Bread Crumbs Faith to Feasting Privilege

16 Pentecost P.18 September 8, 2024
Is. 35: 4-7,  Ps. 146
James 1:17-27 Mark 7:31-37

Lectionary Link

We are not used to reading the Gospels as parables about Jesus and the reality of the Gentile inclusion into the salvation story.  But there is good reason for us to read the Gospels in this way, because they were written when Gentiles were included in the Jesus Movement.  This is believable if we accept the record of the Acts of the Apostles of stories about the early Paul and Peter including Gentiles in the story of salvation, not because they were required to become circumcised or follow the food and ritual customs of Judaism, but by virtue of having faith in Jesus Christ and knowing it verified by the presence of the Holy Spirit in their lives.

The Gospels were not written contemporary with the life of Jesus, so they are not for the people who lived during his lifetime.  They were written in the year 60 and after when the actual practice of the Jesus Movement was to incorporate Gentile people into their membership along with the Jews who regarded Jesus to be the guiding teacher of the direction of their lives.

If we understand when the Gospels were written and the communities to whom they were written, we can appreciate how the Gentile mission was incorporated into the narrative parables of Jesus.

A meal or feast has invited members and guests who are the intended participants in the meal.  The host of feast has the table set for the expected members of the family and the guests.

But any meal can have unexpected and unanticipated participants, namely the dogs.  In our time, parents often tell the children not to feed the dog table scraps but our pets are so much a part of our families that often we give them what they want even if it isn't the best food for them.

Certainly in the time of Jesus, dogs had a mixed reputation.  Dog certainly were domesticated in biblical time for herding and hunting even though there was a distinction between domesticated and wild dogs.  Wild dogs were stragglers and hung around places where people dwelled to scavenge for scrapes.

We have the set up for the parable about Jesus.  A foreign woman has a sick child and she is desperate for her healing.  So desperate that she is willing to seek outside of her physicians' network, because she had heard about the health offered by this person Jesus.

The rhetorical occasion is set up:  "Jesus, my daughter is sick and needs healing."  Jesus then offers a rhetorical challenge to the woman and to the disciples, meaning it involves the biases which Jews and non-Jews had for each other.  Jesus was setting this test:  "Jews have reasons for keeping their traditions from non-Jews, just like the prophet Jonah who did not want to offer salvation to the foreign Ninevites because salvation belonged to the Jews."  Jesus offered the rhetorical test in the metaphor of a meal, by saying, "the meal is supposed to be served to the people for whom it was intended."  But how did the foreign woman pass the rhetorical test?  Using the logic of the story, she responded, "Well, yes a family prepares the meal mainly for the children, but it also happens that some of the crumbs of the bread and scrapes of food fall to be consumed by those lingering puppies and dogs."

And bingo! In her answer one can find insights about the reality of the Gentile peoples coming to the table of salvation.  And how did they get there?  By faith.  Some of the seeds fell into good ground, even outside the intended field and the seeds grew.  The great blessing of being known as a child of God came to places that some did not know or think about before the success occurred.

We can easily see the Pauline mission to the Gentiles creatively prefigured in this parable of Jesus and the Syrophoenician woman.  It highlights the fact that the Gentiles had many strikes against them in coming to have access to the God who is presented in the Hebrew Scriptures.

The effect of this parable in the church is a gratitude event of the Gentiles being included in having this wonderful experiential knowledge of being beloved children of God.

They started with but the crumbs of the message which inspired faith but by they time this Gospel of Mark was written, the Gentiles were invited to feast at the table and partake of the full meal.  And this is the full welcome of the Eucharistic Meal open to all who want to be there because all are welcome.

Let us trace the bread crumbs of meaning which goaded our faith to come to believe that we have been invited to the table of God as fully included children of God.  And let us not be stingy to share this privilege.  We don't just offer bread crumbs to all; we invite all to the full privilege of feasting in the family of Christ.  Amen.