Be Opened

(Mark 7:34)

Mark brings to us this weekend perhaps the most unconventional of the encounters Jesus has with anyone in the gospels. It is one that breaks many conventions of the time, and some that we experience yet today.

Jesus is by himself, in an undisclosed residence, most likely taking a break from his relentless ministry of proclaiming the good news. A local woman from the region of Tyre appears unannounced. Maybe she tried to get to Jesus before, and the bouncer disciples boxed her out, or, she thought a Jewish male would never intentionally meet with a gentile woman for considering her unworthy. The truth is that we don’t know.  However, she is bold enough to seize the opportunity.

What follows is a somewhat strange dialogue. The Syrophoenician lady is desperate and therefore takes desperate measures. She obviously heard about the sort of thing that Jesus can do and begged him to save her daughter. Then comes Jesus’ nasty answer, to say the least. Here, he does not come across as the compassionate and universally hospitable shepherd we usually find in scripture. Let’s face it, Jesus calls the woman a dog (Mark 7:28).  Or does he? Anyway, what is Jesus doing on those neck of the woods in the first place? Why did he leave the comfort zone of his home (see map, blue then pink lines) to adventure himself and the disciples across borders and into the foreign land of the uncircumcised? Does this offer a different perspective on what is taking place?

Here is another way to see it. Could Jesus had just repeated something that both he and the woman grew up hearing? Long before the moment of which this meeting took place, Ezekiel prophesied that God had placed a curse in the kingdoms of Tyre (and nearby Sodon) for corrupting the blessings that they too received upon creation (Ezekiel 28:2-22). It is not difficult to imagine the boy Jesus hearing from his peers and his ancestors about the calamities against God committed by the Syrophenicians. In the same way, chances are that the unnamed woman may have heard all her life about how her people were despised by their Jewish neighbors.

Perhaps facing each other in the cross-roads of resentment or compassion, love or hate, life or death, both the exasperated mother and the human Jesus chose the better path despite everything separating the two of them. And then God said, “be opened” (Mark 7:34).

Isa 35:4-7a; Psa 146; Jam 2:1-17; Mar 7:24-37