Preached on the Sixteenth Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 18B), September 8, 2024, at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Seattle, Washington by The Reverend Stephen Crippen.
Proverbs 22:1-2, 8-9, 22-23
Psalm 125
James 2:1-13, 14-17
Mark 7:24-37
The Great Faith of the Syrophoenician Woman, by Susan Feiker
One of the members of our parish has a terrific job title. This is my opinion of course, and you may disagree. When I told him one time that I love his job title, he seemed unsure how to respond — I think he’s just a self-effacing person who hasn’t really dwelled on the idea that there are “terrific job titles,” so my comment may have caught him off guard.
But even if you haven’t ever focused on the topic, I’m sure you can think of some grand job titles: Chief Justice of the United States; Supreme Allied Commander, Europe… Or how about this whopper: Bishop of Rome, Vicar of Jesus Christ, Successor of the Prince of the Apostles, Supreme Pontiff of the Universal Church, Patriarch of the West, Primate of Italy, Metropolitan Archbishop of the Province of Rome, Sovereign of the State of Vatican City, Servant of the Servants of God. That’s all one job title.
(By the way, my favorite part of that particular title is — no contest — “Servant of the Servants of God,” a job title we all receive as baptized Christians. You — you are a Servant of the Servants of God. Your baptismal certificate is your business card.)
But even Pope Francis, in my view, must tip his miter to our sibling in Christ, Ian, whose job title is … wait for it … Director of Fights and Intimacy. Ian works in the theater as an actor and director, and I just can’t get over this title he sometimes holds: Director of Fights and Intimacy.
I learned all too recently that there is a need in the world for a Director of Fights and Intimacy, but when I think about it, of course we need a director of fights and intimacy! The actors in any performance will need help choreographing their fights, but also their intimate scenes. How can they really fight well, and embrace well, and make it all work for their audience? More crucially, how are fights and intimacy woven together, informing and enlivening each other? The best arguments are ones between intimates, and the best intimate friendships can be invigorated by healthy conflict. A director focusing on fights and intimacy can help actors bring it convincingly to life on the stage.
This weekend, our friend Ian is busy: he and Jenny and Toby are welcoming the newborn Malcolm James into their family. But if he ever has extra time in the future, I might ask him to block for the stage today’s Gospel encounter near the coastal city of Tyre, in southern Lebanon. Tyre is where Jesus chooses to go for a break, to get away from it all, and fails in his attempt. Mark the evangelist tells us that though Jesus attempted to get some time for himself, “he could not escape notice.” (The burdens of fame…) A certain woman is among the horde of people trying to get close to this preacher and healer.
Mark says this woman is of “Syrophoenician origin,” that is, from the region in west Asia that today we call Syria; and Mark makes sure we know that she is a Gentile, that is, not a member of the Judean or Galilean groups who welcome Jesus as one of their own. (Matthew’s Gospel calls her a “Canaanite” woman, an anachronism: “Canaanite” was already an outdated term by this time.) But whatever demonym you prefer for her — Canaanite, Syrian, Phoenician — she is probably close to home, here in the region of Tyre. Still, through the eyes of Jesus and his friends, she is an outsider, a foreigner.
But this foreign woman is probably not indigent, not desperately poor. We don’t know this of course, but her confident action on behalf of her daughter, and her success in getting her daughter the help she needs, suggests a person with resources, maybe even an educated person, though that would be rare for a woman of that time. In my imagination, she looks sharp in a fine silk scarf. Whatever her status or background, she is ready to fight for her daughter, and draw Jesus into a powerful, and powerfully intimate, encounter. She has crossed a cultural border to confront this visitor from the south, and he has literally crossed a border to encounter her on her turf: this intimate fight takes place across a border.
Across several borders, actually: not just the political borders of their respective homelands, but the border of culture, and perhaps the border of language; the border of gender, and perhaps the border of socioeconomic status. (She may be wealthier than Jesus…) There are several lines in the sand beneath and between these two.
There was wider conflict along this border in that time of human history, and it has only worsened in our day. Southern Lebanon is in the news, at the northern border with modern Israel, a borderline of entrenched fighting. This region knows great conflict and devastating warfare.
And yes, Jesus and the Syrophoenician woman do fight. She punches her way into his world, into his private quarters, into what he had hoped would be a quiet afternoon. She begs him to heal her daughter, and in this begging she echoes all of the laments — all of the ‘rage prayers’ — of Holy Scripture, all the times when the people of God cried out in despair, wailed in agonizing fury, pleaded with God for mercy, begged God for healing, reconciliation, restoration. It takes courage to do this, to push your way into someone’s face on their day off and beg for your child’s life. Her motive is heartfelt, but this is confrontational: she is fighting.
And of course his reply to her is … well, it is wretched. Jesus seems to be voicing awful prejudice and intolerance in his reply to her plea. “Let the children be fed first,” he says, “for it is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.” Make no mistake: this is, on its face, a dreadful thing to say. “Dogs” in their day were not pampered and adored, like our beloved pets. Dogs were street animals, feral by definition, filthy, usually covered in sores, infectious, scavenging rotten food from the gutter. You’re from where again? Syria? Oh, well then you are no better than a dirty dog.
How might our friend Ian block this scene, so far? I haven’t asked him. But if it’s me, I might have the woman not on her knees but standing upright, shoulders forward, her body weight lurching toward Jesus, her eyes wide in surprise after he coolly, archly delivers his devastating line.
As I imagine blocking this scene as a drama on a stage, it’s at this point that I want to soften Jesus, if only because I don’t want anybody’s Jesus to be a hard pill for oppressed persons to swallow. I want Jesus to be enlightened and loving, but not just because I’m a cis white guy who loves happy endings: I want Jesus to be an icon of acceptance, representation, and allyship for all of us, for everyone. I don’t want persons of color or really anyone to have to explain to our Savior why he’s causing harm!
But the text of this encounter doesn’t really support that impulse of mine, at least not yet. The woman is assertive, perhaps even aggressive in her urgent need, and Jesus replies with a devastating retort. I think we need to let that be what it is, at least at first: take it in, friends in Christ. In this moment, Jesus is being wretched.
And it is the woman who carries him, and with him, all of us, out of that wretchedness. Her reply is savvy. She is game for the fight. She is undaunted.
The best we can say about Jesus in this encounter is that he saw a worthy adversary, and beckoned her to rise up to meet him; that he threw down with her, jousted with her, deliberately provoked her. We can also notice that behind this story is the first generation of Jesus followers wrestling with the idea of letting Gentiles cross the border of their Jewish community. This story stands on its own as Good News about Jesus, but it also echoes an early intimate conflict among the people we call our forebears in Christian faith.
But finally, ultimately, however we read Jesus, and whatever the historical background behind the scenes, we are left with a shocking, riveting story of intimate conflict at a border; and we are invited to let that story form us in faith. We meet Jesus at the borders in our lives, the tense and often dangerous edges of our comfort zones, where “homeland” and “foreign country” touch.
As I said a moment ago, this particular border is still a war zone on the map, in a region wounded by many — all too many — war zones. A bit further south, of course, is the modern border of Israel and Gaza. That is yet another borderline of bitter conflict that has endured for centuries, all the way back to the age when the Philistines — who give us the term “Palestinian” — lived along the Gazan coast and battled the Judean kingdom of Saul and David.
I want to take us from Tyre down to that border further south, and close with a poem composed by a modern sister of the Syrophoenician woman, a woman of our own day who has spent months pleading across the border between Israel and Gaza, begging for the life of her son, a hostage in Gaza. Her name is Rachel Goldberg, and she learned last week that her son Hersh was killed.
During the attack on October 7, Hersh had bravely grabbed hand grenades to throw them out of harm’s way, and one exploded in his hand, blowing off his arm. He was then held captive, and his parents, Rachel and Jon, have been working tirelessly to secure his release. But — like so many people on all sides of the war, and all around the world — Rachel and Jon have also demanded an end to the war, and justice for all innocent people.
Unlike the Syrophoenician woman, Rachel and Jon had to bury their child. But they and many others continue to lament this horrible war, and Rachel’s poem still can be heard over that terrible border. Rachel is crying out to a mother — to all mothers, to all parents — suffering in Gaza. She is trying to clasp their hands in an intimate conflict that pulls all people of conscience into the fray. I pray that everyone caught up in this conflict, and all conflicts, will find the restoration, reconciliation, and healing that Jesus and his worthy adversary experienced, long ago.
Here is Rachel Goldberg’s poem:
There is a lullaby that says your mother will cry a thousand tears before you grow to be a man.
I have cried a million tears in the last 67 days.
We all have.
And I know that way over there
there’s another woman
who looks just like me
because we are all so very similar
and she has also been crying.
All those tears, a sea of tears
they all taste the same.
Can we take them
gather them up,
remove the salt
and pour them over our desert of despair
and plant one tiny seed.
A seed wrapped in fear,
trauma, pain,
war and hope
and see what grows?
Could it be
that this woman
so very like me
that she and I could be sitting together in 50 years
laughing without teeth
because we have drunk so much sweet tea together
and now we are so very old
and our faces are creased
like worn-out brown paper bags.
And our sons
have their own grandchildren
and our sons have long lives
One of them without an arm
But who needs two arms anyway?
Is it all a dream?
A fantasy? A prophecy?
One tiny seed.