Friday, September 6, 2024 | Trey Comstock
The encounter between Jesus and the Syrophoenician women has lived in my head, rent free, for well over a decade. I haven’t been able to shake it; since, I ran headlong into it, in my first year of seminary. That year, I took a series of classes on urban ministry as part of my work at a homeless shelter. The reflection class for my crew of shelter working seminarians met once a week in the upstairs of the chapel building. As part of our course work, we read Howard Thurman’s amazing text, Jesus and the Disinherited, where he devotes a fair amount of space to this story. Discussing it, my friend and colleague, Brian (who went on to PhD work), used the phrase, “the sinfulness of Christ,” to which our professor, who was perhaps less freewheeling and more traditional than Brian, said, “Brian, we don’t believe in that.”
Our professor spoke correctly. From Paul on down, Christianity stakes a firm commitment to a sinless and perfect Jesus. His lack of fault holds the whole theological system together. Cool. So, what do we do with this scene, where Jesus compares a woman to a dog, and, to our 21st century ears, sounds more than a little prejudiced? Thurman uses it as an opportunity to deeply ponder the nature of profoundly embedded discriminatory social systems, and Jesus goes on to extend the healing power of God to this person usually considered far beyond the definition of “God’s people.” Still, I find the dialogue jarring.
“He said to her, ‘Let the children be fed first, for it is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.’ But she answered him, ‘Sir, even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs.’” (Mark 7:27-28 NRSV)
Over the years, I’ve had the opportunity to work with and pastor many first responders, soldiers, sailors, and correctional officers. I particularly enjoy the way that they talk to each other, when they think that they’re only in the presence of people who have seen the darker side of the world. In all of those professions, they regularly encounter and have to participate in deeply traumatizing things. The nature of the job sends them routinely wading into situations that the vast majority of the population could not imagine. War movies, cop shows, medical dramas, and reality TV prison exposes don’t begin to capture the experience. They process the never ending stream of horrors by telling competitive stores of how bad they had, teasing each other, and concocting truly dark jokes about what they go through. To an outsider, it feels off putting. How can they talk so casually about violence and death? What’s wrong with them? It’s why they only tend to talk to other folks, who know that end of the world. They don’t want your shock or pity. They just want to communicate the extreme nature of their lives, in a way that feels safe. Thus, you get an endless stream of, “So, this one time…,” followed by deeply guttural laughing.
As a kid, living in Belgium, I got a thrill, every time that I heard an American accent in public. At home, school, and church, I had plenty of Americans in my life. Antwerp International School had students from around the world, but at least a third of my fellow students hailed from the US of A. However, whenever, we stepped beyond this narrow community of a few hundred expats, the background dialogue of the world became incomprehensible and, to my elementary school mind, intimidating. I remember the Belgians being nice, but it all reminded me how far that I was from home. So, when I heard that specific “a” sound that only Americans make float into my ear in a restaurant, museum, walking street, or toy store, I felt a point of connection, of shared experience.
When the broader world around you doesn’t share your experience, you find walks to cling to the people who do. Minority communities and oppressed people around the world have had their own versions of this since the dawn of time. All communities form their own codes of conduct, and, often, when your code of conduct doesn’t match the ambient culture, you code switch, to match and blend in. However, when you find someone, in a culture with a different code, who has the same code as you, you immediately have a powerful point of connection. Maybe, they came from the same culture, language, country, or ethnic group, or, like soldiers, sailors, first responders, correctional officers, cancer survivors, or new mothers, maybe, they have the same life and perspective altering experience.
I wonder if this captures the relationship between Jesus and the Syrophoenician woman. They come from different ethnic groups and most likely communicated in their second language. Generally speaking, Syro-Phoenicia had greater wealth than Galilee and Judea, so the semi-homeless, traveling Rabbi, son of a carpenter probably had a different lifestyle as his interlocutor. However, both of them would have experienced rejection from the mainstream leadership of God’s people. Jesus constantly brushes off attacks from Pharisees, Sadducees, and Temple leaders. He knows that they’ll kill him one day. The Syrophoenician woman has clearly received the message that, despite an inkling of the reality of God, she does not belong within in the faithful. She has some faith but comes from the wrong place. I admit that I’m out on a limb, here. The text says none of this. Still, perhaps, Jesus and the woman are telling each other a dark joke, in the same vein as first responders, soldiers, and correctional officers tell jokes about their trauma. Jesus calls her a dog, not as an insult, but with a wink and nod, to knowing what it feels like for God’s people to treat him as less than. She responds, smiling, knowing the feeling, with a quip about getting the crumbs. Jesus does the requested healing, and they both walk away feeling warmed by an encounter with another who truly knows what it’s like. From the outside, how they talk to each other appears weird and mean, but, maybe, from the inside, they felt comfort in a safe way to process what keeps happening to them at the hands of God’s people.