Abstract
How good a travelling companion are you? Mark Twain once wrote, ‘I have found out that there ain’t no surer way to find out whether you like people or hate them than to travel with them.’ Well, there are some ‘likes’ and ‘hates’ in today’s Gospel reading as Jesus and his band of followers go travelling together in foreign lands; ‘the region of Tyre’ (7:24), inhabited almost exclusively by Gentiles, and the ‘Decapolis’—the ten towns area—where Jews were a minority in a Greek and Roman cultural setting.
The good news from Mark’s Gospel is that when forced to meet with others on our travels, even the most unexpected people get to speak things that really matter, and we get an unexpected chance to hear and reply as a result.
We don’t know what caused Jesus to leave his Jewish comfort zone, heading to ‘the region of Tyre’. Maybe it was the Holy Spirit. He was exchanging familiar surroundings, populated by people like himself, for a land full of Gentiles, with their odd, some said ‘disgusting’, non-Jewish religious, social and cultural habits.
Even Tyrean Gentiles probably would have been shocked by the boldness of a woman speaking to man in public, and a Jewish one at that. If the locals were shocked then Jesus’s Jewish travelling companions would have been appalled. Fishers of Jewish men—ok; conversation partners with Syrophoenician women—no thanks.
Jesus happily gets into conversation with this boundary-breaking woman who begs him to heal her daughter. He says it is ‘not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs’ (7: 27); apparently a common Jewish disparaging term for Gentiles. She comes right back with, ‘even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs’ (7: 28) and Jesus responds with, ‘for saying that, you may go—the demon has left your daughter’ (7: 29), giving the woman that for which she has asked.
Opinions vary as to whether Jesus engaged in egalitarian jokey word-play with the woman or this reflected his sharing the human propensity to misread or mistreat people on account of cultural or racial differences. If the latter, at least he would overcome such habits in response to this challenge. Whichever the case, someone on the margins got the chance to speak, and someone at the centre of things listened and then acted upon what they heard. This unnamed woman (women are so frequently unnamed in the Bible) is driven to speak by her need. What she says is validated by her experience. She speaks with authority to an authority figure. Social conventions are defied in the process but her plight and that of her (also unnamed) daughter takes priority.
More particularly, someone from what was then the Syrian coastal region confronts Jesus at a moment of need. At this place—Tyre and Sidon, the Phoenician area of Syria, where Syrians might take the risk of putting to sea in search of other lands, a Syrian (Syrophoenician) woman confronts Jesus. With a great determination and a deep sense of urgency a Syrian woman, afraid for the life of her child, demands to talk with someone from another country. Then, that person is Jesus. Today, it could be you or me.
It is now just a few years since we were first confronted with television images of the bodies of Syrian child refugees washed up the Turkish shoreline; images made even harder to watch by interviews with distraught survivors. And there is no shortage of women, Syrian and others, demanding to be heard today. Women, fearing for their loved ones, confronting Jesus, you and me, demanding action to save them from death. My great problem is that, faced with the plight of a Syrian mother, I am not Jesus … and nor, as it turns out, are our political leaders. And I say that not in a spirit of criticism, but of solidarity.
It’s not to say that governments should be free of criticism over inaction in that particular case, and others since, or over policies and actions that have contributed to terrible situations in Syria and other places today. Yet the biblical image that speaks to me today, is less the obvious one of walking by on the other side, and more that of Jesus’s encounter with a man who could not hear or speak. How can we be made to hear the cries of Syrian women and others when previously our ears have been blocked?
How will we hear, and then speak about wars that disfigure this globe, sending millions fleeing from their homes, dependant on the welcome offered by people of other lands, including our own. Confronted with such cries, paradoxically, being made to hear by what we see on television, can we now speak, saying that something must be done? And will we accept any accompanying cost?
It’s harder for a political leader to speak like that than it is for me. When they speak things happen on a large scale with implications and outcomes that are impossible to calculate in advance, yet for which they will be held responsible. I don’t envy them but I am under an obligation to encourage them to make things happen, acknowledging the needs and desires of their compatriots, but then weighing that against the horrendous plight of millions, including Syrian women and their children.
We face huge challenges. Immediately, we need to respond to these cries for help. In the longer term, further issues will arise if we do not, as a community of peoples, get more control over conflicts between peoples. I am not suggesting immediate, precise, definite policies, but I note that when confronted with the woman’s need Jesus responded positively, just as he then did to a man who could not speak or hear.
In so doing, Jesus expressed the identity and demonstrated the nature of God; the God in whom we place our hope and from whom we receive our understanding of how to treat others. As the psalmist puts it, ‘Praise the Lord! Praise the Lord, O my soul! Do not put your trust in princes … Happy are those whose help is the God of Jacob … who made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them; who keeps faith for ever; who executes justice for the oppressed; who gives food for the hungry.’ (146:1, 3, 5, 6–7)
So, like Jesus, may we respond positively, living out our faith in his way for our time, hearing the cries of others in need, speaking and acting to bring peace and justice to the oppressed, provide food to the hungry and a safe home for the refugee.