Sermon: Breaking Down Boundaries

Lectionary Year B, Proper 18
Gospel Text: Mark 7:24-37

Introduction

None of us are born in isolation from society. From birth, we are a part of some kind of social group. From these social groups we absorb and learn many things; some good, some neutral, and some bad. Some of the things are taught and modeled explicitly, but many more we absorb implicitly. One of those things is how society values different kinds of people, and more specifically, how my in-group views people that are outside of my group. As we grow and interact with different groups, we have positive and negative experiences that can reinforce stereotypes for good or bad. While most of us learn and know intellectually that we should not look down on people different from us, we may still harbor fear, dislike, or feelings of superiority that unconsciously influence our actions.

Many of my childhood and teen years were lived among predominantly White communities. Whether accurate or not, as my young brain looked around, I observed that White people appeared to be more affluent and clearly were the majority. One result of this was that I subconsciously developed anti-Asian sentiment within myself, even though I am clearly Asian.

I think that most strongly reinforcing this idea occurred during a few of my middle school years and a year in high school, when our family spent some time in Singapore as missionaries. The missionaries, who were nearly all Western and White, had their own school for their children, in nice air-conditioned buildings and rooms in a compound just for them.

All of this added up so that for a good number of decades I tried to avoid associating with other Asians and preferred the company of White groups.

But even within the broad category of Asians, I also absorbed a national and ethnic hierarchy that placed my people, Japanese, at the top and other Asians further down the ladder. Although I had close Asian friends that were not Japanese, I held to negative stereotypes when thinking about other groups as a whole. Even though I would have never thought of myself as racist, I thought it was fine and good to maintain internal hierarchies of race and nationality, and to have negative ideas about groups that I didn’t identify with.

I bring all this up because a human individual’s social environment, their culture, and their upbringing all contribute to what they assume is moral and ethical. What they learn and absorb from their in-group defines much of what is assumed to be right. I didn’t think any of what I’ve mentioned was wrong. I simply believed and accepted that that’s just how the world worked. I bring this up because many decades later, as I’ve learned and matured, I am finally at a point where I can begin to see how my upbringing and the experiences I had shaped me and can take conscious steps to break away from recognized negative aspects.

Was Jesus Exempt from Human Upbringing?

Was Jesus exempt from experiencing this part of humanity?

Dr. James F. McGrath, professor of New Testament Language and Literature at Butler University writes,

“Was he [Jesus] entirely free from human biases in his upbringing and culture? As a genuine human being, I think there is no way he could have had a human upbringing in which he learned language, culture, customs, and values, and yet be entirely free of all prejudices and biases.”[1]

And Loye Ashton in the commentary Feasting on the Word writes,

“To be the Son of God, the Messiah must suffer, not only at the hands of those of us who do not understand him, but also under of the conditions of existence, the challenge of the human condition itself. To be otherwise would not allow Jesus to be fully human… Mark provides an interesting way of seeing how the divine and the human can be completely combined in the life of Jesus of Nazareth.”[2]

Jesus and Ethnic Traditions

Today’s gospel text is the middle of a series of stories arranged by Mark to show how Jesus went from caring for the Jews, his in-group, to breaking rigidly established boundaries of purity, religion, ethnicity and race to include all humanity in his care. The Syrophoenician woman is the fulcrum on which this shift occurs.

Up to this point the series of stories show Jesus challenging traditional Jewish norms and even disregarding purity codes. But these were all debates within Judaism and having disagreements or practicing differently did not automatically place one outside of the community.

To offer God’s divine power to someone outside of the Jewish community would be something else entirely. That is the challenge that Jesus is confronted with when the Syrophoenician (or Canaanite; c.f. Matthew 15:22) woman comes to him with a request to cast the unclean spirit out of her daughter. This was not only a Gentile, but a woman; a woman with an unclean daughter, and even more problematic, a descendant of the Canaanites, Israel’s mortal enemy.

And that is the point at which Jesus hesitates. He seems to have some intellectual recognition that God’s mercy should go to all of humanity, but his social norms acquired through his upbringing seems to erect an emotional block. Jesus responds as a Jewish man would be expected to respond to a request from a Gentile woman. It is rude and insulting, but simultaneously, it is an entirely acceptable and expected response.

Rev. Marcea Paul of the Episcopal Church of the Good Shepherd, in Austin, Texas writes,

“We believe and profess that Jesus is fully human and fully divine, and this week, we encounter Jesus in his full humanity.”[3]

We don’t have the time to go into the problem of this apparent portrait of a less-than-perfect Jesus. For now I hope it is sufficient to note that the problem may lie in our overreliance on John’s gospel and some of the Christological texts in the epistles as fully explaining Jesus, and through them our assumptions about what it means to be perfect and without sin. From the quotes I’ve already used, there are biblical scholars and practicing pastors who are raising the problem of an underdeveloped doctrine of Jesus’ humanity.

Jesus Challenged

Jesus responds as a Jewish man might be expected to respond. But the woman, instead of going away, as would have been expected, she responds with a challenge to Jesus’ response, thus invoking an honor contest – again, something that is completely unexpected across social, ethnic, and gender boundaries.[4]

Her response, “Sir, even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs,” (7:28) get the better of Jesus. This is the only story recorded in the gospels where Jesus loses an honor contest, and it is to a Gentile woman. Whereas in Matthew’s account Jesus praises the woman’s faith, in Mark’s account Jesus recognizes the superiority of the woman’s reason and logic.

In commenting on this the Fortress Biblical Preaching Commentaries: Mark reads,

The Syrophoenician woman’s reply in v.28 is startling. The fact that she talks back is itself a sign of boundary-crossing persistence… She engages Jesus in a clever, rhetorical riposte that while not undoing the offense of naming, breaks and thus bests its logic… The gentile woman works cleverly within the metaphor that Jesus uses. But in doing so, she breaks it open for newness and healing.[5]

The woman of this story is the hero. She extracts honor from Jesus, and he is compelled to accede to the woman’s request.

What Jesus Learned

Jesus had been pushing and crossing boundaries within his own Jewish tradition. But the Syrophoenician woman challenged boundaries that defined ethnic, national, social, religious, and gender separations. She challenged Jesus to break those boundaries as ones that were hindering a broader mission to all of humanity. In healing her daughter, Jesus appears to have learned that there were far more traditional boundaries that would have to be broken and crossed.

The next story where a man who is deaf and has a speech impediment is healed shows how Jesus puts into practice what he has learned. He no longer shows reluctance to immediately respond to a Gentile person’s needs. But Jesus’ manner of healing in this story is strange in that he does not lay hands on the man, as was asked of him, but rather pokes his finger into the man’s ears, spits onto his fingers and touches the man’s tongue. It is almost as if Jesus is adopting certain healing practices and goes through motions that were more common in the Greco-Roman world. Karen Pidcock-Lester offers the following observation in the commentary Feasting on the Gospels,

The significance of the spittle is unclear. Some evidence indicates that the Greco-Roman culture viewed it as having curative effects, while other evidence from Jewish texts indicate that it is an unclear discharge. This would actually make a difference in how one views the healing act. Given that Mark has been picturing Jesus breaking boundaries, I would suggest that it is viewed in the Jewish fashion as unclean. By an unclean act Jesus heals; this makes the boundary breaking even stronger.[6]

The final story in this Markan sequence of narratives showing Jesus’ boundary crossings is the Feeding of the 4,000 which takes place still in a Gentil area. In this story, as was found in the feeding of the 5,000 which was in Jewish lands, the Markan text includes that Jesus had compassion for the crowd which had been with him for three days (8:2). Jesus who had compassion for the Jewish crowds, but responded rudely to the Syrophoenician woman, comes around to having compassion for a Gentile crowd.

What We Can Learn

Since we are human, we don’t always know the kinds of boundaries that we hold on to. Many are handed down through our families and the society that we are born into. Others we might choose along life’s way.

Jesus did not say all boundaries should be eliminated. He clearly has at least one – that of sacrificial love for one another which is the defining marker for his people and community.

Any boundary that is antithetical to sacrificial love for one another is, therefore, a boundary that should be questioned. Another might be any boundary that builds and maintains hierarchies of power. And yet another might be any boundary that assigns a degree of value differently from one person to another depending on where they fall. Do our stated values always match what we hold on to internally?

Another area to consider is the ways in which we respond when we are externally confronted and challenged on boundaries that we adhere to, both consciously and subconsciously. Do we become defensive or are we open to the possibility that we might be wrong and take corrective action?

Jesus was crucified, at least in part because he refused to stay within what society demanded were proper and necessary boundaries. Jesus crossed boundaries to love those that were considered enemies by society. He not only crossed boundaries, but he sought to remove them. One could say that Jesus was a traitor for the cause of love. We, who claim the name of Jesus Christ and follow him, are being asked to do no less.

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[1] Was Jesus a Racist? | James McGrath (patheos.com) (https://www.patheos.com/blogs/religionprof/2021/09/was-jesus-racist.html)

[2] Feasting on the Word: Year B, Volume 4, Kindle location approximately at 1716.

[3] Crumbs for Healing, Pentecost 15 (B) – September 5, 2021 – The Episcopal Church (https://www.episcopalchurch.org/sermon/crumbs-for-healing-pentecost-15-b-september-5-2021/)

[4] Fortress Biblical Preaching Commentaries: Mark, p. 103-104.

[5] Fortress, p. 104-105

[6] Pidcock-Lester, Karen (commentary contributor). Feasting on the Gospels: Mark. Approximate Kindle location 7608.