There is a story I want to tell you before we approach the Bible story in the Gospel of Mark today, which gives us the story about Jesus. This is a story before the story about Jesus.

 

When I was in high school, I sang in the high school chorus. I just loved singing in the high school chorus. Chorus met at the end of the day, sixth period, which was a great period in which to be gathering to do something other than reading a book all day long. In those days in Florida, the classrooms were not air conditioned, and it was a good day to be doing something a little kinetic. It was about three o’clock in the afternoon, and you could start to get sleepy.

 

I just loved singing. We had a wonderful director, whose name was Mr. Kramer. I don’t remember his first name, but he was very good about getting everybody in the chorus engaged in singing together. I just felt at that moment in my life that God had made me to sing in the high school chorus. I sang bass. The rehearsal room had tiers in it, and the basses sat at the top tier, which I thought was appropriate in the hierarchy of things.

 

We had a young woman, a student who was a junior, who was our accompanist. Her name was Mae Moore. She was at the piano, behind the basses, on the upper tier. She could take any piece of music and sight-read it almost instantly. She could play the piano and accompany the whole chorus with an ability and a competence that was well beyond what anyone would expect of a high school junior. She was an extraordinary talent, like somebody else that I know around here.

 

In retrospect, it seems clear to me now that it was just a shame that such a capable young musician had to suffer through a full hour every day of playing for a chorus that had lots of people like me in it. People who had to have her bang out the parts for the basses over and over again until we could learn it by rote. Basses who were much better on the whole at being offensive tackles than we were at reading music or singing bass. But that’s what she was doing.

 

I remember she was very quiet, as well as very gifted. She seldom spoke. My memory of her, a particular memory, is not a happy one. It is a memory of the time toward the end of April of my senior year, her junior year, and we were working on a Brahms piece that we were going to sing in the final concert that year. Not a college fight song, or “Shenandoah,” or one of the easier pieces, but a Brahms piece. We had been working on it for quite a while, and it was difficult. Finally, Mr. Kramer said at rehearsal one day, “This isn’t jelling. There is something that is not going right here. Mae Moore, from the back of the room, spoke up and said, “It’s the basses. It’s the basses,” she said. “They can’t get their rhythms.”

 

I don’t know why, but I said something in response that I like to think wasn’t characteristic of me. It was late in the day. I was tired. It was the end of my senior year. She was a junior. And she was picking on us basses. So when she said, “It’s the basses. They can’t get their rhythm right,” I turned and I said, loudly so the whole chorus could hear it, “We need you like we need a hole in the head!”

 

Yeah, you’re laughing. But she jumped up, and in tears, ran out of the chorus room. I was the chorus chaplain.

 

I guess she got over it. But I certainly never did. And I have no idea where she is now. But in my mind, I fantasize running into her someday and seeing her and going up to her and saying, “Mae, Mae, I’m so sorry. I’m so very sorry.” And she would look at me and say, “Who are you?”

 

Have you ever had a moment where you spoke in irritation and said something that wasn’t characteristic of you? When you spoke out of character and wished you could take it back? But of course, you never can.

 

Have you ever had a moment like that?

 

 

Where is Tyre? He had gone to a house in Tyre, says Mark. Do you know where Tyre is? I think I do. It’s a little north from the intersection of Boulevard and Kennedy. I’m serious.

 

It’s in the Just Elementary School neighborhood. Kind of near Tampa Presbyterian Village.

 

It’s to the southwest, along the Texas-Mexico border.

 

Tyre is that place between Haiti and the United States, where the boat people refugees who get on boats, crafts, out of whatever they can make, and get into the Caribbean and head towards the United States, where they reach that point where they know they can’t turn around and go back. They are committed to having to go forward into the Caribbean and try to get over here.

 

Tyre is north Israel. It’s that place along the border where foreigners, the outsiders, meet the insiders. It’s a place, I think, where those who want to be included come into contact with those who are certain are already included. It’s where the wannabes are. Have you heard of the wannabes?

 

Rosalind Wiseman, a fine author, has written a book entitled Queen Bees and Wannabees: Helping Your Daughter Survive Cliques, Gossip, Boyfriends, and Other Realities of Adolescence. It’s a good book. It’s been a national bestseller for about the last four years.

 

In this book, she seeks to help parents of adolescent girls navigate the waters of those high school years with their daughters. It’s a book that’s been used as a resource with The Ophelia Project here in town.

 

Wiseman says that the culture of adolescent girls in the United States is a lot more aggressive than we typically acknowledge. In fact, she says, that it often is a mean culture. She says that it is a kind of culture where there is a division. Wiseman says, a division where some of the young women are, what she calls, queen bees. People who are clearly included and recognized by the community as being included. And some of the people in the culture are outsiders. wannabes. People whom everybody knows are not included. They, themselves, know that they aren’t included. The culture of queen bees and wannabes.

 

The text today, I think, is a story about Jesus surrounded by queen bees, both male and female. People who clearly are included, gathered in a community that clearly feels that it is included. And suddenly, a wannabe shows up and somehow gets into this house with her concern about her child, seeking inclusion for her child. How did she get in there?

 

The gospel says that Jesus went off to the house and doesn’t want anyone to know he’s there. She is a foreigner and she is a woman. She is diminished already in that respect by the culture, and diminished a second time by the fact that she’s a foreigner. Somehow (Mark doesn’t say how she did it), she got into that house and is able to talk to Jesus. She must have really wanted to speak with Jesus, to be able to get close to him at this moment.

 

There is a debate amongst scholars as to whether or not this woman, this wannabe, who comes into contact with Jesus, is a person of faith. Is she a believer?

 

It’s a debate about whether she is a believer when she comes into the house or whether she isn’t. The text doesn’t say. It says she is a foreigner, but it doesn’t say whether or not she was a believer. It says that she is a Syrophoenician of Gentile origins. She comes to Jesus, and she is trying to get to Jesus, but it doesn’t say whether or not she is a believer in Jesus. Maybe she is just desperate. That’s what I think.

 

That’s my interpretation. I think she’s just a desperate person seeking healing for her very sick daughter. I think she is struggling for faith. I don’t think she has faith yet. I think she’s struggling for faith. I think she is struggling to believe that “God is not going to turn God’s back on my daughter.”

 

She is struggling to believe that God is not going to turn God’s back on her child, and that God is going to include her and her daughter in the community of those who receive the compassion and inclusion of God. This is Syrophoenician wannabe shows up and seeks inclusion for her child.

 

Why is Jesus hiding in this house? The text doesn’t say. It says he entered a house and did not want anyone to know why he was there. It doesn’t say why, but I’m thinking, to my interpretation, that he was tired.

 

I’m thinking he’s like that high school senior in late spring, in sixth period, in an un-air-conditioned classroom, who was just tired.

 

Jesus was tired. He needed to be by himself and needed to recharge himself somehow. That’s what I think. He had gone to this house, and he didn’t want anyone to know he was there. But she finds her way in and she speaks to him. To my reading, this story could be subtitled, “Jesus has a bad day.” Because what he says to her is rude. He calls her a dog. “It is not fair and take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs,” he says when she asks for help. “I’ve come to feed the children of Israel. Are we going to give the children’s food to the dogs?”

 

You know, I’ve seen the debate in the community around the use of this word, dogs. I mean the wrong community of scholarship, as we have tried to figure out what it means. I even had one person, after the 8:30 service, come up and point to me at their commentary of the Bible, and say, “It says here that he meant puppy,” and I’m not buying it.

 

It looks to me like he called her a dog. Was he tired? Was he testing her to see if she had faith? Was he using humor with her?

 

The old Methodist scholar, Elton Trueblood, says, “Jesus here is using an Aramaic form of humor. It’s a debate amongst scholars. We don’t know for sure. The text doesn’t say.

 

Consider the dialogue between my dad and me, when I called him at the beginning of this month. He said to me, as he is prone to say when I call him, “What are you preaching on?” I told him I was preaching on this text, and I said, “Dad, what do you think? Why do you think Jesus said this to this woman?”

 

And Dad said a very classic, well-formed, beloved Christian answer. Dad said, “Jesus knew what her answer was going to be, and Jesus said this to her because he knew the kind of response she was going to make, and he wanted to illustrate for the disciples around him that the Gentiles also were to receive the faith. It was an intentional move on Jesus’ part.”

 

What my dad was trying to say was that Jesus didn’t mean to hurt her. Jesus was not trying to hurt her. My dad has a very high Christological view. In his view, Jesus would never be hurtful.

 

But I think he was tired. What do you think? The text doesn’t say. We have to figure it out. The Spirit has to work in our hearts and minds, and in your hearts and minds this week, and interpret it as it intersects with your life. Why do you think that I think Jesus was tired? Could there be something going on in my life after eight days in Haiti that makes me think Jesus was just tired here at this point?

 

Then there is the textual surprise. It’s this wannabe’s response, the answer of the outsider, of the Syrophoenician woman, to Jesus. She turns out to be up to the challenge of repartee with the Rabbi. It’s not what’s expected. Jesus said to her, “Should the children’s food be given to the dogs?” And without missing a textual blink, she responds to him and says, “But even the dogs, Lord, are allowed to eat the crumbs under the table. Will you not heal my child?”

 

In what looks like just rude language to me, she finds it within her character at that moment to reach down and to, in what Kipling would call a moment filled with sixty seconds worth of distance run, a moment of forgiveness, she finds it within herself to give that great answer. She struggles for faith. She is struggling to hold on to her belief that God might care for her and her child. She struggles to grasp on to the possibility that she, too, might receive God’s mercy. She pushes her way into that room. No, she connives her way, somehow, to get into that room. She is in there to encounter Jesus when he wanted to be alone.

 

Her view of God may be higher than the view of most of the other people around Jesus. The queen bees, male and female, in this room, who are certain that they were included in the in crowd. Her view may be higher of God, because her view of God sees God as also having room for the wannabes. Her view may be higher.

 

Now this is a different Jesus in the text, when he hears this response from her, isn’t it. It’s as if he wakes up. She says, “But Lord, even the dogs eat the crumbs under the table from the children.” And suddenly, it’s a different Jesus. It’s as if Jesus turns his head and sees her in a new way when she comes forward with that response. Did Jesus intend this moment all along? Is that the response he was fishing for? Or does it catch a tired Jesus by a renewing surprise? Has he gotten the response from her that he wanted the people in the crowd to see? Or is it a surprise to him, too?

 

It’s as if he is saying to the in-crowd around him, “This is what real faith looks like. This is what real faith looks like, and notice that it comes from this wannabe.” Jesus turns to her, and Mark says that Jesus said to her, “For saying this, you may go – the demon has left your daughter.”

 

That is Mark’s memory of what Jesus said. But I prefer Matthew’s memory. Matthew remembers this story, too. Matthew says that Jesus then turned to her and said, “O woman, how great is your faith!”

 

I like the way Matthew makes it explicit. Mark holds on to the ambiguity. When Jesus says, “For saying this, you may go – the demon has left your daughter,” we wonder, in Mark, is Jesus rewarding her cleverness and repartee? Or acknowledging her faith?

 

But in Matthew’s memory, he makes it explicit. He doesn’t want there to be any room for ambiguity. He says, “O woman, great is your faith!”

 

Where, in your own faith, have you had to struggle? Where, in your own faith, are you still struggling to trust? Is it your faith that God is a God of compassion and inclusion, and that you also might also be able to receive God’s mercy?

 

So she went home and found the child lying on the bed, and the demon gone.

 

Here’s my last question: Why is this story in the gospels? You know, we don’t have every story out of the life of Jesus in the gospels. We don’t have every story of every moment in Jesus’ life, over the thirty-three full years of his life, or even the three years of his adult ministry, in the gospels. If we do, it would be what, paper that would take up this whole room to record every moment of somebody’s entire life. Instead, we have the record of those memories that the community around Jesus, the early community, passed on to us. A kind of a family album. You have the stories and the gospels that the gospel writers remembered or chose to share with you through the inspiration of the Spirit. Just some of the stories.

 

Why do you think they remembered this story? It’s not Jesus’ best moment, is it? I mean, I’m hoping Mae Moore doesn’t remember what I said to her at that point. Could the gospels not share a better moment for Jesus? Why is this one included, this moment with this woman struggling with faith?

 

Richard Boyce says it’s an ancestor story. Dr. Boyce says the people who wanted to keep this story in the family album, the people who remembered this story and told it and shared it and said, “Let’s be sure and share that story,” so that Mark and Matthew remembered it and made it a favorite story and held on to it in the community. The people who remembered this story, and wanted it in the family album of Jesus’ stories, they probably were the wannabes. The Gentiles. The people in the early Christian community who came into a Jewish Christian community, inherited, which was not their own. A heritage that had Abraham to Joseph and Miriam and Deborah as the heroes and heroines of the faith, but no heroes for them.

 

But here in this story, this woman, this foreigner with Jesus, they had a heroine in the faith, too. Somebody from their family line. And now they are able to point with pride at this woman as their spiritual ancestor and say, Here, also, is a story about a time when Jesus said We, too, are included.

 

That’s why, Dr. Boyce says, the gospels have kept it. It’s a story where the wannabes, struggling for faith, remember that Jesus included them in the compassion and purposes of the gospel of God’s mercy.

 

What’s your favorite Bible story? What’s a story that you want to be sure you keep in your family’s Christian album?

 

I’ll share with you something I’ve shared before, because it’s precious to me. Charlotte Hunter has told me a memory of her and her sister, Ann, growing up and getting their mother, Edith, to always tell them a bedtime Bible story. Charlotte tells me that the story they asked for over and over again was a sweet story. It’s the story of the ninety-nine sheep and the one lost sheep. I like to think of the two of them asking her to tell it. “Tell us, Mama, the story of the one and the ninety-nine, where there’s more rejoicing in heaven over the one found.”

 

I’ve been thinking about those wannabes while I’ve been in Haiti this week, those outsiders, who maybe said to their mothers and fathers, late at night. Those wannabes in the early Christian community. “Tell us the story of the outsider woman. Tell us the story of the woman who struggled for faith. What did Jesus say to her?”

 

Who do you know that is struggling for faith? Who do you know that needs you to tell them a story about Jesus including them this week? Who needs you to tell them a Jesus story about their being included, too.

 

Who do you know that needs you to tell them that story? Maybe it’s you.

 

 

©John T. DeBevoise 2006