The Parable of Jesus
and the Syrophoenician Woman
September 3, 2021
There’s a story in the Gospel of
Mark that has always troubled me. It’s the story of Jesus and the
Syrophoenician woman. You’ll find it at Mark 7:24-30. In that story Jesus has gone
to the region of Tyre, a Phoenician city on the Mediterranean coast north of
Israel in Lebanon. A woman of that region, who is a Gentile of Syrophoenician
origin, comes to him. Her daughter has an unclean spirit. The woman begs Jesus
to cast out the demon that is tormenting the daughter. Jesus responds to her in
a way that always astounds and perplexes me. 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.”
Mark 7:27 NRSV. The woman replies that even the dogs under the table eat the
children’s crumbs. Jesus replies: “For saying that you may go—the demon has
left your daughter.” Mark 7:29 NRSV. The woman goes home and finds that the
demon indeed no longer torments her daughter.
I have always read this story as
one in which Jesus screws up. The woman who came to him for help wasn’t a dog.
She was a human being and deserved to be treated like one. Yet Jesus calls her a
dog, and I can read this text as him calling the woman’s ill daughter a dog
too. I’ve always thought, Shame on you Jesus! How could you?! What you say to
the woman in this story is so unlike you! My wife likes this story because she
reads it as showing that Jesus was indeed human, and I suppose it does show us
that he was. Still, I’ve never liked this story because I so strongly dislike
what Jesus first says to the Gentile woman.
I’ve always disliked this story,
but recently I had a new thought about it, new to me at least. I thought: What
happens if you think of this story not as something that happened—and for what
it’s worth the Jesus Seminar is sure it didn’t—but as a parable that addresses
one of the major issues in early Christianity. A parable is sometimes defined
as a story that never happened but that happens all the time. Maybe that’s what
this story is. Let’s take a look and see what sense we can make out of it when
we see it not as history but as parable.
To understand the story as parable
we need to start by understanding one of the central issues in early
Christianity. The earliest Christians struggled a lot with the question of
whether the Gospel of Jesus Christ was only for the Jews or was for the
Gentiles too, that is, for everyone. We often miss this issue as we read the
New Testament, probably because it is so not an issue for us that it doesn’t
even make any sense to us. Nonetheless, this issue lies behind many of the New
Testament texts. For example, it frames the Gospel of Matthew. That Gospel
opens not with Jews coming to worship the baby Jesus but with Gentile sages,
the magi, being the ones who come and worship him. The Gospel of Matthew ends
with the risen Christ telling his followers to make disciples of all nations,
in other words, to make Gentiles disciples of Christ. The Gospel of Luke’s main
trajectory, at least when we know that the book of Acts is the second volume of
Luke, is grounded in this issue. Luke-Acts moves from a purely Jewish beginning
with local presumably Jewish shepherds being the ones to whom Jesus’ birth is
announced and who come to worship him to proclaiming the Good News as being for
the Gentiles too. In Acts Peter is the first of those who had known and walked
with Jesus to catch the vision of the Gospel being for everyone, not just for
the Jews. Early in Acts he comes to understand that you don’t have to be Jewish
to be Christian. He more or less convinces the Christian leaders in Jerusalem,
who had been Judaizers, of that truth. Acts then tells of Paul’s various
missions among the Gentile Greeks of the eastern Roman Empire. It ends with Paul
in Rome, the seat and center of the Gentile empire within which all of the
earliest Christians lived. The authentic letters of Paul, especially Galatians
and Romans, are incomprehensible without an understanding of the central
importance of this issue for him and for the communities where he worked.
Jesus was of course Jewish himself.
He lived and died in a thoroughly Jewish context. All of his first followers
were Jews. At least some of those followers believed him to be the
long-expected Jewish Messiah. The story of Jesus unfolds almost entirely in a
Jewish context. It isn’t hard to see how Jesus’ Jewish followers could
understand him and his message as being only for the Jews. The conflict between
Christian Judaizers who thought you had to be Jewish to be Christian and
Christian Hellenizers who said you don’t that we see in Acts and in Paul’s
letters was real. It colored much of the activity and thought of the earliest
Christians. The Hellenizers prevailed. Had they not we wouldn’t be Christians
today, and we would probably never have heard of Jesus of Nazareth.
Now consider Mark’s story of Jesus
and the Syrophoenician woman in the context of that issue. I suggest that that
story is not an account of something that actually happened and something that
Jesus actually said but rather is a parable Mark tells to address the
Judaizers/Hellenizers conflict. As a parable it makes the point that the Gospel
of Jesus Christ is not only for the Jews but is for the Gentiles as well. In
this story the Jew Jesus encounters a Gentile woman. It really does matter that
the woman in this story is Gentile not Jewish. When she asks Jesus to help her
ill daughter the Jew Jesus takes the position of the Christian Judaizers. He
uses his metaphor of children’s food going to the dogs to say that he, and by necessary
implication his Gospel, are for the Jews only. He doesn’t deny the woman’s
request because she’s a sinner. He doesn’t deny her request because he has
something against helping ill children. He doesn’t deny her request because he
thinks he can’t do what she asks. No, he denies her request for one reason and
one reason only. He denies her request and calls her a dog because she is
Gentile not Jewish.
Then the woman gives a brief if a
bit awkward statement of the position of the Christian Hellenizers that the
Gospel of Jesus Christ is for the Gentiles too. Even the dogs under the table
get some food she says. What the woman says to Jesus amounts to her saying yes,
I’m a Gentile not a Jew. Just as in her statement to him that both the children
and dogs get some food, so the Gospel of Jesus Christ comes to feed both Jews
and Gentiles. In the story Jesus gets it. He does what the Gentile woman asks
him to do. He acknowledges that what the woman has said changed his mind. He
accepts the argument of the Hellenizers that his Gospel is for everyone.
It helps me not only tolerate this
story but to find some meaning in it to acknowledge that it never happened as a
matter of fact but is a parable that makes an important point. It’s a point we
may well miss and that may not be much of an issue for us. The story tells us
in parable, I contend, that the Gospel of Jesus Christ is for everyone. The
Gospel is Jewish, but it is also universal. It excludes no one. It is for
everyone. We may not struggle with the issue of the universality of the Gospel
the way the earliest Christians did. Still, we can know that the Gospel of love
that Jesus brings us is for every single person, every single child of God. For
that truth let us all say, Thanks be to God.
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