“Faith that Opens”
Mark 7:24-37
Can I just say how glad I am that these stories are in our Bible?
Yes, the first one is hard, even painful, to hear. It gives us a glimpse of Jesus at his exhausted, resentful, hangry, and small-minded worst. It suggests that the Word Made Flesh was as human as any of us—which is to say, someone who sometimes just wanted—needed, even—to be left alone, someone who was not always at the top of his game, someone who could be irritable, and, at least this once, dismissive and rude to the point of sounding racist.
It’s not a pretty picture. It’s not a good look on you, Jesus.
Some critics of Christianity might use this story to attack our devotion. “Why in the world would anyone want to follow this guy?” they might say. Even we might wonder.
There may well have been defenders of the faith down through the centuries who were concerned that the story of Jesus’ encounter with the Syrophenician—that is, non-Jewish—woman would so disgust people that the institutional church would falter. Or that spiritual seekers would be so turned off by this glimpse of Jesus that they would cross the Jesus way off their list and keep on looking elsewhere for a connection to the Holy.
History, they say, is written—or re-written—by the victors. School curricula are designed and approved by those who want to control the narrative and keep certain kinds of people in line. Even now, more than 150 years after the Emancipation Proclamation and some 60 years after the Civil Rights bill became law, there are those who would limit discussion of slavery and segregation and prohibit the teaching of African American history. They claim to be protecting white schoolchildren from feeling bad about themselves and their history.
Well.
And yet, in the Christian canon, this story has stood the test of time. Text editors, the earliest church fathers, and subsequent defenders of the faith could easily have ensured that it would never appear in our scriptures. No one would have been the wiser. Instead, they decided to include the story of Jesus mistreating the unnamed but bold Gentile woman—not only in the Gospel of Mark, but also in the Gospel of Matthew.
Why?
Why would they keep alive a story that makes most Jesus-followers cringe? Why wouldn’t they choose to censor a story that makes Jesus look . . . well . . . bad?
I can’t say for sure, of course. But I’m guessing they saw at least two valuable lessons in this story.
First, there is the beautiful embodiment of what faith looks like, as lived out by the Syrophenician woman.
True faith, this story suggests, has compassion for others and advocates for the vulnerable.
Jesus has gone far away, outside of Israel, to get some much-needed rest. Needing a retreat, he goes to a private home. But the Syrophenician woman, whose daughter has been suffering for who knows how long, doesn’t miss a beat. She is on a mission, and she will not be stopped.
True, life-changing faith is also bold—willing to take risks and cross lines of propriety, separation, and diminishment.
The mother of a sick girl had at least two strikes against her: She wasn’t Jewish, and she was a woman. For a woman on her own to approach a man was scandalous enough, but she was a Gentile woman approaching a Jewish man. On top of all that, she had all but stalked someone who had made clear that he wanted to be left alone.
And, based on the actions of this loving and bold woman, it seems that true faith does not take “no” for an answer. True faith persists in seeking what it needs, but it does so with humility.
Not only did the woman not let Jesus’ harsh name-calling deter her, she used it in such a way that it made her seem both non-threatening and worthy of receiving what she had asked for.
And this compassionate, bold, and persistent faith of the Syrophenician woman opened Jesus up. Her faith was not strident or disrespectful. She did not grovel, but rather acted in fierce love, dignity, and with the assurance of knowing her cause was just. And in that way her faith opened Jesus’ eyes to see her worth. She opened his mind to think differently. She opened his heart to her daughter’s plight. And, in the process, she opened an entirely new chapter in Jesus’ life and ministry.
Jesus had already, of course, threatened the religious and political authorities and won the love of the poor and sick by making a practice of breaking boundaries. He ate with sinners and tax collectors. He spoke with and honored women. He touched those deemed “unclean,” empowered the powerless, and healed the sick on the sabbath. He understood these scandalous, inclusive, compassionate actions to be central to his mission of love. He knew this was God’s way.
But this intrusive Gentile woman? She blew his mind. She helped him to see, far more clearly than ever before, that the realm of God is for all people. That God’s love doesn’t leave anyone out.
And so it was that when Jesus left that place, he was a changed—more God-like—man. So changed and healed was Jesus by the Spirit acting through a double outsider that our scriptures say he returned to the Sea of Galilee by way of Sidon.
Now friends, I’ve looked at the maps, and what we all need to understand is that going to Sidon from Tyre to get back to the Galilee is a whole lot like going to Boston from Amherst by way of Albany. It’s the opposite direction. It makes no sense!
Unless, that is, a person’s heart and mind have been so fully opened by the Spirit of Love that there is no longer such a thing as “out of the way.” Unless a person’s understanding of how God’s love works—and through whom—has been blown so wide open that he can’t wait to take that love to the very people he had foolishly thought might be left out.
And so Jesus traveled even deeper into Gentile territory and became more fully who he was created to be—God’s love and healing and justice with skin on, taking the liberating and empowering love of God to all people, especially those on the margins.
Because the only thing just as important as sharing God’s love and goodness with every kind of person and all creation, is understanding that God’s Spirit of Love can come to us and open us up through any and every kind of person, and through all creation.
The Syrophenician woman taught Jesus both of those lessons, and the story of Jesus’ rebuke and her faith—a seemingly horrible story included our scriptures—offers them both to us.
And it invites us to consider the ways in which our hearts and minds, our traditions and ways of doing things need to be opened up and changed up. This story invites us to remember that the Spirit of love and grace and power can work in and through anyone, including—and maybe, especially—those who aren’t like us, those we look down on, those we despise and sometimes mistreat. In that way, the story also invites us to consider how the Spirit might be trying to heal us through the people who annoy us and the situations that challenge us.
Beloveds, how might the Spirit be challenging us to “be opened” through the humanitarian crisis in Gaza and the seemingly never-ending cycles of violence both against and by Israel? How might the Spirit be challenging us to “open up” through yet another horrific and heartbreaking school shooting? How can the Spirit work through the climate crisis to more more fully open our hearts, our minds, our eyes, our ears, and our very souls to the life-changing, world-turning, division-bridging power of love?
If we truly believe that God wants justice and peace for all, if we truly believe that God wants safety, healing, and wholeness for all people and all creation, shouldn’t our faith be as compassionate, bold, fearless, and persistent as that of the Syrophenician woman’s?
That kind of faith opens the way for amazing things to happen. That kind of faith heals divisions and promotes reconciliation and new ways of thinking and being.
“Be opened,” Jesus said to the man who couldn’t hear.
“Be opened,” he says to us.
