Dumb Talk
Mark 7:24-37

September 7, 2003

We have a problem here. Muddling along in the mid-teens of Sundays after Pentecost, with schools re-energizing for a new assault on knowledge and truth, we have heard the Gospel according to Mark tell us something we cannot avoid. The problem is Jesus, and we don’t like what he is doing.

We need to remember that Jesus is a Jew, that is, a man belonging to the contemporary culture and world surrounding him. Jesus was not airlifted into the time and place of first-century Palestine - just like we have been raised enmeshed in a culture and perspective on life and the world that is difficult from which to separate and extricate ourselves.

Jesus is also not airlifted into our time and place either. Jesus would be confronted and compelled to deal with our world and its violence, sexuality, and ethical dilemmas the same way we are challenged and stymied. Jesus would do us little good if he were not trapped by the same sticky ambiguities as we are.

It shows one day as he travels to and fro the region of Tyre, a Phoenician seaport on the Mediterranean northwest of Galilee. Jesus is tired and apparently is not enthused to be dealing with the anxious crowds of people seeking his aid. He entered a house and did not want anyone to know he was there, but he had little chance of remaining unnoticed. A woman with a daughter afflicted with an unclean spirit “immediately” heard about his presence and was right there to make her plea.

It was not an ordinary encounter, though the healing in the end was on a par with other cures of Jesus. The evangelist is not as interested in the healing as in the turbulent conversation; and the evangelist reminds us that it is a real and not always pretty world we are living in: she was a Gentile, a non-Jew, of Syrophoenician stock, and of course, a woman. No one says this, but everyone knows, including Jesus.

She begged him to cast the demon out of her daughter. Demons we moderns have problems with anyway. However, his response, metaphorical and indirect as it is, leaves us breathless.

“Let the children be fed first,” Jesus says to the mother, for it is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.” The children are the children of Israel, the Jews of which she is definitely not one; and the dogs, actually young dogs - but not cute puppies - are everybody else, the Gentiles.

The mother was desperate and she responded with one of the all-time come backs: “Sir, even the dogs under the tables eat the children’s crumbs.” Look, isn’t it God’s idea that even we unclean Gentiles can receive something significant of God’s? Matthew has a much longer narrative to this story, adding a number of details and rationales to the plot. Mark, the first Gospel, retains the starkest of narrative. “For saying that - you may go, the demon has left your daughter.” When she went home, her daughter was there whole and the demon had gone.

You would be amazed at the attention this episode has received in recent years, especially from feminist Biblical interpreters. Jesus was not being nice and his parochial side was in full force. She was nobody he needed to talk to: a woman in the first place, a Gentile in the second, and probably a believer in Greek religion that many would label pagan in the third instance.

This woman, nevertheless, bested him in the favourite form of conflict of Judaism – debate and argument. Don’t the dogs under the table get the table scraps? Jesus cried “Uncle!” and received an object lesson in humility. She was right; that’s what he had been preaching all along. Fitting that it was someone like her who would be the rabbi to him. Jesus was fully human, so he could learn, he could grow and develop ethically.

A lot of people have had problems with this apparent incompleteness and even mean-spiritedness of Jesus. Jesus is the Son of God and he doesn’t need improving upon. Still, if we are to take seriously the fact that Jesus while being fully God was also inexplicably fully human, then here is a situation in which he had to face and deal with his humanity. This may be a harsh conversation, but this is why it is the Gospel, the Good News, for if Jesus could learn and grow, then there is no area of your life in which you are hopeless.

Jesus would learn. He returned back to Galilee immediately after this event, and found himself again in demand. A deaf and dumb man is brought to him to heal. Particularly in Mark, we hear over and over that Jesus really does not like crowds and publicity, so here he takes the man off to the side, out of view.

If there ever was a reminder that Jesus was a man of his contemporary culture, here it is. He goes about healing the man by putting his fingers in his unhearing ears, and placing some of his own saliva on the man’s tongue. Saliva, spit, was revered in ancient society as possessing effective medicinal powers. The healing is not, however, because Jesus placed his spit on the afflicted part, but because of his prayer, a one-worder.

Actually, it was more than just a prayer of words. Different translations say that Jesus “sighed” and that sounds nice and empathetic. But others have it that he “groaned mightily” – this isn’t going to be easy. One Aramaic word was remembered, “Ephphatha!” Open up! And the man heard and spoke clearly.

Jesus still wanted to keep this all quiet, he was afraid people would misunderstand and misinterpret who he was and his mission. But nobody could keep it quiet. How do you think we know about the very Aramaic word he used? Who heard it? The deaf and dumb man was still deaf and dumb until after the word was spoken. There are a few of these words sprinkled throughout the Gospels that obviously made quite an impression upon its listeners. Almost magic words.

Of course, this poor man afflicted for a long time and obviously pitied by the community leaders was not an exceptional case. We are deaf to the Word that the Gospel proclaims, and we are seldom able to find any words to express what we have heard and seen. We can’t spit it out. We are dumb.

But Jesus can make the deaf hear and the dumb talk and that does not always happen by means of proper English. What do the dumb talk about? With “sighs too deep for human words” (Romans 8:26) we are able to grunt and groan our spirits into meaningful communication and love. I once did have a groom give a meaningful grunt to the question, “Do you take this woman to be your wife?” The guy was so anxiety-ridden at that point, I didn’t have the heart to make him say in plain words what we all heard in his inarticulate voice.

All those Syrophoenician Gentile pagans outside our doors don’t twig well to our beautifully crafted statements of our Biblical faith. They hear our groans and feel our touches, though. Then can the dumb talk!

Preached by Robert Kitchen
Knox-Metropolitan United Church
Regina, Saskatchewan