Changed from below

 

Mark 7: 24-37
New Ark United Church of Christ, Newark, DE
September 8, 2024

Photo looking up at a person with medium brown skin, wearing a red shirt and baseball cap, headphones, and a backpack, looking up at a clear blue sky.

Every now and then the gospel writers allow us to see Jesus not just as flesh and blood but being fully human. Not only loving, compassionate, sad, or forgiving, but angry, tired, cranky, impatient, and stubborn. Not only purposeful and determined, surrounded by crowds of people but wanting to hide and have some privacy, like a parent of young children scrambling for the bathroom and locking the door. In the only account of this story it sounds like he’s losing his cool, letting loose with what appears to be an ethnic slur, holding on to an old prejudice, backing up, trying again, and allowing a sigh to escape his lips as he loosens the tongue and opens the ears of a deaf man. A human being in all his imperfect glory. No more, no less, and without shame.



Being human is a sharp-toothed, double-edged sword. The range of what we are capable of, from exquisite beauty and self-sacrifice to horrible violence and cruelty, defies logic. In the Star Trek universe, Captain Kirk said to his half-human, half-Vulcan first officer, “Spock, you want to know something? Everybody’s human.” To which Spock replied, “I find that remark…insulting.” There are days we wonder, is this all we’re capable of, especially when we witness someone like Jesus behaving like the proverbial privileged male of the patriarchy.



Which is precisely why I love this story, because it doesn’t end there. The incarnation is not about humanity becoming perfect but about the Divine embracing humanity and humanity learning to embrace its divinity. It’s about wholeness and completeness, which we have confused with being able-bodied or some other kind of physical perfection. In the ancient world being disabled was linked with sin and brokenness, and healing was equated with forgiveness and restoration. But we know now that anyone, whether they are disabled or not, can live a whole life, that they are a complete person just as they are, and are entitled to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.



Yet in so many ways, we as a nation, moreover we as a human race, have far to go to live up to the ideals we say we believe. And this story of Jesus and the Syrophoenician woman and her daughter is one such example.



In fact, this story can be read in two different ways. The first is just as I first described it. There are some preachers younger than me who would say that the gospels can be summed up with the words “don’t be a jerk”. Actually, that’s a nice translation. But here we have, to all appearances, Jesus being kind of a jerk. I mean, I get it, he had come for his own people who were being squashed like a bug under the boot of the Roman Empire, but Jesus was usually pretty free about healing people. Just before this story, Jesus made a point of breaking the rules to say something about God. And yeah, he was trying to take a break and get away from folks. He could be sort of lax about his boundaries and self-care sometimes, so maybe he was trying to do better at that and came off a bit harsh.



But this woman, this mother isn’t having any of this. Even though Jesus has compared her status in the kindom to that of a dog, she embraces everything that makes the world devalue her, and she gives Jesus a piece of her mind. And perhaps for that reason alone, because she also came back at him like an equal, Jesus changes his mind.



Changing one’s mind is essentially what it means to repent. To turn around, to change direction, to turn toward God. Maybe Jesus remembered that *other* passage in Leviticus about loving one’s neighbor or the one about loving the stranger or traveler as yourself. After all, he is the foreigner here, far from home and behaving rudely at that. By taking the one-down position, being taken down a peg or two, he allowed them both to save face in healing her daughter, just by giving the word.



But there’s also another way this text can be read, and to be honest, it’s the way it should be read, especially if you read Greek. Which I do not, so I have to rely on biblical scholars who do.



Where the text says, “Now the woman was a Gentile”, the word that is used is hellenis, which means that she is a Greek woman or Hellenized. Combined with we are also told she is from Syria, these identities signify that more than likely she was among the more affluent of city dwellers. What is more, the bed that her daughter was lying on is more properly translated as “couch”, rather than the usual pallet or mat. This is a woman of means. So why would Jesus refer to her as a dog?



While Jesus is still using this word in a derogatory way, it takes on a different meaning when we learn the Greek. Jesus uses the word kunárion, which means “puppy” or “house dog”. A little dog that is pampered and well-fed.



The Jesus movement was for the poor, the disenfranchised, the marginalized, the forgotten, not for those who benefit from the excess of empire. Representative Ayanna Pressley said, “The people closest to the pain must always be closest to the power.” Jesus is enforcing a boundary of another kind. He doesn’t want to allow wealth to exploit what he’s doing.



In a way (and I say that to be gentle) Jesus is speaking to us, we who come in need of healing but with our own baggage of privilege and wealth. We want things to change, but we want to keep what we have. We don’t want to live in a world run by tech billionaires, but that is precisely what is happening above and below our radar. A small group of billionaires have been buying huge tracts of land in Solano County, California, about 78 square miles to the tune of $800 million, in order to build a new green city. Many residents are suspicious of the project, that it will only be for people who can afford to live there. It also raises the question, why not help an already existing city with affordable housing? It certainly doesn’t sound like kin-dom building, does it?



Yikes, you may be thinking, “This is the message for Rally Sunday? Has she completely lost her mind?” But remember why I love this story. Because the story doesn’t end there.



What we learn from this Gentile, this nameless Syrophoenician woman, is that she was willing to accept Jesus’ epithet of being a rich bitch, because she knew that all the money in the world wouldn’t get her what she wanted. It couldn’t give her or her daughter wholeness. It’s as if she’s saying to Black Jesus, disabled Jesus, queer Jesus, poor Jesus, “Yes, I am a privileged White cisgender heterosexual woman who has no place in this poor people’s campaign you’ve got going, but even I know that if I eat only the scraps from your table, I’ll get what I need.” She knows that in the Jesus order of things, she is on the bottom rung, and she’s willing to stay there and be changed from below.



Martin Luther King Jr., his Letter from Birmingham Jail, wrote, “We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor. It must be demanded by the oppressed.” If the marginalized are to be liberated, the exalted must be lowered, the rich sent away empty, the rulers brought down from their thrones, the proud scattered in the imagination of their hearts. We lower ourselves, change from below, not to abase ourselves or to look good in the eyes of our neighbors, but so that those who have been exploited and denied their rights and their humanity can feel safe among us.



When we use someone’s correct pronouns, we change from below.


When we divest of our wealth so others can truly live, we change from below.


When we read scripture from the perspective of someone not like the dominant culture, we change from below.


When we interrupt a sexist or ethnic joke, we change from below.


When we endeavor to be anti-racist, we change from below.


When we protect all children from hunger and violence, we change from below.


When we champion trans youth and adults, we change from below.


When we stay close to the earth and its creatures, we change from below.


When we strive to live what we say we believe, we change from below.



Thanks be to God. Amen.

Benediction - from The Book of Common Prayer


Go forth into the world in peace.
Be of good courage.
Hold fast to that which is good
and render to no one evil for evil.
Strengthen the faint-hearted;
support the weak; help the afflicted.
Honor all people.
Love and serve God,
rejoicing in the power of the Holy Spirit.
The grace of our Savior Jesus Christ be with us all. Amen.