(Mark 7:24-37)
There is no love like the love of a mother for her children. At least, that is what I am told. I sometimes wonder, however, how true this is universally. With the many news stories about mothers who have done terrible things to their children in the name of love, I sometimes wondered if this statement was not flawed.
But I am not here to lead a discourse on the validity of Motherly love. What I do wish to reflect on is the love of one mother who dared challenge the very word of Jesus; a woman who so loved her children that she went up against the one who was looked upon as an authority in his claim to serving one’s own before serving others.
The first half of today’s Gospel reading describes such a woman. Jesus had left the place where he had been for some time and headed for the region of Tyre. Why did he go there? He went there to find some respite from the crowds that seemed to follow and find him wherever he went within the cities of the Israelite peoples. By heading into Tyre, he was entering a more Gentile inhabited area, a place where he anticipated being able to rest a while. Yet, as soon as he settled in a house there, a gentile woman, a citizen of Syrian-Phoenicia, came to him seeking his power and ability to drive out the evil, unclean spirit that possessed her daughter.
His response to her seems rather sharp and offensive, especially in present day cultural thinking. "Let the children be fed first, for it is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs." Do you understand the derogatory nature of that single statement? Do you comprehend the degrading insult this statement implies?
We have to understand what initiated such negative attitude among the people of Israel. According to some biblical commentators, there was a great deal of resentment among the Jewish farmers and the citizenry of these wealthy gentile cities. In times of food shortage or periods of crisis, the Jewish farmers resented the dependency of these city areas for the food that the Jews had produced being used to feed the gentile citizens before the Jewish people. The reference to "dogs" referred to the gentiles who took the food that would have essentially been given to the Children, i.e., the chosen of God.
Yet, this Phoenician woman took no offense at the words of Jesus; rather she took and turned his words around and made an even greater argument. "Sir, even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs." She takes the ambiguity surrounding the term "dog" and turns the demeaning metaphor to her own advantage. Though it would be wrong to feed the dogs food that the children need, everyone knows that dogs are permitted to eat what the children drop under the table.
Jesus was bested by this woman in her response. He acknowledges this, and in so doing, grants her, her original plea.
This story is not about a miracle that is done at a distance, though that is what occurs when the woman’s daughter is healed; but instead, it is the miracle of the overcoming of prejudice and boundaries that separate persons. It is the expression of God’s love in a comprehensible, human occurrence.
We humans are too "worldly centered" to know the full power of the love of God. Just as it is impossible to express in numerical representation the number 2 raised to the power of infinity, other than by symbols, so is it possible to express the greatness of God’s love in verbal representation other than in symbolic expressions. If we take the love of this Phoenician woman and multiply it by the power of infinity, we have the expression of God’s love. If we take any expression of love by any individual and apply the same process, we come to the same conclusion. God’s love is beyond the comprehension of our human understanding. Yet, from the incomplete comprehension that we are capable of seeing and understanding, we are given the ability to begin the journey toward loving as God loves. Each move we make toward expressing love to all of God’s creation with equal expression, the closer we become God-like.
The discomfort caused by this story challenges Christians to examine how they treat the "gentiles," the people from another racial or ethnic background, in their midst. Do the poor or persons from minority groups find themselves unwelcome in our churches? The teaching of both denominations with which we, as a local church are connected, proclaim that those who are believers must treat all peoples, not just those, who are like ourselves, with our best, and not just what is left over. We are to care for, and love those who are different, with the same fervor that we love and care for our own.
But, "Charity begins at home," some may cry out. "If I do not care for myself first, how am I to be expected to care for others?"
I will not deny the usefulness of this clique, but only to a point. How you care for yourself is ALSO how you must care for others. That is the very essence of the message delivered to us in this gospel story today. The love we have for ourselves, for our families and friends, is the same love that we must express toward those whom we neither know or understand. It is in expressing that love toward such as these that we will come to know and understand the ways of such individuals and peoples. What we proclaim as our rights, and principles, we must extend as the rights, and principles, of those with whom we come into contact, or have any kind of dealings. When our actions toward others deny this equality of existence, either we have to take ourselves to task and acknowledge this, and make the necessary changes in our attitudes and behaviors, or we will be challenged, as was Jesus by the Gentile woman, by using our very words against us. And then, the need to be un-judging, as was Jesus, will necessitate the acceptance of being humbled by our own actions. Perhaps then, we will know a little better, the meaning of the simple phrase, "Because of Love."
Amen.