Sermon from December 31, 2000
Last September, I shared with you "A Jewish Statement on Christians and Christianity" that had been published in a full-page ad in the Baltimore Sun (9-10-00). Distinguished Jewish leaders from the English world acknowledged "a dramatic and unprecedented shift in Jewish and Christian relations" for the better. Those leaders offered "eight brief statements about how Jews and Christians may relate to one another." I want to use one of those statements to build another context in which we Christians might hear the Gospels of our New Testament more clearly.

The statement says: "Jews and Christians worship the same God. Before the rise of Christianity, Jews were the only worshippers of the God of Israel. But Christians also worship the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; creator of heaven and earth. While Christian worship is not a viable religious choice for Jews, as Jewish theologians we rejoice that, through Christianity, hundreds of millions of people have entered into relationship with the God of Israel."

Let me take one sentence out of that statement for reflection. I believe it will contribute toward our ability to hear the New Testament more nearly as the first Christians heard it. That in turn may prove to have power in our present circumstances. Those Jewish theologians agreed that "Christian worship is not a viable religious choice for Jews." On one hand, we Christians want to respond first by saying, "But all the first Christians were Jews. If Christian worship was a viable religious choice for them, might it not be a viable religious choice for present day Jews as well?"

On the other hand, there were many Jews, almost certainly a clear majority of Jews in the first century who agreed with their 21st century brethren. Chrisitan worship was not a viable religious choice for them either. The conflict that followed in the first century was a conflict between Jews who believed in Jesus and those who did not. That conflict found its way on to the pages of the New Testament.

As I continue to read the Gospel of Mark, I am trying to listen to it with that conflict between Jew and Jew in mind. What were the Christian Jews who wrote and distributed the Gospel of Mark trying to say to persuade their non-Christian fellow Jews to change their minds about Jesus, and what might their fellow Jews have been listening for? We should also remember that the barriers between Jews and Jesus then were not nearly as great as they are today. Today's text in Mark offers an occasion for us to try this experiment in listening. Let's listen in on Mark 7:24-30.

Verse 24: Jesus left that place (where He had discussed the human heart as the source of evil), and went to the vicinity of Tyre. He had to leave Israel to go to Tyre. He had entered Gentile country. There He entered a house and did not want anyone to know it. I am so glad Mark said that about Jesus. Matthew and Luke left it out. Once again, Mark presents Jesus to us in remarkably personal terms that we understand all too well – unless of course you have never felt like you wanted to disappear from earth for a while. We have also probably exeperienced what the rest of verse 24 says Jesus experienced: yet he could not keep his presence secret.

Now, being outside Israel was not unusual. Jesus lived in Galilee, often called Galilee of the Gentiles. Jews living there had more casual contact with Gentiles than Jews living in Jerusalem. So far, so good; but what happened next stepped outside the box. Verse 25: In fact, as soon as she heard about him, a woman whose little daughter was possessed by an evil spirit came and fell at his feet. It is common courtesy not to barge in on other people's privacy, but for a woman in that culture to do it stepped way over the line. And that was not the worse of it. Verse 26 says, The woman was a Greek, born in Syrian Phoenicia.

I can imagine many non-Christian Jews and even some Christian Jews hearing this story and feeling offended at the liberties taken by that brazen, gentile woman. I can also imagine their wondering how Jesus was going to handle her "unclean" intrusion into His privacy. Keeping one's distance from Gentiles was a matter of loyalty to the covenant among observant Jews of the period. The rest of verse 26 adds to the tension. She begged Jesus to drive the demon out of her daughter. What would Jesus do? His response in verse 27 would not disappoint even the strictest of observant Jews.

"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 their dogs." Ouch! That hurts. Speaking as one of the "unclean" Gentiles, I have to say that I don't like being called a dog. Did Jesus really think that way about Gentiles? Or was He just using the Jewish party line with the woman to see how she would respond? In her shoes I suspect that would be a difference without distinction. What He said put her in her place, and she knew it.

Does it bother you for Jesus to have spoken like that? If so, my first response is to say, "Go ahead, let it bother you." The bother we feel may help to undermine the sentimental picture of Jesus we entertain in our imaginations. His abrasive comment to the woman challenges that picture. Somehow I think He would prefer that we be upset with Him than to have highly idealized, highly unrealistic thoughts of what His personality was like.

What matters to our understanding of this episode is that non-Christian Jews, and some Christian Jews, who heard this story, were not bothered at all by what He said to the woman. They cheered. Jesus was maintaining the boundaries necessary for the integrity of God's covenant people. The turning point in the story comes with the Syro-Phoenician woman's response to Jesus' cutting remark. His remark may have put her in her place, but that did not take away her wits or her courage to answer.

Verse 28: "Yes, Lord," she replied, "but even the dogs under the table eat the children's crumbs." "Go ahead, call me a dog; but let's take that idea a step further. How do dogs behave around people who are eating? Think about it. I'm glad to be a dog, so long as I can be a dog under your table and eat what falls from your table."

The cunning in this story almost takes your breath away. As soon as that woman has spoken, the sympathies of those who heard the story would all be on the woman's side. You can almost imagine some of even the strictest, observant Jews admiring the woman. You almost forget that she was a Gentile and focuse on the fact that she was a human being, who had her quick wits about her when it counted most. Verse 29 says she certainly impressed Jesus.

Then he told her, "For such a reply, you may go; the demon has left your daughter." This is a most subversive story. It subverts by the way it shifts our sympathies around. When Jesus for all practical purposes calls the woman a dog, He seems to fuel the powerful passions that divided Jew and Gentile and sometimes divided Christian Jew from non-Christian Jew.

If you are an observant Jew, you cheer His tough line with a brazen Gentile and a woman at that. If you are a Christian Jew who sees Israel's calling as different from that of your fellow Jew, you are perplexed. If you are a Gentile hearing this, your response may range from hurt to anger. All the passions that have swirled around Jews from time immemorial erupted when Jesus called the woman a dog.

Then, she uttered her immortal sentence, and Jew and Gentile alike felt their sympathies shift to the woman's side. The intelligence and humility of her answer slipped past the powerful passions of the moment, and for one shining moment the vision of a new world insinuated itself into the darkness of old antipathies. However grudgingly, even inveterate enemies felt something like joy, when verse 30 said, She went home and found her child lying on the bed, and the demon gone. And the woman, whose name we never learn, disappears from the story; but she has become a permanent part of the story of God's redemptive love toward all mankind.

Her story also furthers Mark's purpose in chapters 5-8 of His Gospel of revealing the true identity of Jesus of Nazareth. One category served to label His identity. He was a prophet, standing in the tradition of the great prophets of Israel. Many Jews, Christian and non-Christian, would hear this story and remember the Old Testament stories of other prophets who left Israel and reached out to Gentiles. They would remember 1 Kings 17, which tells of how the great Elijah ministered to a Gentile widow, herself also of Tyre. They would remember 2 Kings 5, which tells of how the great Elisha ministered to a Gentile military commander named Naaman.

Jesus did the works of a prophet. He thought of Himself as a prophet. He spoke prophetic words like Isaiah of old. Now, He has ministered to a Gentile as to a Jew, like Elijah and Elisha of old. Whatever else we may need to say of Him, Mark teaches us to view Jesus as we would view Isaiah, Elijah and Jeremiah.

With this Jewish perspective fresh in our minds I would like now to offer a response to the current idea that "Christian worship is not a viable religious choice for Jews." Properly understood, that means that no one but Gentiles can become Christians.

The idea current in New Testament times was that Christian worship was not a viable religious choice for gentiles. Properly understood, that meant that no one but Jews could become Christians. Those mutually exclusive conclusions were both Jewish conclusions. How might we explain this?

I believe that behind neither of those conclusions is primarily a hostility toward Jesus. The more fundamental issue then and now is Jewish identity. What does it mean to be a Jew? There is intense debate among Jews about the answer to this question. We Christians need to be especially sensitive about this issue and also about the coercive, Christian behavior toward Jews in the past that ignored this matter of Jewish identity.

A potential talking point between Jews and Christians today may be that it is possible for Jews of all kinds to carry on the important discussion of Jewish identity and still leave room for Jews who find Christian worship a viable choice for them. The New Testament record justifies that, as do the unprecedented numbers of Jews today who have become followers of Jesus. If the new dialogue that has recently opened between Christians and Jews goes in this direction, it will require great patience on both sides.

The story of Jesus and the Syro-Phoenician woman points to another recurrent theme of the Gospel of Mark. The woman's answer has great power, and if we are not careful, we might think that Jesus exorcised the demon from her daughter because of her cleverness. Something more fundamental than cleverness was at work that day. What drove the woman to interrupt His holiday and counter His abrasive reply was her faith.

She believed Jesus could cure her daughter. That faith in Him overcame gender issues, overcame racial issues, overcame language that most people would construe as curt and unkind. In the language of the Apostle James she showed her faith by what she did. She believed in Him and so persisted in her quest. It fits with everything else we have been reading in the Gospel of Mark.

When Jesus spoke to the terrified disciples in the calm after the storm, He asked them, "Do you still have no faith?" When He sought to comfort the woman whom He had healed from chronic bleeding, He said to her, "Daughter, your faith has healed you. Go in peace and be freed from your suffering." When the brokenhearted synagogue ruler got word of his daughter's death, Jesus said to him, "Don't be afraid; just believe." The new way of being Israel focused on faith, and in doing so opened the door for Gentiles to enter into the new way of being Israel.

And there is something else here in Mark seven. The first 23 verses of this chapter showed Jesus teaching, like a prophet of old, where evil really comes from. In verses 21-23 Jesus said, "From within, out of men's hearts, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, greed, malice, deceit, lewdness, envy, slander, arrogance and folly. All these evils come from inside and make a man 'unclean.'" This is Jesus' angiogram of the human heart. It is not a pretty picture. Hot, passionate evils such as sexual immorality, adultery and murder jostle cold, calculating evils such as greed and envy.

He was trying to show us why religious rituals alone have no power to deal with the power of evil in the human heart. We have no more power to free our hearts from that evil than the Syro-Phoenician woman could free her daughter from demonic power. The story of the woman does tell us where liberation comes from. It comes only from Jesus in response to our faith in Jesus Christ, and the woman's experience with Jesus tells us something indispensable about our faith.

She came to Him in desperation. Her every act – interrupting Jesus, falling at His feet, begging Him to heal her daughter, persisting in the face of His abrasive answer – every act bore witness to the desperation in her heart. Desperation about the evil that threatens our lives can stir up faith within us. Such faith persists in the face of repeated obstacles. Haven't you noticed that pattern throughout Mark's Gospel? Have you noticed it in yourself? Do you ever feel desperate that evil in some form might overwhelm you and dominate your life and perhaps ruin your life? The tenderness of God does not warrant the presumption of man, but it responds to our faith, which is often fueled by desperate circumstances, none more desperate than the evil of our own hearts.

Something else in Jesus' treatment of this woman merits attention. He was tough with her in a way that we can seldom be tough with another person. But in the end He ignored the barriers of gender, race and personal inconvenience and reached out to the marginalized woman whom other Jews would have ignored.

Let me be mundane about this. When I greet people who are new to BVBC, I often ask if they know anyone here. If not, I often say, "That can be a scary experience." I hope our compassion for the marginalized extends to the most desperate people on earth. I hope it begins and is sustained in how sensitively we look for and welcome the guest within our gates. I wish every guest here got a warm welcome, and that guests who return would find six or seven people who over a few months' time knew their names and some of what matters most to them in the world. That would make us distinctly biblical.