A Syrophoenician woman will
interrupt Jesus this morning. She’s an outsider on two counts: a non-Jew and a
woman now alone with a man.* And she knows that she
of all people has no right to make demands on Jesus, so she does what she has
to do- she falls at his feet, and she begs. She’s got nothing to lose; she’s lost
it all already, she’s desperate, her life is in shambles.
Jesus seems uninterested and insists that
he has come only for the children of Israel, not for dogs. She is undaunted by
his very blunt metaphor.
“Fine, then, call me a dog if you want. But
even dogs get the scraps. Please, Lord, give me a scrap, just a scrap of your
mercy.”
Jesus is outdone by her forthrightness, won
over; his heart stirred by her anguish and her need. He is transformed in the
encounter. And he reveals himself as amazingly, humanly relational.
What do you want? Perhaps the message this
morning is to take this woman’s lead and be a bit insistent, even desperate.
Jesus is never ever unaffected or unresponsive.
* See Donahue & Harrington, Sacra Pagina: Mark, p. 237.