Room at the Table

Mark 7:24-37

September 9, 2018

            Our dog Boris was a wonderful dog. He was gentle and sweet-tempered. Before I had human babies, he was my baby. I skipped a church meeting to stay home and finish the Snoopy cake I was making for his first birthday and birthday party. He was my kids’ first friend. When Phoebe had a sleepover, he let her and the other girls paint his nails without a whimper of protest. He was such a good and beloved dog; when he died we had a funeral for him. Along with our neighborhood friends, Sam and Sonja, we gathered in the backyard to say goodbye. We lifted up our prayers and memories, then at the end of the service Zach and Sam brought out their Nerf guns. They raised them up and gave Boris their version of a 21 gun salute. Zach told me they wanted to do that, because, “that’s what you do when someone important dies, and Boris was important.”

            Boris was a wonderful dog. I keep a framed picture of him in my den, because I will always love him and miss him. I loved him and I love him. But there was a moment in my life with Boris when I had to choose between him and Phoebe. As the saying goes, I was getting great with child, and Phoebe was an energetic two-year-old. We were outside on a spring day, maybe decorating the sidewalk with sidewalk chalk. I don’t fully remember. What I do remember is that we lived on a corner lot of two well-traveled streets. Phoebe decided to start toward one street, and Boris decided to run toward the other. Cars were coming. I chased Phoebe, which was not easy considering that I was, as I said, getting quite great with child. I hoped that Boris would have enough sense not to get hit by a car, but I didn’t hesitate to let him go while I went after my daughter. It was more important to save her. No matter how much I loved Boris, and I did and do. My child came first.

            You’ve probably already guessed that everything turned out just fine. I caught Phoebe. Boris stayed out of the street. Everyone was safe and well, and I have never questioned the choice I made. I would suspect that none of you are questioning that choice either. Of course, you had to run after Phoebe. Of course, you had to save your child first before you saved your dog, no matter how beloved he was to you. My reaction was the normal reaction of any parent, and that’s that.

            It’s all great, until we get to this passage in Mark’s gospel, and we read these words of Jesus to this Syrophoenician woman. It would seem that Jesus puts into words the choice that I made between my daughter and my dog.

            “Let the children be fed first, for it is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.”

            Say what? While I don’t question my choice on that day so long ago; it was a choice between an actual child and an actual dog. In this situation Jesus is comparing this woman, a human being, to a dog. There are loads of justifications proposed for why Jesus said this and how he said it; we’ll get to some of those. But it’s important to look first at what is happening in this story.

            Jesus made his way to Tyre and Sidon. This was Gentile territory. Tyre was not only a Gentile region, but it also had a history of great animosity toward the Jewish people. So not only was Jesus staying in a place that was “other,” he deliberately went to a town where he was the “other.” Culturally, he was the other in this situation. The text states that he did not want anyone to know that he was there. Perhaps he reckoned that if he stayed in a Gentile home, he would attract far less notice than if he stayed in a predominantly Jewish setting. But that was not to be. Even there in Tyre, his presence was not only noticed, but sought out.

            A woman heard about him. She had a daughter who was tormented by an unclean spirit, and she wanted Jesus to heal her child. She knew Jesus could heal her child. She went to where Jesus was staying and bowed down at his feet. She was Syrophoenician; about as “other” from Jesus as she could possibly be.

            “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.’”

            There it is. These are the words with which we must contend. We have to live with them, sit with them, wrestle with them. What is interesting is that the woman did not try to counter Jesus’ comparison of her to dogs. She didn’t argue that, although I would not have blamed her if she had. Instead, she turned his comparison on its head.

            “Sir, even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs.”

            Her answer and her unwavering faith and determination to see her daughter well reached Jesus. He answered,

            “For saying that, you may go – the demon has left your daughter.”

            If the woman spoke again, we do not have it recorded in this text. What we do know is that she left, and returned home to find that her daughter was lying on the bed, demon free.  

            As I said, we have to contend with these words of Jesus. And as I also said, there are a lot of justifications and explanations for why he said what he did, and what his words may have actually meant.

            One explanation that I have heard endlessly is that Jesus used a word for dog that meant “puppy,” or “beloved family pet.” He was not referring to a wild dog in the street. He was comparing her to a puppy. That may be true, but would you want to be compared to a puppy? If your daughter, your child, was sick and you were scared and anxious and desperate for her to be healed, is that the answer you would want? It wouldn’t be my first choice.

            Some have postulated that Jesus was not being unkind, but that it was a matter of timing. The time for the Gentiles would come, but not yet. It was not yet time for the Gentiles to be pulled into the promise of God Jesus brought. That promise was first for the children of Israel.

            Again, if this were your child, would you want to hear that it just wasn’t her turn yet?

Nope.

            Another theory to explain these words of Jesus is that he was testing her. He was testing her faith. Clearly her answer was the right one, and he told her so. She passed! She won the prize. Her daughter was healed. But at what other time does Jesus test someone’s faith before he heals them? He may have pushed people and questioned the people around him. He certainly spoke hard truths, and he wasn’t afraid to get angry if the situation warranted it. But when did he test someone before he healed them?

            Maybe what we have to do, and I have said this in other sermons on this text, is allow these words to be what they sound like. Jesus gave an unkind response to a woman in need. We don’t want to do this because it runs counter to our understanding of who Jesus was and is. But maybe that is exactly what happened.

            We believe that Jesus was both human and divine; fully human and fully divine. Wouldn’t that mean that Jesus’ had human responses, and human frailties? Jesus may have been tired and overwhelmed and needed a break. He went to this house hoping not to attract notice. But even there he was found. And he was found by this woman. Maybe in a moment of exhaustion, he responded to her the way we might: sharply, curtly and with a lack of patience and compassion.

            But she refused to be deterred. She refused to let it go or to slink away in shame. Her daughter needed healing, and she would do anything to make that happen. Maybe in this exchange, Jesus learned something from her. We have other examples in scripture of people arguing with God, questioning God, negotiating with God. We have other examples where people were determined to see God keep God’s promises. Maybe that’s what happened in this moment. Maybe Jesus learned something from her. Maybe he learned something about the scope of his own mission.

            Maybe even Jesus learned that there is plenty of room at the table, for us and for those we believe are “others.”

            Tuesday marks the 17^th anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. It is unfair to reduce the tragedy of that day and the reasons behind it to any one single factor. Yet even as I say that, it seems to me that we humans spend a lot of time believing that there is limited room at the table. September 11^th showed the terrible, destructive consequences of that thinking taken to its extreme.

            If Jesus could learn that there is room at the table, couldn’t we? If Jesus could learn that healing one does not take away from the healing of the other, couldn’t we? If Jesus could learn that the table is big enough and the world is wide enough for all of God’s children to find a place, couldn’t we? Couldn’t we finally learn that there is room at the table for all? May we learn that lesson; may we learn it soon. Amen.