Listen to the audio of today’s Reflection:
https://soundcloud.com/hapearce/reflection-for-february-4-2025
Mark 7:24-30
The Faith of a Syrophoenician Woman
24 Jesus left that place and went to the vicinity of Tyre. He entered a house and did not want anyone to know it; yet he could not keep his presence secret. 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. 26 The woman was a Greek, born in Syrian Phoenicia. She begged Jesus to drive the demon out of her daughter.
27 “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 the dogs.”
28 “Yes, Lord,” she replied, “but even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs.”
29 Then he told her, “For such a reply, you may go; the demon has left your daughter.”
30 She went home and found her child lying on the bed, and the demon gone.
Nobody I know really likes this story. The interaction between Jesus and this woman with a sick child seems strikingly ‘un-Christ-like.’ But I think we need to wrestle with the passages that are difficult or uncomfortable, so let’s see what’s going on here.
In the story, Jesus has left the area in which he has been doing his ministry, and traveled north and west to the vicinity of the city of Tyre, which was a major seaport along the Mediterranean coast. We aren’t told why he went there, but it clearly wasn’t to do ministry, because we’re told he went to a house and didn’t want anyone to know he was there. We don’t usually think in terms of Jesus taking ‘vacations,’ but in the absence of any other explanation, it’s hard not to wonder whether getting some rest in a seaside community might not have been the real purpose of the trip.
It seems that his fame as a preacher and healer has spread so widely that even outside his ‘ministry area,’ he can’t keep his presence a secret. A woman finds out he’s there, and comes to him to beg healing for her child, who is possessed by an evil spirit. We’re told that the woman is “a Greek,” which in this context probably just means she’s a gentile. She’s also said to have been born in Syrian Phoenicia.
In any case, the response Jesus gives the woman is what makes us so uncomfortable with the story. He tells her, “First let the children eat all they want, for it is not right to take the children’s bread and toss it to the dogs.”
I’d love to be able to pass along a simple answer that wipes out the awkwardness and makes this story perfectly comfortable. But I can’t. But there are a few aspects of this story that should be considered as we reflect on it.
First of all, Jesus mentions in other places that the plan for his earthly ministry was to minister to the Jews first, and then to the gentiles. So it’s possible that he was trying to express that thought in this case – that it was not yet time for his ministry to be expanded beyond the covenant people.
You might remember from other Reflections that in the Aramaic language Jesus spoke, the word for ‘bread’ was used to indicate, not just physical food, but also intellectual and spiritual ‘nourishment.’ So Jesus might have been thinking of teaching and ministry intended for the Hebrew people as “the children’s bread.”
Some scholars have also suggested that the response Jesus gave the woman might have been a common figure of speech in that time. So it might have been a way of reinforcing that message of ministry to the Jews first.
Historians have also pointed out that there was some tension between the people of Galilee, where Jesus lived, and the Phoenicians. First of all, the Phoenicians were the same people called the Canaanites on the Old Testament, so there was a history of hostility between them and the Jews. And in Jesus’ time, the Galileans grew a good deal of food, much of which was exported through Phoenician cities like Tyre. The Phoenicians were dependent on this trade for food, and apparently lots of Jews felt like they weren’t paid well for their grain and other crops. So some scholars have suggested that Jesus, as a Galilean, was just voicing a complaint that lots of his fellow Galileans expressed – a complaint about being exploited by the Phoenicians.
Personally, I don’t find this argument very persuasive. I’m not sure I can picture Jesus being involved in a regional trade dispute – not to the point of being unwilling to cast out an evil spirit from a child because of it.
Actually, I see this exchange as being related to two other conversations Jesus had with women.
One of those conversations was with his mother. If you remember, on the occasion of the first miracle recounted in the Gospel of John – when he turned water into wine – Jesus first told his mother it wasn’t yet time for him to be doing things like that. But then, of course, when Mary ignored his protest and told servants to do whatever he said, Jesus wound up supplying a whole bunch of great wine for the couple’s wedding.
The other conversation was with the Samaritan woman at the well outside Sychar. As their conversation unfolded, Jesus told the woman that salvation was “from the Jews.” But when the woman hurried off to spread the word about Jesus and brought back her neighbors, Jesus wound up staying a couple of extra days to teach the people of the town.
This might be heresy on my part, but I have to say the impression I get here is that Jesus understood that he was involved in an unfolding plan for the salvation of the world, but that he actually varied from the plan sometimes.
It seems to me that Jesus had such a compassion for the suffering people around him – whether that suffering was a possessed child, a wedding feast going dry, a Samaritan woman victimized by gossip or a woman bleeding for twelve years – that he found himself moved over and over to bend the plan a little to accommodate acts of mercy and healing. Because in each of these cases, no matter what he might have said at the beginning of the conversation, what Jesus did was perform an act of miraculous intervention.
In this particular story, it’s hard not to be struck by the persistence and the humility of the Syro-Phoenician woman. She didn’t demand healing. She didn’t express a sense of entitlement. She didn’t accuse Jesus of discrimination. But she also didn’t give up her quest for healing for her daughter. She just took the words of Jesus and extended his logic to claim for her child a benefit that Jesus had the power to grant. And, as it turns out, a benefit that he was willing to grant, as well.
There’s one other thing about this story that I sometimes wonder about. Those of us in the church that claims Jesus’ name sometimes have our own policies and procedures – our own sense of what it means to do things “decently and in order.” I’m afraid we might sometimes fail to help those in need because they don’t fit in with our plans and policies. Or budgets. Maybe we’re meant to take away from this story the idea that if Jesus was willing to bend the great cosmic plan he was fulfilling, then maybe those of us who act in his name should remember that helping others should take precedence over sticking to the plans we come up with, too.
Just a thought.
Let’s pray. Lord, we thank you for the example of this woman’s humble persistence in claiming your Son’s healing for her child, and we thank you also that although he understood himself to be unfolding a great plan for the salvation of the world, Jesus did not turn away from the suffering and the needy that came to him for help. Let us not turn away from them, either, when we act in his name. Amen.
Grace and Peace,
Henry
Recent Comments