Preached by Margie Quinn, Sunday, September 8, 2024
You may or may not have studied the suffragette movement in school. I hadn’t learned about it until I began taking women’s studies classes in college. I had certainly heard the names of Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton and had even revered them for fighting for my right to vote, but I had never dug deep into the movement itself. Deemed abolitionists, these women advocated for women’s right to vote, and even held a convention to discuss this in 1848, known as the Seneca Falls convention. They wanted all women to be able to vote, right? Yet, there were no Black women in attendance.
Stanton went so far as to claim that she would not support the Black vote if women were not also granted the right to vote. She wanted white women to have that opportunity before Black men. She is quoted as saying, “We prefer Bridget and Dinah at the ballot box to Patrick and Sambo.” How often we leave out our brothers and sisters of color when we are so close to power and seeming equality we can almost taste it.
When a woman named Sojourner Truth found out about this, that white women were advocating for only some women to be able to vote, she showed up to the Women’s Right Convention in 1851 and asked, “May I say a few words? I want to say a few words on this matter.” In front of a crowd made of up mainly white, financially secure women, who didn’t want to hear her mix the cause of suffrage with abolition, she spoke:
“I am a woman's rights. I have as much muscle as any man, and can do as much work as any man. I have plowed and reaped and husked and chopped and mowed, and can any man do more than that? I have heard much about the sexes being equal. I can carry as much as any man, and can eat as much too, if I can get it. I am as strong as any man that is now.
The poor men seems to be all in confusion, and don't know what to do. Why children, if you have woman's rights, give it to her and you will feel better. You will have your own rights, and they won't be so much trouble.
And how came Jesus into the world? Through God who created him and the woman who bore him. Man, where was your part? But the women are coming up blessed be God and a few of the men are coming up with them. But man is in a tight place, the poor slave is on him, woman is coming on him, he is surely between a hawk and a buzzard.” This was a woman willing to talk back to those who didn’t consider in their mission for equality for all.
In our story this morning, Jesus is sprinting around in the gospel of Mark, walking on water and healing all kinds of kinds. He’s on the move, trying to find some place to kick his feet up so that he can take a beat from the overwhelming crowds that are desperate to receive his healing touch. He goes away to the region of Tyre, a Gentile territory, and enters a house. He doesn’t want anyone to know that he’s there, but as we learn time and time again this gospel, he can’t escape notice. But it’s not the people we think who notice him…he was rarely recognized by his family or friends for who he was. No, it is once again an unusual suspect who approaches him.
A woman, whose daughter had an unclean spirit, hears about him and comes and bows down at his feet. Now, this isn’t any ole’ woman–this woman is a Gentile of Syrophoenician origin. Jesus doesn’t have time for Gentiles right now. His primary mission is to his people, his ethnic enclave. In Matthew’s account of this text, we hear him say, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel” (Matthew 15:24).
Probably knowing this and probably too desperate to care about class or ethnic boundaries at this point, she begs Jesus to cast the demon out of her daughter. And, in one of the most shocking and head-scratching verses in the New Testament, Jesus says this: “Let the children be fed first, for it is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.” Did he really just call this woman a dog?
A lot of people have tried to find a way out of this one.
There is no way Jesus would say something this rude. It was probably more like a familiar proverb like “charity begins at home.”
Another theory is that Jesus knew the economic hardships that a lot of the Jews faced in this region. He saw the political imbalance between the wealthy Gentiles and the Jewish peasants and was trying to tell her that those who were well-off shouldn’t expect a seat at the table.
My theory? Jesus was exhausted. And in a moment of human weakness, he loses sight of the point of his mission, which is to heal all kinds of kinds, and he makes a mistake. He uses an ethnic slur. He offends this woman. He calls her a dog.
This woman doesn’t hang her head or walk away in shame. Her response? “Sir, even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs.” Like a grandma who holds him to higher standards, she scolds him for his harsh words, and in doing so, sets him straight, maybe even surprising him a little bit. She bests him in an argument! The Gentile woman teaches him, the Jewish man, the true meaning of what he has just reminded his own followers in the prior verse: social conventions should not stand in the way of helping those in need. The Kingdom of God isn’t the Roman Empire. It is a different kind of community–one that knows no economic or ethnic boundaries. God’s love expands beyond all barriers.
We talk a lot about conversion moments in our tradition. I have to wonder if this is a conversion moment…for Jesus? What if the woman’s bold faith, a woman who dares to talk back to Jesus on behalf of her people, on behalf of her daughter, sees that Jesus’s scope of love is becoming a little less wide and attempts to reconnect him to his original course of action? Could Jesus be saved in this moment?
His response? Jesus changes his mind. He snaps out of it, and says to her, “For saying that, you may go–the demon has left your daughter.” Not only is the girl healed of demon possession but we recognize that a further transformation has taken place in Jesus, who experiences a change of heart and a shift in direction as he ministers among Gentiles.
Jesus changes his mind. Because this woman dared to talk back, because she called him back to his original mission of infinite compassion for everyone.
Look what happens next: her faith, her tenacious declaration of her own worth, opens Jesus up. His next stop? Healing a deaf man, putting his fingers in his ears, and saying, “Be opened.” I wonder if he was also talking to himself when he says this, reminding himself to stay open, too?
If we learn anything from this story, I hope it’s this:
Jesus is human. What a relief. Like all of us, he gets exhausted and forgets that we cannot forget anyone. Like all of us, he’s got some blindspots when it comes to who is inside and outside of the movement.
Courage–confronting those who have fallen away from the ultimate goal–could actually change someone’s mind and open someone up to a more expansive way of loving. . It is important to advocate for ourselves, yes, and to advocate for our daughters or friends, for those who need our help fighting for their healing.
When we are willing to hear the truth from someone unlikely, our efforts are not diminished, they are expanded. Our hearts and minds might just be transformed by some faithful back-talk.
Any time my blindspots appear, I hope to be reminded of a woman who did talk back, who was a Gentile, who had the courage to challenge the greatest change-maker of all. I hope to be reminded of another woman, who said, “Ain’t I woman’s rights?” Ain’t I worth fighting for, worthy of the right to vote, worthy of the same liberation you desire?
Jesus, between a Gentile woman and a disgraced deaf man, between a hawk and a buzzard, changes his mind, commends her boldness, opens himself up to the reminder that none of us are free until all of us are free, that the mission was, is and should be universal, and that it is in the most unlikely of voices that we are brought home.
Who are the unlikely voices in your life? Who is attempting to transform your heart and mind, who wants to welcome you back into the fold of faithfulness, with just a little bit of back-talk?
Amen.