By the Rev. Dr. Pamela Dolan
Our Gospel today seems to be telling two very different stories—one an exorcism, performed from afar, and one a healing so intimate and earthy that it shows Jesus sighing and spitting in a manner that many of us might find rather off-putting. As different as these stories appear to be, they are both illustrations of the power of inclusion, showing that the Beloved Community Jesus is creating is open and available to all.
The overall context for these stories is set up in the first few lines: “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.” Jesus has been working hard and encountering opposition on his home turf; in response he is going away, getting out of Dodge, hoping to keep a low profile and maybe enjoy some down time. It is critical to recognize that he is not just far from home in terms of distance: “the region of Tyre” is Gentile territory, socially “quite beyond the horizons of a Palestinian Jew,” as Ched Myers puts it.¹ This is the place where the exorcism of the Syrophoenician woman’s daughter occurs.
The second story, the healing of the deaf man with impaired speech, also takes place in Greek, Gentile territory, although Jesus has begun journeying back to Galilee. These encounters, in other words, both occur where Jesus does not have the upper hand, culturally or politically, and both are with people Jesus would normally not choose to interact with.
We’ll return in a moment to the encounter between Jesus and the Syrophoenician woman, but I want us to start with the second story. I’ve already mentioned how earthy and physical this encounter is; Jesus puts his fingers in the man’s ears, he spits, he touches the man’s tongue, he sighs and looks up to heaven, and he uses a healing formula in his command to “Be opened—Ephphatha.”
Some of these methodologies will seem quite strange to us, with our insistence that things must be sterile and hygienic if they are to aid in healing. However, these would have been familiar gestures to his audience, used by magicians and healers alike. The difference, what sets Jesus apart, appears to be that he gets results; people are astonished by how immediately and completely the man is healed—his ears were open, his tongue was released, and he spoke plainly.
There are interesting ways in which this second story helps us interpret and understand the first one. As we’ve seen, both take place in Gentile territory, with and among people who were separated from Jesus by geography, history, culture, religion, and other societal boundaries. And both stories are in some sense about communication across all those boundaries, or even communication that serves to break up those boundaries.
“Be opened,” Jesus says to the man who has no way to communicate, who is likely cut off from his community and maybe even his family because he can neither hear nor speak. The words of Jesus, along with his actions, free this man from his bondage and isolation. His ears were opened and his tongue released—these are words of liberation, of being set free. And, remarkably, once this symbolic and physical liberation is accomplished, Jesus’s own desire to limit the spread of the news of what has happened is thwarted: “The more he ordered them [to tell no one], the more zealously they proclaimed it,” Mark reports.
Perhaps you’ve experienced this yourself: once speech is set free, it has a life of its own. You may think you’re sharing a secret with one person, when in fact it soon becomes common knowledge, because that one person tells one other person, who tells one other, and so on.
In this case, it is not gossip that is spreading, but Good News, the news that Jesus is creating a beloved community, a community that respects the dignity of all people, breaks down the barriers that separate us, and calls us all into a liberating and life-giving relationship with God and one another.
First, though, Jesus needs to hear some of this good news himself.
As with the healing of the man who cannot hear or speak, communication is a key theme in his earlier encounter with the Syrophoenician woman as well. He has been trying to escape notice, but this woman hears about him the moment he enters her neighborhood. She throws herself at his feet, a gesture of humility and supplication, as recognizable as the healing gestures Jesus uses later with the deaf man. She begs him to free her daughter from bondage to an unclean spirit—and at first Jesus seems not to hear her. Or rather he hears her words, and responds to them, but in a way that ignores or denies her true identity as a beloved child of God.
The verbal exchange between them is brief but pointed, memorably intense. She begs for his help; he refuses, comparing her to a dog trying to take food that belongs to children. She promptly and firmly rebuts him, saying in essence: “Fine, I’m a dog, then, but dogs have to eat, too. I’m not trying to take food away that belongs to others; I’ll be happy with leftovers, with the crumbs under the table. Surely you can give me that.”
Dwelling on this extraordinarily deft argument, somehow both humble and sharp, what I hear the woman saying to Jesus is:
Ephphatha.
Be opened.
This woman, this alien woman, is speaking truth. This woman is speaking Gospel truth. And this time, Jesus hears it.
Lest we miss the point, Jesus replies to the woman, “For saying that, you may go—the demon has left your daughter.” For saying that—for speaking those words of truth and liberation, for reminding me that even I, Jesus, Son of the Most High, cannot and must not limit God’s power, for proclaiming that Good News, you and your daughter are now truly free.
In both of these stories, we see Jesus constructing an “ideology of inclusion,”² as scholars call it. We might more easily say that Jesus is building the Beloved Community. What our closer look at the encounter with the Syrophoenician woman tells us is that nobody is outside of this circle of inclusion—God will not allow any barriers to stand if they serve to separate us from the love of God or true fellowship with one another.
Furthermore, the Syrophoenician woman herself, an “alien gentile,” ³saw the unlimited horizons of this new community before Jesus did. Her courage and tenacity helped to open his eyes and perhaps his heart. Her words helped break down barriers and construct a new world of possibility. Her belief in God’s infinite compassion compelled Jesus onto a bigger and more faithful path.
And yes, we are called to do the same. We are called to crack open the church, to help it shift from being a religious institution centered on its ow survival to becoming the Beloved Community, centered on liberation and justice. We are called to be as assertive, as creative, as courageous, and as tenacious as the woman who spoke truth to Jesus. Ephphatha. Be opened.
Amen.
NOTES: All three quotes are from Ched Myers, Binding the Strong Man: A Political Reading of Mark’s Story of Jesus (Maryknoll, New York: Orbis Books, 1988).
