There is a story in chapter 7 of Mark’s gospel about Jesus and a Greek woman who comes to see him about healing her daughter, and he is hesitant to give it to her. Yes, that’s right, he is hesitant to give it to her! It seems that at least at that moment, the human Jesus is bound by culture and ethnicity and gender and religion.

Some scholars work really hard to distance Jesus from this scene in which Jesus calls the woman and her people kynaria or puppies. Those scholars say that maybe Jesus meant to articulate a term of endearment (!) I think this is unlikely, as do most theologians looking at this passage. It is more likely that Jesus meant to call that woman and her people unclean or not holy or other, because there is precedent in scripture for that case (See 1 Samuel 17:43, 2 Kings 8:13, and Exodus 22:31).

It is not a pretty story but the gospels include it. Why? Maybe they were comforted by the humanity of Jesus, and thought we would be, too. As we notice all of the ways the human response to otherness wreaks havoc in our world—generating racism, and classism, and sexism, and heterosexism; engendering a blatant disregard to boundaries and territory; creating a historic lust and greed for the land and property of the other and the arrogant assumption that might and superior weapons means one can simply take what one wants; resulting in the unequal distribution of resources based on color and ethnicity; leading to genocide and tribal warfare around the world—maybe we are comforted in knowing that even Jesus could be entrapped by our human tendency to withhold love and care and compassion for the “other.”

If that comforts us, then those of us who call ourselves followers of this rabbi, this carpenter, this Child of Man and Child of God, when reading to the end of the story learn that the conversation with the woman changed Jesus’ mind. Changed his mind, and his behavior and his sense of mission. “Even the little dogs deserve the crumbs from the master’s table,” she said. The gospel writers do not tell us her name but they quote this woman—other in her gender, other in her ethnicity, other in her religion, other in the power structure. She not only gets what she needs, she changes Jesus’ mind and heart. I believe that Jesus and the woman were changed at that encounter on the border. She is radically empowered and he is radicalized to become more inclusive. The border experience was transformative. Maybe we get this story in the gospels so we can be inspired to radicalize each other in mission!

I rather like that Jesus’ humanity is on the line here in this passage. I imagine him tired. He’s been traveling all over Galilee and is now on the coast in the region of Tyre and Sidon. He wants a moment to himself. His fame goes before him. Everyone knows that he is a great preacher, teacher, and healer. So when he gets to this particular house a woman shows up . . . a woman with no boundaries. This was a woman who did not know her place; an insistent and persistent woman on a mission. Her daughter is infirm, and needs to be healed. Now.

Jesus is at first better at boundaries. He is on a mission, too . . . a mission to the Jewish people to give them an updated sense of what it means to be the people of God. In this encounter, Jesus’ mission extends and expands; his mission and hers become one. Their conversation is transformational.

And I am giving her, the other, credit here. She stays in the game, toe to toe with the man who has what she wants. She uses his language— his words, to create a space for Grace. And Grace abounds. Go. Because of what you said, because of our dialog, it will be different.

Talk about the value of talk . . . Mission is a conversation; a transformational conversation.  

I love you,
Jacqui