Mark 7:24-37
Welcomed to the Table
James Sledge September
6, 2015
There
are numerous pictures on the internet of black and white toddlers holding hands
or hugging with a caption saying “No one is born racist.” I like the sentiment,
though I wonder if it’s a bit optimistic. Hatred and racism may indeed be
cultural and learned, but we humans seem to have a tribal nature, a tendency to
coalesce into groups and create boundaries separating us and them. Culture teaches the norms that grow up around such
boundaries, but the tendency seems to be innate.
How
many of you ever had the childhood experience of moving and attending a new
school? My family moved several times over my elementary and middle school
years, and while this felt exciting and adventurous, it was also terrifying.
Walking into an elementary classroom where you know no one, or worse, walking
into a school cafeteria… At least in elementary school the teacher took you to
the cafeteria as a class, but in middle school, you were on your own.
Where
do I sit? Will I be welcome at that table, or maybe that one? I certainly
wasn’t going to go sit at the table with all girls, and being new, it was hard
to tell which tables had which sort of students. The athlete’s table was
sometimes easy to spot. Easiest of all were the tables populated by those who
didn’t really fit in at any of the other tables. Pushing aside those who are
different may be learned behavior, but we start learning it awfully early.
If
humans had no tendency to be tribal, I wonder if there would be political
parties or politics as we know it. I wonder if there would simply be varying
ideas about the best way to deal with this or that problem. But we are tribal,
and so our varying ideas get turned into boundaries between us and them.
The
surprising success of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign seems almost
inexplicable, and many have speculated on what makes him appealing. One
suggestion is that he loudly proclaims us
and them boundaries that are already there but not spoken aloud in polite
conversation. Some suggest that Trump has tapped into tribal fears of them, immigrants, the Chinese, and so on.
He’s given voice to an us versus them
fear that makes some think, “He’s on my side, unlike those regular
politicians.” Perhaps Bernie Sanders appeal is not so different, just aimed at
different tribes.
Us versus them tribalism was an
issue for Christian faith almost as soon as it got started. It’s easy to forget
in our time, but all the first followers of Jesus were Jewish. That did not
change after Jesus was raised from the dead. It did not change as new followers
began to join the Jesus movement. Jesus was a Jewish Messiah who remained
firmly in the Jewish tradition all his life, and as the Church began to grow,
no one thought of it as anything but Jewish.
When
non-Jews began to come into the movement, that meant becoming Jewish first.
Males had to be circumcised, and everyone had to adopt Jewish dietary and
purity restrictions. But as the number of non-Jewish converts grew, so did the
tensions. And people like the Apostle Paul began arguing that the Jesus
movement was open to non-Jews without them becoming Jewish. It was the first
really big church fight. Read Paul’s letters and you’ll get some idea of how
heated and nasty things became.
Paul
is arrested and dies, likely executed, before the issue is completely settled,
before any of the gospels are even written. Mark’s gospel is first, written
when the Gentile-Jew divide was still swirling. And in our passage for today,
Mark drops Jesus right into the middle of it.
The
story is remarkable and unsettling, very different from other stories in Mark. For
starters, it is Jesus who stands in the way of a needed healing. Usually it is
Jesus’ opponents or misguided disciples. And Jesus is depicted hard-heartedly
embracing the us and them boundaries
of his day. When this outsider, this Gentile woman seeks help for her daughter,
Jesus not only refuses, he insults her. He calls her a dog. It’s a racial slur,
so it’s not surprising that preachers and teachers have made desperate attempts
over the years to claim that Jesus somehow doesn’t say what he clearly says.
Then
the story gets even weirder. This woman engages Jesus in an argument… and wins.
This never, ever happens. Jesus goes up against scholars trained in the
Scriptures, against the recognized experts in the Law, and he always bests
them, leaves them standing there with the mouths hanging open. But with a
single sentence this woman, this foreigner, this outsider, has Jesus doing a
full reversal. “Wow, you’re right. Your daughter is healed.”
There
are all manner of explanations for how this could have happened. Some see an
exhausted, human Jesus who fell thoughtlessly into the prejudices of his day,
only to be jarred back out of them by this woman’s boldness on behalf of her
daughter. Others suggest that Jesus acts as he does on purpose, a dramatic
object lesson for his disciples. I’m partial to the idea that Mark’s gospel
sets the reader up a bit, having Jesus seem to take the Jewish side in the
Jew-Gentile divide, only to leave heads spinning as Jesus suddenly turns.
Regardless,
this woman does something no one else manages in the gospel. She successfully challenges
Jesus, boldly and fiercely demanding God’s care for her daughter, regardless of
us and them status. In the process,
she obliterates an us versus them
boundary.
______________________________________________________________________
One
possible way to interpret the success of Donald Trump’s campaign is to connect
it to a our culture’s regression in the tribalism area. Us and them boundaries tend to intensify when people are anxious,
worried, or fearful, and we do seem to live in anxious times.
In
a sermon that tackles tribalism, Barbara Brown Taylor draws on Parker Palmer’s
book, The Company of Strangers: Christians and the Renewal of America’s
Public Life.
Parker talks about
the ways public life has broken down in this country, largely because we have
begun—for good and bad reasons—to regard strangers as enemies. In a world that
grows scarier every day, many of us have retreated to well-defended private
lives. We do not go out in public unless we have to. We sort ourselves out into
tribes who are suspicious of other tribes and quite often we go to war with one
another, either overtly or covertly. The strangers we meet must either be kept
out of our lives or made like us, which wreaks havoc with our public life. The
endless variety of humankind becomes a threat, not a blessing, and the whole
body suffers.”[1]
It
happens at church, too. We divide into church tribes: liberal or conservative,
Republican or Democrat, contemporary or traditional, serious music or that junk
those other folks sing. And we all imagine that our group is the one who’s
gotten it right. Jesus is on our side. We’re the true children, the ones who really
belong at the table.
Then
a most unlikely person speaks, an outsider, a foreigner, from the wrong ethnic
and religious group, a dog, Jesus calls her. She speaks, and Jesus replies,
“Yep, you’re right.” A boundary line disappears and she, the last one anyone
expects, is welcomed to the table.
The
table is ready, and Jesus says, “Come.” He invites folks we’re certain don’t
belong, saying, “Come, all who hunger and thirst.” Why he even invites the
likes of me and you.
[1]
Barbara Brown Taylor, “The Company of Strangers” in Home by Another Way, (Boston: Cowley Publications, 1999), pp.
45-46.
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