Theology for the Masses

tom February 28th, 2008

In one of the more misunderstood passages dealing with the life of Jesus, the Son of God encounters a gentile woman who seeks his assistance in casting a demon out of her daughter. The gospel of Mark provides her pedigree for us: “a Greek, born in Syrian Phoenicia.”[1] Before we get to hear Jesus’ response to her request, Mark supplies us with the three strikes against her from the average Jewish standpoint. She was A. a woman, B. a gentile woman, and C. gentile woman who hailed from the insufferable Syrophoenician region, a region filled with people who should have been destroyed in the Canaanite genocides – their very presence a continual reminder to the Jews of their failure to fully obey Yahweh. Even the most hated woman in the Hebrew Bible, Queen Jezebel, hailed from this region. But as we shall see, our narrative redeems the Canaanite people and our woman serves as a reminder that Yahweh’s mind has changed about the decedents of Queen Jezebel.

While others would have considered her unclean, Jesus has just completed teaching that uncleanness is a matter of the heart, not the body, “Don’t you see that nothing that enters a man from the outside can make him ‘unclean?’…What comes out of a man is what makes him ‘unclean.’ For 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.’”[2]

In context, Jesus puts into practice what he preaches. Even trekking through the region of Tyre and Sidon betrayed an act of rebellion. 1st century Jewish stereotypes considered this an area of “seduction to false gods and hostility to the Jewish people.”[3] Instead of judging this woman based on her gender, ancestry, and the side of the tracks she came from, Jesus addresses her as a person, not a mere stereotype.[4] Interestingly Yahweh, who originally commanded the Canaanite genocide, is, in this text, informing us that power, dehumanization and domination are inadequate means by which to spread God’s kingdom. The superiority of the gospel to violence is a probable ethical principle one could draw from this passage.The Canaanites who were once supposed be destroyed now find a place within God’s redemptive plan. This text, then, is intended to counter the Canaanite genocides - this text, above that one, displays the character of God!

While Jesus response to this gentile woman may seem harsh, he does not respond to her with sexism or racism, for that would be a violation of the sermon he has just preached. Initially the text informs us that Jesus refuses the woman’s request. Jesus notifies the woman that, as a dog (gentile), she will have to wait for the children (Israel) to be finished feasting before she can eat. While this may sound offensive to us, the woman has no such reaction. She does not react as if Jesus has insulted her. More likely, she understands that Jesus is merely stating that the time for ministry among the gentiles has not yet arrived. Demonstrating great intelligence and wit[5], she tells Jesus that sometimes dogs eat the scraps that fall from the table as the children are eating. “Now is a good time for my daughter to be healed, even if the time of the gentiles has not arrived,” she says.

Without regard for her gender or race, Jesus grants the woman’s request. With no consideration for whether or not this woman or her daughter are deemed unclean because of their gender, Jesus heals them both. He casts the unclean spirit out of the daughter, symbolizing that the gentiles by virtue of their race, and women by virtue of their gender, should no longer be categorized as unclean. He shows this woman she is not subhuman simply because of her gender or race. Neither Jesus nor the gospel writers concerned themselves with her gender; they simply marveled at her “great faith.”[6]

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[1] Mark 7:26

[2] Mark 7:20-23 – Interestingly enough, Mark describes the evil spirit within this woman’s daughter as an unclean spirit. While many of our English translations translate the word evil, in context it seems infinitely more appropriate to translate the word as unclean.

[3] Mary Anne Getty-Sullivan, Women in the New Testament. (Collegeville: The Liturgical Press, 2001), 87. Getty-Sullivan also notes that this area was considered profane to the ancient Jews because it represented their own failures. The area was originally given to the tribe of Asher, but they failed to completely occupy it as God had commanded. This was also the area that the most hated of all OT women was birthed: Queen Jezebel, who was the great persecutor of the prophet Elijah, and the great dominator of her puppet of a husband Ahab.

[4] Stereotypes are created by people in order to make sense of an increasingly complex world. The pluralistic world of Jesus’ day and ours is filled with stereotypes simply because people are groping for a simple way to understand their crazy pluralistic world. Unfortunately, this is never neutral. Stereotypes also dehumanize the ‘other’ and keep them perpetually in a state of being sub-human. They are a means of power maintenance.

[5] Intelligence and wit are only a small part of what this woman displays. Her determination to get what she has come to Jesus for is another quite remarkable attribute.

[6] Matt. 15:28 – Matthew adds this praise for the woman in his account of the event. Mark, the earlier gospel that Matthew used as a source for his gospel, does not record Jesus praising her for her great faith. We see, however, in Matthew’s addition, that it was important for him to correct first century assumptions about the faithlessness of women and gentiles.

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