Being Opened

February 18, 2001

When I first encountered this passage, I was in divinity school. I didn't particularly consider myself a Jesus-follower then, and I wasn't personally invested in preserving his status as the perfect savior of a people. Still, I was shocked that Jesus would behave this way. And even more shocked that this story would have been preserved in a testament to his life as the Son of God. Here is the one who has spent his life rallying for those who were powerless, who welcomes everyone to the table of fellowship, telling someone that she is a dog unfit to partake of the feast he prepares for his children. Say it ain't so!

So it's just as amazing that this woman who has sought out this mysterious miracle-worker, bowed down at his feet and begged for his service, not only is undeterred by his bad behavior, but respectfully gives him lip right back. "Sir, even the dogs under the table eat the children's crumbs." Call me a dog if you want, but change your metaphor if you want me to go away.

The passage gives us no clue as to Jesus' emotional state as he answers her. We just know what he says: "For saying that you may go – the demon has left your daughter." She has been granted her wish, which implies that Jesus saw that he was wrong. I don't know about you, but after seeing the hero of the story behave so badly, I'd like to hear a public confession, an apology of some kind. But Mark's author doesn't give us one. The right thing is done in the end, and it's time to move on.

Abruptly, the gospel turns back to the much more palatable story of the healing of the deaf man with the speech impediment. Jesus is still in pagan territory, but is apparently back on duty now (the doctor is "in"), and quite willing to see the man who is brought to him, whom the crowd has begged him to heal. So he takes the man to a private place, puts his fingers into his ears, spits and touches his tongue. Then looking up to heaven he sighs and says to him, "Ephphatha," the Aramaic word meaning, "be opened." And immediately his ears are opened, his tongue is released, and he speaks plainly. Then Jesus, presumably needing to return to the crowds and greet his people again, begs them to tell no one; yet the more he tells them, the more zealously they proclaimed it. They are in absolute awe of the miracle they have witnessed, and they want to spread the news: "He has done everything well; he even makes the deaf to hear and the mute to speak."

Taken together, these stories paint a complicated picture of our healer, prophet, and teacher. The healings serve as testaments to extraordinary powers, to be sure, but his rudeness to the Syrophoenician woman, and his willingness to be challenged and changed by her retort are remarkable. Jesus proves himself to be capable of the kind of closed-mindedness he often rails against. His parable of the Good Samaritan is the classic example of his teaching that the need of another for aid is always more important than human rules about who may touch whom, and under what circumstances. He runs around all over the place asserting the fact that compassion and helping those who are in need is the name of the game for those who would enter God's kingdom, and here he is denying someone a place at that table. Unlike the crowds at the end of the passage, we who know the first story know that he hasn't done quite everything well. Still, he remains the same man who lived a remarkable life; who could give the gift of hearing and speech with some spit, a few gestures and a magic word.

For most of us, our encounter with the notion that no authority is perfect comes at a pretty early age. I remember vividly the first time my mother, who was known in our house as the just and compassionate arbiter of all sibling disputes, made the wrong call. My younger sister had been annoying me, as was her right, and I had not been kind. But my sister decided that the best way to get a chance at playing with my favorite doll, which I had been jealously guarding, was to run and tell my mother that I had hit her. My mother, perhaps seeing how close I really had been to hitting her, believed my sister and punished me accordingly. As I watched my sister revel in her chance to play with my doll, I was devastated, and convinced that some evil power had overtaken my mother. How could she believe my sister's word over mine? How could I continue to trust in her judgment when she had been so wrong? Unlike the woman in today's story, I could not come up with a witty retort that pointed out the error of her ways. So I did what any wronged person would do: I sulked in silence, and now I tell my side of family stories publicly. My mother settled quite a huge number more disputes fairly before I left home, and regained her place in my mind as the fair and wise judge. But I went on from that day knowing that even she had an off day, and I would need to be ready to plead my cause if she did.

Of course this was only the beginning of a long realization of the humanness of authority figures. As we grow and take on positions of authority ourselves, in family relationships, in work settings, in social groups, we are forced to grapple with the fact that we will make the wrong call sometimes. Whether we are dealing with a lack of information, our own prejudice, anger, or a situation in which there may not be a right answer, we all are forced to face the reality of our ability to think and do what is unjust. We may at times find ourselves on either side of the equation: appealing to an authority figure for justice which seems clear to us, or being asked to challenge our own judgment.

Could it be that the power, the authority of Jesus was as human as ours is? Could it be that he was just as able to use his power hurtfully as any of us? If so, what does this story tell us about how to live in light of our own ability to act unkindly?

The most extreme form of human misuse of power in relationships is of course violence. In my ministry at Renewal House with women and children who have been abused, we are immersed in the testimonies of people who have literally been called dogs – and treated like them. Michelle was the wife of a university professor who would regularly throw his full dinner plate at her when the meal was not of his liking. When she would try to explain that it was the best she could do, and offer to make something else, he would pick up the food from the floor and force-feed it to her. Family members tried to intervene on her behalf, which only made her husband more angry and volatile. Michelle had tried to leave several times, only to be found and bullied into returning home again.

When she finally made it to Renewal House, having been referred to us by a doctor who saw physical evidence of her abuse, Michelle couldn't make sense of her husband's behavior. He was well known for his compassion and ability to respond to student's needs in the classroom. He was a devoted son to his parents. When their relationship began, he had been a wonderful, attentive husband to Michelle. What could possibly have gone wrong?

We all have power. Sometimes more, sometimes less. The power we have in relationship includes the power to hurt others. If even Jesus, one of the great teachers of compassion, can use his power to hurt, so can we all. Every human relationship involves the negotiation of power. It's the desire to preserve power over another person at the expense of everything else that makes a relationship abusive. Relationship violence is part of a pattern of control over another person. When an abuser is entering into relationship, what is most important is retaining the position of power. Everything else is secondary. When relationships are approached in this way, there is no room for being opened, for hearing the voice of God that speaks through the other person in the relationship. As the pattern takes root, it denies the power from outside that we encounter in one another in relationship.

Workers in batterer intervention programs say that the one thing they see as a pattern in abusers is an unwillingness, perhaps an inability, to understand that there is anything wrong with their behavior. They might be willing to see the value in listening to the effects of their behavior on other people in their lives, but their intimate partners do not get the same credit. Their hearts are closed to the voice of God that speaks through the experience of their partners, and all suffer tremendously as a result.

Theologian Rita Nakashima Brock points out that if we are to attempt to imagine a God who dwells in human existence, we must look not to a particular person for that incarnation, but for the activity in which love is manifest. "The spirit of God in our lives moves fluidly, finding homes for Her presence as hearts open, looking elsewhere as hearts close. The revelation of incarnate spirit comes from the margins of life, from the heart of life-giving power…" There is a fluid movement of spirit that is defined by the place in which active love is made real. And that love is most often seen and called for by the people whose lives would otherwise be forgotten: the people on the margins. Jesus was one who reflected the incarnate power of God when he confronted the laws and authorities that were unjust to him to the point of killing him. The Syrophoenician woman reflected the incarnate power of God, as she demanded that Jesus be accountable for the way he used his power. The woman was not asking for him to apologize. She was asking him to act out of the power of his love, to act in a life-giving way: to heal her daughter.

Jesus' willingness to be opened, his ability to see that the Good might speak from a source other than himself, that the voice of truth always sounds the cry of compassion, stopped him before he continued down the hurtful path of his insults. It enabled him to go forth in his life-giving ministry with others and to command them to be opened. One hurtful use of power does not make a person abusive. It makes a person human. It is clinging to the power itself, rather than recognizing the power that comes from within every person, which leads down the path of abuse. It is systematically denying that which is life-giving in the name of retaining power that is ultimately against God.

We live in a society, in a world, which does not provide us with a lot of stories of the value of being held accountable for how we use our power. Sure, we love to see the manipulative villain get what's coming to him or her. We don't often like to get mixed up in the messy situations in which a person who generally has managed to live responsibly acts badly and has to make amends. It's an all-or-nothing brush we like to paint things with, while most of us live in that murky gap in which we have lapses in judgment, and need to be open to the presence of God speaking to us. We often need to be led back to the course of compassion by the presence and action of other people in our lives. Most of us can't do it with as stunning a miracle as removing unclean spirits like Jesus did. We just have to be ready to hear that voice that calls for the active movement of love, of life-giving power, and make sure the movement happens.

The power of the interaction between the Syrophoenician woman and Jesus is in its testimony to the manifold ways that God's incarnation comes to us. As the Jesus story tells us repeatedly, it is most likely to come from those who are not considered powerful. Our responsibility as we attempt to witness to the transformative power of compassion in the world is to always be on guard for the ways that one person's power can harm another. To be the voice that speaks on behalf of those who are not being heard, to listen when we are in power and might harm another, and to always be opened to the movement of God in human relationship.

All of this may we do, so that it may be said of us as the crowds said of Jesus: That we have done everything well. Not because we did it all perfectly, but because we were always open to the many ways that God is made flesh among us. Amen.