SETTLING FOR CRUMBS
Text: Mark 7:24-30

I’d like to begin my time with you by settling a much disputed matter. Four years ago as I prepared to preach here for the first time, I was asked to submit a photo of myself for the weekly newssheet.

I resisted.

I do not like pictures of myself. I seem always to look worried or mad or like a relative I don’t like.
So instead of sending Amy Jones a photo of me, I sent a photo of Catherine Zeta-Jones. And Amy printed it! And it became this big joke among the staff.

So this past week, sitting at staff meeting, Steve asked me to submit my picture again, and I let out this horrible moan….and someone said. “Why don’t you submit the Catherine Zeta-Jones again?” Well, long story short….I never did either one…so….

Imagine my surprise when early his week I started receiving emails from people calling me Catherine….

then I found out from Jill Kinney Weaver that Steve had written this in the newssheet: “September 3, I will be at the Chancel Choir retreat and Sheila Ennis is preaching. I asked her to send a picture of herself for this column. All she would send was a picture of Catherine Zeta Jones.

So that explains the newssheet…

BUT it didn’t end there.

My husband, Tom Schulz, had a fascinating dream on Wednesday night, which he told me about on Thursday morning. It went like this:
It’s Labor Day weekend. I’m preaching, so I leave the apartment early. Tom starts puttering around and look up at the clock and it’s almost 10:00! So he rushes over to the church.
Gets to the parking lot and there’s this guy who says, “You’ll have to park in the Hutchinson Overflow lot #1 which is two miles down the road.”

Tom says “What’s all this big crowd about?”

The guy says, “Someone really famous is preaching today!”

So Tom drives to Overflow lot #2 and the same thing happens! He has to drive even further down the street. FINALLY he finds a parking place downtown, and he falls in step with this huge crowd of people gathered outside the Bobcats Arena. Turns out the attendance was SO high at MPBC that they had to move the service to the Arena! So Tom’s standing there and he looks up at the giant screen outside the Arena….and there is me preaching!!!

So today, while Tom is in the clinic being treated for delusions of my grandeur, I would like to tell you that if you came up to me and said, “Sheila, you have a choice: either you can have your image magnified 5000 times and broadcast at the Bobcats arena….or…. You can open your mouth and let me rip out your tonsils……I’d go for the sore throat.

And for any of you who came here today especially to see Catherine Zeta Jones in this pulpit…well, I’m sorry to report that her flight was delayed due to bad weather….BUT I’m really hoping she’ll be here in time to lead sermon talkback…..

So let’s turn to our story for this morning: the Syrophoenician woman. We read the story as it appears in Mark, which is believed to be the earliest gospel text. The story also is in Matthew, who likely consulted Mark’s text and then embellished it, added some stuff….and actually makes this story a whole lot LESS radical than Mark’s version.

So here’s some background.

Jesus is well into his ministry by this time. In the time preceding this passage Jesus has healed many people. He has called 12 disciples to help with his work. He has restored life to a little girl, cast out demons, walked on water, fed thousands of people with 5 loaves and 2 fish. And he has taught many, in parables, about the kingdom.

AND interestingly…. In the passage preceding this one, Jesus has stood up against the Pharisees and scribes who have tried to blister him by citing all the Jewish laws he and his disciples have broken: apparently they haven’t been washing their hands before handling their food. They’re using the wrong pots and pans and cooking utensils. And Jesus answers the charges by calling the Pharisee hypocrites, people who answer to HUMAN laws, who abandon their commitment to God and hold to human traditions.

He says all these things to the Pharisees. And then he takes his disciples aside, away from the crowds, and gives them private instruction. He tells them…. it is not what into your mouth that makes you unclean. Eating with unwashed hands does not defile you.

It’s what’s inside of you that defiles you. If your heart and mind are filled with greed, wickedness, deceit, envy, pride, slander, theft, murder—that is what defiles you. And apparently, as usual in Mark, the disciples don’t catch on.

So now tells us that Jesus set out to Tyre and when he gets there he goes into a house where he THINKS no one will discover. Tyre is a foreign country. He has left the region of Galilee and gone OUT OF HIS FAMILIAR TERRITORY---among the Gentiles and pagans.

Why did he go there? You have your own ideas, probably. You will do your own work with this passage with your own soul authority.

But as for me, I wonder if Jesus was just tired of preaching and healing and explaining and proclaiming. He’s tired of people who just don’t “get it” – including his disciples. Maybe he just needed to get away from it. So like an introvert he goes into hiding, or tries to. He goes somewhere where maybe he won’t be recognized. I expect I’m projecting wildly. Admittedly.
But the text does say that he doesn’t want anyone to know he was there.

But guess what?

He gets noticed anyway.

By the Syrophoenician woman.

Now here again this is just my own opinion, but this woman rocks!

Who is this woman? What do we know about her?

She’s a woman. She is NOT a Jew, but a Gentile….a foreigner...A pagan, in all likelihood…

And she has a daughter who has an unclean spirit or a demon…and that could mean just about anything. It could indicate some mental illness or it could refer to some life-threatening condition…I don’t know.

Whatever the specifics, however, Mark wants us to understand the IMPORTANCE of her “outsider” status. She is NOT part of the chosen people of God…or is she?

And we don’t know how she heard about Jesus. Were there rumors circulating that a great healer had come to the region?That there was a rabbi who could heal the sick and feed the hungry…just like that?

Here again, I speculate…but you have, probably, I have, I know…been in a situation where you would do grab any straw, any straw, if you thought it would bring healing…to yourself, to someone you love…in this case to your child.

Did she run (Mark uses the word immediately) to Jesus because she was desperate and at the end of her rope? Or did she run to him with her heart filled with hope? Both?

But her need for her daughter’s healing was strong enough and deep enough to give her to courage to cross…transgress…all those barriers of race, class, gender, origin.

And as a woman…
Approach a man….
And even a Jewish Rabbi…
And bow before him and beg for her daughter’s restoration.

In this woman’s life there is something so wrong, so…what? Unfair? Hopeless? So…not right…
That she HAS to try to do something about it.

So she goes to Jesus, bows down, and begged him to cast out the demon possessing her daughter. And Jesus…well you might not like this part, but Jesus basically says: No. I can’t or I won’t.

Why?

Well, Jesus says in the metaphorical language he uses quite a lot:
I cannot take the food that belongs to the children and give it to the DOGS.

We can’t take their (meaning the right kind of people) food and throw it to the dogs (that is, YOUR kind of people). That would be breaking the rules. We just don’t do that.

Now a sidebar here about the dogs. In our culture, there are many many people to whom dogs are extraordinarily important. Being treated like a dog at some people’s houses is a wonderful thing. I’ve decided that if there IS such a thing as reincarnation, I want to come back as Mariah Currin’s dog!

Once on Seinfeld, in his opening monologue, he talks about this. He says (and I’m paraphrasing this because it is Seinfeld, after all) he says suppose there are aliens hovering over New York City in a spacecraft. And they look down through their telescopes and they see these human beings walking along behind these well-dressed and well-groomed dogs, and the humans are picking up after the dogs….who would you ASSUME is in charge down here??

But that is absolutely not the case in this story. Jesus is using a metaphor to insult her terribly, to put her in her place.

And let’s pause here and remember: Didn’t Jesus, in the story just before this one….didn’t Jesus just get through saying that it is not a good thing to worship the rules instead of God? The rules are a human construct and NOT the vital important thing.

But is he not, in this case, falling back on those rules? I can’t help you, you dog…it’s against the rules.

Now why is he acting so…out-of-character?

Of course I don’t know. But I bet we’ve all had times when we have just gotten tired of trying to challenge a system or a rule…to no avail. When it’s easier to FALL BACK on the old ways because forging a new path just takes too much energy. Is that what Jesus was doing? Maybe?

Whatever his reasons, though, the Syrophoenician woman just would not buy it: quoting Elizabeth Malbon from the BWB materials, “But if she is a dog, she yaps right back. She says, Okay, you want to do metaphors? I can do metaphors”

And the Syrophoenician woman does.

Just as fast as Jesus can present his argument, she presents hers: Yea, well even those dogs you’re talking about get to eat the crumbs off the floor.

She KNOWS what Jesus is saying about her and she turns it right back on him and basically, she beats him at his own game, really.

She doesn’t argue with him about her worth. She doesn’t say ‘you can’t call me a dog.” She says, okay, so I’m a dog. Then treat me like a dog…let me at least eat those crumbs under that table.”
Now this part always gnaws at me a little because you want her to ask to see the whole menu, you know?

But she’s just willing to settle for the crumbs.

And well, considering the fact that according to law and custom she’s not even entitled to THAT…
Considering that she is one despised by the Jews, then that makes the crumbs a pretty good deal, I guess.

And Jesus says “for saying that, you may go. The demon has left your daughter.”
Does this not astonish you?

Jesus says no, I have to play by the rules,
She says, well, not entirely…there might be another way…
He says, well, you may have a point there!

What?? I believe Jesus has changed his mind. Does this happen anywhere else in the New Testament? Did Jesus just say…..nevermind! When challenged by her words, by what this foreigner says…Jesus says okay. You’re right. I guess I need to change my mind. And he does.

Several weeks ago Dan White preached a sermon about being confronted by God. For Moses, he reminded us, God spoke through the burning bush, for instance. And he cited all kinds of ways God confronts us—fire, wind, thunder, earthquakes….

But he later said this “it just may well be that when God speaks to us it is from a client, a patient, a student, a neighbor, a teacher, a friend, a child, a lover, a spouse, or any of a myriad of circumstances that WE may think God would not touch with a ten-foot pole.” In this story Jesus of Nazareth is confronted by one of those 10-foot-pole situations. A woman, a strange and unclean and maybe even irritating woman…

Gets in his face.

Could it be that in that moment, Jesus sees NOT the irritating woman, but the face of God – the other. I want to think that.

Some scholars suggest that it is in this moment that Jesus comes to understand that salvation, if you will, is not just for the Jews, but also for the Gentiles. Maybe you agree with that and maybe you don’t. That would depend on your theology. But it does seem to me that whatever the theology, at this point the concept of the kingdom of heaven or the community of God is just not the same. In this moment there is less “us” versus “them”. And the reason I quoted Sandra Schneiders in the silent meditation is this: for me, in this passage, Jesus, maybe not at first, but eventually, Jesus is once again rejecting the structures. He is showing that there is another truly redemptive way of being a man in a patriarchal system.

And the Syrophoenician woman? She is saying almost loud and clear that she, too, is made in the image of God. In this story this woman IS putting on the Christ…that is…she is acting out of her own empowerment to bring healing and wholeness to her world.

God will, and God can, and God always does….confront that which prevents our wholeness. That which keeps us from living in the community of God.

That which would tell us “no, you cannot eat at the table….” The meeting between Jesus and the foreign woman is a holy conversation…for both of them it is a confrontation with God. After which, neither is ever the same.

This week we have marked the anniversary of Hurricane Katrina.
There are people, fine people, strong and resilient people…who have NOT enjoyed any kind of restoration or relief…here a year later.
THAT is a daughter, possessed by a demon…bedridden, powerless. THAT poverty and dispossession is a daughter.

Where’s the voice of the Syrophoenician woman? Where and how is the voice of God confronting the Pharisees and the scribes who are saying, “That’s just the way it is…..”

And where are the demon-possessed daughters in your world?
What is sick or bedridden in your world?

What part of you needs that desperate mother, that foreign woman, to give that bedridden daughter her voice? And where are your Pharisees and your rules and your regulations that are telling you to settle for crumbs….or nothing at all? Because I don’t think we’re supposed to settle for crumbs. And I don’t think we’re supposed to stand by and allow others to have to settle for the crumbs either. This woman, the Syrophoenician woman, is the other prophet in this story. She sees what is wrong. And she points it out

And she INSISTS that something is done about it.

Think back over history and remember all those unclean, unorthodox, unaccepted Syrophoenician women…male and female….who have told us and continue to tell us:
Do NOT settle for the crumbs.

This is supposed to be a banquet!
 

Benediction

Our deepest fear
is not that we are inadequate.
Our deepest fear
is that we are powerful beyond measure.
It is our light,
not our darkness,
that most frightens us….

Playing small doesn’t serve the world.
There’s nothing enlightened about shrinking
so that other people
won’t feel insecure (I said uncomfortable) around you.

We were born to make manifest
the glory of God within us.
It’s not just in some of us;
it’s in everyone.

As we let our light shine,
we unconsciously give other people
permission to do the same.
As we are liberated from our own fear,
our presence automatically liberates others.

….from a prayer by Marianne Williamson