Praise to You, O Cheeky one

Thursday of Week 5 in Ordinary Time

Mark 7:24-30

The following imaginative telling of Jesus and the Syrophoenician Woman is quoted from The Oral Ethos of the Early Church, Speaking, Writing, and the Gospel of Mark, by Joanna Dewey*, Performance Biblical Criticism Series 8, Cascade Books, Eugene, Oregon: 2013, Pages 132-134

*Sometimes you read a book and you pause and realize that you have highlighted darn near the whole thing…this is one of those;)

(read it with some umph and sass)

Imagine that you are living in a small coastal village, say, on the coast of Asia Minor, just outside Ephesus, some time towards the end of the first century.  It’s late in the day; it’s a warm, balmy evening.  You have finished your day’s labor; you women have cooked and cared for the children.  The poorer ones among you—and that is most of you—have returned from working in the houses of the wealthy in the nearby city, cooking, cleaning, and caring for other people’s children.  You have returned to feed the men who have come in from the fields and the fishing boats.  And now, finally, your own families are fed.

It’s not time for bed, and your homes are small and dark and stuffy, so you have gone out to gather in the village square.  The  men and the boys occupy most of the square, talking about whatever it is that men talk about when they are together; and the women and girls, and all the children under, say nine or ten, are in one corner of the square, the women’s corner near the path to the community baking ovens, gossiping about your day, about how hard you’ve worked, and about what the children have said and done.  The women are oohing and aahing over Tatia’s daughter, now nearly a week old, whom Tatia has brought out for the first time.

And Chloris and I walk into the square.  We’ve walked over from our nearby village.  I’ve come to visit my daughter, Tatia, and see my new grandchild.  Pretty soon, the women and girls begin badgering me to tell them a story.  There’s not much to do in the evenings, no outside entertainment, no books.  We don’t know how to read; we don’t need to.  Only the scribe knows how to write a bit, and even he fishes for a living.  So that’s why we tell stories, and good storytellers are in demand.

Now, I pride myself on my storytelling.  Wherever I go, the women gather to hear me tell stories.  I have a reputation throughout the whole region.  People know me as Artemisia, the teller of tales.  Tonight, the girls clamor, “Tell us the story of Jesus and that woman from Tyre!  That Syrophoenecian woman!”

Some of the men even creep over to the outskirts of our group to hear my story.  Of course, men don’t spend time chatting with women—they think it is shameful.  But I’m a good storyteller, better than any they have tonight.  Besides, Tatia’s husband is very fond of me, and he’s one of the chief men of the village; so, as he comes to listen, the other men—some of them, anyway—come over, too.  We;;, I begin my story.

I’m a Christian, you know, as some of you are, too. I’m a follower of the risen Jesus who ‘s brought me freedom and joy in this life, and the promise of greater freedom to come. I love living in my new Christian community.  But my story tonight isn’t my story—you’ve probably heard that one often enough from me or Tatia.  This one is an old story that women have been telling each other since the days of Jesus or from soon after. Indeed I heard the story from my friend Philé, who heard it from her aunt, who heard it from I don’t know who.  I don’t know exactly how or even if this story really happened, but it’s the story Philé told me.

It’s Justa’s story, the Syrophoenecian women from near Tyre.  Now she had a daughter who was possessed by a demon, and she was desperate, what with wanting to help her daughter who was possessed by a demon, and being worn out trying to protect her child and keep her behaving right.  Hopeless!  You can’t control a demon!  She heard that that popular Jewish healer, Jesus, was in the village.  They say Jesus was trying to keep his presence hidden, he didn’t want anyone to know he was there.  Did he really think he could do that?  All those strangers arriving in a village?  News travels fast in a village, faster than my bread burns in the oven when I get to telling a story, which is fast enough.  And Justa went into the house where Jesus was, and she begged Jesus to heal her daughter, to cast the demon out of her little girl.

And you know what Jesus said?  He said, “Let the children first be fed, for it is not proper to take the children’s bread and throw it to the dogs.”  Huh! Her child isn’t even a child, she’s just a dog, not worth feeding!  I would have walked out then, I think—this man wasn’t going to act as patron for someone he called a dog.  But Justa didn’t walk out. She turned to Jesus, politely called him sir, as we’ve all been taught to do, and told him, “Yes, we may only be dogs, but look, sir, the little dogs under the table get the children’s crumbs.”  And Jesus—Jesus listened to her.  He said, “For your word, for what you’ve said, you may go your way. The demon has left your daughter.”  And when Justa got home, she found her daughter whole.  We, women, Christians, people who live I Asia Minor, we have a lot to thank that Syrophoenician woman for.  She taught Jesus something—we are all people, not dogs; we all need food and healing.  Ad Jesus believed her.  He praised her word, what she said, her understanding.  Indeed, he went on from that house in the region of Tyre to feed some four thousand Greeks, people like us, with plenty of food left over.  Maybe we owe our whole, new, glorious life to Justa, to that woman who taught Jesus that even little Greek girls should be healed.  And certainly she showed that women are to be listened to!

Some of the people in the crowd clamored for me to tell another story.  One of the men in the back yelled for me to tell the story of the deaf man with the speech impediment, but I told him that’s his story to tell and that I’m going in with Tatia to put my new granddaughter to bed.  And we go into the house, as the last of the light begins to fade outside in the square.