When Jesus Lost the Debate

When Jesus Lost the Debate

Mark 7:24-30

March 15, 2020 • Mount Pleasant UMC

Well, friends, only 8 more months of the presidential race to go! Doesn’t it seem like it has already been going on forever? The Democratic side started with I’m not sure how many candidates, but it was enough that last year they had to take two nights for their debates. Now, we’re down to basically two candidates, and some are even calling for an end to the primaries since the favorite seems to be Joe Biden. Then there are those debates! It seems we have had more debates this round than ever before, and they have been—let’s just say “louder” then ever before. Of course, we love to debate. Just look anywhere online and watch how people go at it, trying to prove their point, trying to convince the other person that they are right. However, I have yet to hear anyone say, “A debate on social media changed my mind and corrected the course of my life!” It doesn’t seem to happen, but that doesn’t stop us. I’m not sure even the political debates change anyone’s mind. Yet, we love to debate—more than that, we love to win debates.

One person I would not want to debate with is Jesus. I mean, come on, he’s the Son of God, creator of the universe—he knows everything and seems to win every debate he engages in. Except one. This morning, as we continue our Lenten series on “Jesus Behaving Badly,” we’re going with Jesus to a town called Tyre, the one place where the one person lives with whom Jesus lost a debate. And while we’re there in a foreign land, we’re going to ask the question: did Jesus promote racism?

Racism wasn’t uncommon in Jesus’ day and it wouldn’t have been unusual in his upbringing. There were all sorts of layers of favoritism in his world, prejudice that wasn’t necessarily based on skin color or other physical features, but on where the “other” was from. Whatever ethnic group you were a part of, you generally considered yours superior to everyone else. The Greeks coined the term “barbarians” because they couldn’t understand the language of the people around them; it sounded like babbling: “bar bar bar.” So they called them “barbarians,” a term that was meant to paint them as inferior. The Greeks also looked down on the Persians, and then the Romans came along and treated the Greeks just like the Greeks had treated the Persians. And then there were the Jews, God’s chosen people. To them, everyone else was…well, not chosen. Gentiles (which basically means everyone who isn’t Jewish) were considered unclean, and if you had contact with them, you became unclean as well. There was even a curse in one of the books written between the Old and New Testaments that pronounced two neighboring nations as “detested” and a third as “not even a people” (cf. Strauss, Jesus Behaving Badly, pgs. 127-128; Wessel, “Mark,” Expositor’s Bible Commentary, Vol. 8, pg. 681). Gentiles were “not a people.” So the world around Jesus was full of tension between people groups, but Jesus chooses to go across those geographical and racial boundaries when he wants to find rest.

Now, part of me wonders if he went to Phoenicia so that no one would find him. It’s a place “good Jews” didn’t go. He could hide out and rest, which appears to be what he wants to do; he tries to keep his presence there a secret (7:24; Card, Mark: The Gospel of Passion, pg. 100; Wessel 682). Phoenicia was home to the city of Tyre and at this time the whole area was controlled by Syria; today it is part of Lebanon, northwest of Galilee. It was Gentile territory, to be sure, and yet they have heard of Jesus here, too. It’s not long before at least one person is seeking him out. She is a desperate woman, a mother whose daughter is sick. Mark says the daughter was “possessed by an impure spirit” (7:25), a demon. Undoubtedly, like any mother would, she had tried anything and everything to help her daughter; when she comes to Jesus, she is desperate. This may be her last hope. She will try anything, even asking help of this Jewish teacher.

So she falls down at Jesus’ feet—a sign of submission and respect—and she begs Jesus to take care of the demon. This is not just a quiet request. This is a desperate plea. This is an “I will do anything” action. Begging. Parents or grandparents get this. I know when my kids were sick, there wasn’t anything I wouldn’t do to help them get well. This woman is even willing to bow at the feet of someone she would have been taught all of her life was beneath her. In order to help her daughter, she’s willing to swallow her pride and give control over to this Jew—and then he rejects her. Or at least that’s the way it sounds. Jesus tells her, “It is not right to take the children’s bread and toss it to the dogs” (7:27). Did Jesus seriously just call this woman—and her people—“dogs”? You need to understand that, for the Jews, dogs were not the cuddly, cute pets that we know them as. Dogs were, generally speaking, unclean animals—wild strays roaming the streets of Jerusalem. They were animals you stayed away from, and if you wanted to insult someone (like a Gentile), you could call them a “dog”—which is what Jesus does here. And, by the way, the words Gentiles used for Jews were just as uncomplimentary (Wright, Mark for Everyone, pg. 95)! Now, the word Jesus uses refers not so much to wild dogs as it does to little dogs—puppies—and it is true that the Gentiles in Tyre sometimes kept dogs as pets, but the words still sound harsh, insulting and—well, downright racist. Jesus refers to her with a word that, in his culture, you didn’t use to describe someone you liked (cf. Card 100; Wessel 682; Strauss 129). Mark doesn’t say it, but I imagine that the disciples got really quiet at this point, waiting to see what would happen next.

What happens next is amazing for a lot of reasons. For one, this woman who has been, we might say, “put in her place,” doesn’t hesitate to respond to Jesus. In fact, it’s almost like she knew how this would go and how she would respond. She’s certainly got a quick mind and a sharp wit. She engages Jesus: “Even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs” (7:28), she says, and every parent who also has a dog knows that is true. Our dogs have always learned that the best location to get food from the table is near the kids. When the kids were babies, it didn’t take long for our dog to learn that all sorts of yummy goodness fell from the high chair. To this day, Hershey, our mutt, hangs out around Rachel when we’re at the dinner table. Hershey doesn’t need the whole meal; she’s quite happy with the crumbs, the leftovers, the things that fall from the overflow of the table. That’s the point this woman is making—she seems to understand that, as Jesus tells another Gentile woman, “salvation is from the Jews” (John 4:22), but this woman is willing to take whatever overflows from the table and onto the floor. She’ll be happy with crumbs; God’s crumbs are better than a full earthly meal. So Jesus responds by casting out the demon—long-distance, by the way. He tells her the demon is gone at that moment (7:29). The woman gets what she begs for, which creates the other amazing thing about this story. It’s the only time in the Gospels when Jesus loses a debate (Strauss 129). He concedes the woman is right, and as some tell it, gives up his racism and allows her to access the power of God.

Or is there something else going on here? Is it possible that Jesus is, in fact, not debating with her but provoking her faith (cf. Strauss 130)? Is it possible that Jesus is speaking into the racism of his world and showing a different way? In the Gospel of Mark, Jesus is very much in charge of and guiding conversations the way he wants them to go (cf. Strauss 130), and that seems to be what he’s doing here—he’s egging the woman on, pushing her, knowing she will stand up to him. This debate is, I believe, meant more to show the disciples that he has in fact come not just for the Jews but for everyone. It’s a lesson they will have a hard time learning, even after he is gone. One of the more well-known stories comes some time after Jesus’ resurrection and ascension, when Peter, leader of the disciples, is summoned by a Roman soldier. While waiting on lunch, Peter had received a vision—three times!—of unclean animals being lowered from heaven. In the vision, a voice told him to eat the unclean animals, and Peter protests. He has never eaten anything that is on the Jewish “do not eat” list. After the vision, messengers from Cornelius, the Roman soldier, arrive, and they ask Peter to come with them. Peter goes, but the first words out of his mouth when he arrives at Cornelius’ house are, “It is against our law for a Jew to associate with or visit a Gentile.” In other words, “I’m really not supposed to be here.” Then he goes on: “But God has shown me that I should not call anyone impure or unclean” (Acts 10:28). It’s one more reminder to these stubborn disciples that what Jesus came to bring was not just for the Jews; it was for the whole world.

To demonstrate that, Jesus healed the servant of a Roman centurion and commended the soldier’s faith: “I have not found anyone in Israel with such great faith” (Matthew 8:10). And when Jesus preached at his hometown synagogue in Nazareth, he preached a well-received sermon—until he pointed out their racism and their lack of faith. In his sermon, he pointed back to a time when Elijah the prophet was sent to a Gentile widow instead of one from Israel. And he followed that up by reminding them of the time Elisha the prophet healed Naaman the Syrian, also not an Israelite (Luke 4:24-27). And at the end of that sermon, they take him to the high cliff outside of Nazareth, where they threaten to throw him off. I’ve stood on top of that cliff; falling off would do some serious damage! They weren’t kidding when they took him there; he had deeply offended them because he had this idea that everyone was welcome, everyone was included, that God’s salvation was (and is) available to everyone (cf. Strauss 134-137).

And then there’s perhaps the most famous of Jesus’ stories, at least when it comes to including others. The parable of the Good Samaritan—even the title we’ve given to it would have been unacceptable to the average Jew in Jesus’ time. There was no such thing as a “good” Samaritan. Samaritans were half-breeds. They were the people who had not been “good enough” or “valuable enough” to be taken into exile centuries before, and they had intermarried with Gentiles who moved into the land while the “real Jews” were gone. They were half-Jews and half-Gentiles, not really wanted by anyone and when the Jews came back to their land after the exile, they were considered second-class citizens. A good, religiously observant Jew would go way out of his way to not have to even touch Samaritan soil. He would not walk through Samaria. And so Jesus goes and tells this story about a man who was beaten and robbed on his way out of Jerusalem toward Jericho. And while he laid there by the road, half-dead, two Jewish religious men walked by and did not help. In fact, Jesus says, they both crossed the road and walked by on the other side so that they didn’t risk touching the beaten-up man. The man would have died if he had relied on his fellow countrymen, but a Samaritan—that’s the phrase that Jesus uses. I love that; you can almost hear the audible gasp from the crowd, because the last person they expected to be the hero would have been the half-breed. “But a Samaritan…took pity on him.” The Samaritan not only helped him, he took the man to the hospital and paid for his care. And Jesus concludes the story this way: “Go and do likewise” (cf. Luke 10:25-37).

What are we to “go and do likewise”? Care for everyone, regardless of who they are or what prejudices we might have toward them. We live in an increasingly polarized and divided world, one where it seems we look for reasons to separate and divide from each other more than we look for what brings us together. And if the world is looking to the church for a higher way of life or a better example, they are by and large not finding it. We divide along so many lines, racial included. Martin Luther King Jr. said it during an interview in 1960, that Sunday mornings are the most segregated time in American culture, and sixty years later, it’s still true. Churches are sometimes the least-integrated parts of our society. I’m not pointing the finger only at us; there is enough blame to go around for all sides. We don’t know each other; we don’t trust each other. We’re afraid to cross those lines. I’ve been in full-time ministry now for almost twenty-seven years, and I have yet to see even pastors of different races come together successfully. But that doesn’t mean we quit working on it. This summer, you may have heard, our local pastors are following a vision that Pastor Billy Joe Henry had last year, to bring The Church of Terre Haute together for an event we’re calling “One Church: Better Together.” It will be on a Saturday in July, at the fairgrounds, and is intended to be a place where we don’t worry about racial differences or theological differences or even different ways we practice our faith. The point is to show the community what it looks like when we all come together as one, when we love each other regardless of whether or not we like each other! There are a lot of details yet to be worked out, but I am excited about the possibilities, and how, for once, the church is intent on leading the way across the boundaries and walls we build up.

That is, after all, that Jesus was all about. Yes, Jesus came and preached salvation to the Jews, his own people, first, but it was always his intent that racial and dividing barriers would be broken down. His follower, Paul, even wrote about this grand vision of the kingdom of God: “So in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith, for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise” (Galatians 3:26-29). There is no place for racism in the body of Christ, for we all belong to him. There is only one title that matters here: Christian. And more than that, if we claim the name of Jesus, we are called to the same mission, the mission I mentioned to you last week: “Go and make disciples of all nations…” (Matthew 28:19). The word translated as “all nations” there is ta ethne, “all the ethnic groups.” Everyone, all people. Mount Pleasant, you are beloved children of God called and sent to make a difference in the world—all the world, not just the world we like, but all the world, even those unlike us. I love a phrase I heard another pastor share this week, the way he challenges his church to make a difference: “Breathe and Bless.” Anytime you breathe, which ought to be fairly regularly, you seek to bless those around you—all those around you, not just the people who are like you. Breathe and bless. How can I bless that person? And that person? And that other person? And that next person? When we breathe and bless, we share the love of Christ in practical, powerful ways. Breathe and bless—it’s a mindset, a life set on changing the world one person at a time, every second, every minute, every day. How will you breathe and bless everyone you encounter today and this week?

At the end of the Bible, John gave us a vision of what the kingdom of God will look like, and so I want to close with his words this morning as we go to prayer:

After this I looked, and there before me was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language, standing before the throne and before the Lamb. They were wearing white robes and were holding palm branches in their hands. And they cried out in a loud voice:“Salvation belongs to our God,who sits on the throne,and to the Lamb”(Revelation 7:9-10).

Amen. Let us pray.