Proverbs 22: 1-2, 8-9, 22-23 (New Jerusalem Bible)
Mark 7: 24-30 (Common English Bible)
In this reading, Jesus went to the area of Tyre, a Gentile area which is now Lebanon. There Jesus met a Gentile Syrophoenician woman whose ancestors were the Canaanites and Moabites, historic enemies of the Jewish people. The woman begged Jesus to heal her daughter. But then Jesus says something not expected. He tells the woman, “It isn’t right to take the children’s bread and toss it to the dogs.”
What? My Jesus said that! This kind of language makes us wince when used by people in our everyday lives. But it is especially upsetting when this kind of language comes from Jesus the Christ.
Some will try to soften this by saying that Jesus doesn’t call the woman a dog, he calls her a puppy, a more gentle and kind word. But if the text really does say what it appears to say, and God is not cruel, what are we to make of Jesus’ response to this desperate woman?
Some choose to criticize Jesus for giving in to the bigotries of his own day. And some ministers bypass this reading altogether because it makes Jesus look bad. And some say Jesus was just joking, while others say Jesus was exhausted and grumpy from his long journey to Tyre.
But an alternative idea turns this story upside down. It may be this woman was one of the economic and political elite of Tyre. Since Tyre was under Roman occupation the city’s leaders acted as pawns to extract goods and services from the regions further south. Some of Tyre’s people became wealthy dealing with the Romans. The southern is where the Jewish communities were located.
It may be, if this woman was part of the elite she probably confronted Jesus with a kind of privilege. But she longed for the healing of her daughter. No doubt, this woman heard about healing miracles by Jesus.
If this was the case and the woman was one of the elite, Jesus' sharp words to her would be understood differently. According to this thought, Jesus was confronting her unjust economic advantage with sharp words. The gospel writer Mark suggests that perhaps Jesus with his metaphor “dogs” for gentiles was saying something between the lines, like, “First, let the poor people in Jewish rural areas be fed first. For it is not right to take poor peoples’ food and give it to rich Gentiles in cities.” Jesus’ harsh words could be taken as an act of resistance to distribute the resources of the rich to the poor. Jesus during the early part of his ministry was focused on the Jewish people. The Gentiles came later.
One of the things in the gospels is Jesus' ability to meet people on their own level. He uses farming metaphors to an agricultural group and fishing metaphors to speak to fishermen. The parables of Jesus were full of metaphors.
The Syrophoenician woman does not argue with Jesus. She knows the Jewish people shunned Gentiles like herself. If this was about the woman’s race or gender, then her response wouldn’t make any sense, when she says, “Lord, even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs.”
In other words, the pets are part of the family, even in a secondary way. The woman recognizes that. Even a crumb’s worth of healing from Jesus will mean everything to this mother and her child. The rebuttal of the woman to Jesus was the key to Jesus’ healing of her daughter. Even the Son of God was moved by it.
Proverbs 22 addresses the care of those who live in poverty and the nature of injustice. Whether King Solomon was the real author of Proverbs is difficult to prove. Likely these proverbs were linked to Solomon because of his wisdom, one of the gifts that God gave to him.
The writer of this Proverb speaks about a serious problem, that wealth and the social power associated with it, end up being unevenly distributed in society. If this scenario is allowed to play out and unchallenged, the weaker will only become more oppressed by those who have the wealth. Therefore, everyone must one day give an account of how they treated their neighbors, both local and foreign.
God’s heart desires that human society should reflect the equal dignity and worth of all God’s people. Christians should be disgusted whenever they hear about anyone’s “net worth” calculated in the dollar amount. One of the chief functions of a society is to tell its members what they should value most. It’s not money, but how you love God and treat your neighbor. Churches should act like an alternative culture that does not view wealth as a Golden Calf to worship.
God is not rewarding the rich for being wealthy, as our North American culture does. Instead if you read the Bible, God favors the poor. God pleads for them and is on their side. In order for the rich to receive God’s blessing, they should assist the poor and pay less attention to their stocks and bonds.
God’s values differ from human values. If one is focused on being rich, that person will fall short. It is only caring for the least of these that glory is found.
There is no higher calling than to care for others who have nowhere to live and eat. One of the people I admire most in caring for people, was Dorothy Day of the Catholic Worker Movement. She housed the homeless and fed the hungry. Dorothy’s entire life was dedicated to the poor and to end war. And she was jailed a few times for her activism. But getting into good trouble is always worth the risk.
God pleads justice and mercy for the poor. It is good to give to charity, but charity is not the all-cure destination. God wants fair equality among the human species God created. And not in the distant future, but in this troubled present where we live.
AMEN
