The Syrophonecian Woman--Mk 7

I write on today's lectionary text not because the pastor who exposited it did an inadequate job. Quite the contrary; she carefully and skillfully waded into the central problem of the passage--Jesus' seeming insensitive and even cruel response to the woman in v. 27--before concluding that the key to the passage was the woman's willingness to risk everything for love, the love of her child. The woman even "bested" Jesus in argument and thereby became one of the few who had that distinction in the NT.

I agree that the exchange between the woman and Jesus is unique in the Gospels, that Jesus' response to the woman's need in v. 27, where he likened her to a Gentile "dog," is startling, and that she got the upper hand in the discussion. Yet, I would like to look at both her and Jesus' conduct in more depth in the story in order to show the nuance with which Mark composed the text.

Here is the text of the familiar story, from the NRSV:

"From there he set out and went away to the region of Tyre. He entered a house and did not want anyone to know he was there. Yet he could not escape notice, 25 but a woman whose little daughter had an unclean spirit immediately heard about him, and she came and bowed down at his feet. 26 Now the woman was a Gentile, of Syrophoenician origin. She begged him to cast the demon out of her daughter. 27 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.’ 28 But she answered him, ‘Sir, even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs.’ 29 Then he said to her, ‘For saying that, you may go—the demon has left your daughter.’ 30 So she went home, found the child lying on the bed, and the demon gone."

I. Understanding Jesus in Mark 7

Jesus had just arrived in Gentile territory and wanted to remain incognito (v. 24). In my judgment this is really the key to the entire story. Matthew, who also has the story, doesn't pick up on Mark's emphasis; he merely mentioned that Jesus went to the region of Tyre and Sidon (Matt. 15:21). But for Mark, Jesus is trying to hide his identity. What is the significance of this?

More than a century ago, the German scholar William Wrede isolated what he called the "secrecy" motif in Mark's Gospel, in which Jesus was hesitant to claim divinity and urged others to keep his identity a secret. Wrede argued that Jesus' commands to keep quiet about his great works were not actual words of Jesus but were put into his mouth by the later (Markan) community in order to remove an embarrassment and explain why Jesus wasn't popularly recognized as Messiah when he did all the things the Messiah would do. Why? Because Jesus told everyone to keep it a secret.

Our passage this morning is aware of secrets and of keeping Jesus' identity unknown, but any suggestion about a later community's intervention in the editorial process of the book is an unnecessary hypothesis. In fact, it hinders us as we read this powerful text.

The principal point Mark makes is that Jesus is trying to conceal his identity from the (Gentile) locals. Why? Not necessarily because he is exhausted, though that is a good suggestion. Jesus is concealing his identity because he remembers an earlier painful experience which came upon him because of exhaustion and wants to avoid it now. In that earlier experience (these two essays describe it in detail), he had, in the space of a day, been actively teaching, traveling, casting out multiple demons, and healing insistent needy people (Mk. 4-5). Then, when he came to his home town, he "could" do no mighty work among them (6:5). Many interpreters blame the locals for this, but I attribute it to Jesus' miscalculations and his exhaustion. In the words of the KJV, virtue had gone out of him, and he had nothing left to give the people.

My thesis is that his previous cycle of exhaustion made such an impression on Jesus, even frightened him, that he knew he had to begin to protect himself as he taught and preached. His retreat to the northern parts in this passage follows directly after he engaged with a large crowd and then took his disciples aside to explain things to them (7:17-23). This was the way things began in Mark 4-5, which led to his "meltdown" in Mark 6. Fearing that he might be repeating this earlier pattern, Jesus escaped from the situation in 7:24, going up to Tyre. Phew. Looks like he dodged that bullet. He needed to learn a lesson, and he possibly had learned not to overextend himself. A good lesson for a young man.

Jesus is not tired, but he is afraid about the possibility of repeating his earlier experience. So, he holes up in a house. But, when Elvis is in town, the word gets out, and so it got out here, too. This, then, is the context in which to understand the encounter with the woman. He doesn't want to become known, and is indeed afraid of interacting with any more demons or stories of demons, for fear of the kind of meltdown of the previous chapter.

The Encounter With the Woman

People in need are often heedless of the needs of those whom they seek. So it was with the woman. She may have broken all barriers for the sake of love, but she basically didn't want to honor Jesus' own needs. To be fair, perhaps she didn't know of them. But when she learned that the celeb was in town, she sought him out and wouldn't let him go. Is this commendable? It certainly is understandable, but is the point of the passage that her behavior should be an example for us? Certainly the text preached on last week, Luke 11:5-13, emphasized the importance of shameless persistence. Perhaps we are on a roll, and we need to embrace our shameless side a little more shamelessly. Yet shamelessness only works a few times; if you make a habit out of it, you tend to be labeled as "the shameless" one; it is hard to shake the role. So, we might not want to look at her as a role model. She is simply a woman in need who won't let barriers get in her way in her quest for Jesus.

I need one more essay to "finish" things.

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