28. Mark 7:24-37: Back to the Gentiles

Earlier Mark presented to healing stories in Jewish territory (5:21-43). Now we get two in Gentile territory (7:24-37). Jesus has just authoritatively undone the Jewish purity system that promoted an ethnic pride and exclusivity. Though his ministry is focused on reconstituting an inclusive Abrahamic people God intended to use to bless the world, Mark wants us to see that taboo-breaking inclusivity in action in him. To have an outreach to the Gentiles grounded in the ministry of the Master would be important, crucial even, for the New Exodus movement that continued on after his earthly ministry. Indeed, we have here an important allusion to the Exodus, I believe. Then, the narrator of Exodus notes, a “mixed crowd” left Egypt with the Hebrews (Ex.12:38). An Exodus of more than just the Hebrews will be matched and exceeded by a New Exodus of more than Jewish people!

7:24-30: A Syrophoenician Woman

This story unsettles readers because it suggests that Jesus was reluctant to help this Gentile woman who had sought him out to heal her demon-possessed daughter. Her quick response on hearing about Jesus (“immediately,” v.25; Mark’s favorite word) suggests some action on Jesus’ part. But he stalls hers with puzzling and perhaps even offensive words: “Let the children be fed first, for it is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs” (v.27). What’s going on here? This is not the Jesus we met so far in Mark, is it? This seems like the same ethno-centric clap-trap he just debunked! (Though to fair, Jesus does say the feeding of the children must happen first indicating that further feedings to other peoples would be forth-coming.)

I think ethno-centricity gets us headed in the right direction to understand this story. Jesus knows his ministry is to reconstitute Israel as God’s Abrahamic people. He is utterly committed to his Father’s will. He doubtless believed as any Jew would that when God brought his kingdom to realization in Israel it would have positive repercussions for the Gentiles. The Old Testament taught as much. But it was not his calling to carry out that part of God’s intentions and he did not intend to be distracted. His statement about the children being fed first points to his awareness of the shape of his own ministry. Fair enough. But why the derogatory reference to the woman as a “dog”? Is this a patriarchal, anti-feminist blind-spot in Jesus? Does the Syrophoenician woman “correct’ him or lead him to a new insight?

As popular as the latter understanding has been in recent years, I don’t think that’s what’s going on here. Wright claims this back-and-forth between Jesus and the woman is, though serious and urgent, teasing banter to achieve her goal. Her acceptance of the common epithet “dogs” for Gentiles is evidence of this. She not only accepts it but uses it to her advantage to convince Jesus to do what she wants (Wright, Mark for Everyone, 122). On a feminist reading, she should have rejected the term and plumped for equality between the children and the “dogs.

The woman’s reply is shrewd and humble at the same time. Perhaps she even senses something in and about Jesus that inclines her to believe he has something to offer her (and all other “dogs” as well. At any rate, according to France,

“. . . she does not dispute the lower place which J esus’ saying assumes for the Gentiles, and even accepts without protest the offensive epithet ‘dog’, but insists that the dogs, too, must have their day. Putting it more theologically, the mission of the Messiah of Israel, while it must of course begin with Israel, cannot be confined there. The Gentiles may have to wait, but they are not excluded from the benefits the Messiah brings. On this basis, she is bold enough to pursue her request; even the crumbs will be enough.” (France, Mark, 299)

The sharpness of Jesus’ reply, then, may be to contest the notion that he is a wandering miracle worker, healer, available to ply his wares for whoever comes asking. That’s not his mission. Too often, I think, we moderns tend to think of him that way and it troubles us he didn’t heal or exorcize everyone with a snap of his fingers.

“He had specific (and controversial) things to do and a limited time to do them. If we remake Jesus in the cosy image of a universal problem-solver, we will miss the towering importance of his unique assignment. If he must not be distracted  from the messianic vocation that will lead him to the cross, nor  must we, readers of the gospel and followers of Jesus, be distracted from focusing on that too by our natural, and indeed  God-given, desire to spread the healing message of the gospel  as widely as possible.” (Wright, Mark for Everyone, 124)

The woman’s awareness that even though it is not Jesus’ mission and not yet time for the full blessing of the Gentiles, Jesus can help her he accounts as faith. And accedes to her request. Her daughter is freed of her demon in that moment!

Mark uses this event to interpret Jesus’ just-concluded astonishing dismissal of long-standing Jewish taboos that reinforced Israel’s ethno-centricity in the interests of a wider scope to his work. Here he enacts it!