Patrick Comerford
Sunday next, 9 September 2018, is the Fifteenth Sunday after Trinity (Trinity XV). The readings in the Revised Common Lectionary, as adapted in the Church of Ireland, are:
Continuous Readings: Proverbs 22: 1-2, 8-9, 22-23; Psalm 125; James 2: 1-10, (11-13,) 14-17; Mark 7: 24-37.
Paired Readings: Isaiah 35: 4-7a; Psalm 146; James 2: 1-10, 11–13, 14-17; Mark 7: 24-37.
There is a link to the readings HERE.
Introducing the readings:
The continuous readings in the lectionary for next Sunday move us on to the Book of Proverbs and we return to the readings in Year B in Saint Mark’s Gospel.
The emphasis in these readings is on justice, especially for the poor and the marginalised, and connecting the feeding and clothing of the poor and looking after their health and housing with faith and the in-breaking of the Kingdom of God.
Proverbs 22: 1-2, 8-9, 22-23:
Following last week’s brief exploration of the Song of Solomon, or the Song of Songs, next Sunday’s Old Testament reading is the first of three readings from the Book of Proverbs, a book we continue reading on Sundays and weekdays until Sunday 23 September.
A proverb is a pithy statement that expresses a ‘common sense’ truth in a striking, memorable way. This book is a collection such pithy sayings by a scholar to a student on leading a moral life that gives proper respect to God.
God shows no special favour to the rich, but is impartial between the rich and the poor. We are advised to value justice, to be generous and to attend to the needs of the poor – themes that are important in both the new Testament reading and the Gospel stories.
The ‘afflicted at the gate’ are the people at the margins who are waiting outside society for justice – which provides an important introduction to and context for the Gospel reading.
Psalm 125:
This psalm is one of the ‘Songs of Ascent,’ sung by pilgrims travelling up to Jerusalem.
It is not power and wealth that makes someone strong and firm like a mountain, but trust in God or faith. Those who have power and privilege may be wicked, but we are called to be good and ‘true of heart.’
James 2: 1-10, (11-13,) 14-17:
Last Sunday [2 September 2018, Trinity XIV], we heard the author of this letter urge his readers to ‘be doers of the word, and not merely hearers’ (James 1: 22) of the Gospel, giving as an example care for widows and orphans.
In this reading, Saint James continues his discussion of the responsibilities we have as Christians to the disadvantaged. He challenges his readers to consider whether our favouritism and partiality is consistent with our belief in Christ, who in his glory makes nonsense of distinctions based on status.
If strangers come into church – the word translated here as ‘assembly’ is συναγωγή or synagogue – do we offer them better seats, more honour and respect, because they are well dressed, while we leave others standing?
Do we judge by appearances?
Do we discriminate?
He challenges us to recall that Christ’s preference is for the poor, who will have faith and inherit the kingdom.
We are reminded that the summary of the law is ‘You shall love your neighbour as yourself’ (verse 8; see Leviticus 19: 18, Matthew 22: 39, Mark 12: 31, Luke 10: 27).
It makes no sense to say we have faith if we do not show love by seeing that the hungry have food and through promoting peace. As we were challenged last Sunday, we are called to ‘be doers of the word, and not merely hearers.’
Mark 7: 24-37:
Last Sunday (Mark 7: 1-8, 14-15, 21-23), we heard how Christ challenges official but non-Biblical traditions about ritual purity and shows how they are irrelevant.
This Sunday, Christ steps out of the area of the ritually pure and into the land of the ritually poor, visiting the Greek-speaking, gentile regions of Tyre, Sidon and the Decapolis, shares the table with, has physical contact with, and brings healing and wholeness to people who are on the margins and outside the boundaries, not only because of their ethnic and religious backgrounds, but because of their gender, their age and their disabilities.
There are two stories in this Gospel reading: one is set in Tyre, and recalls Christ’s meeting with the Greek-speaking Syro-Phoenician woman and the healing of her daughter (Mark 7: 24-30); the second is set in Sidon or in the Decapolis, and recalls the healing of a man who is deaf and hardly able to speak (Mark7: 31-37).
Part 1, Mark 7: 24-30:
In the first part of this reading, Christ travels to Tyre, a coastal area north of Galilee, and a largely Gentile area. He is seeking some time on his own, away from the demands of the crowds and other people, and he stays in a house that must have been the home of a Jewish family.
The story is also told in Saint Matthew’s Gospel (Matthew 15: 21-28), which also tell us that Christ is accompanied by the disciples (Matthew 15: 23), and the woman is described as a Canaanite woman.
In Saint Mark’s Gospel, in the NRSV translation, she is ‘a Gentile, a Syrophoenician origin’ (verse 26). But the original Greek text describes her as ‘a Greek, a Syrophoenician by birth’ (ἦν Ἑλληνίς, Συροφοινίκισσα τῷ γένει).
The Clementine Homilies name this woman as Justa and her daughter as Bernice. But, like so many women in the Gospels, they are unnamed.
She is not of Jewish origin, but she is an example of a woman who is a righteous Gentile; Old Testament comparisons include Ruth the Moabite and Achior the Ammonite (Judith), or we might be reminded of the Gentiles healed by Elijah and Elisha (see I Kings 17: 8-16; II Kings 5: 1-14). She seeks healing for her daughter who is possessed by an ‘unclean spirit’ (verse 25) or a ‘demon’ (verse 26); she is at home, lying sick on bed – the phrasing, context and wording makes me wonder whether this girl is suffering from anorexia.
When Christ replies (verse 27), the children he refers to are not her children, but Jewish believers. Jewish writers sometimes referred to Gentiles as ‘dogs.’ Dogs were regarded as unclean (see Revelation 22: 15), but Christ’s intention may have been humorous when he uses this phrase to ask rhetorically whether the woman believes his ministry is principally to Jews, although in this scene both Jews and Gentiles are at or near the table.
If Christ’s retort is meant to be witty, then the woman is also witty in her reply, appearing to ask whether her daughter is a ‘little bitch’ (verse 28): κυνάριον (kinárion) in verse 28 is translated as ‘dog’ in the NRSV, but it is diminutive and could be more accurately rendered as ‘little dog’ … even ‘little bitch’!
This woman might all too easily have interpreted this response as rude if not racist. Instead, she engages with the same humour, showing she has a confident faith. She claims a place for non-Jews in God’s plan, Christ accepts her claim, and her daughter is cured completely.
Part 2, Mark 7: 31-37:
After a circuitous journey through Gentile territory, Christ now heads towards Galilee. Sidon is north of Tyre, half-way between Tyre and Beirut; the Decapolis was a Greek-speaking region that took its name (Δεκάπολις) from 10 cities east of Galilee, Damascus once being counted as the most northerly of these 10 cities.
The description of this journey is difficult to map or track. But Sidon may be a misreading for Saidan, another name for Bethsaida, east of the River Jordan. In either case, the location of this story, once again, is an area where the majority of the people are gentiles.
A man with hearing and speech impediments is brought to Jesus. The story is also told in Saint Matthew’s Gospel (Matthew 15: 29-31).
Some rabbinic sources consider a deaf person heresh, similar to being a minor or mentally ill, and therefore not responsible for observing the law. For a strict and observant religious Jew at the time, he was not an appropriate person to have physical contact with – he ought to have been on the margins, on the edges of the people who came in contact with Jesus.
This man is kept on the margins, perhaps outside the town. But this man is brought for healing to Jesus, by his friends or his family.
In the Gospels, Jesus’ healings usually by word alone, as we see in the previous episode in this reading. But in this story, Jesus is asked to lay his hand on him, a form of healing known only in the Qumran literature from the Dead Sea and in the Church.
In healing this man, Christ uses two symbols, one for deafness and one for speech. He puts his fingers in the man’s ear and touches his tongue with spittle. Moved with compassion, Jesus sighs, prays, and the man is healed.
The cure is immediate and again complete, and although Jesus asks those present to tell no one, the good news spreads quickly. ‘He has done everything well; he even makes the deaf to hear and the mute to speak’ (verse 37) is a partial citation of a section in Isaiah on Israel’s glorious future:
‘Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened,
and the ears of the deaf unstopped;
then the lame shall leap like a deer,
and the tongue of the speechless sing for joy.
For waters shall break forth in the wilderness,
and streams in the desert.’ (Isaiah 35: 5-16)
The kingdom of God is already breaking in.
Detail from the ‘Sarcophagus of the Crying Women,’ from Sidon, now in the Istanbul Archaeological MuseumA Reflection on the Gospel reading: ‘Pity distracts my aching heart, pity for a mother’s heart’
I am embarrassed at times when I am caught off-guard, caught with my compassion down. So often, I fail to respond to the needs of others, not just in giving, but in being their advocate, in speaking up for them, in being compassionate, in sharing their pain, in seeing who they truly are inside rather than how they appear to be on the outside.
But would any of us like to be seen behaving the way Christ behaves in the first part of our Gospel reading this morning, when he meets the Canaanite or Syro-Phoenician woman in the district of Tyre and Sidon?
On a first reading, the Gospel account of this meeting seems to show us Christ at first rejecting the pleas of a distressed woman, deeply worried about her daughter. One writer suggests that in this story Christ is caught with his compassion down. Even his disciples want to turn her away. They see her as a pest, a nuisance, a pushy woman breaking in to their closed space, their private area.
After a trying and busy time that included the beheading of John the Baptist, the feeding of the 5,000, the calming of the storm, and a major debate with leading Pharisees, Christ and his disciples have arrived in the coastal area of Tyre and Sidon, perhaps looking for a quiet break for a few days.
This is foreign territory, inhabited mainly by Canaanites or Phoenicians. In the Bible, Sidon was the city of Jezebel (I Kings 16: 31), and the area was associated with the Prophet Elijah, who raises the widow’s child from death (I Kings 17: 9-24), and who, in Father Kieran O’Mahony’s words, ‘was markedly, even offensively, open to foreigners.’
These were coastal, cultured cities, Hellenised and Greek-speaking since the days of Alexander the Great, and known for the arts and commerce. Sidon was the first city of the Phoenicians and the mother city of Tyre, known as its ‘Virgin Daughter’ (see Isaiah 23: 12). Mothers and daughters – one of the great archaeological finds from Sidon is the ‘Sarcophagus of the Crying Women,’ now in the Istanbul Archaeological Museum.
So, Christ could expect to find himself among a large number of Greek-speaking ‘gentiles’ in this area. Would the Disciples expect him to behave like Elijah and to break all the rules in being open to them, to take miraculous care of a lone mother and her child?
Or would they expect him to treat all Phoenician women like Jezebel and leave them to the dogs?
In Saint Matthew’s account, the woman who confronts Christ is a Canaanite woman; in Saint Mark’s telling (Mark 7: 24-31), she is a Greek or Syro-Phoenician woman (verse 26). Both mean the same thing, for Canaan in Hebrew and Phoenicia in Greek both mean the Land of Purple.
She was a gentile, a foreigner, a Greek-speaker and a woman.
What right had she to invade their privacy?
Could she not just accept life as it is?
In the classical world, Phoenician women were pushy women. About 400 years earlier, the Greek playwright Euripides wrote his tragic play The Phoenician Women (Φοίνισσαι, Phoenissae), rewriting a story told by Aeschylus in Seven Against Thebes, dealing with tragic events after the fall of Oedipus.
The title of the play, The Phoenician Women, refers to the chorus, composed of Phoenician women on their way to serve in the Temple of Apollo in Delphi but trapped in Thebes by the war. But the Phoenician Women in the chorus – and remember a Greek chorus was normally played by wizened old men – are mere bystanders, watching an unfolding tragedy that disrupts their plans.
The two key women in the play are Iocasta and her daughter Antigone, who have survived against all odds. These two women, mother and daughter, challenge the accepted concepts in the Classical world of fate and free-will. In the face of death, they refuse to accept what others would impose as their destiny; they refuse to be pushed aside, marginalised and dismissed while the men around them compete for power.
So, in the time of Christ, cultured, Greek-speaking people, including those in Tyre and Sidon, expected a Greek-speaking Phoenician woman and her daughter to be pushy when faced with what appeared to be a cruel fate – even if this involved confronting successful or ambitious men: they were prepared to stand up to kings and their retinues, to challenge them, and to risk rejection, exile and even death.
For their part, the disciples, probably, were not open to this cultural dimension, and would have dismissed the woman as a gentile, a stranger, a foreigner, a Greek-speaker and a woman. Her religion, language, nationality and gender place her beyond their compassion.
The NRSV says she bows down at Jesus’ feet. But the original Greek is more direct when it tells us she prostrates herself in homage and worship before him, perhaps touching her forehead to the ground: ἐλθοῦσα προσέπεσεν πρὸς τοὺς πόδας αὐτοῦ, she fell down, or prostrated herself, at his feet (verse 25).
In Saint Matthew’s account, the disciples are like the chorus staged by Euripides: they become wizened old men, obsessed only with their religious future and failing to have compassion for the outsiders who enter their lives, talking in asides at the side of the tragedy, but not actually engaging with it. In Saint Mark’s account, they are not even on the scene.
Les Très Riches Heures du duc de Berry, Folio 164r - The Canaanite Woman (The Musée Condé, Chantilly)Faced with her daughter’s needs, the woman ignores the disciples: she is direct and aggressive in demanding healing and justice. And in demanding justice and healing for her daughter, she is, of course, demanding the same for herself too.
Her dialogue with Christ must have sounded crude and aggressive to those who overhear the drama, who witness the tragedy. This pushy woman forces herself onto the stage, addresses Christ in Messianic terms, and makes no demands for herself but demands healing for her daughter.
At first, Christ appears to treat her with contempt. At first, in Saint Matthew’s Gospel, he does not even respond to her; instead, he turns away and tells his friends, the chorus, that he is only here for the lost sheep of Israel (verse 24). But she is persistent and – with a touch of melodrama – she throws herself at the feet of Christ.
Christ then describes his fellow Jews as ‘little children,’ and shockingly compares the Gentiles with dogs, little dogs (verse 26). Today, it sounds like he is calling this woman a bitch, and her daughter a little bitch. But there is something even more shocking here: at that time, dogs were regarded as unclean animals. They were kept outside the city gates, and in Saint Luke’s Gospel we see how low the beggar Lazarus has sunk that outside the gates of Dives the dogs lick his sores (Luke 16: 19-31, see especially verse 21).
Despite the title of Don Bluth’s animated movie, All Dogs go to Heaven (1989), it was held at the time of Christ that dogs must be kept outside the city gates, and that they were the only animals excluded with certainty from heaven (see Revelation 22: 15). And the disciples would have thought instantly of that other pushy Phoenician woman, Jezebel, who met her death by being thrown to the dogs in the streets.
All this makes Christ’s words and images deeply offensive, culturally and theologically, unless he is engaging in humorous banter with this woman.
For one moment, try to imagine the body language that accompanies this conversation. Imagine you are trying to stage this Gospel story as drama. You would have Christ talking face-to-face with this pleading, pushy woman. But the disciples are standing behind him, like wizened old men in a Greek chorus, or like the women in the chorus in the Phoenician Women … more distressed by the disruption to their religious careers than they are by the plight of a mother and her daughter and the tragedy that unfolds around them.
The disciples, as a chorus, can see the woman’s facial reactions to Christ … but they cannot see the face of Christ.
By now, he has engaged with this woman face-to-face. So, she now knows it is worth pushing her demands for mercy and help. So, who is Christ expecting a response from? The woman has already shown both her compassion and her faith. The question now is – can the disciples also show proof of their compassion and faith?
The woman not only has compassion and faith, but she also shows humour when, in her response to Christ she engages in banter with him. She tells him that even puppy dogs, when they are away from adult view, play under the table.
Could Christ, when he is away from the view of Jewish crowds, not engage with those he does not sit to table with, but who nevertheless are in his presence, those he had dismissed as dogs?
Christ appreciates this encounter: her insistence on meeting him face-to-face, her refusal to be oppressed on the grounds of ethnicity, history, religion, language or gender, her forthright way of speaking and her subliminal but humorous comparisons are all part of the drama. They all combine to show that she is a woman of faith. The NRSV translation has her address Jesus as ‘Sir,’ which sounds like civility, if not servility, today. But in the original Greek she addresses him in the vocative as Κύριε (Kyrie).
The word Κύριος (kyrios) or ‘Lord’ was a title of honour, respect and reverence, used by servants to greet their master. The word Kyrios appears about 740 times in the New Testament, usually referring to Jesus. The use of kyrios in the New Testament is the subject of debate.
Many scholars, drawing on the Septuagint usage, says the designation is intended to assign to Jesus the Old Testament attributes of God. At the time the Septuagint was translated, Jews when reading aloud Jews pronounced Adonai, the Hebrew word for ‘Lord,’ when they came across the name of God, ‘YHWH,’ and so this was translated into Greek in each instance as kyrios. Early Christians were familiar with the Septuagint.
Saint John’s Gospel seldom uses kyrios to refer to Jesus during his ministry, but uses it after the Resurrection, although the vocative kyrie appears frequently.
Saint Mark never applies the term kyrios as a direct reference to Jesus, unlike Saint Paul, who uses it 163 times. When Saint Mark uses the word kyrios (see Mark 1: 3, 11: 9, 12: 11, &c), he does so in reference to YHWH/God. He also uses the word in places where it is unclear whether it applies to God or Jesus (see Mark 5: 19, 11: 3). In any case, the title kyrios for Jesus is central to the development of New Testament Christology.
The faith the woman shows here now produces results. In Saint Mark’s Gospel, Christ responds to her demands, and she returns home to find her child has been healed (Mark 7: 30). Saint Matthew has Christ go further – he commends her for her faith … and her daughter is healed instantly (verses 29-30).
Nothing is said about the response of the disciples, who are not in Saint Mark’s account, but in Saint Matthew’s account have been trying to push her away, despite her crying, her tears, her distress, her plight over her daughter. Nothing is said about the response of the disciples … perhaps because we are the disciples. How do you and I respond to encounters like this?
As a social response, for example, we might consider that the confrontation is an illustration of how we might respond to the needs of strangers and foreigners. Do we find them pushy and demanding?
How do we respond to the foreign woman who wants the same treatment in hospital for her child as Irish-born children get?
How do we respond when foreigners who are more open and joyful in conversation appear to encroach on our privacy on the bus, on the street, in the shops?
Are we like the Disciples, and want to send them away?
Or are we like Christ, and engage in conversation with them?
Do we think we have some privileges that should not be shared with the outsider and the stranger?
Do we remain silent when they plead for their children but are deported against their will?
How do we respond to people who are pushy and continue to demand care for their children in the face of society’s decision to say no?
The parents who want teaching support for children with learning disabilities? The parents who want to know why children’s hospitals are so badly funded they have to raise funds with charity events while their children wait for treatment?
Or could we say, as the ‘Phoenician Women’ in the Chorus say, after hearing the distress of Iocasta and Antigone: ‘Pity distracts my aching heart, pity for a mother’s heart’?
But this Gospel story also raises questions at a personal, spiritual level too, when it comes to matters of faith.
How many people do you know who give up when they turn to God in prayer and find those who are supposed to represent Christ appear to turn them away?
How many times have I dismissed the needs and prayers of others because they appear to be outside the community of faith as I understand it?
And, at a personal level, how many times have I gone to God in prayer, and given up at what appears to be the first refusal?
This woman is rebuffed, but she is insistent. She refuses to accept what other people regarded as her fate and destiny. She receives the mercy and help she asks for, and because of her faith her daughter is healed, healed instantly.
We do not have to accept misery in our family life, even if others see it as our fate or our destiny. And in simple prayers we may find more in the answer than we ever ask for.
In the small miniature below Jean Colombe’s painting of the story of the Syro-Phoenician woman, the Disciples, gathered like a Greek chorus, can see her but cannot see the body language and facial reaction of ChristMark 7: 24-37:
24 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, 25 but a woman whose little daughter had an unclean spirit immediately heard about him, and she came and bowed down at his feet. 26 Now the woman was a Gentile, of Syrophoenician origin. She begged him to cast the demon out of her daughter. 27 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.’ 28 But she answered him, ‘Sir, even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs.’ 29 Then he said to her, ‘For saying that, you may go – the demon has left your daughter.’ 30 So she went home, found the child lying on the bed, and the demon gone.
31 Then he returned from the region of Tyre, and went by way of Sidon towards the Sea of Galilee, in the region of the Decapolis. 32 They brought to him a deaf man who had an impediment in his speech; and they begged him to lay his hand on him. 33 He took him aside in private, away from the crowd, and put his fingers into his ears, and he spat and touched his tongue. 34 Then looking up to heaven, he sighed and said to him, ‘Ephphatha’, that is, ‘Be opened.’ 35 And immediately his ears were opened, his tongue was released, and he spoke plainly. 36 Then Jesus ordered them to tell no one; but the more he ordered them, the more zealously they proclaimed it. 37 They were astounded beyond measure, saying, ‘He has done everything well; he even makes the deaf to hear and the mute to speak.’
Liturgical Resources:
Liturgical Colour: Green
The Collect:
God,
who in generous mercy sent the Holy Spirit
upon your Church in the burning fire of your love:
Grant that your people may be fervent
in the fellowship of the gospel;
that, always abiding in you,
they may be found steadfast in faith and active in service;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.
The Post-Communion Prayer:
Eternal God,
we have received these tokens of your promise.
May we who have been nourished with holy things
live as faithful heirs of your promised kingdom.
We ask this in the name of Jesus Christ our Lord.
Suggested Hymns:
The hymns suggested for next Sunday in Sing to the Word (2000), edited by Bishop Edward Darling, include:
Proverbs 22: 1-2, 8-9, 22-23:
494, Beauty for brokenness
523, Help us to help each other, Lord
432, Love is his word, love is his way
Psalm 125:
3, God is love: let heaven adore him
34, O worship the King all–glorious above
595, Safe in the shadow of the Lord
Isaiah 35: 4-7a:
231, My song is love unknown (verses 1, 2, 4, 7)
166, Joy to the world, the Lord is come!
104, O for a thousand tongues to sing
113, There is singing in the desert
Psalm 146:
4, God, who made the earth
125, Hail to the Lord’s anointed
92, How sweet the name of Jesus sounds
357, I’ll praise my maker while I’ve breath
97, Jesus shall reign where’er the sun
99, Jesus, the name high over all
535, Judge eternal, throned in splendour
363, O Lord of heaven and earth and sea
708, O praise ye the Lord! Praise him in the height
712, Tell out, my soul, the greatness of the Lord
8, The Lord is King! Lift up your voice
376, Ye holy angels bright
James 2: 1-10 (11-13), 14-17:
494, Beauty for brokenness
402, Before I take the body of my Lord
317, Father all–loving, you rule us in majesty
39, For the fruits of his creation
352, Give thanks with a grateful heart
649, Happy are they, they that love God
495, Jesu, Jesu, fill us with your love
44, Praise and thanksgiving
527, Son of God, eternal Saviour
497, The Church of Christ in every age
Mark 7: 24-37:
65, At evening when the sun had set
511, Father of mercy, God of consolation
512, From you all skill and science flow
614, Great Shepherd of your people, hear
211, Immortal love for ever full
513, O Christ, the healer, we have come
104, O for a thousand tongues to sing
514, We cannot measure how you heal
Christ in conversation with the Syro-Phoenician woman ... a modern iconScripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicized Edition copyright © 1989, 1995 National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide. http://nrsvbibles.org
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