Introduction:
Starting this week, over three Sundays, we will engage with the story of the Syrophoenician woman (Mark 7:24-29). Though we don’t know her name, today’s story speaks of her cultural/racial identity. Then, she asks Jesus a question powerful enough to inspire change…
THE FIRST READING
24From there Jesus 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, 25but a woman whose little daughter had an unclean spirit immediately heard about him, and she came and bowed down at his feet. 26Now the woman was a Gentile, of Syrophoenician origin. She begged him to cast the demon out of her daughter. 27He 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.” 28But she answered him, “Sir, even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs.” 29Then Jesus said to her, “For saying that, you may go—the demon has left your daughter.”
In today’s story, Jesus has come into the region of Tyre, a Gentile region. The author doesn’t tell us whose house is being entered, but in typical Mark fashion, Jesus wanted his presence to be a secret. Yet a woman somehow got inside the house and bowed down at Jesus’ feet. Though we don’t know her name, her cultural identity is not a secret: “Now the woman was a Gentile, of Syrophoenician origin.” (V 26). Should Jesus be surprised to encounter a Gentile woman in a Gentile region? After all, Jesus was the outsider inside the house.
This unnamed woman was a desperate mother, willing to do anything to find a cure for her daughter. She bowed down at Jesus’ feet and begged — just as Jairus, the leader of the synagogue in the previous chapter, had done. We know that Jesus went with Jairus without asking any questions. But here, Jesus’ response is different: “Let the children be fed first (the Jewish people), for it is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs (the Gentiles).” Because the word “dog” here is derogatory, it is worth noting that Jewish people in antiquity typically spoke respectfully of Gentiles, and indeed, many Jewish people anticipated that God would save the Gentiles. While some Christians think that Jewish people commonly referred to Gentiles as “dogs”, that was not so.
Then, why? Why was Jesus so disrespectful and even name-calling, when he responded to the woman’s request?
Was Jesus exhausted? Was Jesus upset that his presence inside the house had been discovered, or even disturbed? Jesus had already healed a Gentile — the “Gerasene demoniac” the wounded healer of the story we read and engaged with, last month at BVU. The Gerasene man didn’t even ask for healing! What makes Jesus so unjust, so unkind to this pleading mother?
Why? What is going on?
We need a Rain Stick at this point! Thank you, Cheryl, for allowing me to use this wonderful instrument you received from your dad.
Imagine if this story was a report of an actual event that happened recently and the news post is circulated widely on social media, … I see such posts often come with a trigger warning. Trigger or content warnings assist survivors of traumatic events to be mentally prepared; it gives them a choice of what they want to see or read. Not only calling the woman and her people “dogs” but there are more occasions in today’s story that the Rain Stick Warning could help us to pause in silence and hold the moments of grief and pain in reflection and remembering women, Indigenous members, Black and Persons of Colour, Queer and Transgender people, people with disabilities and mental health challenges. As family, friends or allies, we remember those who have been shunned, ostracized, excluded, misunderstood and marginalized for who they are, their skin colour, their racial and cultural identity, sexual and gender identity, disability, mental health, economic circumstances… Those who have been racialized, enslaved, institutionalized, stigmatized and stereotyped, treated differently and labeled as "less than human", as “something else” like a dog. We know it has happened, too many times; we know it is still happening.
From today’s trauma-informed perspective, Jesus’ statement and racial “slur” — calling the Syrophoenician woman and her people “dogs” — have caused harm. “Let the children be fed first, for it is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.”
Let me read the story again with the support of the cooling sound of this beautiful Rain Stick, holding the pain as lamentation; holding the righteous anger and grief as prayer…
Sermon: Mark 7: 24-29
READING AGAIN WITH THE RAIN STICK (on the highlights)
24From there Jesus 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, 25but a woman whose little daughter had an unclean spirit immediately heard about him, and she came and bowed down at his feet. 26Now the woman was a Gentile, of Syrophoenician origin. She begged him to cast the demon out of her daughter. 27He 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.” 28But she answered him, “Sir, even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs.” 29Then Jesus said to her, “For saying that, you may go—the demon has left your daughter.”
In 2018, I attended the Two Spirit and Queer People of Colour Call to Conversation With Allies Conference, hosted by the queer people of colour scholars and leaders at the University of Winnipeg, on the land of Treaty One. I had an unforgettable, spiritually reshaping three days of immersive learning. Every day began with a welcome and the words of Two-Spirit Indigenous Elders and the rituals they led — dancing or a pipe ceremony — and each day ended with smudging and prayers by the Elders in English, Ojibway or Cree languages. Between the beginning and the ending, I was immersed in an incredible learning experience with more than a hundred participants from all over Canada.
One speaker who impressed me deeply was OmiSoor Dryden. She/they started her keynote speech with acknowledging their collective ancestors — Indigenous, BIPOC, the queer and genderqueer and trans communities… After she touched on misogyny and classism, she said “Blackness in Canada is the impossible image. Imagining Canada as the Black Canada (instead of White Canada) is an impossible image.” She meant not only Black people who were forcibly brought here, but those Black people who continue to come here. “Society says,” she continued, “Our life will continue to be devalued.” Incarceration, impoverishment as the result of colonization; invisibility or hyper-visibility that make Black people’s existence in Canada a perpetual exercise in inequality — the impossibility of belonging.
Omisoor Dryden continued, “We are the afterthought.”
At this point I remembered that a United Church queer Black clergy based on Toronto expressed some years ago: “In the United Church of Canada, being Black is harder than being queer.”
“Celebrating ‘diversity as a strategy’ is good, but ultimately it does not disrupt the system. Inclusion policy is good, but it often better serves White people, White women, White queer folk,” as long as Whiteness is unquestioned and positioned as the standard, as the norm. “My commitment and interest lies in a disruption of the Canadian project — anti-Blackness. I don’t say belonging is bad … It is beautiful. It is important. We need to think about something other than belonging in order to disrupt the colonial education.”
After she shared these words, an incredible movement was made in front of my eyes and the 200 eyes of the audience. She held a bowl of water, and showed it to us with explanation. She brought the water from the Atlantic Ocean and kept it in her bottle. Then, she stepped down from the stage and poured the water on the audience’s floor. She said "it’s Black water”, remembering her ancestors of Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade — , and let the water flow.
There, the impossibility of belonging / flew / and created the possibility of impossible belonging.
(Pour the water into the baptismal basin.)
In today’s story, Jesus says to the Syrophoenician woman. “Let the children be fed first, for it is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.” Is Jesus modelling colonial education?
Jann Derrick, Indigenous scholar, when teaching Decolonizing Conflict Resolution and Indigenous Peacebuilding, teaches that there are two systems in the world. The Circle and the Box. I enjoyed learning from her in Manitoba. Lifting up a few interesting contrasts, the Circle System (Indigenous) is child-centred, honours the female gifts of intuition and emotion: all living beings are equal in value. On the other hand, the Box system (Colonial education, for example) is conceptualized as a ladder of hierarchy, of power and control; children traditionally were to be seen and not heard. This system judges and excludes in order to protect. The hierarchy of importance and value is applied to people and other living creatures. Shaming communication is often used in order to exert power and control; differences are disturbing, as are grey areas.
The Circle system can also be called The Indigenous Worldview
The Box system can also be called the Colonizing Worldview
Today’s story is where two worldviews, two models collide… and transform. Colonized social hierarchy is a reversal of the Indigenous social roles.
Males of dominant culture.
Females of dominant culture.
Children of dominant culture.
Indigenous men.
Indigenous women.
Indigenous children.
Dogs/the living creatures.
(Use the Rain Stick here again.)
This is interesting and so emotionally moving to me: Today’s story’s of the Syrophoenician woman’s “writing back” (to Jesus), “Sir, even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs” is a Circle View!
Let’s go back to the “Dog” or “dogs.” She plainly explains and speaks the truth of her experience in her Gentile household, where dogs have a place and eat the crumbs children let fall beneath the table. Children are at the centre of the Circle, which includes dogs in it. The woman’s description is aligned with the Indigenous worldview.
She asks a question powerful enough to inspire change… in Jesus.
She asks a question, and that helps Jesus, her spiritual partner in this dialogue, to realize where and what his assumptions are.
In many Korean translations, her response is in the question form: “Isn’t it true that even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs?” She’s asking that the inclusion policy would permanently shift and transform Jesus’ mission, which is, up until this startling point quite colonial. The Syrophoenician woman’s Indigenous worldview, the Circle Model, challenges the Box (or the Ladder) of the traditional mission of reaching out, listening to, and helping primarily those who share the same worldview. The Syrophoenician woman, her daughter, the children and the dogs in the Indigenous/Gentile household in the Circle invite Jesus to sit and heal (or be healed) by breaking out from the harmful restrictions of the Box.
I remember, in 2018, when the three day conference, Two Spirit and Queer People of Colour Call to Conversation with Allies, ended, after this powerful, transformative immersive spiritual experience, I walked out of the campus and continued to walk through Winnipeg’s downtown. I was dizzy. For the first time, I experienced the oppression of the grey, concrete buildings. For the first time I felt the grief of this world, colonized in boxes. It was like the whole world was upside down… I saw that the truth is under the ground - the buildings that looked to me like boxes of different heights and shapes - grew (instead of trees), and suppressed/outweighed the life on the ground and the Circle’s Light under the ground. That day, I decided to commit myself to the decolonizing path, and wrote back. “I would not go back to the point that I did not know the Circle’s Light in the path.” Thank you, Syrophoenician woman. Miigwetch.
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