The Sassy Syrophoenician Woman

 

I don't often get to highlight the powerful women in Scripture and the way that they get God's attention. So when one of their stories pops up in the lectionary...well, I have to talk about it. And the Syrophoenician woman (Canaanite woman in Matthew's Gospel) is one of my faves. 

Text: Mark 7:24-37

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Back when I was in massage school in Gainesville… I had what might best be described as a misunderstanding with one of my teachers.

He’d said something in class that felt like a personal insult to me.

I was upset and hurt by it.

So I asked to meet with him to talk.

I was scared.

I didn’t like confronting him or anyone for that matter.

And past experiences in life had taught me that speaking truth to power would more often than not result in a boomerang effect…where the powerful would exact some kind of retaliation against me.

So…I was nervous having this meeting.

But Frank…the teacher… like all of my instructors at Florida School of Massage… showed enormous patience… kindness… and thoughtfulness in listening to me.

Even as my voice shook… and I was holding back tears… he wasn’t cruel.

He wasn’t dismissive.

He wasn’t even defensive.

And he told me he was sorry and he had not intended to be hurtful.

After about a half hour…Frank and I left on much better terms… having taken that time together to talk and to listen.

A few days later…and after reflecting on our meeting… I approached him after class and thanked him again for how he treated me.

I wasn’t used to a man being willing to listen to me that way.

And I shared that at other times in my life…especially working in the very male-dominated field of broadcast journalism… any complaint I raised automatically made me….

The “B” word….the word for female dogs.

Now I would describe Frank as a happy and even gentle man.

But when I used that term in reference to myself… this jovial kind soul… frowned and looked me straight in the eye:

“Don’t you ever use that word about yourself! You are not that and I would never call you that. Don’t you ever think of yourself that way!”

That brief exchange…was an even more powerful teaching moment.

I share that story because in our Gospel today…we hear Jesus call this Syrophoenician woman the “B” word. 

No…the word itself isn’t in our translation of Mark’s Gospel…but that is essentially what’s been said.

To call this woman… and by extension her demon-possessed daughter…“a dog” was deeply offensive, hurtful and rude.

Some biblical scholars try to downplay this scene and pass it off as Jesus not really being this mean. They try to say that he used a word that means “puppies” and…y’know… puppies are cute and cuddly so he wasn’t really being THAT bad…and he was just testing this woman’s faith.

I’m not buying any of that.

He called her a dog.

And such an insult flies in the face of everything we’ve come to think about and believe about Jesus.

So why would Jesus be this aggressively nasty to her?

Well… to borrow a term often used in social media to describe a relationship status…

It’s complicated.

It’s a mix of so many “things” …. Gender… religion….and class differences going on in this story with Jesus and this unnamed woman.

Let’s do some unraveling.

First of all… this scene takes place in Tyre… which is a seaport city on the coast of the Mediterranean Sea in the north just below Syria…part of what is now modern-day Lebanon.

This is a Gentile area of the Roman Empire.

And it was a city that dominated all of the surrounding rural areas.

Tyre and its city-dweller population gobbled up food…supplies…and labor to enrich themselves at the expense of those around them….particularly their poorer…more rural and oppressed Jewish neighbors in Galilee.

As you might imagine…this behavior and the wealth gap it created didn’t make the people of Tyre all that popular with Galileans.

And Jesus was from Galilee.

One biblical commentator rephrased Jesus’ contemptuous reply to the woman this way:

“First let the poor people in the Jewish rural areas be satisfied. For it is not good to take the poor people’s food and throw it to the rich Gentiles in the cities.”

There’s also the religious differences between these two.

This woman is not Jewish. She’s a Gentile.

And not just a Gentile but a “Syrophoenician”…a Greek…which scholars say means she’s a pagan.

She has no interest in becoming a follower of Jesus…or worshipping the God Jesus talks about.

There’s no desire on the part of either Jesus or this woman to have some sort of conversion experience.

So this ISN’T a “faith-based” discussion.

Finally… there’s the gender difference.

Jesus… as a Jewish man… would have been and could have been offended at a woman crashing his attempt to get away for awhile by showing up at this house…and asking for a remote healing for her daughter.

Women… especially Gentile women… weren’t supposed to be so forward and pushy especially toward men who weren’t part of their own kind.

So…there are a myriad of issues going on in the background of this passage that could be at play for why Jesus behaves in a very un-Jesus way.

And yet… he did respond.

He did the healing.

He returns to being the Jesus we know and love.

So what happened?

My favorite way of reading this story is from the perspective of what happens when women overcome whatever societal norms get in their way…and show persistence in fighting for their cause…in this case a daughter who’s in trouble.

This Syrophoenician woman is that single mother fighting for life-saving healing from the one doctor who she’s heard has the medicine that can do it.

As a mother…living in a system that is heavily ranked… with rules about who can speak and when… she’s beyond caring about the social mores and is willing to risk everything approaching “the man” to ask for his help.

And when he calls her a derogatory name…she doesn’t flinch.

In fact…in the words of the womanist biblical scholar Mitzi Smith… she gets “sassy.”

She employs the rhetorical technique of the oppressed to take that insult… turn it on its head…and spin it back at Jesus.

Jesus hears it.

Jesus gets it.

And Jesus grants this queen her fervent wish.

Not because she’s promised to follow him.

Again…this has nothing to do with her faith.

Jesus responds because her words… the words of someone who acknowledged her own powerlessness in this situation turns to his power to make something happen.

By being bested by this woman’s words….Jesus changed his mind.

And in changing his mind…our Savior is demonstrating to us another valuable lesson.

Jesus shows us…through his own humility…his own humanity…the importance of listening…and what happens when we set aside ideas of status and difference to listen…even to one who isn’t one of our own kind.

And he does it without any expectation of “getting anything” back.

Think of what happens when we take a moment to really listen to another person’s story…particularly when we listen to the complaint of someone who is not like us.

We learn something. Not just about the other person but it can challenge us to learn some more things about ourselves.

Sarah mentioned it recently…that Johari window… where we uncover things in ourselves that maybe we were not aware of.

And once we’re made aware of it… we have an opportunity to take this new information… and change.

It’s through a process like this that we start to free ourselves from the shackles of fear and prejudice that keep us from becoming a more cohesive member in that bigger body of Christ.

It helps us to become better friends and neighbors to each other and our wider community. 

Thanks be to God for the Syrophoenician woman for her bravery and her sass.

And thanks be to God for the humility of Jesus to demonstrate that it is OK to listen and change.

In the name of our one holy and undivided Trinity.