This Wednesday at our weekly Tierra Nueva Bible study, we experienced surprising new understanding of Mark 7:24-30. In this difficult story, Jesus gives a jarring response to the Syrophoenician woman, who asks him to cast an unclean spirit out of her daughter.
First, Jesus heads into the region of Tyre in modern day Lebanon, 12 miles from the Israeli border, a city which has recently been targeted by Israeli airstrikes. Jesus went into a house there to get away from the crowds. Mark specifies that “he wanted no one to know of it; yet he could not escape notice” (Mk 7:24).
A woman whose little daughter had an unclean spirit somehow hears that he’s there, and “immediately came and fell at his feet” (Mk 7:25).
Mark specifies that this woman was a Gentile of the Syrophoenician race. As such, she was not considered as one of God’s people- the children of Israel, but rather as a religious and social outsider, and unclean. Her daughter had an unclean spirit.
Though Jesus’ first miracle in this Gospel is casting out an unclean spirit (Mk 1:23-26), the beneficiary is a Jewish Synagogue attendee. Jesus later sends out his disciples to cast out unclean spirits in the villages of Galilee (Mk 6:6-7), but there’s no mention of this ministry being only for Jews.
There at his feet, the Gentile woman “kept asking Jesus to cast the demon out of her daughter” (Mk 7:26). So why didn’t Jesus immediately respond and free her daughter?
As a parent I can relate to this woman’s desperation to see her child freed. The parents present at our Bible study have all experienced times of desperation, where we’d prayed continuously for our children. We’d be willing to do anything, including falling at Jesus’ feet if he were here. As we read together Jesus’ response to her, we find ourselves at a loss, unable to understand, for the longest time.
“He said to her: “Let the children be satisfied first, for it is not good to take the children’s bread and throw it to the dogs.”
Why does Jesus appear so mean to this poor, desperate woman? As people involved in a ministry which advocates and pray for many desperate people, we find ourselves wanting to come to her defense—to challenge Jesus. I find myself wanting to advocate for this woman and her daughter based on my conviction that she is entitled to Jesus’ help.
After all, Jesus came as a light to those sitting in darkness, including those in “Galilee of the Gentiles” (Mt 4:12-16). He came to preach the Gospel to the poor, to proclaim freedom to the captives” (Lk 4:18). She and her daughter certainly are included in these categories! So why is Jesus excluding them, and referring to them as “dogs”?
Omi, who oversees a men’s recovery house, mentions that he thinks “dogs where a category of people seen as unclean by the religious Jews because they were outside the faith.” People struggling with addictions today are literally identified as “clean” or “dirty” depending on whether they are in active recovery or not.
Carol, a White woman in her early 80s, who lost a 10 ½ year-old girl and 13 ½ year-old boy 18 months apart from a degenerative nerve disease NLD, looks up from her Bible and comments: “It seems important that she calls Jesus Lord.”
Emmanual, a man who has attended Tierra Nueva for twenty years suddenly pipes up: “I’ve got it!” As a Black man from inner-city Chicago, Iraq war veteran and recovered alcoholic, his vibrant faith born of untold suffering gives him a unique angle on Scripture and a special authority—so we all listen as he explains.
“This woman says: “Yes Lord!” doesn’t she?! She addresses him as God, which suddenly makes her one of the children who receives the bread first!”
Carol, scrutinizing the notes in her study Bible through her reading glasses, tells us that this is the only time in Mark’s Gospel where anyone addresses Jesus as “Lord” (kurios—the Greek translation for God’s name in the Old Testament). I later confirm that this is in fact the case!
Emmanual’s insight and Carol’s discovery suddenly shift the whole conversation, and we’re excited. While the woman was advocating for her daughter, Jesus wants to give to her. He wants a relationship with her, and with us! While her presence interceding at his feet for her afflicted daughter would eventually be addressed, her seeing Jesus for who he is, there in the house where he’s trying to hide, gets his attention.
And her next words to Jesus get my attention: “Even the dogs under the table feed on the children’s crumbs” (Mk 7:28).
There is no hint of entitlement in this Gentile woman’s response. Rather she agrees with Jesus, despite my protests, and humbles herself with no resistance, by comparing herself to a dog eating the children’s little crumbs that have fallen under the table.
Philemon of Gaza writes beautifully of this woman’s humility in his commentary on Mark’s Gospel.
“Humbled, she accepted the insult with great humility, so great indeed that she considered herself not so much humiliated as honored. Instead of feeling rejected, she felt welcomed into the house, as a dog, yes, but that mattered little since it was enough for her to be there with the dogs, under the table, in the lowest place, so long as she could receive her share of the bread in the way children have theirs. Her share was mere crumbs, but that was enough to go away fed. She was so humble that she was happy with the crumbs or, more precisely, “tiny crumbs” (psichion) according to the way she spoke to him, using the diminutive for “crumbs” (psix). What extraordinary humility in this woman, satisfied with tiny crumbs fallen from the table of the Lord!”
“Because of this answer go,” says Jesus. “The demon has gone out of your daughter.”
Jesus gives the woman the credit for her daughter’s liberation: “because of this answer.” Jesus honors the woman before us all. He tells her that because of her answer (showing that she accepted his word, saw him and addressed him for who he is, and humbled herself), the demon has left her daughter. There is no mention of Jesus casting it out, as she had requested. It leaves her daughter because she has received the bread first, as one of the children there in the house. She leaves in child-like faith, without questioning or doubting.
“And going back to her home, she found the child lying on the bed, the demon having left” (Mk 7:30).
I go home wanting to pray differently, inspired by this woman’s radical humility and faith.