ROME IMPROVEMENT 8/8/2021

MORE POWER !  MORE GLORY !!  MORE SPIRIT !!!

SURVEYING THE SITE—Mark 7:24-30

Following the debate with the Pharisees and the Scribes, Jesus leaves Gennesaret and goes to Tyre. He is still trying to find a place of rest, but he is unable to escape notice. After he has entered a house, immediately, a woman comes and prostrates herself before Jesus begging that the demons leave her daughter.

Is this a faith request, or is this a test? Is this woman a plant, a spy, a provocateur? Or is this woman simply a caring mother who is willing to go to any length to save her daughter?

READING THE BLUEPRINT

Then [Jesus] caused himself to arise and went away to the region of Tyre. Having gone into a house, he was not wanting anyone to know, but he was not able to escape notice. But immediately, a woman, who having heard of him, who had a small daughter having an unclean spirit, came. She prostrated herself before the feet of him. Now the woman was a Hellenist, of Syrophoenician origin. She was asking him that the demon he might throw out of her daughter.

And he said to her, “First allow the children to be satisfied for it is not good to take the bread of the children and to the puppies throw it.”

But she answered, saying to him, “Master, but the puppies under the table eat upon the small crumbs from the small children.”

And he said to her, “Through these words, go off, gone out from your daughter is the demon.”

 And having gone off into her house, she found the little girl [having been caused to take to bed], and the demon gone out.

ROUGHING IN THE HOUSE

Not since the leper in chapter one, has Jesus been alone with the person who seeks healing. Here we hear again that there is a choice to cleanse the unclean. With the leper, we heard, “If you so choose, you can make me clean.” This time, however, the request is less clear.

Jesus and his disciples have been under constant surveillance—in Peter’s mother’s-in-law house, the crowd gathered; also, when Jesus came back home, in the house of Levi the tax collector, near the tombs of Gerasa, at Jairus’ house, in the wilderness, and at Gennesaret. Yet, here, an unnamed woman comes. She is a Hellenist which could mean that she is Greek, a gentile, or one of the diasporic Jews, that is, one of the people who emigrated, or were transported from the Northern Kingdom after it fell to the Syrians.

If, as I suspect, this unnamed woman is a woman of the diaspora, whose family did not return to Jerusalem after the Babylonian exile, a woman in the same category as the Samaritan woman in John 4, a woman who might be thought less of because of her life in a country of Israel’s historic enemy, then the attribute of puppy may have something to do with this woman’s status as “unclean”. She and others who were no longer part of the Jerusalem-based, temple-structured Judaism could be thought of as unclean dogs.

PUTTING UP THE WALLS

We cannot overlook this woman’s love for her child. The act of bowing before a master is not just an act of obeisance, it is a ritual way of offering one’s life to the person to whom you are bowing. She is, in effect, offering her life for her daughter’s. This is the same posture Jairus uses when he begs for his daughter’s life.

Perhaps because this woman’s bona fides are at least sketchy, so it is that Jesus tests her, saying, “First the children [of Israel] are to be cared for. Their care should not be thrown away to be fought over by puppies.”

When she replies, “But even the puppies get to eat the crumbs that the children spill for them.”, Jesus tells her, “Your daughter has received the crumbs from the table.”

Do we really think that children of old are so different than they are today? I have never liked cauliflower, and the taste and texture of lima beans have never put them at the top of my favorite foods list. So, I was excited when we got a new dog. I quickly learned that if it had gravy on it, Scamper would eat almost anything.

Suddenly cauliflower and lima beans were no problem. Scamper didn’t even mind if the lima beans had gotten into my mouth first. It was amazing how much food could disappear. My sister thought that I was a slob, but I was willing to live with that. Mealtime would come, and. when I sat at the table, the dog’s head would appear between my knees, and a wet muzzle would wait for the largess that fell from the table.

After the feeding of 5,000 men and more, twelve baskets of pieces (crumbs) were gathered up. So now, the woman asks not for everything, but for some of the crumbs—what the children let fall from the table just as the woman with the hemorrhage and the people at Gennesaret wished just to touch the fringe of Jesus’ garment.

As the table of Eucharist is extended for the five thousand and more, so now the crumbs from that table fall for the wholeness of many. This little girl is just the beginning.

HANGING THE TRIM

In the presence of the bodily resurrected Jesus, we recognize that we cannot offer up our lives to save others. Jesus has already done that for us. Therefore, let us be freed from our demons and live.