Who's Out? Maybe The Chauvinists - How You Read It Matters - First Monday in Advent

YOU MIGHT WONDER why those who make up the lectionary decide which parts of the Scriptures to assign to be read on any given day.  I know I used to wonder that during Advent where almost none of the readings from the Gospels has much of a direct connection to the birth of Jesus.  Today's Gospel in the Catholic lectionary is the story of the Centurion in Matthew 8: 5-11 asking Jesus to heal his servant.  I didn't know it was coming when for some reason, last week, the story of the Syrophonecian woman in Mark and Matthew, asking him to heal or exorcise her daughter started going round in my head.   I'll start with that one as given in Mark 7 because it strikes me as the meaner and so more problematic telling of the two:

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

I don't know how other people think of this story but for me the scandal of Jesus expressing chauvinism and bigotry and callous rudeness to the woman is so disturbing that the rest of the narrative was forgotten.  

Mark, sometimes considered the least sophisticated of the Gospel writers, or so it seems to me, sets the scene starting with Jesus wanting some down-time from his ministry - anyone who thinks the Gospels present Jesus as superman hasn't read them carefully. 

He entered a house and did not want anyone to know he was there. Yet he could not escape notice.

So, according to our present day ideas of privacy and private property the alien woman who approaches him was trespassing, invading his privacy, depriving him of needed time off the job.  And she wasn't even a legitimate insider in his group, she was an alien.  Not to mention she was a woman not noted to be chaperoned by an authorized male, though the extent to which that would have made an impact on those who may have been there or first heard the story has to be imagined by me.  I don't know how much her sex would have made a difference in the level of impropriety  her flaunting of conventions would have seemed.   Maybe that can be seen in how humbly and abjectly she approached him.  

 . . .  and she came and bowed down at his feet.  Now the woman was a Gentile, of Syrophoenician origin. She begged him to cast the demon out of her daughter.

No doubt she would have been aware of a prejudice against gentiles among many, though certainly not all of the Jews who were the central following of Jesus who she certainly knew was Jewish, too.  And you can imagine that chauvinism and hostility went both ways, maybe she expected them to think she didn't like them, either.  They were in Tyre, not a Jewish city,  so they would have been outsiders there.   Which is something I'd never thought of since first hearing the story read out in Church when I was a little kid but only noticed last week while thinking about it. 

So how can we explain the unaccustomed callousness and meanness of what Jesus says to her?   Was he sharing in the prejudices of his followers concerning gentiles?   Women?  Aliens?  Was he annoyed at having his down-time violated by someone asking him to do something?  Even someone asking so abjectly for healing or liberation from demons on behalf of, not herself, but her daughter? 

Or maybe he was pointing out the expectations of exclusive privilege by his followers, those who witnessed the event and the woman, herself in order to, by his act, overturn their expectations?   By allowing her reasoning with him to overturn what he'd just said?   That is something I don't remember ever considering and I have to wonder if whoever wrote Mark thought of that as a possible explanation, even in light of Jesus, in the end, giving her exactly what she asks him for.  It's certainly not indicated in the text. 

I have to wonder if maybe Jesus said what he did in a gently teasing manner, as if to say, "you know I'm supposed to here for just the Children of Israel, not for fer'ners."  Expecting that she would have an answer for that.  Maybe the woman answered him similarly once she knew he was friendlier than she had feared, a fear she may well have had to overcome to approach him in the impertinent even risky way she did.  I don't know the extent to which they may have considered dogs to be unclean but I wonder if that's why mention of them is so prominent in the story.  I can't imagine, in the context of all of the other encounters with and mentions of gentiles by Jesus, that he wouldn't have said that in the way of good-natured teasing.  Maybe hearing it read that way would have made it more comprehensible and less scandalous.  He did give her what she asked for, after all.  I wonder if maybe he said,  "You got me there,"  but not in words.

I think today's Gospel Matthew 8: 5-11 in which another alien asks him for a similar favor is interesting to consider in how Jesus responds to another healing request from an alien, a man of considerable political-military power.  One who appeals to Jesus in a similar though less humble manner, telling him HE'S not worthy to have Jesus come into his house and that he believes Jesus can heal just by summoning the forces he has command over like he has command over his soldiers and servants.

When Jesus entered Capernaum,
a centurion approached him and appealed to him, saying,
“Lord, my servant is lying at home paralyzed, suffering dreadfully.”  
He said to him, “I will come and cure him.”  
The centurion said in reply,
“Lord, I am not worthy to have you enter under my roof;
only say the word and my servant will be healed.
For I too am a man subject to authority,
with soldiers subject to me.
And I say to one, ‘Go,’ and he goes;
and to another, ‘Come here,’ and he comes;
and to my slave, ‘Do this,’ and he does it.” 
When Jesus heard this, he was amazed and said to those following him,
“Amen, I say to you, in no one in Israel have I found such faith. 
I say to you, many will come from the east and the west,
and will recline with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob
at the banquet in the Kingdom of heaven.”

I have to wonder here at why they didn't finish the story that goes on to say some pretty amazing things about who will be in and who out from the banquet. Skipping from the official US Catholic translation to the New Revised Standard Version . . .

^{. . .}  while the sons of the kingdom will be thrown into the outer darkness. In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.”  And to the centurion Jesus said, “Go; let it be done for you as you have believed.” And the servant was healed at that very moment.

Walter Brueggemann often points out how lectionary committees cut out the really problematic and challenging parts of Scripture, maybe to make it easier and more audience pleasing but you miss so much of the meaning when that happens.  Was Jesus again, here, challenging his own followers who certainly would have considered themselves to be "sons of the kingdom" who should certainly have thought they had a right to be included over those illegal aliens who Jesus said were going to have a couch at the feast?  That they were going to be weeping and gnashing their teeth due to their chauvinism and conceit?  

I think like a lot of the really troubling things Paul wrote, a lot of the hard parts of the Gospel were said first for the instruction of those who were there or who first heard these accounts being familiar with the culture and milieu in which those events would have happened and those are the parts we have the least understanding of and which we leave behind in either our acceptance of what we do understand or in shock over those things which, taken out of even their literal context, we skip over.   I certainly have not been accustomed to reading these stories and accounts and quotes this way until fairly recently.  The problem with so much of Christian reading of the Scriptures, Christian and Jewish, is that we don't read them on even a deep literal level, never mind trying to consider what they mean in the context of their times, places and cultures, including that Jesus and his closest followers were steeped in the Jewish culture(s) they came out of.