III Talking Back: Mark 7:24-30

A few further explanatory points.

Cbs is a process: it relies heavily on facilitators who can assist a group in producing a close, communal and critical reading of the text. To this end we run training courses for facilitators and this is backed up by a handbook, to be published by our partners, the Scottish Bible Society with whom we have run a conversations project for the last three years and a website with some 150 worked examples of texts and questions (1).

We trust that the communal readings which we encourage will lead to individual and communal transformation. This may emerge in ways which bear directly in the planning and action of a particular group (though not often). One of the most transformative and liberative aspects of this kind of reading is in the achievement of ‘dominance-free discourse' (Habermas). Creating a forum where people can speak freely and openly about deep matters of the faith can indeed enable people to escape from various forms of domination: as one participant said of a crucial encounter in his life, when as a Catholic he had received great support and wisdom from a member of the Orange Lodge: ‘he opened my mind which had been closed by instruction'.

And one further point. The readings of Mark on which these talks are based were part of a wider project where we asked a number of groups across Scotland to read the same passages and then collated the various readings. This offers a way of articulating a ‘theology from below' which can, I believe inject new life into the language of faith and the theological reflection of the church. A first attempt at this kind of work is just published in The Global Bible Commentary(2) (on Ephesians). The studies on Mark will be published in a collection edited by the Urban Theology Unit at Sheffield.

7:24 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, 7:25 but a woman whose little daughter had an unclean spirit immediately heard about him, and she came and bowed down at his feet. 7:26 Now the woman was a Gentile, of Syrophoenician origin. She begged him to cast the demon out of her daughter. 7:27 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." 7:28 But she answered him, "Sir, even the dogs under the table eat the children's crumbs." 7:29 Then he said to her, "For saying that, you may go--the demon has left your daughter." 7:30 So she went home, found the child lying on the bed, and the demon gone.

In this passage we looked first, after collecting people's initial reactions, at the way in which Jesus and the woman are depicted. What is striking is on the one hand, the generally positive portrayal of the young woman fighting for the health of her child with all the resources at her disposal, not least her sharp wit; and on the other hand, the largely negative portrayal (as it was seen of Jesus): harassed, rude, almost racist and sexist, though ultimately responding to the woman's wit. Equally, in the treatment of the woman people saw a reflection of the marginalisation of women in the church down the ages. What is the effect of women not having had a voice in the church over 2000 years on women now? How long will it take to overcome the effects of this kind of suppression?

However the group saw the clash between Jesus and the disciples and the woman predominantly in racist terms. Jesus' saying, ‘Let the children be fed first, for it is not fair to take the children's food and throw it to the dogs', has something of a proverbial ring to it, reflecting deep Jewish prejudice against Gentiles. But it is here that the woman's wit comes into play.

It's worth a closer look at the stages of the woman's struggle with Jesus. In Mark the story moves straight to its climax: Jesus' attempts to hide and the woman confronts him in the house. In Matthew however, which was the version we read at a meeting in Berlin, the encounter between the woman and Jesus takes place in three scenes. In the first, she appears as a suppliant and pleads for him to have pity on her, addressing him with a Jewish honorific: ‘son of David'. In this way she abandons her own culture and acknowledges his Judaism. However this concession is met only with silence. At this, as we learn from the words of the disciples, she keeps up a persistent verbal assault on the group of Jesus and his disciples. Jesus' reply: I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel which is directed to the disciples and not to the woman, recalls 10:5, where a similar restriction is put on the disciples' mission. Now the woman comes (closer?) to him, falls down in front of him and simply asks for help. This simple expression of her human need initiates the discussion proper between Jesus and the woman. Now Jesus speaks to her for the first time - albeit in a deeply dismissive and humiliating manner – not indeed addressing her directly but in the form of a proverb, of a conventional wisdom saying, redolent of Jewish prejudice. ‘It is not right to take the children's bread and throw it to the dogs!' But it is just this remark, so full of nationalistic prejudice, which provides her with the opportunity which she seizes with wit and intelligence. For she turns the metaphor to her advantage. What was intended as a crude description of two absolutely irreconcilable groups is turned into the picture of a family household. The parents and the children are gathered round the table, while round them lie (just like the woman who is addressing Jesus) the household animals and wait for the leftovers. It is admitted an extremely lowly position; nevertheless the animals – dogs – have their place within the household, admittedly as the lowest members of the household hierarchy, and not outside , as in Jesus' saying, as something wholly alien and threatening. The brilliant twist which she gives to Jesus' saying transforms the situation: now Jesus speaks to her directly: ‘Woman, great is your faith! Let it be done for you as you wish!' And her daughter is healed.

Thus in Matthew's story the Canaanite (a term reminiscent of those conquered by the Israelites in their occupation of the land) woman first speaks the language of her traditional rulers, the Jews, and is met with only silence, is ignored. Her incessant cries as she gives expression to her need, alienate the disciples. Only when she adopts the simple language of human helplessness: Lord, help me, does a dialogue begin, which then at last allows Jesus insight into the situation of the woman and her child. But even this exchange between the woman and Jesus only becomes true dialogue as a result of the woman's subversive wit: Jesus' eyes are opened by her inversion of his conventional, inhuman saying. In this exchange between Jesus and the woman (‘arguing with Jesus') light is shed precisely as a result of the woman's subtle resistance. Such are the subalterns' ‘arts of resistance' (3), which attempt to undermine the official language of the dominant classes with wit and humour.

This extraordinary encounter between Jesus and the Syrophoenician/Canaanite woman shows the extent to which Jesus becomes embroiled in human cultural exchange, even to the point where he absorbs the unexamined prejudices of his people and is disabused only by the determination and wit of the woman, as it shows how the woman by her willingness to suffer abuse on behalf of her daughter finally triumphs, ‘She moved from her knees to walking tall'.

Again two points from the many reflections which flowed from this story. The Lansdowne group fixed on a phrase which emerged from the earlier discussion: ‘arguing with Jesus'. We need to engage in this way with Jesus. ‘It brings out the real nature of the relationship with Christ: the relationship is closer with someone you can doubt.' Similarly we need to engage in critical dialogue with the ‘accepted teachings' of the church. We need to cut through official teaching when it becomes repressive and prejudicial to the weak, as it has been to women and to hear the voices of those who suffer under it. Did the churches adequately protect women when they were being burned as witches, or gays when they were being executed? In the same way, we need to engage with other faiths, less from a ‘critical point of view' but in search of understanding and of mutual illumination.

A rather different emphasis emerged from a discussion of this text with a group working with asylum seekers and child soldiers in Berlin. With that I close: ‘This old story, despite its age, speaks provocatively and not altogether without hope to the situation of those who work with migrants in present-day Europe. The story gives clear expression to the extreme need and helplessness of those who, because of their strangeness and because of nationalistic and racist prejudice are excluded and ostracized. But it also sheds light on the role of those who work as advocates on behalf of migrants, who have to counter the official language of civil servants and judges, who need the wit and imagination to be able to confront those in positions of power effectively with the simple humanity and need of the homeless and powerless in our society.' (4)

http://www.scottishbiblesociety.org/conversations

The Global Bible Commentary, ed. Daniel Patte, Abingdon Press, 2004.

James C. Scott, Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts,
New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990.

Jesuit Refugee Service website: campaign against detention centres:
http://www.detention-in-europe.org