, and the social-cultural descriptions of both Jesus and the woman seem not to be supported by historical scrutiny” (page 384).

He also notes that many of the “Teaching the Teacher” responses now focus on the gender of the Syrophoenician woman and the politics of patriarchy. He is not convinced. “If the powerful one in this story, however, is not Jesus but the woman,” Sun argues, “or more accurately, not the woman as woman, but the Syro-Phoenician woman who symbolizes and in fact represents the powerful and real colonialism, the story and message would be entirely different” (page 385).

Sun analyzes the story, then, from this perspective – the Syrophoenician woman as colonizer and Jesus as colonized. He notes that women occupy a variety of social roles and power gradients in Mark’s account. “Thus,” he writes, “contending that the gospel presents every woman as a victim, marginalized, oppressed, and colonized is actually shooting everything that will move” (page 386). This is not to say, he hastens to add, that androcentrism and patriarchy are absent from Mark’s account. But gender is not essential to this story.

“I would suggest,” Sun contends, “that the woman’s presence symbolizes the coming of a power instead of a victim” (page 386). This is not Jesus’ first foray into Gentile territory or the last. This is not the first Gentile healing story or the last in Mark’s account. This is not the first woman healed. This is not the first mother mentioned. Jesus breaks no new ground in these regards.

“If the story of the Syrophoenician woman signifies an important transition and therefore the way for the Gentile mission, we must look for another motif instead,” Sun argues, “I suggest that it is the power revealed and subverted that makes the Gospel heard among the Gentiles. It is also from this perspective,” he continues, “that Jesus’ offensive words can be understood and perhaps appreciated” (page 387). This story, Sun proposes is “about when Power and Jesus encounter each other.”

He notes the negative descriptions of Tyre and Sidon in the Hebrew scriptures. He also points to the continuing negative attitudes to Tyre and Sidon both in the Christian scriptures (Matthew 11:21-24) and in the Against Apion by Flavius Josephus. The hostility was even more recent and local than that. “If the readers of Mark were not unaware of the incident that the Tyrians had killed and imprisoned many of their Jewish inhabitants when the Jewish revolt broke out in 66 CE,” he notes, “the coming of a Syro-phoenician woman could hardly be thought of as just another visitor asking for help” (page 388).

In addition, the Gentiles along the coast exploited Galilee as their breadbasket. Galilean peasants often went hungry while the Tyrian elites were well-fed. Isn’t that an interesting image in light of the discussion about tables, crumbs, and dogs! The Syrophoenician woman came first as a symbol and cause of suffering for Jesus’ home folks. There are indications in the text, according to Sun, that she was “Greek-speaking, educated, urban upper class” (page 389).

“All these historical, cultural, and social considerations lead to the conclusion that the Syrophoenician woman does not come to Jesus as a victim oppressed by colonialism or male domination,” Sun concludes, “not to mention homeless or marginalized. There is,” he declares, “simply no evidence from the text that supports any of that” (page 389). He argues that the woman comes from a dominant and oppressing group. She intrudes on the relatively powerless Jesus. In that context, his response is an act, not of rudeness, but of resistance.

What if Jesus is not just taking a small sabbatical? What if, instead, he is hiding out from the agents of Herod Antipas and the Jerusalem elites until things calm down a bit? If that is the case, then the Syrophoenician woman has blown his cover. When she came in the door and put him at risk, did Jesus think, “Just another Gentile rich bitch coming to take what belongs to us Jews”? That puts a different spin on his words in the text.

This doesn’t exclude the possibility that Jesus was using some resistance humor to respond to this fraught situation. Right now, I’m reading the book by Amber Ruffin and Lacey Lamar called You’ll Never Believe What Happened to Lacey.” In part I’m reading it because most of the stories told have happened in Omaha, Nebraska, in the last few years. I’m also reading it because these are some very, very funny women. And I’m reading it to understand my own white supremacy from a different angle.

The fact that Ruffin and Lamar use humor in their stories doesn’t mean these are light pieces of entertainment. It means that humor is a tool of resistance and a resource for grieving. I won’t try to summarize or recapture the wisdom and pain in the book. Just buy it and read it. My point is that humor is no guarantee that everyone is happy and nice.

“Niceness” is a luxury and expectation of the privileged and powerful. I know that I expect women to be pleasant and pliant, and I’m put off when they’re not. That’s my problem. I know that I expect Black and Brown people to smile and be friendly in order to assuage my anxieties. That’s my problem. I know that I expect the world to be nice to me just because I’m a privileged and positioned white male. That’s my problem.

In a 1961 radio interview, James Baldwin replied to a question about being Black in American. Here’s what he said:

“To be a Negro in this country and to be relatively conscious is to be in a state of rage almost, almost all of the time — and in one’s work. And part of the rage is this: It isn’t only what is happening to you. But it’s what’s happening all around you and all of the time in the face of the most extraordinary and criminal indifference, indifference of most white people in this country, and their ignorance. Now, since this is so, it’s a great temptation to simplify the issues under the illusion that if you simplify them enough, people will recognize them. I think this illusion is very dangerous because, in fact, it isn’t the way it works. A complex thing can’t be made simple. You simply have to try to deal with it in all its complexity and hope to get that complexity across.”

What if we come to this reading seeing Jesus as oppressed rather than powerful, as enraged rather than abusive? How does that affect our experience of his initial words, and of his actual response?

More than that, what if we begin to see following Jesus as a path away from power? We read the text from a triumphalist perspective where Jesus has all the power (and therefore so do we). But, if Sun is right, that is not the situation It certainly wasn’t the situation for the Markan church. Jesus is one of the colonized, not one of the colonizers. If Jesus is suspicious, defensive, and reluctant, that makes sense. He is testing her sincerity, not her “faith.”

References and Resources

James Baldwin quote: https://www.npr.org/2020/06/01/867153918/-to-be-in-a-rage-almost-all-the-time.

Dewey, Joanna. The Oral Ethos of the Early Church: Speaking, Writing, and the Gospel of Mark. Cascade Books, an Imprint of Wipf and Stock Publishers. Kindle Edition.

Hurtado, Larry. Mark (Understanding the Bible Commentary Series). Grand Rapids, MI.: Baker Books, 1989.

Ruffin, Amber; Lamar, Lacey. You’ll Never Believe What Happened to Lacey . Grand Central Publishing. Kindle Edition.

Wright, N. T. Mark for Everyone (The New Testament for Everyone). Westminster John Knox Press. Kindle Edition.

Text Study for Mark 7:24-37 (Pt. 3); September 5 2021

The Patron Saint of Sass

I think it matters that Mark’s gospel was first of all an oral/aural experience and only later was committed to writing in approximately the shape we have it now. Joanna Dewey argues that this move from story to document resulted in a loss of women’s voices in the text. She points to words from both Plato and the First Letter of Timothy to indicate that at least some men in the ancient Mediterranean world wished that such a loss of women’s voices would happen in fullness.

In response to this trend, Dewey retells the story of the Syrophoenician woman as she imagines (based on lots of scholarly work) it might have been told in the early years of the Christian movement. In fact, she tells the whole Gospel of Mark in that way, but we will focus on her re-telling of the text in question for now.

She begins by giving the woman a name, Justa. She tells the story assuming that Jesus was insulting, and the woman absorbed the verbal abuse. “We, women, Christians, people who live in Asia Minor, we have a lot to thank that Syrophoenician woman for,” the storyteller comments. “She taught Jesus something—we are all people, not dogs; we all need food and healing. And Jesus believed her. He praised her word, what she said, her understanding” (page 134).

This is not one of the “Defending Jesus” readings of the Syrophoenician woman’s story. Let’s call it the “Teaching the Teaching” framework. In this view, Jesus is not bantering with the woman. Jesus is not testing the woman. Jesus is not using her as an object lesson for a larger audience. In this view, Jesus has not gotten it right, in spite of the previous verses, and needs to be pushed to a larger perspective. Jesus needs, in this sort of reading, to change his mind.

“Maybe we owe our whole, new, glorious life in Christ to Justa,” Dewey says as the storyteller, “to that woman who taught Jesus that even little Greek girls should be healed. And certainly,” the storyteller concludes, “she showed that women are to be listened to!” (Page 134).

Part of the significance of the story, Dewey argues, is that it is one of relatively few women’s stories in the written gospel accounts. “[O]ne major reason for the paucity of women’s stories in the canon,” she proposes, “is that while early Christianity was an oral phenomenon in which women could participate relatively fully, the writing of Christian texts and their selection for inclusion in the canon was the work of the small minority of literates who were mostly men” (page 134).

In the cultural settings in which early Christians found themselves, women were often the village and community storytellers. “The world of early Christianity was a world of oral communication,” Dewey writes, “in which women were full participants as active proclaimers and storytellers as well as receptive listeners” (page 138).

Oral/aural culture was much less prone to patriarchal, hierarchical, elite dominance. “As long as Christianity was based on oral authority,” Dewey continues, “as it was in the early urban churches, and as it remained well into the second century, full participation and leadership was open to all, regardless of class and gender” (page 139). That changed as the gospel accounts were committed to writing, transmitted by manuscripts, and thus placed in the possession of a small number of male elites.

Given the way the social system worked, it’s a wonder that we find any women’s stories in the gospel accounts at all. “Yet we may be surprised to find as much material as we do in the Synoptics,” Dewey observes, “coming from the women’s traditions; it is a tribute to the importance of women at the very beginnings of the Christian churches that so much is still present” (page 144). The story of the Syrophoenician woman is part of that tribute.

Given the fact that women were so integral in telling the story in the beginning, I think we ought to pay primary attention to the ways that women tell and interpret the story now. It should not be surprising that we find fewer women represented in the “Defending Jesus” camp and more women in the “Teaching the Teacher” camp. That says something about the interpreters, certainly. But it also says something about the text.

The Syro-Phoenician woman is not merely an intersection of first-century Mediterranean identities. She is a four-car pileup of identities. She is Syro-Phoenician in her home territory and has both status and familiarity superior to that of Jesus, the interloping and lower-class Jew. But she is a woman who accosts and confronts a man in a patriarchal culture.

She is perhaps well off and accustomed to being in charge, so her reply to Jesus is based in confidence rather than humility. But she is also in desperate need of what Jesus has to offer, and he’s not a mere peddler of faith-healing wares. So, when it comes to power in this situation, it’s hard to tell which foot the shoe is on at any given moment in the interchange.

Jesus relies on a Jewish tradition and ideology of “racial priority,” Smith argues. “The woman can either submit to her oppression,” she continues, “or she can challenge and resist affirming her own humanity. Colonization does not encourage unity among the colonized,” Smith continues, “it encourages them to guard the crumbs. The oppressed are expected to achieve wholeness on the crumbs, to be treated like dogs and yet remain civil and silent” (pages 103-104).

The Syrophoenician woman resists, and her resistance takes the form of “sass.” The Syrophoenician woman went “toe to toe with Jesus” and used his own argument against him (page 105). Now comes the gut punch for the “Defending Jesus” folks. “Jesus’ consciousness is raised as a result of the woman’s sass” (page 106). Her sass is effective. “In response to the woman’s sass,” Smith writes, “Jesus acknowledges the power of her word (logos), her reasoning” (page 107).

Smith notes that Jesus says no words of exorcism to make things happen (unlike in the next section in the Decapolis). In fact, he ways that the woman’s word has done the work! Jesus “affirms the authority embodied in this woman’s sass,” Smith writes. “It is her word, her sass that brings restoration and relief to her child. Her daughter,” Smith concludes, “is no longer one of the untouchables” (page 108).

“The story of the Syrophoenician woman shows that sass can call our attention to and challenge unjust, biased, and oppressive traditions, laws and expectations,” Smith writes in her concluding remarks. “The power of sass can reveal and question the destructive forces at work in or against our communities.” The communities in question are those of black women. “We need to celebrate sass and talk back in women of color as well as in white women as a legitimate form of agency and method of truth telling rather than punishing women for speaking truth boldly in the face of corrupt, biased, life-threatening, and denying authority. Sass and talk back,” Smith declares, “are legitimate forms of resisting oppression and exploitation” (page 110).

Yes, but is Jesus the oppressor and exploiter here? Wow.

This is where the animal waste hits the oscillating blades, as they say. This is why we can’t just let this text slip by as an interesting story with a happy ending. I’ve had too many alert parishioners over the years who listen closely to this text and draw precisely the “Teaching the Teacher” conclusion. Or they realize that such a conclusion is possible and reject it.

In either case, this story can create anything from a minor interpretive storm to a full-on crisis of faith. On the one hand, the text has opened the door to some of the best teaching opportunities and spiritual growth I’ve observed in my ministry. On the other hand, I think no other text has exposed me to a greater number of charges of heresy (and I’m grateful for that, too).

Some listeners will retreat immediately to the safety of some variety of “Defending Jesus” position. Others will push forward into new territory. I’m not suggesting one or the other is better at this point. But I do know that thoughtful people will be destabilized if they listen closely to the text. I prefer to be proactive at that point.

References and Resources

Dewey, Joanna. The Oral Ethos of the Early Church: Speaking, Writing, and the Gospel of Mark. Cascade Books, an Imprint of Wipf and Stock Publishers. Kindle Edition.

Hurtado, Larry. Mark (Understanding the Bible Commentary Series). Grand Rapids, MI.: Baker Books, 1989.

Wright, N. T. Mark for Everyone (The New Testament for Everyone). Westminster John Knox Press. Kindle Edition.

Text Study for Mark 7:24-37 (Pt. 2); September 5 2021

Jesus, I Thought you’d be Nicer

Ah, but I forget that the appointed text includes the rest of Mark 7 – both the Syrophoenician woman and the deaf man with a speech impediment in the Decapolis. Hurtado includes both passages in his commentary and notes that the exorcism and the healing both happen in Gentile territory. He argues that these stories give encouragement to Mark’s Gentile audience that they too are included in Jesus’ kin(g)dom project. Hurtado suggests that Jesus’ initial rejection of the Syrophoenician woman “sounds very much like what the ‘historical’ Jesus would have said. He is not remade by Mark into a cosmopolitan missionary who preaches to all nations,” Hurtado continues (page 115). He points to the fact that Jesus gives the woman what she wants. And Jesus describes a two-step process for the inclusion of the Gentiles. They come after the “children” have eaten their fill.

Hurtado notes that the woman throws herself at Jesus’ feet and describes this behavior as “determined and reverent.” The lesson the Gentile audience should take from this account, he proposes, “is that Gentiles who show the same kind of readiness to recognize their need and to trust in Jesus can be saved” (page 116). If the woman’s prostration were the only behavior in question, I might find this proposal more convincing. But there is that little “you’re a dog” thing as well. It still seems, if Hurtado is correct, that the real lesson is that Gentiles need to eat crap for the sake of the Gospel in order to be included in the family. I’m not sold on that idea.

In his text notes, Hurtado expresses several of the “Defending Jesus” ideas common in that position. When Jesus uses the children/dogs images, Hurtado says it’s not clear whether Jesus is relying on the view of the Hebrew Scriptures that Jews are the “real” children of God and Gentiles are not really or these images are “simply an analogy based on common household life of the time – the family eats before the house pets” (page 118).

That’s not how it works at our house, but that’s another story.

Hurtado also notes a peculiarity in the vocabulary of the passage. He agrees that Jews of the time sometimes referred to Gentiles as “dogs, but this may not be relevant here.” Instead, he suggests, “The Greek term Mark uses seems to refer to household dogs, while ‘dog’ as a slur used a Greek term applied to wild dogs or to scavenger does of the street” (page 119).

This part of “Defending Jesus” argues that Jesus calls the Syrophoenician woman a cute puppy rather than a Gentile dog. We may get the chance downstream to revisit some of the implications of that vocabulary choice. But at the moment, I don’t find the argument particularly compelling. We can’t determine the tone of the remarks, but I don’t know if I would find the diminutive label less offensive. Let’s keep that in mind.

Hurtado argues that the woman’s response fits the framework of a discussion of household pets under the dinner table. He suggests that “she cleverly points out to Jesus that, although children are fed first, these dogs can get scraps without disturbing the meal” (page 119). Hurtado proposes that the woman convinces Jesus that helping her will not deflect him from his main mission. She’s only asking for a few crumbs of his time, energy, and attention.

This position is not as hardline Jesus-defending as the one adopted by Wright. Hurtado punts on the issue of Jesus’ offensiveness and focuses on the nature of the Gentile woman’s faith. “The tenacity and humility that assents to Jesus’ mission,” he writes, “thought she does not understand it, wins her Jesus’ blessing” (page 119). Hurtado backs into the position that the woman changes Jesus’ mind on the matter, and he blesses her for getting it right.

Hurtado’s second point in his commentary is more convincing. He notes that the two-stage description of Jesus’ mission – feeding the children (of Israel) first and then the rest – “was used by Mark to mean that the restriction of Jesus’ own ministry to Israel both was proper and did not preclude a later mission to the Gentiles” (page 116).

He notes that the current chain of events happens between the two feeding stories in the gospel according to Mark. In the first feeding, the children of Israel are fed in abundance (chapter 6). In the second feeding, it’s a Gentile crowd that goes from little to leftovers (chapter 8). This framing makes the current text “part of Mark’s effort to get the reader to see that Jesus’ ministry in Israel was a preparation and basis for a later, wider proclamation of the gospel” (page 116).

The story of the Syrophoenician woman is followed by the healing of a deaf and stammering man in the Decapolis (still Gentile territory). Hurtado reminds us that the story contains very specific and detailed references to Isaiah 35. The description of the man’s condition provides a direct link to that text. The Isaiah 35 text is a song of return from exile. This is an example of extremely little text (just a word or two) taking us to a very important context (the prophetic oracle). As Hurtado suggests, the interpreter will be well-served to read Isaiah 35 in reflecting on this story in Mark 7.

It’s worth slowing down for a moment and taking this in. Events that evidence the return from Babylonian Exile in Isaiah 35 are now happening in Gentile territory on Gentile bodies. It’s not surprising to remember that Mark sees the Good News of Jesus, the Messiah, the Son of God, as the fulfillment of both the Exodus from Egypt and the return from Babylonian Exile. To see and hear those events taking place in Gentile territory is revolutionary.

Isaiah 35:8 describes the “Holy Way” upon which the returning exiles shall travel home. The “unclean” shall not travel on it. This takes us back to last week’s conversation about who is clean or unclean, and how that happens. Those who return are “the ransomed of the Lord.” They come to Zion with songs on their lips and everlasting joy upon their heads. In Mark 7, the ransomed of the Lord are now Gentiles. What Jesus described earlier in the chapter is now enacted on Gentile bodies.

Jesus studiously avoids Jewish territory (at least the territory controlled by Herod Antipas) as he moves from Tyre and Sidon to the Decapolis. Perhaps the execution of John the Baptist and the notoriety of becoming a “bread king” made the Galilee a bit too hot for Jesus and his crew at the moment. Nonetheless, he continues in Gentile country, back in the place where the Legion of demons fled into a herd of swine.

When Jesus released the Gerasene demoniac from his bondage, the people there had begged Jesus to leave. Perhaps they were afraid of the trouble his success might cause with the local Roman authorities. Now that he has returned to that general area, people seek him out for healing. The deaf and stammering man has friends who bring him to Jesus and beg for healing for him. We get some remarkable details in this healing, and it works.

The response is fireworks, billboards, and full-page ads in the local papers. So much for Jesus’ orders to keep it all on the hush-hush.

The summary statement, “He has done everything well,” could indicate the end of a large section of Mark’s account. But I don’t think that’s right, given the previous discussion. This section of Mark must continue probably through Mark 8:22. We don’t get any of this first part of Mark 8 in our lectionary selections here, but it’s important to keep this story structure in mind.

“Mark 8:14-21 makes it evident that Mark saw both feeding miracles as important revelations of Jesus’ significance,” Hurtado suggests, “His devoting space to two accounts of the same sort of miracle suggests that each one had for him a special significance,” he continues, “and that neither could be omitted without losing something important” (page 121). One of the reasons the lectionary folks probably omitted the second feeding is precisely the reason why the composer of Mark’s gospel included it.

I struggle with how one reads this whole text in public worship and preaches on the broad sweep of the story. That’s Mark’s intention, certainly, and I’m sure it can be done. I am concerned that each of the stories has elements which will take captive the attention of the listening audience. It’s hard to get past “Mean Jesus” in the story of the Syrophoenician woman. I’m not sure we can read that text out loud without giving it some detailed attention and exposition.

The “Ephphatha” story has such power in advocating for the inclusion of those excluded by the able-ist assumptions and prejudices of our dominant culture. Certainly, the preacher can reflect on the inclusion of these two Gentiles who have additional boundary-breaking identities. But I worry that there is the danger of minimizing the pain and trauma of either or both characters and the communities they could represent.

“Back in my day” (ouch!), the “Ephphatha” story created the opportunity for a whole Sunday devoted to ministry with and for those with hearing impairments and speech impediments. Service ministry agencies provided resources and encouragement to preachers and congregations in that regard. In hindsight, there was much that was minimizing, colonizing, and condescending about that approach, but the effort was laudable and well-intentioned.

I say all that as a way of wondering if the preacher needs to pick one or the other of the texts for reading and interpretation on this Sunday. I know that takes a scalpel to texts that ought to be read together. But I lift up the concern for reflection, knowing that I don’t have to actually make such a decision this year. At this moment, I’m uncertain what I might do (context would likely make the decision for me). Perhaps by the end of the week I’ll have a clearer sense of that issue.

References and Resources

Hurtado, Larry. Mark (Understanding the Bible Commentary Series). Grand Rapids, MI.: Baker Books, 1989.

Smith, Mitzi. https://www.google.com/books/edition/Womanist_Interpretations_of_the_Bible/J2esDQAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=mark+7:24-30&pg=PA95&printsec=frontcover.

Wright, N. T. Mark for Everyone (The New Testament for Everyone). Westminster John Knox Press. Kindle Edition.