Biblical Wanderings: Mark 7:24-30

(This is technically backtracking on our reading schedule, but I had an impulse to revisit this story this week.)

He left that place and went to the region of Tyre. (Tyre is the capital of Syro-Phoenicia, a region close to the settlements of Judea.) Not wanting anyone to know, he entered a house, but could not escape being noticed. Instead, a woman whose young daughter had an unclean spirit soon heard about him. She came and fell at his feet. Now she was a Greek woman of Syro-Phoenician descent, and she kept asking him to drive the demon out of her daughter. “First let the children be fed,” he said. “For it is no good to take the children’s bread and throw it to the dogs.” “Yes, Lord,” she responded, “and the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs.” Then he told her, “Because of this answer, you may go. The demon has left your daughter.”

I think there’s a lot going on behind the scenes in this dialogue, so let’s expand it. First off, we know from earlier in the gospel that Jesus needs his solo recharges. In order to do the things he’s meant to do - heal, cast out demons, teach wisdom - he needs that solo time with God. And right now, he’s wiped out. He’s had no solo time. So this is his weekend spa retreat - a place outside of Judea, in what is supposed to be an empty house. No one is supposed to be there, no one is supposed to know he’s there.

But someone spills the beans, and his spa weekend is ruined. Now the house is filled with people who want his help, and he’s going, “I can’t help you. I’m tapped out. I’m supposed to be avoiding you this weekend so I can help you next week.” When he says “let the children eat first”, a lot of people understand that to be Jews versus Gentiles. The Jews are the children and the Gentiles are the dogs. Maybe that’s a part of it. But I think it’s also obvious that Jesus is the child here. He’s asking for food from his Father. This is his mealtime, and he can’t get a bite in because there’s scrabbling going on to get fed. So he’s saying, “if you expect me to feed you, let me get fed first.” They’re turning to Jesus as their higher power, but he’s at his limit, and he’s trying to turn to his higher power.

Now, maybe it’s a bit heretical, but it seems clear to me in the gospel stories that Jesus was capable of losing his temper, and losing sight of the larger picture. That’s part of being human. In fact, losing sight of the larger picture is a necessary part of life, because then it allows us to be surprised. When we’re surprised, our automatic responses get superceded - we go off the tracks of habit. You say this, I say that, then you say this in response. When that doesn’t happen, you’re forced to remember that the world is larger than our little roles can contain. You’re forced to improvise.

When Jesus loses his temper at this woman, she responds by surprising him. She doesn’t contradict him or protest - she says “yes, and”. She develops and expands the image that he presented to her. He says, “look at this scene, it’s chaos - dogs and children in a feeding frenzy.” She says, “well, here’s a table. Here are the dogs, but they’re domestic, not wild. Everything is as you said, but there is an order here.” She provides Jesus with this image - she’s setting the table for him. In that moment, she’s offering him some comfort; she’s seeing the fuller picture and passing it along to him.

So what is a distressed mother doing surprising Jesus? Is Jesus simply less than divine in this moment, or is there something divine about being surprised? I think there is something divine to it. After all, a God who’s already written the book all the way through and is just waiting for us to finish would be a pretty bored God. But what about a God who has something to learn from humans? That’s much more compelling to me, at least.  In my letter from love today, God told me, “You’re a lowly peasant, and I am your king ordering you to move bricks around and laughing watching you do it.” Maybe that doesn’t sound so great, but it sounded great to me, because I know when I’m moving those bricks - all those mundane tasks of the day that I’m obliged to do - I’m moving them out of love, and he’s asking me to do it because it is genuinely amusing to him to see how I do it. “I told you to move that brick here, but I never in a million years would have guessed how you would manage to do it. Look how you did it, look how you made the brick!”

In one of my favorite Jewish stories, two rabbis are engaged in a hot debate about the nature of the cleanliness of a certain type of oven. Rabbi Eliezer keeps asking for signs from heaven to emerge - a tree to uproot itself, water to flow backwards, the walls of the house to tilt - to prove that he’s right. Sure enough, the tree uproots itself, water flows backwards, the walls tilt. yet Rabbi Joshua refuses to budge. Finally, a voice cries from heaven to Rabbi Joshua, “"Why do you dispute with Rabbi Eliezer, with whom the Halakhah (Jewish law) always agrees?"  Rabbi Joshua tells the voice: "’The Torah is not in heaven’ (a quote from Deuteronomy 30:12). We pay no attention to a divine voice because long ago at Mount Sinai You wrote in your Torah at Mount Sinai, `After the majority must one incline' (a quote from Exodus 23:2)." At this, the voice from heaven laughs and says, “'My children have defeated Me! My children have defeated Me!” (The story is from Baba Metzia 59b.)

This is what I hear in the story of the Phoenician woman: the love and tenacity and humor in her response; the sheer joy of Jesus when he realizes he’s been defeated.