Many, if
not most, of us are familiar with the Syro-Phoenician woman.
Her story appears twice in the Gospels, Mark
and Matthew, and because they are a little different, I want to focus on Mark …
Mark 7: 24-30 (NIV)
24 Jesus
left that place and went to the vicinity of Tyre.[a] He entered a house and did not want
anyone to know it; yet he could not keep his presence secret. 25 In
fact, as soon as she heard about him, a woman whose little daughter was
possessed by an impure spirit came and fell at his feet. 26 The
woman was a Greek, born in Syrian Phoenicia. She begged Jesus to drive the
demon out of her daughter.
27 “First
let the children eat all they want,” he told her, “for it is not
right to take the children’s bread and toss it to the dogs.”
28 “Lord,”
she replied, “even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs.”
29 Then
he told her, “For such a reply, you may go; the demon has left your
daughter.”
30 She
went home and found her child lying on the bed, and the demon gone.
Yes, I find it problematic that Jesus was arguably
guilty of a less than pastoral response to the situation of this woman. But at the end of the day, he listened.
One of the
great problems in our current world is that it is our normative practice to listen
in order to reply rather than to truly understand. Bonhoeffer writes: “The first service that one owes to others in
the fellowship consists in listening to them. Just as love to God begins with
listening to His Word, so the beginning of love for the brethren is learning to
listen to them.”
Jesus listened the first time and gave a
problematic, not particularly loving reply – he didn’t understand, it was momentarily
outside his feasible solution space. Did
he think he did not owe this outcast a deeper debt of listening?
But instead of castigating him as an
unfeeling, moronic, anti-Syrian, anti-Phoenician, anti-Greek speaking
misogynist, this unnamed heroine invited Jesus to expand his ministry horizon
beyond. In the words of Mark Miller, she
invited him to “draw the circle wide, draw it wider still … ”
And Jesus did, Jesus did draw the circle wide,
wider still … and instead of replying that she was a two time loser with
non-Jew and non-man tattooed on her forehead, he actually listened to her and
displayed God’s love, God’s Grace.
Mark’s red letter words are a little different
than Matthew’s. Jesus says to the
unnamed woman “For such a reply, you may go” it is her logos – which the NIV translates as reply – that got his attention.
Logos is a word used over 300 times in the
Greek bible. Our most familiar rendering
of it is from John 1 where we are told the word/logos was with God and the word/logos
was God. But here, the word/logos changes
the very heart of God, through the human manifestation of God actually
listening, in love, in Grace.
"For such a word, you may go ..."
I have to wonder a little if the reason Jesus
listened was at least in part due to the negative critique he had just given the
disciples. Jesus had just told the
disciples that what pollutes one is not what is outside of us, but rather what
is inside of us.
Mark 7:
20b: ‘He [Jesus] went
on: “What comes out of a person is what defiles them. 21 For
it is from within, out of a person’s heart, that evil thoughts come— [fornication],
theft, murder, 22 adultery, greed, malice, deceit,
lewdness, envy, slander, arrogance and folly. 23 All these
evils come from inside and defile a person.”
Sounds like to me that this unnamed woman
advised Jesus that his own words coming from deep inside Jesus were defiling him – here arguably arrogance.
But instead of retreating into a world of
privilege, Jesus, listened. He didn’t
attempt to come up with some clever, mind numbing, self serving, retaining the
old position, reply. Jesus listened, and
then he complimented her for the word she spoke back to him and granted her
wish.
How often are we in the position of
Jesus? Invited to hear God’s word in a
way that is new, exciting, and refreshing, and instead, we retreat into our own
arrogance, our own hubris, and we endeavor to reply from our privilege?
I love this interaction. I love it.
This non-person times two in Jesus world –
woman, non-Jew – weighs the scales of the dialogue, and she gives back to Jesus
what he had just given the disciples – a righteous critique.
And Jesus after getting his answer righteously
chewed up and given back to him, responds in Grace, reminding the woman that it
was her word – her logos – her use of
his words – her use of the logos that
is Jesus – that won the day.
If “Jesus wept” is the shortest passage most
people can quote from the bible, I wonder if this might not be summarized as
“Jesus listened.”
I think the challenge for us in the Church is
to be listeners like the second Jesus here in this Mark 7 passage. We can retreat into tradition, history, and
rules, just to name three things, ad
nauseum (and yes there are an infinite number of retreats here) and engage
in an enormous exercise in missing the point.
The point of all of us being here today is to
help deploy resources that make the basilea
– kingdom, kin’dom, reign, pick the one that works for you -- of God just a
little bigger, a little larger, a little more Jesus like, surely a little more
Syro- Phoenician woman like. I think
many if not most of us can recite or at least paraphrase the United Methodist
mission statement but we must stay focused on the why, how and where of our
collective community task: Our why echoes
from John 3: 16 about why God gave us the gift of Jesus -- love – love for the world. How we reflect that love is transformation
(our what), and our where is the local church.
In our listening, are we the first Jesus,
ready to see things the way they had always been seen, or the second Jesus,
new, creative, fresh, drawn from the very words of God. The choice is our – how do we listen?
Selah,
Pastor Dennis
