Grace Beneath the Table: Mark 7:24-37 - Fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost

March 27, 2011 by Jeremy Jenum.  Creative commons image on flickr

²⁴ [Jesus] 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,²⁵ but a woman whose little daughter had an unclean spirit immediately heard about him, and she came and bowed down at his feet. ²⁶ Now the woman was a Gentile, of Syrophoenician origin. She begged him to cast the demon out of her daughter. ²⁷ 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.” ²⁸ But she answered him, “Sir, even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs.” ²⁹ Then he said to her, “For saying that, you may go—the demon has left your daughter.” ³⁰ So she went home, found the child lying on the bed, and the demon gone.
  ³¹ Then he returned from the region of Tyre, and went by way of Sidon towards the Sea of Galilee, in the region of the Decapolis. ³² They brought to him a deaf man who had an impediment in his speech; and they begged him to lay his hand on him. ³³ He took him aside in private, away from the crowd, and put his fingers into his ears, and he spat and touched his tongue. ³⁴ Then looking up to heaven, he sighed and said to him, “Ephphatha,” that is, “Be opened.” ³⁵ And immediately his ears were opened, his tongue was released, and he spoke plainly. ³⁶ Then Jesus ordered them to tell no one; but the more he ordered them, the more zealously they proclaimed it. ³⁷ They were astounded beyond measure, saying, “He has done everything well; he even makes the deaf to hear and the mute to speak.”

There was a time in my life when I didn’t use a broom for at least a decade…

The reason why: there was never any need to sweep up crumbs from beneath the kitchen table.  The family dogs more than took care of that for us.

Thankfully, there was never a shortage of dog food or people food in the house.  Yet the dogs were never content to settle on the little brown pellets of Hill’s Science Diet that daily filled their dog dish… 

Any time we ate a meal or got a snack, the dogs were right there, ready to snatch up whatever crumbs would happen to fall from the table.  Our Lhasa Apso had a way of snatching whatever food she could from the tabletop; especially dinner rolls…

But can you imagine having to survive only on crumbs? 

Sadly, 800 million people in the world don’t have to imagine—because it’s reality.  A sad fact about our world is that there are some who get to enjoy the absolute best of everything—careers, homes, food, clothing, cars, schools, hospitals, entertainment, vacations, you name it…  Then there are those who must survive on or even beg for the crumbs and leftovers that trickle down from the tables of privilege.

Yet this struggle is not limited to the social and economic realities of our time…

This can also be a person’s spiritual reality: you see some people feasting at the table of God’s goodness—but you’re under the table, begging for a few measly crumbs of grace…

This was the situation for the Syrophonecian woman in today’s Gospel.  Her daughter was demon-possessed—which was, by far, the most horrific thing that could ever happen to a person.  To put it bluntly, your body and soul are completely controlled by evil.  When Jesus comes to town, she falls at his feet and begs for mercy. 

Jesus’ response is a bit surprising: he says, “Let the children be fed first, for it is not [right] to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.”  In other words, Jesus’ priority was to serve the children of Israel—of which she was not.  She was a Gentile.  Now it’s really hard to imagine Jesus rejecting anyone in such a way—but I wonder, since he knew people inside and out, if he spoke these words in order to draw out her faith? 

She claims no sense of entitlement, either for herself or her daughter.  All she claims is her desperate need for a few crumbs or grace in her desperately graceless situation.  With that, she holds Jesus to be true to who he is—the gracious and merciful Savior of not just the children of Israel, but all people.  God’s grace immediately breaks and destroys the bondage of evil.

What Jesus teaches us is that none of us have any rightful claim upon him or anything he would have to give us.  All that we have to claim is our brokenness and desperate need.  But thanks be to God, Jesus comes to us.  He shows up, to draw out our God-given faith.  It is by faith that we awaken each morning with a bold and daring confidence that Jesus is going to meet us in our graceless situations.  It is by faith that we receive amazing grace in what would look like mere crumbs to the world.  It is by faith that we take Jesus’ hand as he invites us to sit at his table and eat and drink the best of what he gives us: his very own body and blood. 

Faith is not just a set of intellectual beliefs.  It is living by the expectation of grace to meet our every need.  But it’s not just about me or you…

These are troubling times we’re living in right now—and there’s no escaping the fact that the devil comes right into our struggles to survive.  You see it everywhere, in the greed, hostility, and violence that pits neighbor against neighbor as we all strive to give the best possible future to our children.  What’s more is that the devil exploits our sense of pride and self-importance, turning us so far into ourselves that we are blinded not only to the hunger of our neighbor, but even to our hunger for God.

Yet, by faith, Jesus takes us below the lofty tables of the American Dream to where brokenness, suffering, and need are literally ruling over people’s lives.  The Spirit brings to life the love of Jesus within us that we serve our neighbors—not with crumbs and leftovers, but with the best of who we are and what we have in Christ.  We are turned inside-out, so that God may work within us and through us to bring about the redemption of others.  We become God’s amazing grace in a graceless world.

How beautiful it is, that in a world so full of death, Jesus gathers us in to eat and drink the bread and cup of life.  He comes to set us free not only from the demons of sorrow and fear, but the demons that turn us in on ourselves and make life into a war to gain and maintain our own happiness.  How beautiful we are empowered to be, to bring light into the shadows of pain and human need; to be grace in a graceless world.