Mark 7:24-30

Brothers and sisters in Christ, 

The Bible passage for this Tuesday after Mother’s Day is Mark 7:24-30, which tells the story of a mother’s love for her child:

²⁴ And from there [Jesus] arose and went away to the region of Tyre and Sidon. And he entered a house and did not want anyone to know, yet he could not be hidden.²⁵ But immediately a woman whose little daughter had an unclean spirit heard of him and came and fell down at his feet.²⁶ Now the woman was a Gentile, a Syrophoenician by birth. And she begged him to cast the demon out of her daughter. ²⁷ And he said to her, “Let the children be fed first, for it is not right to take the children’s bread and throw it to the dogs.” ²⁸ But she answered him, “Yes, Lord; yet even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs.” ²⁹ And he said to her, “For this statement you may go your way; the demon has left your daughter.” ³⁰ And she went home and found the child lying in bed and the demon gone.

At first reading, Jesus’s initial response to the woman seems harsh, even racist, comparing Gentiles to “dogs.” But there’s another way of reading Jesus’s interaction with this Gentile mother. Imagine staging it as a short play.

To stage this incident, you’d have to think about more than just the words spoken. You and your actors would have to make decisions about tone of voice, gesture, action, positioning, props (bread, table, etc.), non-speaking roles (were any of the disciples present?), and (a director’s nightmare) animals: are you going to risk having real dogs on stage? In this way, you’d be able to get closer to the historical incident itself, which involved animate bodies and moveable (even edible) objects and not just words.

Of course, this would involve some creative imagination. The written account confirms the presence of bread and a table, but it doesn’t specify action or tone of voice. You and your actors would have to try several options and see which made the best sense of the passage. Your friendly Greek consultant, though, would be able to settle one issue: the word that both Jesus and the mother use for “dogs” (kunaria) designates pet dogs not street dogs or feral dogs. This doesn’t settle the question of whether to risk dogs on stage, but it does suggest that Jesus’s tone of voice might reflect an affection for the family’s pet dogs rather than, let’s say, a distaste for snarling feral dogs.

So, let’s imagine the scene. Our imagination isn’t inspired, but we are promised that the Holy Spirit helps us to understand the Scriptures. Maybe the Spirit can use this method, too.

Suppose Jesus is sitting at a table, eating a meal, which includes a good loaf or two of crusty bread to be passed around. Shall we give him a cup of wine, too, to prefigure the Last Supper? Suppose, too, that Jesus is (at least in this respect) a bit like me and likes to slip bits of food to the pet dogs under the table. Nibble, drink, slip a bit of bread to the dogs: try it out with the actors. Some of the disciples may be at the table, too, because somebody besides Jesus and the woman must have been present to tell Luke about it later. Perhaps the whole host family, including several children, was there, too. The cast of characters turns out to be larger than you first thought.

Then there’s a sudden entrance. A Syrophoenician woman runs into the room and flings herself at Jesus’s feet. She’s visibly different from everyone else present. The Jews around the table only have to look at her (or the way she’s dressed?) to know she’s not Jewish. Before anyone can stop her, she begs Jesus to cast the demon out of her daughter. People hold their breath. How will Jesus, who was hoping for a quiet meal, hidden from the crowds, deal with this interruption?

His words alone might sound irritated. “Let the children be fed first, for it is not right to take the children’s bread and throw it to the dogs.” By “children,” he means both actual small children and, by analogy, the children of Israel. He’s come to minister to the Jews not to the Gentiles. But that staging doesn’t really work, does it? It raises more questions than it answers. So, let’s imagine an alternative staging.

What if you were to ask the actor playing Jesus, even as he speaks those words, to throw another piece of bread to the family dogs under the table? (I suppose you’d better risk live dogs, but maybe life-size stuffed animals would do at a pinch.) That would change everything. It may not be “right,” according to the Jewish version of Miss Manners, to feed pet dogs like that, but Jesus is doing it anyway. In that case, you’d have to put a smile on Jesus’s face as he spoke, and his tone of voice would have to be generous not condemning. 

The woman—who, you’ll remember, is at Jesus’s feet—can see what’s going on under the table. She knows what Jesus is up to with the dogs. Perhaps some of the children are also slipping bits of bread to the dogs. In any case, there are plenty of crumbs on the floor and the dogs are licking them up with their bright pink tongues. The woman gets the joke. She looks up to Jesus and smiles: “Yes, Lord; yet even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs.”

Maybe Jesus laughs at this point. He likes the woman’s response, the way she’s caught the meaning of his smile. He likes her bold faith. He says to her, his eyes twinkling, “For this statement you may go your way; the demon has left your daughter.”

To one side of the stage, there’s a bed, in which throughout the action a young girl, in another house altogether, has been having nightmares. Now she stops. An actor in a devil costume slinks away from under the bed and leaves the stage. The little girl lies still. Her mother approaches. The girl sits up. She smiles. She holds her arms out to her mother, who hugs her. Jesus, who of course can see what’s going on, watches and smiles. The disciples, who can’t see that far, wonder what on earth he’s done now.

This, at least, is how I might stage this passage if I were given the opportunity. Imagining its staging has helped me better understand a passage that had previously puzzled me. Please feel free to use your imagination to stage other passages. Let me know how it helps.

Your brother in Christ,

Max