First Presbyterian Church
September 8, 2024, Pentecost 16B
Crumbs
I’m not going to lie to you, folks. This is my least favorite sermon passage ever. I dare say I may never preach this passage again. But then again, I said that before, and somehow, I couldn't stay away from it.
After all, there is something of worth, and actually a lot for us to learn from this passage. There is healing that happens, and there is a remarkable show of faith that any person should be humbled to see. There is an opening up of Jesus’s ministry on earth that starts in this passage. In fact, one can argue that this passage is one of the most important turning points in this gospel to which the lectionary directs our attention this year.
Still, there is no way I can make verse 27 sound good.
Can I understand how it might happen to us humans? Certainly.
In The Screwtape Letters, C.S. Lewis has the senior demon Screwtape make the point to his mentoree that human beings, despite their reputation, can actually be quite patient and endure a great deal of stress and pressure. Rather, the great impatience, the great explosion and emotional eruption most often comes when we humans think the pressure has finally relented only to have some other unexpected imposition appear. Screwtape gives the example of an emergency room doctor or nurse who might endure a full shift of trauma after trauma, one patient after another, with no release and no break, and successfully hold it together throughout the entire shift. Then, on the way out of the hospital, that same doctor or nurse might explode with seeming rage at being tripped up by a stray dog.
Maybe you’ve known something of that experience.
I don’t necessarily want to say that’s what happens here, but there is something about the setup that makes such a scenario plausible, or at least plausible for us humans. Jesus has been through a lot since we last spent time in this gospel: the death of John the Baptist; the feeding of five thousand; the incident of the disciples’ panic on the Sea of Galilee and Jesus’s walking on water to save them; another round of healings of multitudes of people; and a big spat with a group of Pharisees from Jerusalem (we heard some of that in last week's reading). That’s a lot to cope with, and we humans might find the stress and pressure a challenge, but we deal with it because we see a light at the end of the tunnel – a break from the stress – and we hold out until then. For Jesus, this hoped-for release was an escape to the region of the city of Tyre, roughly in what we would call Lebanon today. Although there were some Jews there (presumably including the person at whose house he stayed), perhaps Jesus thought getting away to this primarily Gentile city region might offer some relief. Or so he might have thought, only to have this woman – this Syrophoenician woman, a term that conjures the most ancient enmities of the Hebrew people - somehow get into the house and threw herself at his feet to beg for healing for her daughter.
And, according to this line of reasoning, Jesus snapped, and fired off what was a pretty vile insult at her. To say “first let the children eat," as Jesus does initially, is to echo pretty standard Jewish thought of the time about the Messiah and salvation – the Jews would be “fed” first, then the rest of the world. It's a little out of step with our post-incarnation theology, but at the time it would make sense.
But to repeat the next line – “for it is not right to take the children’s bread and toss it to the dogs” – is just flat-out ugly. Think of the kind of ugly things a southerner might say about “Yankees” in, say, the 1860s or thereafter, or the kind of slurs many whites used against blacks in the Civil Rights era and before (and frankly after too). And that simply isn't a thing we can comprehend Jesus saying. Doesn't fit the image of Jesus we carry around.
To understand this, you need to understand that dogs were, in Jewish thought of the time, unclean. A good Jewish family of the time would be horrified at the idea of having a dog in the home at all, much less as “part of the family” as we regard them today. To speak of Gentiles as “dogs” (even in the diminutive form as this Greek word is, something like “puppies” or “doggies” but not exactly) was to call them something about as ugly and impure as possible – perhaps not quite on the level of pigs, but close.
You’ll find all manner of efforts to try to soften the blow in the theological commentary literature (I get reminded of this in turning to the commentaries a pastor uses as an aid to sermon preparation). To use such a reference, some will say, should be understood strictly metaphorically, and not as a direct insult to the woman. This is nonsense; members of any minority group aren’t going to care about whether the use of the n-word, or the word once used as the name of Washington’s NFL team, is strictly rhetorical or metaphorical, and neither should this woman be expected to understand being called a “dog” differently than if it were uttered at her by any other Jew.
Other commentators suggest that this is a “test” of the woman; Jesus is probing to see just what she understands about him or how far she is willing to go to have her daughter healed. This wouldn’t be out of character; Jesus engages in such exchanges with other interlocutors at other places in the gospels. Still, if I’d engaged in a “test” like this during my teaching career, that career would have ended a lot sooner than it did (and I'm pretty sure I wouldn't last long in ministry of any kind either). Furthermore, Mark didn’t really drop us any clues that this was the case; no “to test her, he said…” or “he said, with a chuckle…” or any such thing. Just the bald-faced words.
The latest such attempt to come along in the literature suggests that, rather than being poor, the woman was in fact quite well-off - part of a Gentile ruling class that lorded it over poor rural Jewish folk in the region surrounding the city. At the minimum, I guess, Jesus would at least be "punching up" at an oppressor rather than "punching down" at the oppressed, but it takes some spectacular rhetorical gymnastics to come to that conclusion. The words are simply there, and they are ugly.
What we can say, though, is that the Syrophoenician woman’s response is absolutely amazing. She takes the Jewish insult and reframes it for the Gentile setting. Unlike Jews of the time, those in the larger Greco-Roman world were somewhat inclined to take in dogs as domestic animals, “members of the family” – something like pets. One might think of the mosaic found in the ruins of the volcano-destroyed city of Pompeii, depicting a vigilant dog with the inscription "Cave Canem," or "beware of the dog." So while a Jewish family would have been horrified to find a dog in the house at all, a Gentile family might well have a pooch lapping up the crumbs from the table (or being slipped a little more than crumbs by children who don’t care for the meal; maybe you’ve seen that before…). So, from the completely submissive position this exchange has forced upon her, she responds – still calling him “sir” or “Lord” – that the dogs – she, her daughter – could still eat the crumbs the children left behind, and with this answer apparently blew Jesus’s mind. He sends her home with the word that the demon was gone from her daughter, not because of her faith specifically, but because of her answer.
This woman, it seems, has got ahold of something that others who have encountered Jesus may have missed. He is a powerful healer and exorcist of demons, to be sure; but her dogged persistence – pun intended – suggests that she gets that there is more to this Jesus, something besides just the ability to heal. It isn’t fleshed out, but there is some understanding that not many seem to have grasped, certainly not the disciples at this point.
We also can’t escape the fact that the story of Jesus takes a distinct turn at this point, a turn through Gentile territory. On his way through the primarily Gentile territory of the Decapolis, or “ten cities,” the crowds bring to him a man who was not only deaf, but also stricken with a speech impediment so that he could not speak language. All they hoped for was that Jesus might “place his hand on him,” but even with this Gentile Jesus goes far beyond – he takes the man aside, touching both ears and tongue (yes, also spitting), and uttered a word; instantly the man’s ears were opened and his tongue loosed. No hesitation about touching an “unclean” person, no hesitation about old purity laws that called spittle disgusting; just a deliberate and unequivocal act of healing.
Pretty good for crumbs under the table.
It’s a recurring theme in the gospel of Mark that Jesus’s ministry on earth was the ultimate manifestation of “the kingdom of God come near,” part of Jesus’s own words all the way back in the first chapter, at the beginning of his public ministry. What happens in this moment in Mark’s gospel reminds us just how uncontrollable, how unrestrained this in-breaking of God’s kingdom really is. It cares not one whit how we build human traditions atop divine revelations that come to obscure those divine revelations (remember the Pharisees from last week's reading). It does not respect our self-appointed boundaries. And it dares challenge us for not sharing our bread, or refusing those in the most need even the crumbs that end up under the table.
It was just a week ago that we came to this table here. It’s a table that reminds us of a Lord who gathered with his followers around tables large and small, teaching and feeding and healing even when at the end of his physical strength, finally giving them at one last table a gesture of bread and wine to hold in their hearts and minds and souls. When we come to this table, those tables speak to us, remind us of Jesus and bring us to the table with Jesus, not just to share this bread and this cup, but to share the Lord’s presence, all the blessings of the table, with all around us, the ones who need it most, even those desperately searching for the crumbs under the table.
Even from a moment that seems inexplicably ugly (no, I can't explain why Jesus said this) can come a moment of transformation, a moment of healing, a moment of kingdom-breaking-in that upends our expectations, unsettles our comfort zones, and undoes our human certainties. The words we often hear at the table, “the gifts of God for the people of God,” point us to this truth; we can’t keep those gifts to ourselves, no matter how much it upsets our expectations. The gifts of God are indeed for the people of God; indeed, for all the people of God.
Thanks be to God. Amen.
Hymns (from Glory to God: The Presbyterian Hymnal): #385, All People That on Earth Do Dwell; #203, Jesu, Jesu, Fill Us With Your Love; #610, O For a Thousand Tongues to Sing
