Student and Prophet
Mark 7:24-30
Rev. Dr. Mary Alice Mulligan
The Gospel of Mark packs a huge amount of information, Christological claims, and theology into 16 short chapters. Although the shortest Gospel, Mark is full of healing stories, so we sense Jesus’ serious commitment to making people whole. Curiously however, there are only two times when women speak in the entire Gospel of Mark. One occurs three days after the crucifixion when the women followers say to each other, “Who will roll the stone away from the tomb for us?” We hear the other one today. One sentence spoken by a non-Jewish woman directly to Jesus, with a powerful result. If we listen carefully, we receive a stop-action glimpse of a decisive moment when Jesus steps across a threshold into a new understanding, a new understanding of his identity as Messiah and of God’s desire for wholeness for all the Earth. From the 7th chapter of the Gospel of Mark, listen for the Word of God.
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.
Many of us especially treasure the scene, seeing a mother’s love for her child overcoming fear, gender barriers, and religious protocol to throw herself at the feet of Jesus, begging for her child’s healing. But the response indicates Jesus is not much used to interacting with gentiles in a personal way. His focus is on his own people, the children of Abraham. But when Jesus rudely rejects her, the woman goes toe-to-toe with him in a religious disagreement. And Jesus is persuaded. Biblical scholar Mary Ann Tolbert points out, the Syrophoenician woman “is the only character in the entire Gospel of Mark to best Jesus in an argument.”[i] We should also notice, the woman throwing herself at Jesus’ feet pleads for her daughter’s wholeness. The daughter does not ask for healing. And we might also notice another most curious unasked for change happens to Jesus. And we rightly can call it a healing, too.
Jesus seems quite human. In the scene here, Jesus appears a normal guy. You might have expected Jesus to be nicer to a desperate mother, even if she isn’t Jewish. But he is surprisingly rude. He calls the gentile woman and her seriously ill daughter – dogs! Only Jews are children of God. You wonder why he is so mean. Older interpretations said he snapped at her because he was weary. More recent scholars disagree. Remember, Christians claim Jesus is “fully human and fully divine.” Every human grows and learns. Jesus learned to walk, to eat with a spoon; he became a student and learned to read. Humans get new ideas, often from being corrected by someone else. Just earlier, Jesus warned others to beware of hypocrisy.[ii] Remember last Sunday? “You abandon the commandments of God and hold to human tradition.” (7:8) Now suddenly Jesus is the one who needs teaching.[iii] One scholar, in fact, calls it a “’conversion’ moment for Jesus… [realizing] he has lost sight of the point of his mission.”[iv] The mother’s argument gets Jesus back on track. “In light of her words,” another scholar explains, “Jesus does not simply have second thoughts; his vision and vocation are radically reoriented.”[v] He reconnects to God’s message of unconditional mercy, remembering that it is “unconditional.” You don’t have to be male or Jewish or poor to receive God’s welcome. Divine healing is for everyone, even when the human side of Jesus momentarily doesn’t like such universal welcome. But he does come around, just as any good student does when you realize someone else’s point is correct. As difficult as it is for humans to learn a hard lesson, Jesus opens up and grows. Quite an unusual image of Jesus as a humble student. You see him looking quite human.
It’s the woman who is prophetic. The gentile mother speaks for God; she is the prophet. As a religious Greek, a Phoenician from Syria, she may have been quite wealthy, but circumstances put her in a miserable fix. Her child is incurable. She is ready to try anything, even a wandering Jewish miracle worker. When Jesus refuses her, saying divine food is for God’s children, she expands the idea, arguing she and her daughter may be unacceptable to Jesus, but they are acceptable to God. Like prophets before her, she speaks God’s sharp truth to correct human misconceptions which try to limit God’s providence. She has heard of Jesus as teacher and healer. Her faith in him rests in her belief that God’s mercy is larger than even he knows. She believes Jesus manifests God’s overflowing, abundant mercy. But she argues that even when it is supposed to be limited to one group, God’s generosity cannot be contained. Mercy might just get served up on a plate for the Jews, but God’s mercy is limitless. It bubbles over, spilling off the plate. So the woman asks, since mercy is spilling all over, can’t the people it falls on receive it? Quite a pointed and stubborn argument. And in the end, she opens Jesus’ mind to see his own ministry is bigger. She is unconventional, intelligent, and morally correct. No wonder she is able to turn the Master’s distain into agreement.[vi] She becomes a messenger for God’s message, showing: “God is not unchanging or unresponsive but compassionate and merciful.”[vii] She may remind us of Amos and other O.T. prophets who boldly spoke God’s message even in the face of those who could hurt them. This woman courageously argues with the very one whose help she is begging for. She is one of those marvelous people whose gentile faith “calls forth a larger vision of God’s mission to the Gentiles.”[viii] Even Gentiles deserve divine nourishment. She speaks powerful words on God’s behalf. People of faith give characters like that mother a special name: prophet. The gentile woman is a prophet of God.
So, here’s the point. If we want to follow Jesus, we have to grow. We must allow our tidy conceptions of God and even our role in God’s plan to stretch beyond our imaginations. Jesus models a willingness to accept a theological shift in thinking, to expand our understanding of how God is active on Earth, even actively using us. That mother didn’t just teach Jesus something new about God; she taught him something new about how God was using him. Such stretching is not easy for any of us.
Some retired people commit to learning a new discipline every year – like a new language one year, ball room dancing the next, calculus the next. The theory is, taking up something new keeps their minds and bodies from aging as quickly. Certainly we should be as willing to combat aging in our spiritual lives. Shouldn’t we be open to new ideas of God? Especially if those ideas include new ways for us to be involved in furthering God’s magnificent purposes on Earth? Jesus lived 30 years disregarding gentiles. His change of attitude was surely difficult, but we gentiles are pleased his understanding expanded. Of course, new ideas and ways of growing in the faith will be difficult for us, too, but that’s why we have each other, to encourage and support and call us to our better Christian selves. Churches can do amazing things when they catch a new vision of where God is calling them.
One church, eager to welcome more families, agonized over the decision to change the time of worship. They loved starting the day worshipping at 9:30, Sunday school at 10:45, and out in time to get to the cafeteria before the Methodists. But finally, they admitted, families with children cannot (or don’t want to have to) get to worship by 9:30. One couple did leave in a snit when the time changed, but within two years of 10:30 worship, 6 or 8 children were coming forward for the children’s sermon most Sundays. They changed to actualize the plan they sensed God had for them.
As St. Andrew Church moves forward with our strategic planning, we want everyone to be involved – in filling out the survey, in attending conversations about our present and our future, and in planning next steps. We need everyone’s participation if we are to receive all the information. If we are open to new ideas about how God’s mercy might be dripping off the plate and spilling all over the place, who knows what amazing healing might happen through our willingness to let God be God? As long as we admit, if we follow Jesus, we will change.
Jesus was fully human, so we can be sure change wasn’t easy for him. And I imagine it was not easy for the woman in her desperation to become a prophet, showing Jesus a new understanding of God and a fuller way to understand himself. So change probably won’t be easy for us either, but we believe Jesus is among us, empowering us to stretch and grow and follow him more closely. And right here, in this place and online, all around us are those God is calling – some to be prophets and teachers and encouragers and singers and listeners and speakers – and our future is unfolding beyond what we can ask or imagine.
[i] Mary Ann Tolbert, “Mark,” in Women’s Bible Commentary, 356.
[ii] Mark 2:23-28; 3:1-6
[iii] Cf. Tolbert’s ideas on p. 356.
[iv] Loye Bradley Ashton, “Theological Perspective,” Feasting on the Word, Year B, vol. 4, 46.
[v] Dawn Ottoni Wilhelm, “Homiletical Perspective,” Feasting on the Word, Year B, vol. 4, 49.
[vi] See Tolbert’s discussion, 356.
[vii] Ottoni Wilhelm, 49.
[viii] Ottoni Wilhelm, 49. Remember his own people’s lack of faith limited his acts of power (6:4-6)