Interrupted Plans
Jean-Germain Drouais, The Woman of Canaan at the Feet of Christ, oil on canvas, 1784, Louvre Museum, Paris, public domain, click image to link.
Sermon Series “Through the Bible,” № 54.
He entered a house and did not want anyone to know he was there. Yet he could not escape notice. –Mark 7:24b
As we move through the gospels, each week I’m highlighting something about their similarities and differences. You’ve heard me say that, according to a common source theory, Mark was written first, then Matthew and Luke used Mark’s gospel as a foundation for their versions. You may have wondered, “Why would a Bible scholar believe this?”
One way to answer that question is to say, “It’s in the details.” Mark writes more directly and seems eager to quickly tell Jesus’ story as efficiently as possible. But, curiously, he records certain details in a way that Matthew and Luke do not. For example, in the healing of Peter’s mother-in-law[1], Matthew says Jesus “touched her hand,” and Luke says that he “stood over her.” But Mark’s account is a little more nuanced: he not only touched her, but “took her by the hand and lifted her up. Then the fever left her ….” Or, when the storm strikes on the Sea of Galilee[2], both Matthew and Luke say Jesus was asleep, but only Mark recalls that he was asleep in the back of the boat, and on a pillow! To many Bible scholars, the most plausible explanation is that Mark recorded the testimony of an eyewitness, traditionally thought to be Peter; then, as Matthew and Luke retold the story from Mark, they simply left out details that seemed unimportant.
Matthew and Luke are reluctant to say some things that make Jesus look too subject to human limitations, while Mark just tells it like it was. You can see this in the text I’ve chosen today from the seventh chapter of Mark. Luke doesn’t record this event, but when Matthew does, he writes that Jesus “went away to the district of Tyre and Sidon.”[3] But Mark again recalls a detail known to an eyewitness who knew and understood Jesus’ state of mind, “He entered a house and did not want anyone to know he was there. Yet he could not escape notice ….”[4]
Mark not only tells us Jesus went to Tyre and Sidon, but also that he was trying to get away from public attention. In context, he had come from a skirmish with the Pharisees. The Pharisees had attacked Jesus for not requiring his disciples to follow dietary cleansing rituals. Jesus had responded with a critique of the Pharisees. It seems perfectly plausible to me that Jesus was feeling exhausted, and needed time to rest. “He entered a house and did not want anyone to know he was there. Yet he could not escape notice.”
We know how that goes. You thought you’d have a day off, then something breaks down and you’re called in to help. Someone phones in with a problem, just as you’re closing down the computer to start the weekend. On an emotional level, the way conflict-weary Jesus responds to an interruption isn’t so difficult to understand.
But, sometimes, we are reluctant to see the human side of Jesus. We expect Jesus to be above cultural expectations about the subservience of women or the inferiority of Gentiles. Once, after I preached a sermon which emphasized Jesus’ human nature, a worshiper came to scold me. The Jesus I preached was not the Jesus she knew, I was told.
We expect Jesus always to say something kind, rather than say something like we hear in today’s text, that the woman should get lost since he didn’t come to feed the dogs. Some commentators point out that the Greek word used means “puppies.”[5] Others say use of that word does nothing to diminish its harshness. If I asked someone for help to heal my child, being told help wouldn’t be offered to “little dogs” would not make me feel less hurt or insulted.
Biblical scholars who have thought a long time about this episode tell us that Jesus is making a point, however harshly it actually sounded, about his mission. He was saying that his priority is ministry to the Jews. Ministry to those outside of the household of Israel would have to wait.
The amazing twist in the story comes when Jesus loses an argument (the first and only time in the gospels). Jesus says it’s not fair to throw the children’s food to the puppies; the woman responds, “Sir, even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs.” The woman –a foreigner, not of the same religion, a distressed parent – causes Jesus to rethink his position. Though he is tired, it looks like he also feels compassion and sees the need. He realizes that after meeting his obligation to the children of Israel, there is still something left for others outside Israel. In the end, he rewards the woman’s faith, heals her daughter, and sends her home satisfied.
What does Jesus’ encounter with the Syrophoenician Woman mean for us? Perhaps we notice the way that the woman is not easily turned away. We might look at this text as we would at the Parable of the Unjust Judge, also known as the Parable of the Persistent Woman. We could take away the lesson that just as the woman was persistent in her quest for Jesus’ attention and healing, so also should we be persistent in prayers for God’s healing and blessing. Another way to answer the question is to look at Jesus’ response for a lesson on how to serve others, even during moments when we are not feeling our best.
Pastor and author Paul Tripp puts it like this: “The character of a life isn’t set in ten big moments. The character of a life is set in ten thousand little moments of everyday life …. Ten thousand little moments come (in many forms). They are moments like when we get stuck behind a school bus when we’re already late to an appointment, or when we have a flat tire on the way to work. They are in all those moments all throughout the day when things don’t go our way, our plans fail, and our life is interrupted.”[6]
Maybe it’s like the young man in a story told by Clarence Stephens, Nicholasville, Kentucky, which appeared last year in Readers’ Digest. He writes, “Leaving a store, I returned to my car only to find that I’d locked my keys and cell phone inside. A (young man) riding his bike saw me kick a tire and say a few choice words. (He, too, probably had a schedule to keep, places to be, and things to do. But he stopped). “What’s wrong?” he asked. I explained my situation. “But even if I could call my wife,” I said, “she can’t bring me her car key, since this is our only car.” He handed me his cell phone. “Call your wife and tell her I’m coming to get her key.” “That’s a seven miles round trip.” “Don’t worry about it.”
An hour later, he returned with my key. I offered him some money, but he refused. “Let’s just say I needed the exercise,” he said. Then, like a cowboy in the movies, he rode off into the sunset.[7]
When we come across a need like that, we won’t always respond as best we could. Sometimes, the response of our busy and sometimes tired selves will not feel perfectly satisfying. Jesus was able to heal with a word, but we’re not that powerful. So maybe our “yeses” to requests for help are more qualified: “I can help, but not today, tomorrow,” or “I can help, but not exactly the way you’ve asked for it, but rather with this modification.” If Jesus’s response didn’t feel perfectly satisfying, then it’s understandable, perhaps even normal, for our response to a request for help to feel less than 100% satisfying.
But if you value your church, if you care about what happens to your community, then it’s also true that God won’t let you rest comfortably forever. One way or another, God will interrupt you with calls and challenges to join in service to a world of hurt and need. Part of our job as people of faith is to practice enough prayerful discernment to recognize that some of those interruptions may be acts of God’s grace. Part of our job is to serve as God’s agent of healing, and so be Christ for the world today.
NOTES
[1] Matt. 8:14-15, Mark 1:29-31, Luke 4:38-39.
[2] Matt. 8:28-34, Mark 5:1-20, Luke 8:22-25
[3] See Matthew 15:21-28
[4] See Mark 7:24.
[5] C.S. Mann, Mark: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary, Vol. 27 in The Anchor Bible, New York: Doubleday, 1986, p. 321.
[6] Paul Tripp, Whiter Than Snow, p. 21.
[7] Clarence W. Stephens, in “30 Stories About the Touching Kindness of Strangers That’ll Make You Tear Up,” Readers Digest, 4 Feb. 2022, https://www.rd.com/article/kindness-strangers/
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