Wednesday Sermon: The Children’s Crumbs, Part 2

Pastors have a frequent question when they begin to discover mimetic theory. “That’s great. But how does it preach?”

Reverends Tom and Laura Truby shows that mimetic theory is a powerful tool that enables pastors to preach the Gospel in a way that is meaningful and refreshing to the modern world. Each Wednesday, Teaching Nonviolent Atonement will highlight Tom and Laura’s sermons as an example of preaching the Gospel through mimetic theory.

This sermon is the second part of last week’s sermon. Tom received very helpful feedback from the “Rene Girard Changed My Life” Facebook page and has rewritten the sermon here. 

Year B, Pentecost 15
September 6^th, 2015
By Thomas L. Truby
Mark 7:24-30

The Children’s Crumbs

Geography is important in Mark and so we have to know where places are to understand what is being communicated.  Jesus’ own people saw the world divided into two; between their people and all other people.  They believed they were the chosen, good people, the ones God loved and they live here and all others are the bad people that God and they want nothing to do with. They live there. Every town, every region, every area was seen in light of this division The text makes it clear that Jesus is setting out to visit regions they all know as alien.

This territorial awareness reminds me of growing up north of Randolph, Nebraska; my town and a town inhabited primarily by people of German descent. Being north of town we lived near the territory that belonged to Wausa; Swedish people:  Swansons, Johnsons, and Andersons; tall blonds with advantages in basketball.  Driving west through their territory had a different, more foreign feel for me.  Now this is all irrational and even humorous but I felt it as a kid and still feel it when I go back sixty years later.

Recently something new has developed.  With the changes in agriculture most shallow wells in the land have either gone dry or become polluted and so our farm is being hooked up to a new source for our drinking water.  And of all places, our water is being piped from Wausa!  When I visited there this summer I found myself drinking water drawn from wells of people of Swedish descent!

Does that give you a feel for what’s happening with Jesus and his disciples as they travel into the foreign region of Tyre?  Jesus had been traveling along the safe and familiar north shore of the Sea of Galilee and now he heads toward the region of Tyre, the territory of Gentiles. This is an opportunity to explore how we relate to people different from us.

For some reason “he entered a house and did not want anyone to know he was there,” but “He could not escape notice.” Of course Jewish people didn’t enter gentile houses so he would naturally stick out.  “A woman whose little daughter had an unclean spirit immediately heard about him.”  This woman came and bowed down at his feet.  She is Gentile, a Greek of Syrophoenician origin.  She is from Wausa, only more so!   She is a foreigner and a daughter of the ancient enemies of Jesus’ people.

She is an outsider, for Jews a person who can be officially ignored and a woman and she has a daughter with an unclean spirit.  She fails in almost every purity code category by which Jesus’ people ordered their world.  This woman who can’t pass a single test “begged him to cast the demon out of her daughter.”  She knows she brings nothing, has no rights and must appeal to his mercy alone and she does.

Jesus’ response is notably grumpy.  “He said to her, ‘Let the children be fed first, for it is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.”  What a mean thing to say!  He suggests that he has responsibility to feed his own people and since she is not one of them, she and her daughter are no better than a dog to him.  This is one of those texts I would never touch if I weren’t a lectionary preacher.

How will this foreign woman respond?  Will she take offense like the Pharisees and legal scholars when Jesus called them hypocrites?  “‘Sir,” she answered him, “even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs.’”  She does not take offense.  Instead she addresses Jesus with respect.

Interpreters have always struggled with this passage.  Some people simply doubt that Jesus said it.  It’s too un-Jesus like.  Well then why did Mark say he said it?

Others have taken an almost opposite approach.  They like a very human Jesus who might have bought into the stereotypes of his people.  So like all Jews of his day he was prejudiced against gentiles and said this without thinking.  But, to his credit, he is a quick learner and the persistence and cleverness of the woman teach him to be more open to Gentiles.  With this approach Jesus models being willing to learn from a woman who teaches him tolerance.  Not a bad lesson.  Jesus models how to listen to the ones we deem as outsiders.  This is a good lesson to learn in this time of “Black Lives Matter.” We might learn something about our own distorted and dismissive way of seeing people of color.

But approaching the story from this angle makes it very modern.  Would Mark write it this way to answer these sorts of questions?  I have my doubts.

In last week’s gospel the Pharisees notice that some of Jesus’ disciples did not wash their hands before eating.  Since this is an important ritual rule for them, they want to know why Jesus doesn’t make his disciples wash their hands too.  They are talking to Jesus like one religious leader talks to another and comparing notes.

Jesus cuts them short by calling them hypocrites who insist the outside of their bodies be clean while they exude filth from the inside.  A vast abyss separates them yet they think Jesus and they are just alike.  Jesus offends them to bring them to the crisis of needing to decide who he is.  Is he just another religious leader who has followers and rules or is he the Son of the living God come from another place?   Until they recognize the differences they can’t chose to follow him.  Right now, he is just another religious leader for them and a rival; and so they are offended.

Could it be the woman accepts “the offense” because she knows her place and she knows who he is?  She dares stand up for herself with wisdom and humor because she sees Jesus’ offensive comment as a straw man meant to test her and this is a test she passes brilliantly.  She can’t pass the purity code test but she passes the test of faith with flying colors.

Today we all get to eat the crumbs from this table of love.  Even those at the bottom, those who dwell under the table, those who consider themselves unworthy have been invited to eat the crumbs.  This Syrophoenician woman, the one from another religion, who had nothing going for her in terms of justifying herself, had a powerful insight that we are still being stretched to understand.  She sees that there are no differences with God and all are loved.  The love she has for her demon-possessed daughter that compelled her to seek healing from Jesus is the same love God has for all God’s children.

The Syrians, Palestinians and Iraqis heading north into Europe and the Europeans already there who are afraid of them are equally valued and loved.  God wants all his people to find a home.  Hispanic people pressing our borders and those already here are just as loved as those of us who have been here for decades.  Those prejudiced eyes we look through are clouded by our own inhumanity.

The Syrophoenician woman has pushed the dialogue outside the box of who’s in and who’s out.  She anticipates Paul who says in Christ there is neither Jew nor Gentile, slave nor free, male nor female.  She has no puffed up notion of herself to protect.  She isn’t in rivalry with Jesus and can see him for who he is.  She sees the radical reversal he brings the whole world and opens to it.

When this woman came and fell at his feet it was not a manipulation.  It was worship.  When she claimed her place as his follower he replied, “Go on home.  The demon has already left your daughter.”

Is the demon that left the powerfully distorting idea that some humans are more worthy and loved than others?  It is a demon with many heads and hard to get rid of.  Jesus went to the cross and God raised him from the dead to caste it out.  It changes everything!