Women Count
a sermon by Jeff Miller From there he set out and went away to the region of Tyre. He entered a house and did not want anyone to know he was there. Yet he could not escape notice, but a woman whose little daughter had an unclean spirit immediately heard about him, and she came and bowed down at his feet. Now the woman was a Gentile, of Syrophoenician origin. She begged him to cast the demon out of her daughter. 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.” Then he said to her, “For saying that, you may go—the demon has left your daughter.” So she went home, found the child lying on the bed, and the demon gone. (Mark 7:24–30 NRSV) It would be difficult to overestimate the complexity of what’s happening here in this sanctuary. At first glance, one might simply say, “We’re listening to a sermon.” And while that is true, much more could be said. Think for a moment about your morning. Most of you have had a good morning, but very likely a few of you have not. Some of you slept well; perhaps a few of you just came from a night shift. Now think about yesterday . . . and about last week . . . and last month. On and on it goes. My point is that an incalculable number of trajectories are converging right here, right now. Your family, your education, your profession, your emotions; my family, my education, my emotions . . . we bring all these themes here with us, and they strongly influence how we’ll experience this sermon. So, if a visitor were to look in on us and ask, “What’s happening in there?” No simple answer would suffice. You could say, “We’re worshiping.” Or, “It’s a sermon.” But whatever you say would surely lead to more questions. Preaching about this story from Mark chapter 7 is like that. It’s as if we are glimpsing a moment in the ministry of Jesus, watching him interact with a certain woman, and this sermon is the answer to the question, “What’s happening over there?” I could simply say, “Jesus has been asked to heal a child.” Or, “Jesus is insulting a woman.” Or, “Jesus is illustrating what he taught in the prior story.” One fuller answer, though it’s a bit cumbersome, is, “Mark the Gospel writer is bringing together an interwoven stream of trajectories in order to challenge some of the Christians who lived around AD 70 and their view of discipleship, particularly their view of the discipleship of women.” But whatever I say is going to lead to more questions. For example, here are seven questions you might ask after glimpsing this story: Why did Jesus and his disciples walk thirty miles to the region of Tyre? Why did Jesus want so desperately to be alone?
cbeinternational.org
What precisely is demon possession? Does Jesus initially deny the woman’s request? Why would he say something that could offend her? Does Jesus change his mind in this story? And one of the most important questions we could ask after glimpsing this episode in Mark’s Gospel: Of all the stories Mark could have included, why this one? I should tell you that I’m not going to answer all seven questions. I do hope to answer some of them, but to do so I need to get a running start. Like a good storyteller, Mark weaves threads throughout his story. There are more of these than we have time to follow. I am, however, going to follow three of Mark’s trajectories from the beginning up to the sermon text for today.
Tracing Three Themes through The Gospel of Mark Food in Mark The first trajectory is fun to follow. It’s food. Someone is eating on essentially every page of Mark’s Gospel. Usually it’s Jesus and his disciples. Bread in Mark is a symbol of the presence of God’s kingdom, of God’s blessing, of God’s work in the world that is blossoming in the life, teaching, and ministry of Jesus. I’ll give you seven examples, one for each chapter leading up to our story: In ch. 1, Jesus is in the wilderness, tempted by Satan. Though the Gospels of Matthew and Luke say Jesus fasted during this experience, Mark makes no such claim. Mark doesn’t want to remove this important symbol from Jesus’s time of trial. In ch. 2, Jesus is asked why his disciples don’t fast. Not only do they eat a lot, but they openly eat with sinners. And his reply, if I may paraphrase, is “The kingdom of God is a party!” To be more precise, he says the kingdom of God is like a wedding feast, and it makes no sense to fast at a feast. In ch. 3, we read, “Jesus entered a house, and again a crowd gathered, such a large crowd that they couldn’t even eat!” In ch. 4, Jesus tells his first parable, The Parable of the Sower. And, of course, the Sower was sowing grain, which is food. Some seeds fell on good soil and produced lots and lots of food. In ch. 5, Jesus raises a twelve-year-old girl from the dead—his most amazing miracle to date! When the girl gets up, what does Jesus say? “Give her something to eat.” In ch. 6, we come to Jesus’s most famous food story— The Feeding of the 5,000, which begins with five loaves
Priscilla Papers | 34/4 | Autumn 2020 • 17
