Mark only tells us that Jesus went away to the region of Tyre, that’s a port city on the Mediterranean coast, in what’s Lebanon today. We’re not told why he went so far from rural Galilee, both geographically and culturally. Did he have to leave the country just to get a little peace and quiet? That would explain why he didn’t want anyone to know he was there. Whose house did he enter and how did the woman find out and get in? We don’t know; it’s as if Mark stripped away all potentially distracting details so we would give our full attention to the encounter between Jesus and the woman. He does tell us that her little daughter was tormented by an unclean spirit. But then he just lets us sit for a moment with this explosive tension: a gentile woman and a Jewish man in a house on Gentile land - at the time an almost unthinkable clash of gender, culture, language, and religion. She throws herself at his feet, begging him to cast out the demon that has bound her daughter.
We don’t know why Jesus crossed the border, but we do know why she stepped across every boundary of custom and propriety; we know what having a sick child can do to a parent. Having a sick child makes you desperate.[1] It makes you say horrible things to the receptionist who won’t give you an appointment until Wednesday next week. It makes you very rude to doctors who will spend hours running test after test and then tell you in less than two minutes that the nurse will call you tomorrow. It makes you scream at the insurance representative who tells you that your plan does not cover the treatments your child needs. It makes you stay up all night doing research on the web, finding out where the best clinics are, the best doctors, the best therapists, the most promising programs. And after you’ve exhausted all options, would you consider a trip to Mexico or India or anywhere else on God’s green earth? Of course you would. You will do anything it takes to make your child well. You will knock on any door and cross any border for your child’s wellbeing. That’s where this mother is – in the place at Jesus’ feet where love and determination have given all and now await an answer.
“Let the children be fed first,” he says. Yes, the little ones, of course, who wouldn’t agree that the young ones, the ones who have so much life ahead of them — who wouldn’t agree that they need to be fed first, that they need to be showered with love and good, nutritious food, with quality education and health care and freedom to play…anything to allow them to thrive and flourish.
“Let the children be fed first,” Jesus says, “for it is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.” It may take you a moment to realize that he just told her No, and not just that, he insulted her by calling her and her child “dogs.”
We love our dogs. We love ‘em a lot. Cartoonist David Sipress allows us to overhear two little dogs chatting on a Brooklyn sidewalk.[2] Each is on a leash. Each has just dropped a you-know-what on the pavers. And each has a most attentive owner with a little baggy picking up what the puppy just dropped. Says one pooch to the other, “I don’t know about you, but it always makes me feel kinda special.”
We love our dogs, and for many of us they are simply canine family members. There are currently 69 million U.S. households including at least one dog. This number is not based on the latest census figures. Every other year, the American Pet Products Association conducts a National Pet Owners Survey. If you want a copy of the full report, it’ll cost you $3,600. The information is costly, because pets are big business. According to APPA report estimates, basic annual expenses for dog owners include
$700 Vet Visits
$368 Food and Treats
$228 Kennel Boarding
$81 Vitamins
$47 Grooming supplies
$56 Toys[3]
That’s about $4 a day. For perspective, in 2018, nearly half the human world population lived on less than $5.50 a day. So yes, we love the canine members of our households.
This was very different in the world in which Jesus grew up. In Jewish communities dogs weren’t pets, but semi-wild animals that roamed the streets scavenging for food, and they were not allowed in the house. They had to stay outside. So Jesus is telling the woman that her place is outside and that the door is closed. In saying “Let the children be fed first,” he implies that the time is not right.
Galilean peasants often were not fond of city folk like this woman. Small farms produced most of the food for the urban populations, but city folk controlled the markets. People in the cities bought up and stored so much of the harvest for themselves each season that frequently people in the country did not have enough, especially in times when supplies went down and prices went up. In the ears of poor Galilean farmers, Jesus told this rich lady to get in line and wait her turn.[4] In God’s reign, the last would be first, and those rich, urban Gentiles who always managed to be first, those dogs would be last. God’s salvation would come to the gentiles, in time. The day would come when those on the outside would be welcomed in, but not yet, not her and her child, not now. Jesus’ mission was to the house of Israel first.
“Let the children be fed first, for it is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.” If you were to write the script for a Jesus movie, that’s a scene you’d likely want to skip, unless you want Jesus to come across like a ranting talk radio host. This line about children and dogs — it just doesn’t sound like the kind of Jesus you’d want to portray, does it? It’s like he’s sitting in this little house of exclusive concern for his own people, telling the rest of the world that we’ll just have to live with our demons.
But this mother is already in the house. And if you want to call her a dog, call her a bulldog, for she won’t let go. She is courageous. She’s determined. And she’s quick-witted. “In my house, Sir,” she says, “even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs.”
In my house, dogs don’t wait until the children are finished; dogs and children both eat at the same time. The doggies wag their tails in expectation of every bit of bread dropped either by accident or by a child’s secret cunning. In my house, the children eat their fill and the dogs still get to feast on the crumbs. What I’m asking of you isn’t taking away anything from the children. Must I remind you of your own miracle? Five loaves, and 5,000 ate until all were full and wanted no more, and the pieces filled twelve baskets. Your table can’t hold the abundance you bring, it overflows with blessing. Let the doggies have a feast. My little daughter is bound by a demon, and I know that what she needs is yours to give. Crumbs will do.
This is the only story in all the gospels where Jesus is bested in an argument, which is remarkable. The fact that he’s being bested by a woman is perhaps no longer remarkable in some quarters, but it surely was for centuries, and there are plenty of places where it still is astonishing. And the fact that she’s a gentile puts the cherry on it. Like Jacob who wrestled with God through the night, saying, “I will not let you go unless you bless me,” she didn’t let go.[5] She left the house with a blessing she had wrestled from him: “You may go,” he said, “the demon has left your daughter.”
The word “faith” is never mentioned in this story, but everything about this anonymous, gentile mother embodies it: her courage, her tenacity fuelled by love, and her insistence that mercy is not a limited resource. When she went home, she found the child lying on the bed, and the demon gone. The house of bondage and fear had become the house of laughter. And this unbinding, this joy is the promise of God for all of life.
Almost immediately following this story, there is another bread story.[6] At first glance it looks like an awkward repetition of the feeding of the 5000. Jesus breaks bread with thousands, seven loaves for 4000 people. All of them eat and are filled; and they take up the broken pieces left over, seven baskets full. Plenty of crumbs, don’t you think?
What ties the two bread miracles together is this gentile mother’s fierce love. Because of her we can see that the two stories are really one: two courses of the one meal. Of this bread of mercy, there is more than enough for all of us, and the door is open. No need to keep anybody outside or under the table.
The miracle of Jesus’ power and this woman’s faith brought healing to a child, and not only that. The miracle also became manifest in the bridging of the divisive distance between two cultures, in the overcoming of realities that deeply separate us—and you don’t need me to remind you of the realities that so deeply divide our country and our world. The miracle continues wherever the power of God in Jesus Christ and the tenacity of our faith come together. The house of prejudice becomes the house of promise, and the house of bondage becomes the house of laughter.
As Christ breaks bread and bids us share,
Each proud division ends.
The love that made us, makes us one,
And strangers now are friends.
[1] With thanks to Anna Carter Florence, Lectionary Homiletics, Vol. 19, No. 5, August-September 2008, 30.
[2] New Yorker 2012, see http://tinyurl.com/d7guo7o
[3] All data from http://www.americanpetproducts.org/press_industrytrends.asp
[4] See Theissen, Gospels in Context, p. 75-80
[5] Genesis 32:22ff.
[6] Mark 6:30-44 is the feeding of the five thousand; Mark 8:1-10 is the feeding of the four thousand