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The Rev. Dr. Dennis E. Morey, Pastor
Scripture: Mark 7:24-30
Even the Dogs
It is tough to keep kids from feeding the little house dog under the table. When our children were small we had a toy Pomeranian named Lucy. When it was mealtime, Lucy positioned herself under the table and waited for some morsel of food to drop from the table so she could immediately gobble it up.
Even though there was a rule, “Don’t feed the dog,” our children learned that Lucy would eat about any kind of people-food. Some things they didn’t like often fell to the floor “accidentally” where she pounced and in a few bites it was gone.
Now Margaret is a good cook and doesn’t mind cooking, but she wasn’t cooking for the dog. The little dog was not the object of the meal plans. The plan was about what was good for the children, although the dog eventually benefited from the plan as well.
While it is true that God loves each of us, at the time Jesus came to earth he came as the Messiah promised to the Jews. The Jews were considered the children of God. The Jews were the object of the meal plan for what God intended to feed them. The plan was for them to be fed first.
I think that it is interesting that Mark wants us to know this woman’s background. So she was not a Jew. Couldn’t he just have said that? Why did he go into such detail about where she was from?
It was not that she was in foreign territory, but Jesus was in foreign territory. The cities of Tyre and Sidon, great seaports, were originally to have been a part of Israel given to the tribe of Asher. But the Jews never got that far in their conquests.
In today’s scripture, Jesus had left the Jewish territory for a little rest and was trying to hide inside the house of a friend. The Jewish authorities wanted Jesus dead, and his loyal followers had kept him busy and had not given him a moment’s peace. Jesus needed a little time off. He had to get someplace where people didn’t know him.
But even there someone found him and wanted help. This woman was from Phoenicia. These highly intelligent people helped develop our alphabet. These people figured out that a boat could be guided by sailors observing the stars. Until that discovery, boats had to hug the shore and anchor at night for fear of being lost at sea. Using the stars, Phoenician sailors had circumnavigated the whole Mediterranean Sea and had gone as far north in the Atlantic Ocean as England.
Mark wants to tell us that she is from a very progressive society, but nothing helped her little girl, until she found Jesus.
The way she dressed, the way she wore her hair, the jewelry she wore—all said she was not a Jew.
When she asked for Jesus’ help she knew he was not a Jew and she would be called a dog. The term for non-Jews was the female dog, which is still an insult today even in our society. They were the wild dogs that roamed the streets at night ready to eat anything that someone had thrown out.
The Messiah God had in mind was to come to the Jews. The Jews, after turning back to the Lord God and reforming their own religion, would then open it up to the rest of the world, telling about the Good News of God’s love that came in the person of Jesus the Christ.
At the point of this scripture Jesus was focused on that mission. However, he had been rejected time and again by the Jews, and here was a woman who needed help now. She placed her faith in Jesus’ ability to heal her daughter without hearing about him through the Jewish religion.
She admitted she had no legitimate claim on Jesus. She admitted her place in Jewish society was that of a dog. Jesus graciously opened the door to her when he did not call her the female dogs that roamed the streets devouring garbage, but he tempered his reply to her by calling her the little dog that waited under the feet of the children of the household.
When she heard that reply, she knew she was free to open the door a little more. She carried the metaphor a step further. “Even the little house dog gets the crumbs the children drop.”
Jesus did not say there would be no food for the little house dog, but he said that the plan was for the Jews to receive the promises of God first.
Now what happens when the children have had their fill of all the good food? They delight in feeding the little dogs under the table.
God had in mind that once the Jews understood the blessings of knowing the Messiah, from their abundance they would share him with the rest of the world.
Jesus was saying that the woman should be content to wait until the Jews had their fill and then she would be satisfied as well.
She didn’t have that much time. Her little daughter was sick. This woman was not only brave enough to ask the Jewish Messiah for a favor even though she was not a Jew, but she was asking for a miracle for her daughter.
What good was girl? No one valued a girl.
You could understand if she wanted to save a son, for a son would grow up and be her protector and provider, but a daughter only took up resources until she married into the family of someone else. Girls were seen as a poor investment. You put a lot into them and it just didn’t pay.
This foreigner, a woman at that, who knows she is regarded as a dog, has the poor judgment to ask not just a Jew, not just a Jewish Rabbi, not just the Jewish Messiah, but the Son of God, for a miracle for her daughter?
She could not have gotten any lower in terms of human status nor she could she have asked a more important person for help.
But social standing did not matter. What mattered was her daughter who was very ill. She was the mother and she was desperate to save the child.
Even though it was a long shot, she at least had to try. As though standing at the center of a basketball court, she wa throwing the ball for all she was worth.
Miracle of miracles, Jesus saw her faith and the ball hit the hoop. Jesus said, “Your daughter is well.”
You and I are much in the same boat as that woman. Hundreds of years before this scripture, God promised Abraham his descendants would become a great nation that would bless all the nations of the earth.
Yet it is that smile in Jesus’ voice, that amazing grace that reaches out to everyone, that opens the door to our being included in his redemptive work.
We are not shut out because we are not Jews, or because we are not Bible scholars, or because we are not rich and powerful. Again and again the scriptures tell of us of a God who is so powerful that he can take the youngest and smallest brother and kill a giant, and that boy becomes Israel’s greatest king. God can take a group of ragtag shepherds and farmers and make a strong nation.
God does not delight in showing his power by crushing those who oppose him, or those who stray from the path of righteousness. God shows his power by exalting the humble, by finding the lost sheep and welcoming the no-account son.
God delights in showing mercy. The Lord God is to be praised because he found someone like you and me and called us to be his children.
In II Corinthians 12:9, the Apostle Paul is complaining about some physical problem he had. He had asked God three times for help. Then he heard these words, “My grace is sufficient for you. My strength is made perfect in weakness.”
When can God do his best and mightiest work? When we declare our weakness, God applies his grace and reaches out to do what needs doing.
Did you ever have a child who declares, “I can do this myself”? What do you do? Most of us let the child try. If the child can handle it, fine. If the child cannot, then we wait until the child asks for help and then we help.
So it is with God. So long as we say, “I can handle this on my own,” God will let us try. We can keep trying and failing and becoming more frustrated, or we can say, “God I can’t handle this on my own, can you help me out?” Then God is pleased to help.
Jesus knew there is more than enough grace for the whole human race. He knew there was help for the non-Jewish woman. She didn’t have to be reminded she was the dog, but she knew that even the dogs were eventually fed. She knew she needed help, and Jesus used this to open the door again to any who would place their faith in him.
So why do we struggle? Why do we worry and fret and complain that the problem is too big and this isn’t fair?
Let’s follow the woman’s example. Let’s quit trying to do this on our own. Let’s admit that the challenge is bigger than our strength to cope. Let’s admit we don’t deserve help. Let’s go to the one who has what we need. His grace will reach out to us.
And from that experience of knowing his grace, let’s be driven to share that grace and model that grace so that others experience it as well. Once we experience God’s grace, we can become instruments of God’s grace. God can use us and what we know to help someone else place their faith in him as well.
Yes, it is true we need God’s help.
Yes, it is true we cannot claim any ancient promise as the descendents of Abraham.
Yes, it is true that the plan was to first feed the children.
Yes, it is true that even the dogs sitting under the table get the children’s crumbs. And crumbs that fall from God’s table are more than enough to meet our needs. In fact because the amazing grace of God is so complete, we are no longer the dogs beneath the table; we have joined the family, and we too are the children of God.
Amen.
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Mark 7:24-30 (From the
New Revised Standard Version of the
Bible) |
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First Presbyterian Church, Oskaloosa, Iowa