Mark 7:24-37
“Dog Faith”
September 9, 2012 - Fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost

         “Don’t feed the dog at the table!” It was a key rule. My sister and I were not to respond to those big, brown, pleading eyes that gazed up at us as we sat eating. We weren’t to sneak bits of meat, or better yet, vegetables we didn’t like, off our plates and let our pet gratefully take them, licking our fingers as he did so. The dog might lie down at our feet, but he was not to beg and we were not supposed to feed him.

         Jesus had a philosophy similar to my mother’s. Children’s food is not for dogs. That’s how He responded to a Gentile woman with a demon-possessed daughter. He was in the vicinity of Tyre, a region opposed to Israel in the Old Testament and known for its paganism in the time of the New Testament. It’s on the coast of modern-day Lebanon, about fifty miles south of Beirut.

         Jesus came to Tyre to escape the crowds and the opposition He encountered in Jewish territory in Galilee. He may have wanted quiet time to instruct His disciples. So verse 24 tells us He found a place for them to stay and didn’t want anyone to know they were there. Yet, “he could not escape notice.”

         A woman heard about Jesus, says verse 25. Verse 26 explains she was a Gentile, a “Syrophoenician.” The Phoenicians were part of Israel’s ancient enemies, Canaanites. They were regarded as hopeless pagans in Jesus’ time. Think of a Palestinian coming to an Israeli for help today. Or a Kurd coming to an Iraqi. Or a Coptic Christian coming to an Egyptian Muslim. In the normal course of things, a Jewish man would despise this woman. But she came kneeling at Jesus’ feet and asked Him to cast a demon out of her daughter.

         Jesus’ reply in verse 27 is surprising. He sounds like any other Jewish man. “Let the children be fed first, for it is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.” He was talking about the priority of the Jews. His mission was first and foremost to God’s chosen people.

         It’s hard to believe this is our tender, compassionate, Savior. Jesus looked down at this woman and said cruel words. His own people were children. Gentiles are dogs. Many Jews called Gentiles dogs. Dogs in the ancient world were strays, like those you see roaming the streets of less developed countries. They were mangy animals whose social function was to scavenge and eat garbage, even dung. You don’t take good food meant for children and throw it to dogs.

         Lots of people love dogs here in twenty-first century America. We spend millions of dollars to feed them, groom them and provide medical care for them. Yet in ancient times they were “the most despicable, insolent and miserable of creatures,” as one writer said. In a parable in Luke 16 when Jesus wanted to describe a totally wretched beggar, He pictured a dog licking his sores. To be called a dog was a grave insult.

         There are various strategies for taking the insult out of what Jesus said to her. The word for “dog” here is not the usual word for street dogs, but a diminutive form which implied a puppy or a pet. Perhaps Jesus spoke to the woman in a way that implied the kind of fondness my daughter has for dogs, treating her as beloved domestic animal.

         Or suppose Jesus was teasing this woman.  A text, as anyone who sends e-mail knows, doesn’t let you see facial expression and body language behind the words. Cruel-sounding words might have been gentle banter. Jesus reminded the woman who she was and who He was, but not with meanness. Wil­liam Barclay wrote, “We can be quite sure that the smile on Jesus’ face and the compassion in his eyes robbed the words of all insult and bit­terness.”[1]

         So Jesus kidded the woman and she responded in kind in verse 28, “Sir, even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs.” It’s a little exchange of wit, and in verse 29 Jesus acknowledges the woman’s cleverness, “For saying that, you may go—the demon has left your daughter.” It’s all about gentle humor, not a barbed insult.

         But there is more than humor here. Jesus said some funny things, but this was not one of them. In Matthew’s version of this, in Matthew 15:28 Jesus told her, “Woman, you have great faith!” He did not compliment her on her wit. He praised her for her faith. It’s not about a clever comeback. It’s about faith, the faith of a dog.

         It’s still insulting to be called a dog. Think about what stupid, vicious men call a plain woman. Even if you love your canine pet, you know dogs are innately filthy creatures. Left to itself a dog quickly sticks its nose—and if possible its whole body—into whatever vile garbage it can find. Dogs greet each other by sniffing regions humans don’t acknowledge in polite company. Dogs have absolutely no dignity or self respect. Which is just what makes them good models of Christian faith.

         If a modern woman came to Jesus and He dropped the name “dog” on her, she would bristle with pride. She would stand on her dignity. “I’m no dog! I am a woman, a human being. I’m entitled to respect and help! How dare you?” Yet this Gentile woman meekly accepts Jesus’ label for her. She admits she’s a dog in verse 28 and pleads for His help because she is one. Even dogs get something she reasons. “Help me as a dog if I’m nothing else.” She didn’t ask for her rights, not even for kindness or mercy, but only for the indulgence of scraps falling from a table set for someone else.

         It’s not easy or natural for us, but coming like a dog to Jesus is the only way to receive the help we really need. This woman needed deliverance for her daughter from the forces of evil. We need exactly the same. We need to be forgiven and delivered from our sins.

         Joanna was an R.A. in a college dorm this summer. She supervised students from well-off families who came for summer programs. When a student broke the rules, parents might be contacted. Joanna encountered wealthy parents who didn’t scare what their child did. Dropping him off they left him with cigars and likely some beer. Notified he was in trouble, they blamed the R.A.s for their son’s misbehavior. The boy wasn’t going to change because his parents only saw him as perfect and above the rules.

         That boy needs someone to call him a dog rather than a child for a moment. He needs to see himself for the budding little sociopath that he is. The help that young man needs is clear vision of his own failings. It’s the only way he will change. You and I are just the same. We need to lower ourselves into a dog’s place if we want to ever rise into the place of being true children of God. We need dog faith.

         The Syrophoenician woman answered Jesus admitting she was only a dog undeserving of mercy. That’s her confession of faith, her confession that she’s a sinner from a race outside God’s Covenant. The NRSV translates her reply beginning “Sir,” but it’s the word for “Lord.” She is the only one in all Mark’s Gospel who directly addresses Jesus as “Lord.” She was a dog, but she made Jesus her Master.

         The second part of our text shows us more dog faith. Jesus was on the move again in verse 31. He took a strange route, heading north up the coast before turning south and east to enter a region called the Decapolis, the “ten cities.” He was trying to avoid going back to Galilee so He went to a region freed from Jewish rule by the Romans. So it was another area with a Gentile population.

         There in the Decapolis they brought Him another Gentile person needing help, a man both deaf and unable to speak we learn in verse 32. His friends and family took him to Jesus and begged Jesus to lay hands on him and heal him.

         You can’t bandy words with a man who can neither hear nor speak, so verse 33 tells us Jesus took him aside in private. He submitted the man to humiliating prodding. He poked His fingers in the man’s ears, then spat on those fingers and touched the man’s tongue.

         If you say, “yuck,” at the thought of a stranger’s saliva being put in your mouth, well so would any normal Jewish person. Like all bodily secretions, spit was regarded as something unclean. You would avoid another person’s saliva back then as much we might avoid it today. Yet here’s Jesus putting it in this poor guy’s mouth.

         It’s dog faith again. Like I’ve said, dogs will happily consume all sorts of icky stuff a human being would avoid. My wife Beth has bad memories of being licked by the neighbor’s dog after playing outside on a hot humid St. Louis summer day. The animal was perfectly happy to lick and enjoy a little salty perspiration from a child’s sweaty body. And a bit of spit would be just as much a canine treat. Spit on the ground for your pet and you can be sure he’ll sniff at it and probably lap it up.

         There is humility in the deaf-mute man’s submission to what Jesus does. He can’t speak his faith out loud, but he demonstrates it by letting Jesus do this disgusting business. He put himself completely in Jesus hands and let Jesus put His hands on him in a low and humbling way.

         There’s an old Peanuts cartoon where Charlie Brown is sitting eating his lunch with Snoopy alongside. He turns to the dog, “Do you want the rest of this sandwich, Snoopy? I’ve already eaten half of it… you don’t mind? Okay, it’s yours…” And Snoopy catches and snarfs down the sandwich thinking, “I’m so humble it’s sickening.”

         But it’s not sickening. Dog-like humility made that woman’s daughter well. It healed that man and gave him back his speech and his hearing. It’s the opposite of sickening. Dog-faith is the way to healing and wholeness. When we come to the Lord like a dog on its belly, admitting our sinfulness and acknowledging Him as Master, He responds to us with grace. Our psalm today, Psalm 146 said, “The Lord lifts up those who are bowed down…,” bowed down like humble dogs.

         This whole dog thing is part of Jesus’ own identity. Wags like to point out that, “God” spelled backward is “dog.” Jesus asks for dog faith, because He was not ashamed or afraid to turn even Himself around backward and take on humble dog-like humanity. Philippians 2:8 teaches us that God in Jesus, “humbled himself and became obedient to death, even death on a cross.” Jesus let Himself get treated like a dog, and He did it for us.

         Jesus submitted Himself to God the Father like a dog. At the crucial moment of healing the deaf man in verse 34, where did He look? He looked up into heaven, like a dog looking up to his master. And the Father heard Jesus sigh and when He said that Aramaic word “Ephphatha,” “Be opened,” it was done.

         In verse 36 Jesus didn’t want publicity. He wanted to slip away like a dog into the corner and rest for awhile. He asked the people not to tell anyone about that miracle, but they did anyway. They were astounded, says verse 37, and said, “He has done everything well; he even makes the deaf to hear and the mute to speak,” maybe remembering what we read from Isaiah 35, about God opening the eyes of the blind and unstopping the ears of the deaf.

         We learn from this how we should look at each other. We are not some of us privileged children who get to sit at the table while the rest of the world licks up our crumbs. We are all dogs. That’s what James chapter 2 was teaching today. Those of us who are better off should not be treating people who are poor like dogs.

         In fact, James told us in verse 5 of that chapter, “Has not God chosen the poor in the world to be rich in faith and to be heirs of the kingdom that he has promised to those who love him?” It’s James’ way of saying that God likes dogs. He likes those who come humbly, knowing their faults and their failings and throwing themselves on His mercy ready to receive any crumbs that drop from the table.

         Otto von Hapsburg died last year. He was Archduke of Austria, the last son of the Hapsburg dynasty that ruled the Austro-Hungarian empire, the Holy Roman Empire. He had royal blood of the bluest shade. He was exiled from his homeland in his early years and eventually renounced any formal claim to the throne, but he was a great scholar and an able politician. He opposed Nazis and communists and was a visionary figure in the formation of the European Union. He served a time as President of the European Parliament.

         Von Hapsburg’s funeral was July 16 last year in a huge ceremony at St. Stephan’s Cathedral in Vienna. Dignitaries, aristocracy, a Catholic cardinal and several bishops came to conduct the service and remember a great man. But the most remarkable part of the day came at the moment when it was time for his casket to be carried to its last resting place.

         A grand procession was led by the Master of Ceremony in a black suit with long tails to the Capuchin Cloister, a smaller yellow church in Vienna. There the MC stood at the door and rapped three times with a silver-headed cane tasseled in gold. On the video of the funeral you see and hear a brown-robed prior inside answer, “Who desires entry?”

         The MC began to read,

Otto of Austria; once Crown Prince of Austria-Hungary; Royal Prince of Hungary and Bohemia, of Dalmatia, Croatia, Slavonia, Galicia, Lodomeria and Illyria; Grand Duke of Tuscany and Cracow; Duke of Lorraine, Salzburg, Styria, Carinthia, Carniola and the Bukowina; Grand Prince of Transylvania, Margrave of Moravia; Duke of Upper and Lower Silesia, of Modena, Parma, Piacenza, Guastalla, of Oświęcim and Zator, Teschen, Friaul, Dubrovnik and Zadar; Princely Count of Habsburg and Tyrol, of Kyburg, Gorizia and Gradisca; Prince of Trent and Brixen; Margrave of Upper and Lower Lusatia and Istria; Count of Hohenems, Feldkirch, Bregenz, Sonnenburg etc.; Lord of Trieste, Kotor and Windic March, Grand Voivod of the Voivodeship of Serbia etc. etc.

         Then we hear the prior reply, “We do not know him.”

         So the MC took that cane and knocked again three times, with the same answer, “Who desires entry?” The MC started over:

Dr. Otto von Habsburg, President and Honorary President of the Paneuropean Union, Member and quondam President of the European Parliament, honorary doctor of many universities, honorary citizen of many cities in Central Europe, member of numerous venerable academies and institutes, recipient of high civil and ecclesiastical honours, awards, and medals, which were given him in recognition of his decades-long struggle for the freedom of peoples for justice and right.

         But again the prior said, “We do not know him.”

         Then once more the MC knocked three times and was asked, “Who desires entry?” But this time the MC replied only, “Otto, a mortal and sinful man.”

         And the prior looked up and said, “Then let him come in,” while his fellow monks moved to swing open those big wooden doors and receive the body of one more poor sinner awaiting the grace of Jesus to raise him up in the resurrection.

         Yes Jesus called that woman a dog. Yes he put spit in that man’s mouth. But as people then realized, He does all things well. He does well when He asks us to come to Him like they did, like dogs, to come in the end like Otto von Hapsburg, with no claims of pride or accomplishment, but with simple dog faith in His grace.

         So if it feels sometimes, when things go wrong, when you’re sick or poor or lonely or afraid, if it feels like the Lord is treating you like a dog, that’s good. That is well. He is the good Master. He wants to help and heal and save you. He only asks a little humble faith. Then He will welcome you to His Table, and even the crumbs from it will be a banquet of joy and blessing. Sometimes it’s good to be a dog.

         Valley Covenant Church
         Eugene/Springfield, Oregon
         Copyright © 2012 by Stephen S. Bilynskyj