It Is Positively Scandalous!

"...it is not fair to take the children's food and throw it to the dogs." Mark 7:27

Last time I checked, this story hadn't made it on to the Top Ten Biblical Stories featured in Sunday School curriculum.  It's tempting to gloss it over  or ignore it altogether. I struggle immensely with this story and suspect you do too.

A Gentile woman of Syrophoenician origin comes to Jesus. Matthew refers to her as a Canaanite.  The point is the Jews and Canaanites were ancient and bitter enemies. She was an outsider, religiously and ethnically. She violated custom by addressing a man directly, and a Rabbi at that. But she dared to seek him out. She didn't convert to Judaism, nor does she appear to be a devout follower of Jesus. But something about Jesus intrigued her, and she believed he could help.

The Jesus with whom we are most familiar is the Jesus of compassion and mercy, the Jesus who taught things like, "Love your neighbor as yourself." "If you do it to the least of these... you do it to me." So, when this woman cries out for help, we expect a response of compassion and sensitivity. Perhaps a polite, "Yes, my daughter, what can I do for you?"  This time Jesus was not so nice!

In Matthew's version of this story, at first, Jesus ignores her, and he then throws out a little ditty about how he came to only "serve the lost sheep of the house of Israel."  However, in Mark's account he goes directly to his un-niceness, "Let the children be fed first, for it is not fair to take the children's food and throw it to the dogs."

Jesus calls this woman and her daughter "dogs." "Dogs" in Jesus' day was a racial slur. They called the Gentiles "dogs," and they didn't mean sweet domesticated animals like our well-loved, well-tended, well groomed pets, but rather they meant repulsive, diseased, garbage-eating mongrels. It was a prejudice so deep, it was not taught but rather caught by children simply observing their parents behavior over the years.    

This is clearly not the Jesus I thought I knew! I don't like to think of Jesus as susceptible to bad moods, offensive behavior and racial slurs. I don't like to think about my Savior treating someone in such a condescending manner.

Even so, this woman apparently was not deterred in her mission, but she deftly responds, "Sir,  even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their master's table." After her quick-witted remark, Jesus agrees to help her daughter, and immediately the daughter is healed. Matthew's version has Jesus  saying in response, "Woman, great is your faith!"

So what do we do with this story and these abrasive words from Jesus? What do you do when Jesus does not behave as you might expect?  

Many have tried to soften and rationalize his words, making excuses for Jesus saying he was stressed from traveling so far and speaking so long to the crowds. Or, some say he was just trying to get away for some quiet time and this woman interrupted. Or that Jesus was testing the woman's faith in some way. Or that Jesus didn't mean "dog" in the pejorative sense, but more like "puppy." But I don't buy it any of it. Let's not change the story for if we do we just might miss altogether the real power and truth of it.

I don't know about you, but this story upsets and offends me!  But you know what? Just maybe that's the key to understanding the whole story – the offense.

Not everyone is offended! Our domesticated and polite sensibilities might be offended, but if you were a typical first century Israelite, you wouldn't have been offended at all by Jesus' words.  He simply mirrored what was culturally and religiously acceptable. He was acting, doing, and speaking just like the Israelites would have expected the messiah to act , do and speak.  From their point of view, if he was the messiah, then he was their exclusive property and nobody else’s, especially the gentile "dogs." 

What would have offended and appalled the first century Israelite would have been if Jesus did show mercy to this woman, did heal her daughter, and did commend her for her great faith, because she had no legitimate claim whatsoever upon Jesus as the Jewish Messiah. That would have been scandalous!  And that's exactly what Jesus did. He offended the in-crowd by ultimately affirming someone on the outside. Those who are offended the most by this story is not you and me; not the Gentile woman; but the religious insider of Jesus day.

This is a dangerous and subversive story - for the Israelites of Jesus' day - and for we who name ourselves followers of Jesus in our day. The stakes are very, very high! This pleading woman was asking Jesus for a great deal!  She was asking for far more than merely the healing of her daughter. She was asking Jesus to bestow upon her gifts that were not by right hers to claim. If Jesus really was the long awaited Jewish Messiah, then Jesus and the gifts of his kingdom rightly belonged to those who suffered in Israel, not to Gentile outsiders. There were more than enough suffering people in Roman occupied Judea to be delivered without casting blessed bread toward this Gentile "dog."

Allow me to use a contemporary analogy. Their attitude toward the Gentiles is somewhat analogous to the attitude by some towards illegal immigrants; illegal immigrants who use the resources and benefits and gifts of our tax dollars. Some say, "This must stop! They have no legitimate claim on the stuff that rightly belongs to American Citizens."  Perhaps that just might help us understand how those first century Israelites might have felt.

You see, the stakes were so very high, for if Jesus were to grant the request of this one Gentile woman, the implications of his barrier bashing action would forever change: the meaning of their religion; the direction their religion was taking them; the destinations their religion would ultimately bring them!

It is right here with this outsider that the real offense and the real scandal lies.  I believe this story was remembered and recorded by the early faith community - first for the insiders - the insiders of the house of Israel; Jesus' own people; and the insiders of today, you and me!

One thing occurred to me as I reflected on this story again this week. Jesus began this encounter in a place that was acceptable to the insiders, mirroring and mimicking exactly what the conventional religion and cultural norms of the time expected him to say. But then, in one brief moment of frozen time, he turned the whole thing around and offended those same insiders who just moments before were cheering him on.

Think about this. That's exactly what Jesus does with you and me. He meets you where you are with unconditional love. He forgives you! He bestows upon you gifts of grace you do not deserve. He loves you unconditionally - even with your sins and slurs; your prejudices and parochial ideas about God; your hatreds and harsh words; your failures and foibles; your self-indulgence and self-seeking. But His love is not soft, sentimental and, it is not always nice! He simply will not leave you where you are. In that sense the grace of God is always offensive to our sensibilities.

Jesus crashes right on through all of our exclusive and isolating barriers, and he takes the grace of God (and us, if we'll follow, sometimes kicking, screaming and resisting) to outsiders, and he shocks the living daylights out of us by demonstrating that God is active and present in and with outsiders too - not just us. It's a tough pill to swallow folks. It's positively scandalous!

Who are the outsiders to you? to us? Muslims? Immigrants? The Family who comes to the church door begging? Homosexuals? The visitor who's a little different in some way? The teenager with pink hair and a nose ring? Those dying of malnutrition and AIDS in Africa? The homeless on our own streets? The contentious co-worker? The alcoholic? The disabled? Who are the outsiders to you? To me? Who are those that you feel are somehow and someway outside on the perimeter?

Robert Capon, pastor and writer knocks us over with this,

"What happened to radical Christianity--the un-nice brand of Christianity that turned the world upside down? What happened to the category smashing, life threatening, anti-institutional gospel that spread through the first century like wildfire and was considered by the insiders to be dangerous? What happened to the kind of Christians whose hearts were on fire... who made the world uncomfortable, who were willing to follow Jesus wherever he went? What happened to the kind of Christians who were filled with passion and whom every single day were unable to get over the grace of God? I'm ready for a Christianity that 'ruins' my life, captures my heart and makes me uncomfortable. I want to be filled with astonishment which is so captivating that I am considered wild and unpredictable and dangerous! Yes, I want to be 'dangerous' to a dull and boring religion. I want a faith that is considered 'dangerous' by our predictable and monotonous culture. What happened?"

What happened is... we too often domesticate Jesus to make him look more like us - than we like him.

-Too often we stop following when we perceive he asks too much or calls upon us to change our insider, condescending attitudes.

-Too often we mistake the gospel life for a life of strict and narrow morality rather than embracing others with the wild and passionate grace of God!

-Too often we are pre-occupied with our own self-righteousness than astonished by God's unconditional love.

-Too often we're blinded by our insulating walls to see God at work on the outside in scandalous ways.

God in Jesus Christ begins His journey with you right where you are bestowing upon you gifts of grace you do not deserve; but the glorious promise is if you follow this anything but boring Lord, he will move you to places you thought you'd never go; make you into a new person that you will scarcely recognize. It is positively scandalous!