Proper 18 B: Mark 7:24-37
September 8, 2024
David Mealy
“Even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs.”
We hear that memorable phrase in today’s Gospel from Mark, spoken by a woman who asks Jesus to heal her daughter.
Their cryptic conversation occurs in a truly short story, consisting of only six lines out of today’s reading. It’s also a pretty odd story, cringe-worthy the way it casts people as dogs in its head-scratcher of a parable – like, maybe they’re really talking about puppies instead of dogs? It is short and strange, and it’s tempting to pass right over it to preach on the next part of today’s Gospel, a straightforward and easily understood story of Jesus healing a deaf man.
But this brief conversation between Jesus and the Syrophoenician woman also has a bigger story to tell, a tale of encountering an obstacle to receiving much-needed care and overcoming that obstacle with dignity. It’s a powerful story in several ways, and it has great resonance with us today.
The conversation between Jesus and the woman takes place in a house in Tyre, on the Phoenician coast of what was then the Roman province of Syria and is now part of Lebanon. Jesus has travelled there from Gennesaret on the Sea of Galilee, a journey of about sixty miles. It’s like going from here to Santa Cruz, only by foot or donkey.
We’re not told what brings Jesus all that way to go to this house. Maybe he is in need of a rest, an escape from the crowds that have been following him. Or, perhaps he’s there to visit a Jewish community in this Gentile, mainly Greek, area.
Whatever the reason, he’s had a long journey and doesn’t want anybody to know he’s there. Word of his presence seems to travel quickly, however. A woman – who is introduced to us only as “a Gentile of Syrophoenician origin” – hears that Jesus was in the house and she comes to ask him to help her little daughter.
In Matthew’s telling of the same event, the woman shouts and pesters him, and the disciples urge Jesus to send her away. Mark’s gospel tells it differently. In today’s reading the disciples are not mentioned at all, and the woman simply entreats him to help her daughter.
We’re told only that her daughter has an unclean spirit. It does not seem to be the same kind of impure spirit that Jesus dealt with two chapters before in Mark, where the demons tell Jesus that they are Legion. In that story, Jesus casts the demons out from a man and into a herd of pigs, which then rush into a nearby lake.
Jesus does nothing like that here. In fact, after the woman responds to him he simply tells her that the demon has left her daughter. This unclean spirit seems more like what we might understand today as a mental health issue, one that can be healed without resorting to pigs.
Up to this point, Jesus believes his ministry is limited to the people of Israel and he does not feel himself able to help the woman. In Matthew’s Gospel he explains this to the disciples by saying, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.”
In Mark’s Gospel, he tells the woman that he cannot help her in a way that comes off as pretty rude. He speaks to this Syrophoenician woman of food and children and dogs. He says “Let the children be fed first, for it is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.” Suzanne Watts Henderson, in her commentary for the New Oxford Annotated Bible, describes this response as exhibiting a “surprisingly provincial attitude.”
In this mini-parable the children are meant to represent the “lost sheep of the house of Israel” that Jesus believes he was sent to serve. The dogs, of course, stand in for everyone else, including Gentiles like this woman.
Calling this woman a dog when she is so in need of help is harsh. Yet the woman does not respond in anger, nor does she grovel or plead or otherwise demean herself to prove her worthiness.
Instead, she answers Jesus with dignity, or as much dignity as one can muster while still talking about dogs instead of people. She uses his own metaphor to point out that fairness has nothing to do with it. She says that “even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs.”
She points to our everyday life, to the dogs we see, maybe in our own homes, snarfing up any food that falls from a table. They don’t need to prove their worthiness, they simply take their place and receive what comes to them.
There are other ways to interpret this interchange between the woman and Jesus, of course. Some have heard her response as an acknowledgment of her “dogginess,” a humble admission that she is not worthy of help and must rely on Jesus’ mercy to receive it.
This understanding inspired the Prayer of Humble Access, written by Thomas Cranmer in 1549 and still used in some Episcopal churches today. But more on that in a minute.
There is a dignity in the answer she gives Jesus. It is the answer of someone thinking on her feet, of recognizing an unjust situation and countering it. And, with that dignity, and yes, with a bit of doggedness, she gets past Jesus’ belief that some may receive help but not others. By talking him through this obstacle she gets the healing her daughter so desperately needs.
The way in which the daughter gets healed is also striking. Jesus says to the woman “For saying that you may go – your daughter is healed.” It is almost as if it is the woman’s words, when heard by Jesus, that heal her daughter.
In persuading Jesus that there was no good reason to deny healing to her daughter this Syrophoenician woman may have also invited Jesus into a broader understanding of who he was sent to serve.
Right after he heals her daughter, he travels back to the opposite side of the Sea of Galilee from where he started in Genesserat, making his way to another largely Greek area called the Decapolis. While there, he enables a deaf man to hear by speaking a word to him, perhaps mirroring his own ears becoming opened by her words.
The story of the Syrophoenician woman resonates for us in many ways.
At its core, it is a story of someone seeking mental health care for her daughter. It reminds me of the obstacles my daughter experienced in finding adequate mental health care, and of the indignities like the warehousing of patients that made up much of the institutional care available to them.
The story reminds us of the obstacles that exist today in our public health systems, obstacles that ensure that some are served while others are not, obstacles of cost, of culture, of race, of language, of geography.
The dignity of the woman’s response brings to mind the daily indignities suffered by people who are living on our streets rather than in their homes because there is no dignified path available to them towards shelter or mental health treatment.
This story also reminds us of the ways our capital-C Church has changed.
I mentioned the Prayer of Humble Access, written almost five hundred years ago and partly inspired by the woman’s response to Jesus. We no longer use that prayer at St. Aidan’s, but some of you may remember the line “We are not worthy so much as to gather up the crumbs under thy Table,” words that Cranmer, their author, drew from this story.
We said these words just before we were invited to the table to receive communion, after we had already, to use the old language, acknowledged and bewailed our manifold sins and wickedness, and had received forgiveness for them.
As a twelve-year-old hearing these words every Sunday, I remember feeling like I was being asked to pass one final test before I could receive the gifts of the sacrament. It felt like another obstacle to my participation in the Eucharist.
That prayer was in use at a time when there were other physical barriers to receiving
communion. In the church I grew up in, the altar was as far away from the congregation as possible, and we all had to stand in a long line to get to the altar rail.
Before we could get to the altar rail, the line snaked through an imposing wooden structure called a rood screen, another physical barrier. And, distancing us further, part of the service was delivered by a priest facing the altar, often with his (always, in those days, his) back to us.
By having us acknowledge our unworthiness to even approach the table, the Prayer of Humble Access seemed to reinforce those physical barriers to receiving the sacrament.
Like the rood screen, the far-away altar and the preparation of the sacraments with the back turned, the Prayer of Humble Access has, for over forty years, not been part of the liturgy we use. It is still found in the Book of Common Prayer, in the Rite 1 service.
So, this odd little story, strange though it may seem at first glance, holds a lot of hope for us in its six lines.
Just as the Syrophoenician woman’s words were heard in one way by our church five hundred years ago and heard again, differently, in our lifetimes, may we always be able to hear old words in new ways.
Just as those words resulted in the healing of her daughter, may we receive the grace to ask for – and receive – help with dignity.
And just as her words brought healing to an outsider who Jesus was not prepared to heal at first, may we, with the grace of the Holy Spirit, hear with open ears and open hearts the wants and needs of all others, and meet them with dignity. Amen.
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