Texts: Isaiah 35:4-7a; James 2:1-17; Mark 7:24-37
Last week we got the theory – this week we see the theory being worked out in practice. This whole chapter 7 of St Mark's gospel is about the division between Jews and Gentiles – Israel on the one hand, and everyone else on the other. That attitude is not peculiar to the Jews, of course. I have a copy of a very old map, which claims to be based on "divers explorations and discoverations of English and foreigners in recent times". My Grandmother was slightly more broad-minded than that. She used to talk of "British and foreigners". And I remember a former colleague who assured me that people were either Ngati Porou or strangers; for him that was the important distinction – not Maori and Pakeha.
So the fundamental starting point for Jewish belief was that they had been especially called by God; and it was necessary for them to remain separate and distinct as a people. There was to be no intermarriage with Gentiles – no social mixing – and no eating together. And whenever that separation was threatened, those who were most zealous for the house of Israel became ever more insistent on those marks of the distinct Jewish way of life, including, of course, the dietary code and all the ritual that surrounded the eating of a meal. We saw all that last week, when the Pharisees asked Jesus why his disciples did not observe the correct ritual practices relating to hand-washing. That argument came to an end with Jesus seeming to abolish the dietary code altogether: he insisted that it is not what we eat that makes us unclean, but the thoughts of our hearts.
And that posed a great difficulty for at least two of our gospel writers, St Mark and St Matthew. (It's interesting that neither St Luke nor St John has this story.) The difficulty for them is that they were writing their gospels to prove that Jesus was the long-awaited Messiah; and every good Jew knew that according to their Scriptures the Messiah would come to the House of Israel, not to the world at large. He would bring redemption (salvation) to the House of Israel. It's true that from the time of Isaiah onwards there was a recognition that this would somehow be good news to the Gentiles as well, but it wasn't always clear quite how this would work out in practice, and it didn't really matter. What mattered to the Jewish believers was that the Messiah would come and redeem Israel.
There's the problem for St Mark and St Matthew. How is it to be explained that, by their time, the Christian gospel was being accepted by Gentiles far more readily than by Jews? How were they to record Jesus' own interactions with Gentiles, if he was the Messiah and had been sent only to the House of Israel? We can see their answer to that problem in this fascinating and disturbing story of the Canaanite (or Syro-Phoenician) woman this morning.
As I said earlier in the year, when St Mark tells us the geographical location of a story we need to take note; because what he is usually doing is to tell us whether the story is set in Jewish or Gentile country. So both these episodes today are set in Gentile country, the first in Tyre, in the Phoenician hills (modern day Lebanon), and the second in the Decapolis on the eastern side of the Lake. In the first story St Mark is at great pains to spell out that the woman who comes to Jesus is a Gentile: he says she "was a Greek, born in Syrian Phoenicia" (which is also very interesting, given the Syrian influence in Lebanon to this day!).
As usual, St Mark cuts straight to the chase. He leaves out the important preliminary that St Matthew puts in. According to St Matthew, Jesus' first response is to ignore her: he has nothing to say to the Gentiles. Then the disciples join in, suggesting that he should tell her to go away. Then Jesus spells it out: "I was sent only to the lost sheep of Israel." Only after that does St Matthew give us the sharp thrust and counter-thrust that St Mark has in his version. In both versions Jesus uses the clear insult: Gentiles are dogs. Even today, to call someone a dog in the Middle East is grossly insulting.
And down through the ages Christians have been embarrassed by this text, which seems to show Jesus in such a harsh light; and Bible commentators have gone to very inventive lengths to explain it away. My favourite is the one who claimed that the word Jesus used was not "dog" but "doggie", which might soften the insult a bit but at the cost of making Jesus sound condescending if not plain barmy! The more favoured approach is to suggest that Jesus is simply testing this woman's faith, but there is nothing in either text to support that approach.
More likely, this is the way St Mark and St Matthew wish to show that Jesus' starting-point, as the Messiah, is with the Jews, and only after that is his mission to the Gentiles as well. And, of course, the basis for the Gentiles to come to him is faith. As St Paul puts it, salvation is for all, the Jews first and then the Gentiles. After all, St Mark has Jesus say, "First, let the children eat all they want", the implication being that after the children have eaten others may eat, too.
However, the really important thing about the way this story is told is that it gives a strong hint that Jesus' understanding of his mission as Messiah was growing as he went along. And, what a wonderfully liberating story it is for women! A bunch of men have been to see Jesus over the behaviour of his disciples and he has routed them in argument. Now this lone, desperate Gentile mother has come to him and apparently won him over. Next time anyone tries to tell you the Scriptures are hopelessly patriarchal and anti-women, rub their nose in this story – either version will do!
St Mark follows this story with another healing story, this time of a man who is deaf and unable to speak easily. Again it is a Gentile, and that may be one reason why St Mark spells out the procedural details involved in the healing. Jesus touches the man, which would make him ritualistically unclean. Probably, this is also about proving Jesus is the Messiah because much of the language in this story is taken from Isaiah's messianic prophesies, including the one we have in our first reading this morning. Jesus the Messiah casts out demons, heals the deaf and empowers the mute to speak again.
And we should note that the hearing is healed first. Only when the man can hear properly is he able to speak plainly. That's probably to be understood on the spiritual, as well as the physical, level. Only when we have heard God speak, should we presume to say anything. Again, Jesus urges the crowd to keep this to themselves, and of course they take no notice. The problem of his fame and popularity getting in the way of his ministry is a common theme in St Mark's gospel.
So we have had the theory and now the practice, and that gets me to one of my favourite authors of the Bible, St James. If there was a prize for the clearest piece of Scripture his letter would bolt in! To him it's all very simple. Don't play favourites. Minister to the needy. Walk the talk. Now get on with it. No need for conferences and seminars and mission statements and all the rest of it; just do it. Despite his critics, St James does not deny that faith in Christ is essential. What he says is that true faith is manifested in action. It is not enough to believe that the hungry should be fed; we must actually feed the hungry. As he puts it, "faith by itself, if not accompanied by action, is dead".
And no amount of hand-washing will make any difference to that.
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