Archive for the ‘Syrophoenician Woman’ Category

Calling people “dogs”. The Syrophoenician woman

September 7, 2024

Pentecost 16 – 2024

Mark 7:24-37

Marian Free

In the name of God in whose eyes nothing and no one is unclean in and of themself. Amen.

Some years ago, I watched a move titled simply Water. It was set in rural India in the 1940s. Set against the social movement of Gandhi’s non-violent resistance it tells a story of a number of widows (aged from about 12) who were forced to live out their lives in an ashram in order to expiate the bad karma which had led to their current situation of destitution. The widows were in effect an impoverished religious order. They rarely left the dilapidated building that was their home and when they did they were clearly identifiable in their plain white saris. A scene that has stayed with me is that of a young, beautiful widow who happened to be walking in the street when another woman brushed up against her. Even though the physical connection was brief and not caused by the widow, the other woman recoiled in horror and disgust and began to abuse widow for causing the contact. In that culture a widow was considered to be unclean and her impurity deemed to be contagious. The offended person was angry with the widow because it was the widow’s responsibility to keep well out of the way of the rest of society so that she didn’t risk sullying anyone else.

In our culture it is difficult to understand the purity laws of another culture – how contact with an otherwise moral and clean person might cause us to feel in some way polluted. We might shudder if we were touched by someone who had not bathed for several days, and we might want to wash ourselves after the encounter, but we would not consider ourselves seriously contaminated and unfit to mix in society until we had undergone some form of purification.

Purity laws abounded in first century Judaism. The Pharisees (and the Essenes) in particular were anxious to avoid impurity and there were rules about bathing to restore purity. The reason that the Jews didn’t enter Pilate’s quarters when they handed Jesus over was that they feared being made unclean before the Passover and therefore unable to celebrate the festival. In Jesus’ parable of the Good Samaritan, the Priest and Levite passed by the wounded man because, had he been dead, touching his body would have made them impure and unable to enter the Temple (which was their destination). 

Jesus’ encounter with the woman from Syrophoenicia Jesus takes place immediately after a discussion with the Pharisees and scribes on the subject of purity.[1] The Pharisees and scribes had challenged Jesus because he and his disciples did not observe the purity regulations – washing before eating, cleaning the outside of cooking and eating utensils and so on. Jesus’ response was to challenge the hypocrisy of his opponents who kept the letter of the law but not the Spirit of the law, whose inward nature was not at all impacted by their outward behaviour. Observing the purity laws had failed to purify them. (He on the other hand did not need to keep the laws governing purity as he was pure on the inside.)

After this encounter with the Pharisees, Jesus sought refuge in a house in the region of Tyre. Here, his own relationship with the purity laws was challenged by a desperate woman – a woman who was a source of impurity on three accounts. She was a woman; she was a Gentile, and she was the mother of a child who is possessed by a demon. For all these reasons, according to Jewish law, Jesus should have nothing to do with her. But the woman will do anything for her child. Even though Jesus insinuates that she is no more than a dog, undeserving of his attention, she will not take “no” for an answer. She refused to accept that she and her daughter were not worthy of Jesus’ attention due to their race, their gender and their state of health. She even accepted the description of “dog” and turned the argument around: “Even the dogs eat the crumbs under the table.”  

The woman confronted Jesus’ attitude towards outsiders and thereby his concept of clean and unclean, pure and impure. In so doing she forced Jesus to recognise that he was being that he was being inconsistent. If it was not the “outside” of a thing that makes it clean or unclean, then surely it was not the external identifiers of a person – race, gender, physical or mental health that could determine their state of purity. In his debate with the Pharisees, Jesus claimed that it was not what goes into a person that defiled but what comes out. Taken to its logical conclusion his argument implied that all people should be judged according to their inward nature not their outward characteristics.

This most extraordinary story of a woman, an outsider confronting Jesus and changing Jesus’ mind, makes more sense if we understand the context in which Mark was writing. Mark, and indeed all the gospel writers, were writing to an audience that was primarily Gentile in origin. The evangelists had to answer an unspoken question – How was it that those to whom Jesus was sent did not accept Jesus’ message, and those who were outsiders did?

Placed alongside each other, the debate with the Pharisees about purity laws and Jesus encounter with the Syrophoenician woman provide an answer to that question.  The Pharisees were too rigid to see in the rule-breaking Jesus the one whom God had sent. The Syrophoenician woman dared to claim God’s promise that the Gentiles would be included. 

All that of course is ancient history. We belong to a faith that has little connection with the faith from which it grew. That said, there are at least two lessons for us in today’s gospel. One is that it is not ours to judge others. The second is that God’s embrace can and does include all people regardless of sex, gender, race, religion or any other criteria that we might use to separate and divide.

Beware of calling other people: “dogs” or any other slur – they might just supplant us in the kingdom.

[1] I am grateful to Dr Margaret Wesley for this insight. 

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Change of mind – Syro-Phoenician woman

August 19, 2023

Pentecost 12 – 2023
Matthew 15:21-28
Marian Free

In the name of God who is always beyond our comprehension. Amen.

I begin this having just read the SMH report (18.8.2023) relating to the Anglican Diocese of Sydney. The Doctrine Commission of that Diocese has produced a report that will be presented to their Synod later this year. The document includes a new doctrinal statement on homosexuality that says that the mere desire for same-sex sexual intimacy is contrary to God’s will, “an inclination toward evil” and something from which Christians seek to be liberated. It concluded that people who are same-sex attracted but celibate are not “actively and consistently perpetuating sin”, and their desire alone does not demand repentance. However, it is “something to be lamented and from which we seek to be liberated”.

Rob Smith, a member of the Committee stated on The Pastor’s Heart Podcast: “Sinful desires are sinful. It’s not just the doing of sin that’s sinful, the desiring of sin is sinful,” he said. “There are not godly ways of expressing same-sex sexual desire. There’s no opportunity there, there’s no open door … It’s contrary to nature from the get-go.”

I find myself grieving for all who are same-sex attracted, who are being told that something over which they have no control is sinful and deserving of God’s wrath and at the same time I am puzzling how any mere mortal can truly put themselves in the place of God to determine what is good and what is evil, who is in and who is out.

It seems to me that today’s gospel speaks directly to this issue and it demonstrates that even Jesus did not entirely know the mind of God – that is, Jesus was sure that he knew the mind of God until he was humbled by the insistence of the very person whom he judged to be unworthy of his help and “deserving of God’s wrath” (to use the language of the language quote above).

The scenario is one with which we are very familiar. Jesus is a long way from home – in the region of Tyre and Sidon when a woman of that region – a Canaanite, a gentile – comes out and begins shouting that her daughter is tormented by a demon. Jesus’ response is to ignore her, until the disciples, unable to listen to her shouting tell him to send her away. When Jesus does speak, it is not to address the woman’s concern but only to coldly inform her that she is outside his area of concern. She is a gentile, and his role (he is certain) is only to the lost sheep of Israel. Undeterred, the woman falls to the ground and begs him to help her. Jesus remains unmoved: “It is not fair to take the children’s food and feed it to the dogs.” The woman shrugs off the insult: “Even the dogs eat the crumbs,” she says.

At last Jesus is moved to help, though what changed his mind is not entirely clear. The woman’s faith alone seems unlikely to have forced Jesus to reverse centuries of antipathy towards the gentiles and his lifetime immersion in the Jewish faith and it practices .

What is clear though, is that when the woman approached the group, Jesus was so confident in his understanding of Judaism, so sure that he fully understood his mission (to the lost sheep of Israel), that he could see no reason to give this distraught woman the time of day. Until this conversation, Jesus was absolutely sure that he knew God’s will with regard to the gentiles, that he was knew the difference between right and wrong and who was in and who was out. He was so confident in his point of view that he was completely comfortable with his refusal to show the woman any compassion and he had no hesitation in insulting her to her face. In comparison to his self-righteous assurance, the woman’s anguish and grief was nothing. According to the Jewish law, the gentiles were outside God’s grace and there (or so Jesus thought) they should remain.

And yet now, Jesus makes a 180 degree turn. He lets go of a lifetime of conditioning and prejudice and comes to the realisation that the good news he brings is intended for all not just a few and that just as he has broken boundaries to include sinners, tax-collectors and prostitutes, so he is called to break down the barriers between Jew and Gentile.

What I find extraordinary is that the very person whom Jesus (and the religious system he represents) has deemed as unclean and unworthy to be included in the healing, restorative power of the kingdom is the same person who through her self-belief and perhaps through her recognition of Jesus and his mission, opens his eyes to his narrow-mindedness, his parochialism and his judgementalism and breaks through his self-assurance that he knows God’s will. Through this extraordinary encounter, Jesus becomes aware that God’s all-embracing love is big enough to include all people.

Jesus’ encounter with the Syro-Phoenician woman, should be a warning to all of us that we can never presume to speak for God, that we are foolish to think that the norms and attitudes that we have inherited from our forebears in faith are necessarily intended to stand for all time. If Jesus could let go of the beliefs, the biases, and the practices of his time, then we too should be open to the ways in which the Spirit is moving the church of our day.

Jesus saved his harshest words for the self-righteous people of his day, those who wanted to hold on to the past at all costs. Let us not be those people.

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Arguing with God

September 4, 2021

Pentecost 15 – 2021
Mark 7:24-37
Marian Free

In the name of God, known to us in creation, through the life of Jesus, by the prompting of the Spirit and in the written word. Amen.

Last week I attended the Northern Region Clergy Conference. In our Conference bags was a copy of a recently released book written by a British priest, Miranda Threlfall-Holmes – “How to Eat Bread – 21 Nourishing Ways to Read the Bible .” In a novel and accessible way, Miranda guides the reader into a deeper understanding of the ways in which one can and should approach our scriptures. In so doing, she takes away some of the mystery that can be associated with a book that is often difficult and which contains themes and ideas that are foreign (and even distasteful) to our experience.

The Bible is our story, the basis of our faith, the source of our knowledge about the one true God. Its complexity should not daunt us, but we may need some tools to help us to get the most out of our reading.

For example, when we read the Bible, it is important to bear in mind including that it was not written in one sitting, nor was it authored by just one person. It is a collection (a library even) of sixty-six books. Within the bible we find different styles of literature written during different periods of history to address particular situations. Books of the Bible cover history, law, poetry, proverbs, stories, prophetic books, gospels, letters, sermons, and apocalyptic literature. Each book has to be read according to the type of literature that it represents. If we were to read a book such as one of the wisdom books (A Song of Songs, Ecclesiastes) as if it was history, we would completely miss the point and would find ourselves taking literally something that was intended figuratively.

Because the Bible was written over a long period of time, those who wrote at a later date would have known and used pre-existing writings (explicitly and implicitly) to speak to their own time and place. Unlike modern scholars, they would not have had to use footnotes to reference where their quotes came from, nor would they have felt any obligation to be precise. (For example, the quotation attributed to John the Baptist is a combination – coming from both Isaiah and Micah for example.) Knowing that the Bible itself includes a number of different forms of interpretation, means that we do not need to feel ourselves limited to one or another way of reading/understanding it.

Very little of the Bible was written in real time. The Gospels were only committed to paper thirty to forty years after Jesus’ death. During that time the stories were told and retold which allowed variations to creep in. Genesis, the first book of the Bible consists of stories that had been told and retold for thousands of years. It reflects debates regarding the nature of God and of humanity, questions and answers as to why things are the way they are.

As Miranda points out, the various writings have been gathered over time because people who believed in the God of the Israelites felt that these books captured their experience of God and/or that they were significant in building up their spiritual life. She says: “They (the books) are not simply a list of beliefs about God” (or, I would add, a collection of rules that must be obeyed). Scripture represents: “stories, thought experiments or dreams that are meant to be troubling, unsettling, or even to make you angry .”

All this is a rather long-winded introduction to the practice of debate in scripture and, in particular the practice of arguing with God – Miranda’s first chapter. As she points out, one of the ways of coming to understand and of developing a relationship with the one true God is represented through debate. This was particularly the case when it came to trying to come to grips with the question of good and evil and how it is that a good God allows bad things to happen.

Not only did our forebears argue with one another as they tried to understand what it meant to have faith, but they had no difficulty arguing with God. Abraham had no problem challenging God’s decision to destroy Sodom, Isaac wrestled with God and Job questioned God’s treatment of him – just to mention a few examples.

That Jesus was a part of this tradition is evident from the way in which he countered the arguments of the Pharisees as they struggled together about the meaning of scriptures – what did it mean to keep the Sabbath holy, which commandments were the most important, was ritual washing essential in everyday life and so on? Arriving at a definitive answer was not as important as struggling with the question. This tells us, as Miranda suggests, that the point of engaging with scripture is: “to encounter God and to let ourselves be formed and changed by the process of argument itself .”

Today’s gospel addresses, in the form of debate, the question about the inclusion of the Gentiles in the people of God. Jesus’ encounter with the Syrophoenician woman was a vital step in the movement of the Christian faith from its Jewish origins to its place as a universal faith. In good rabbinic fashion, the woman refused to simply accept Jesus’ abrupt (rude?) refusal to help her. She held her ground and offered a different way of seeing the world and the relationship with God. If Jesus healed her daughter, she insisted, he would not be taking anything away from “the children” because there are always scraps or crumbs that fall from the table for the dogs to consume.

We neglect the Bible at our own peril. Not only does it tell our story, and the story of God’s relationship with us, it also encourages us to ask questions, to challenge the status quo, not to take anything for granted and to engage with the living God without fear.

If you haven’t already – give it a go!

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Hearing the cries of the oppressed

August 15, 2020

Pentecost 11 – 2020

Matthew 15:21-28 (some thoughts)

Marian Free

In the name of God who is dynamic and active not confined by human imagination. Amen.

Sometimes it takes spontaneous movements to bring about institutional change (the Arab spring for eg) and sometimes it is the quiet persistence of just one person that sets a ball rolling that starts a chain of events that lead to real and lasting change.  In 1955, on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama Rosa Parkes refused to stand for a white man. Her action inspired the Montgomery Bus boycott which lasted for over a year at the end of which the United States Supreme Court ruled that segregation was unconstitutional. In turn the boycott gave courage to the millions of disenfranchised and disenchanted black Americans who under Martin Luther King began the civil rights movement. Later, in 1977 Harvey Milk was elected as a city supervisor in the city of San Francisco. Milk had become increasingly politicized – in particular by the prejudice and discrimination he witnessed and experienced as a gay man. It has been claimed that Milk was the most famous and significant  LGBT official elected in the United States. His time in office was short lived. Milk was assassinated by a disgruntled city supervisor eleven months after being elected to office. Milk served almost eleven months in office, during which he sponsored a bill banning discrimination in public accommodations, housing, and employment on the basis of sexual orientation. His impact was acknowledged in 2009 when he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Parkes and Milk and numerous others demonstrate that quiet, firm persistence, an awareness of one’s own worth and an insistence that that worth be recognized can overturn unjust institutions and prejudicial laws.

The woman from Canaan was one such person. Jesus’ refusal to respond to her request did not deter her. She had a clear sense of her own value (and that of her daughter). Neither Jesus’ silence nor his disciples’ demand that Jesus send her away had the capacity to make her feel underserving of his notice. She would not allow them to ignore or demean her. Even when Jesus tried to defend his response – claiming that her daughter’s distress was not his problem, the woman stood firm, she engaged him in debate and in so doing convinced Jesus of the justness of her cause. As a consequence of the actions of the woman, the whole course of history was changed. Jesus’ claim that he was sent ‘only to the lost sheep of Israel’ was successfully challenged and, as the letters of Paul make clear, the definition of Israel was broadened to include not only those of Jewish descent, but all those who believed in Jesus.

We are all created in the image of God. None of us should feel that we deserve to be demeaned, put down or put upon. Confident in God’s love, each of us should be able to be certain of our place in the world and entitled to claim it. More importantly, those of us who are privileged by virtue of our place of birth, our education or our income should be willing to hear the voices of the oppressed, the marginalised, the disadvantaged and the disenfranchised.

Despite his hesitation, Jesus responded to the woman’s plea and to her argument. So we too should be open to having our opinions, our values and our prejudices challenged and changed.

If through our own parochialism, ignorance or arrogance, we remain deaf to the cries of others, we may find ourselves thwarting the will of God.

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God’s holiness making us holy

September 8, 2018

Pentecost 17 – 2018

Mark 7:24-37

Marian Free

In the name of God through whom all things are made clean. Amen.

 In the early part of this century, an Indio-Canadian woman produced three controversial movies – “Fire”, “Earth” and “Water”. I have only seen the last of these. “Water” follows the life of two widows – one who is only eight years old and another who appears to be in her late twenties. The movie is set in 1938 when widows in India were allowed to remarry but, as we all know, some traditions – especially those that are rooted in religion – are not easily overturned by legislation. Chuyia and Kalyani who were members of the Brahmin caste had only two choices when their husbands’ died – to throw themselves on the funeral pyre or to marry their husband’s brother. If they chose to do neither they were forced to enter an ashram. For the remainder of their lives they were to live as nuns, hidden away from society and dependent on the charity of others. Their hair was cut short and they were robed in white so as to make them identifiable to the public because their status as widows meant that they were considered unclean and were to be avoided.

It is a powerful and disturbing movie that demonstrates the way in which, as one commentator puts it, “an ancient religious law has been put to the service of family economy, greed and a general feeling that women can be thrown away.” The widows have no social status, in fact it is as if they did not exist. In one scene, a woman brushes up against Kalyani who, though she is young and beautiful causes the other woman to recoil in disgust, screaming at Kalyani for allowing herself to get so close. Her widowhood has made Kalyani ritually impure and she has, albeit inadvertently, made the other woman impure through contact. Societies such as that in which the movie is set have strict protocols that must be observed so as to avoid any possibility of pollution of the one by another.

In our reasonably enlightened and unstratified society, it is difficult for us to imagine the utter revulsion that people in some cultures feel when exposed to others whom they have been taught to see as soiled or polluted. We do not feel that we have to have religious rituals that would restore us to purity or make us fit to attend worship.

As the gospels and the letters of Paul reveal, issues of clean and unclean were the lived reality of first century Jews. The Pharisees worry that Jesus does not wash. In the parable of the Good Samaritan the priests and Levites avoided the Samaritan because they did not want to be polluted by his injuries or by his status as a Gentile. The priests do not enter Pilate’s quarters when they bring Jesus to be tried because they do not want to be rendered unclean by the contact.

Today’s gospel stands alone as a powerful story of a woman whose desperation meant that she refused to be silenced and whose persistence, it appears, changed the course of Jesus’ ministry.

If we look at the context of this story within the gospel as a whole, we can see that Mark uses this story in a very particular way to illustrate Jesus’ argument with the Pharisees regarding ritual purity and concerns about what food is clean and unclean. The narrative section in which the account of Jesus’ meeting with the Syrophoenician woman occurs actually extends from Mark 6:31 (the account of the feeding of the 5,000 Judeans) to Mark 8:21 (the feeding of the 4,000 Gentiles)[1].

The discussion begins in Jewish territory (6:31-7:29) and concludes in Gentile territory (7:31-8:21). Both the geography and the narrative setting serve to highlight the central point – Jesus declares all things to be clean. In technical terms Mark uses a chiasm to place the emphasis on the central point – clean and unclean. Simply put, the story is framed by two different accounts of a miraculous feeding (and a misunderstanding of the meaning of bread). Within those outer brackets are two other sets of brackets.  Immediately inside this the stories of feeding we find instances of Jesus’ healing ministry and inside those again are two controversy stories (with the Pharisees and with the Syrophoenician woman). Nested within this framework is Jesus’ discussion with the disciples in which he declares all things to be clean.

It is clear that in Mark’s retelling of the story Jesus’ discussion with the woman serves to emphasise the point that he has already made in his argument with the Pharisees – that cleanliness and purity depend not on outward behavior, but on inward disposition. Boundaries related to food, religion or ethnicity have no place in the Kingdom that Jesus is announcing. Borders considered to be immutable are being torn down in the new world that Jesus’ teaching is bringing into being.

In the short account of Jesus’ interaction with the Syrophoenician woman a number of significant frontiers are crossed. Jesus (for no apparent reason) not only enters Gentile territory but presumably the home of a Gentile and he engages directly with a woman. The woman, who by Jewish standards is unclean on account of her race and her gender is further tainted by the presence of an unclean spirit in her daughter. According to the social and religious norms of the day she should not have approached Jesus, let alone entered the house in which he was staying. The woman’s actions demonstrate her deep love for her child. Jesus’ actions reveal his understanding that the social and geographic boundaries of his time are a human artifice that have nothing to do with true holiness.

The society of Jesus’ time and place believed that the impure polluted the pure. In declaring all things to be clean, by responding to the pleas of the Syrophoenician woman, Jesus exposes the false thinking of his age. God, God’s temple and God’s people cannot be polluted by the unholy and profane. Impurity does not flow from us to God. Rather purity and holiness always flow in the other direction from God to us. God is not tainted by our behavior or by our failure to observe certain protocol, neither is God sullied by those deemed (by us) as unfit for God’s presence. Rather God’s love and goodness extend outwards from God making holy all those who, like the woman, believe that they are not beneath God’s notice.

 

 

 

[1]For more details read “The Construction of Identity in Mary 7:24-30: The Syrophoenician Woman and the Problem of Ethnicity.” Smith Julien C.H., Biblical Interpretation.20 (2012), 458-581.

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Changing God’s mind, changing our minds about God

September 5, 2015

Pentecost 15 – 2015

Mark 7:24-37

Marian Free

Loving God, free us from the arrogance that leads us to believe that we know all that there is to know. Fill us with holy awe such that we might tremble in your presence knowing that our understanding is both finite and limited. Amen.

I think I can safely say that the rise of ISIS in the Middle East and Boko Haran in Nigeria has filled us all with horror and that presence of the Taliban in Pakistan and Afghanistan – especially the terrible consequences for women and girls in those countries – has been a source of continuing concern. Fundamentalism (in any religion) is a very dangerous thing. Black and white thinking and literal interpretation of a few select scriptural texts not only damages and constricts spiritual development but it can give some people permission to behave in ways that most of us would consider to be not only cruel and oppressive but also ungodly.

One of the problems with fundamentalism is that it allows people to believe that they know all that there is to know about God and about their holy texts. Being convinced that they and they alone know the mind of God, such people believe that they are authorized to act on God’s behalf and to impose on others what they believe to be God’s law. In general fundamentalists have a very narrow view of faith and of God. They are blind to the inconsistencies and complexities of their scripture, unable to discern developments in the way in which God is understood and known and ignorant of the fact that scripture has been interpreted in very different ways in different times and different contexts. Very often, fundamentalists confuse true religion with social conservatism believing that the will of God was most fully expressed in a particular way and in a particular time and thinking that the only way to restore order to the world is to return to that time.

In many cases fundamentalism is as much about power and control as it is about faith in and faithfulness to God. At the moment we are witness to the fact that the worst excesses of fundamentalism result in violence against those who do not or cannot hold the same views.

While God – the same yesterday, today and tomorrow – does not change and God’s plans for humanity do not waver, our understanding is limited and finite and our knowledge is always incomplete. This means is that over time our knowledge of God and of God’s purpose for us changes and develops. A relationship with the living God is not static – as if God were able to be contained and defined in human terms. A relationship with God is always growing and changing – both collectively and individually. Different life experiences, changes in culture, developments in science and new tools in biblical interpretation all serve to deepen and enrich our understanding of God and of scripture and help us to live and behave in ways that reflect these new insights and understanding.

Different life experiences can cause us to rethink our relationship with God and God’s relationship with the world. As we learn more about ourselves and others we become more compassionate, more tolerant and more understanding – all of which enables us to see scripture and God from the point of view of our own limitations and frailty.

Of course the most dramatic, and for us most compelling, revision of our understanding of God comes in the person of Jesus who broke through all previous preconceptions and revealed God in a way never before conceived. Jesus was both a continuation of the Old Testament ideas and values, but also a radical departure from them. Jesus extended God’s love of the poor and vulnerable to tax collectors and sinners, he showed a blatant disregard for the letter of the law, he refused to unquestioningly submit to the leaders of the church and he interpreted scripture in a new and different way.

Not only did Jesus completely change the way we think about God, it appears Jesus himself was open to change. So far as we can tell, when Jesus began his ministry he had in view the people of Israel. Being a person of his time and place, Jesus understood that Yahweh was the God of Israel and as such concerned only with the salvation of Israel. As he saw it, Jesus’ role was to restore the relationship between Israel and God.

It should come as no surprise then that he refused to help the woman from Syrophoenicia. She and her daughter did not belong to God’s chosen people. They were not his responsibility. Undaunted by Jesus’ response and desperate that her daughter be cured, the woman persisted with her request, debating with Jesus and demonstrating that his point of view was unnecessarily narrow. The woman’s argument was so persuasive that Jesus was forced to concede that her point was valid. By helping Jesus to understand that God’s love and compassion need not be limited to a few, the woman opened his mind to a new way of thinking and pointed his ministry in a new and different direction. Her argument persuaded him that God’s love and compassion need not be limited to a few, but could be extended and offered to all.

It is true that God doesn’t change, but our understanding of God is continually developing and expanding. It is this that allows us to make changes in our practices and doctrine that help us to continue to open our hearts and our minds to new possibilities of relating to God and to others.

If we lock God in to one particular way of being, what we really do is to limit and confine ourselves. If we think that we have nothing more to learn about God, we have essentially elevated ourselves to the position of God and reduced God to an image of ourselves and to a set of easily understood formulae.

As Jesus demonstrates, God will continue to burst through the narrow confines of our understanding, confronting and challenging us, stretching our imaginations, forcing us to acknowledge new and changing boundaries, refusing to be defined and contained and reminding us that God is, and always will be, beyond the limits of human understanding.

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Changing the world

September 8, 2012

Pentecost 15

Mark 7:24-37

Marian Free

In the name of God whose shoulders are broad enough to bear our complaints and whose love is wide enough to respond. Amen.

I’m sure that most of you will have heard the extraordinary and moving story of the young Australian woman whose fiancé is living with locked-in syndrome as a result of a football injury. My google search failed to find the story, so I will call the couple Rachel and David. Rachel and David were preparing for their wedding when David knocked his head during a football match. When he woke from his coma, he was unable to do anything. Though fully aware of what was gong on around him, he could not move nor could he communicate. He was suffering from locked-in syndrome for which there is no known cure. For Rachel this situation was not good enough. She loved David and was determined that he should have the best life possible. In order to achieve this, Rachel moved into David’s parent’s home to be able to help care for him. Then, with David’s Father, she spent every spare minute researching a cure.

Hope came when, after extensive searching, they discovered that a doctor in South Africa had discovered that a particular sleeping tablet sometimes had the opposite effect that is, with particular patients it caused them to be more alert than usual. Rachel contacted the doctor to see if the same drug might assist David. After a number of discussions and a full consideration of the risks involved, she decided to give David a small dose of the medication. To their joy and amazement, the drug brought David out of his locked-in state! For an hour, he was able to communicate, to share how he had been feeling, his frustration and hopes. Sadly, at the time the programme was shown, the family had not been able to increase the times of alertness nor was there an clear understanding of how the drug worked. However, at lest for a short time each day, David is able to communicate and Rachel has her partner to talk to. No one knows what lies ahead for David but the determination of his fiancé has meant that his quality of life will be so much better than had she given up hope or given up on him.

People will go to amazing lengths for those whom they love. Magazines and newspapers are filled with inspiring stories of families and friends doing all that they can to ensure that the person whom they love has access to the best possible care even if that means taking them overseas. Others raise money to build care facilities that enable young people to receive care without going to an old people’ home. Many spend hours helping a family member or friend to recover from accident or stroke. Others establish funds or foundations to assist other people who are afflicted in the same way as their loved one and yet others challenge the laws to see justice truly done. We have all witnessed the way in which Daniel Morcombe’s parents responded to the disappearance of their son. They have spent years keeping their story in front of us in an attempt to make sure that their son was found. As well they have established programmes to educate children about “stranger danger.

The list of stories could go on and on and on. What is clear is that love doesn’t see the barriers that are put in the way, but pushes through sometimes with unexpected and astounding results. Very often the changes that result form such persistence help not only the family concerned but have much wider implications – changes to the legal system or to treatment regimes, funds for ongoing research all benefit the wider community.

Such is the case with the woman in today’s gospel. She is not even supposed to know that Jesus is in the area and, as a woman and a Gentile, probably shouldn’t even being trying to approach him. However, she is driven by desperation. Her daughter is unwell and like, most parents, she will do whatever it takes to save her. Even when Jesus refuses point-blank to help, the woman is undeterred. She breaks through Jesus’ argument to persuade him that even those outside the chosen people are able to access “the crumbs” that fall from the table. Jesus is unable to resist this logic and the woman’s daughter is healed. The long-term result of the woman’s persistence is that the community that formed in Jesus’ name was not restricted to those of Jewish birth, but was thrown open to people from all backgrounds and from every nation. Jesus’ mind was changed by the woman’s word (teaching) and history was changed as a result!

Too often we feel powerless to change our situation – either because of our physical abilities, societal restrictions, family background, income or other reason. Some of us assume that our situation in life is “the will of God” and submit, sometimes grudgingly, to the hand life has dealt us. The example of the Syrophoenician woman challenges these negative assumptions. While it is true that it is not always possible to bring about change – the cure for our disease might not be found in our life-time, it may take years and years for a refugee to find a country that will them – that doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t try to bring about change or that we shouldn’t challenge society (or even God) about the way things are.

Often it is the most unlikely people who effect change – sometimes on a huge scale. The Syrophoenician woman was an outsider, with no position in society and almost certainly no income to boast of yet, according to this account she was able to change the mind of Jesus, and as a result, to change the course of history.

We may not be able to change the world, but it may be possible to change our small corner. Things don’t always work out the way we hope but whether they do or not, let it not be for the want of trying.

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Posted in Mark's gospel, Syrophoenician Woman | Comments Off on Changing the world