18 Proper B

Charlotte Collins Reed
Christ Episcopal Church
September 9, 2012

                                                               18 Proper B

When I was a little girl, my mother used to say "If you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all." Jesus seems to need to hear those words from my mother this morning. When the Syrophoenician woman comes to Jesus, begging him to heal her little daughter of an unclean spirit, Jesus’ response can only be considered rude. Jesus says to the woman seeking his help "Let the children be fed first, for it is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs." In the first century, dogs were not beloved house pets. Jesus would be out of line to compare the woman to a domesticated dog. But the dogs Jesus refers to were wild and dirty animals, that scrounged for food and were chased away from human company. Jesus is placing the woman beyond the margins of human society, which doesn’t sound at all like the Jesus who worked to make the outcasts insiders and said that whoever is last shall be first.

Perhaps Jesus should study the passage from James which we heard this morning. James writes "Has not God chosen the poor in the world to be rich in faith and to be heirs of the kingdom that he has promised to those who love him?" In this passage, James condemns the very behavior we see from Jesus this morning. Jesus is distinguishing between the children and the dogs, and the Syrophoenician woman falls in the later category. If this was one of the disciples, who, in Mark’s gospel, consistently misunderstand who Jesus is, that would be one thing. But this is Jesus.

At the end of the story, after Jesus has healed both the child of the Syrophonecian woman and the deaf man, I am left with two basic questions. The first concerns Jesus’ rudeness. Why Jesus is so rude to the Syrophoenician woman when she seeks his help. I can find no satisfactory answer to that question. The commentaries suggest that Jesus was testing her, or that Jesus had an ah-ha moment in the middle of the conversation and realized that he was sent to the Gentiles as well as the Hebrew people. Neither of those explanations are an adequate excuse for Jesus’ rudeness. Quite frankly, I think we have to let go of that question and just live with the fact that Jesus was rude. The second, and more important question, concerns the meaning of this story. What are we supposed to take from a story in which Jesus does actually heal the daughter of the Syrophoenician woman, then heals a deaf man with a speech impediment?

Last week, we heard the Pharisees and scribes wonder why Jesus’ disciples eat without washing their hands, thus disobeying the Jewish laws of ritual cleanliness. Jesus wasn’t terribly polite to the Pharisees and scribes, either, by the way, when he tells them that they abandon the commandment of God and hold to human tradition. He tells the crowd that there is nothing outside a person that by going inside can defile, but the things that come from within are what defile.

Our gospel lesson this morning with the stories of the healing of both the Syrophoenician woman’s daughter and the deaf man follow right on the heals of Jesus’ comments about what defiles. In Jesus’ time, many people thought that physical ailments were the result of sin and that is part of the reason the sick, the blind and the lame lived on the margins of society. They were considered unclean, or defiled. The Syrophoenician woman with the daughter who is possessed is on the margins of society for several reasons. She is a woman, she is a gentile, and she has a daughter who is possessed by a demon. In the first century, that was a combination that would put her on the edge of society to a Hebrew man. The deaf man with an impediment in his speech was on the fringes of society because his disability meant he had no way to support himself, he may well have had to beg for whatever he needed, and he was unlikely to marry and have a family.

In the end, Jesus’ actions this morning do demonstrate what James calls the "royal law according to scripture" which is to love our neighbor as ourselves. Jesus heals both of these people, and in the case of the deaf man, those who witness the healing proclaim to anyone who will listen that Jesus makes the deaf to hear and the mute to speak.

Through out the gospels, along with the prophet Isaiah, the sign of the Messiah, the sign that the reign of God is near, is that the deaf hear, the lame walk, the sick are healed, the oppressed are free. Those who previously had to eat whatever crumbs were thrown under the table are now given seats at the table. Jesus’ actions this morning tell us that the Kingdom of God is near. The relevant question for us today is not why Jesus was so rude to the woman who sought healing for her daughter. The real, and much more difficult question, is how our lives bear witness to the reign of God. How do we live so that those in the world around us who get only crumbs, whether in housing, health care, education, or food, know that the Kingdom of God has come near? That is the far more important, and the far more haunting question than why Jesus was so rude to the Syrophoenician woman, and the answer matters.

Amen.