“All of us,” writes Kay Higuera Smith in The New Testament in Color, “come to Scripture with a set of assumptions that are borne out of our traditions, our life experiences, and our social and historical locations.” For example, Smith, a Bible professor at Azusa Pacific University, brings to her commentary on the Gospel of Mark assumptions “as a Latina and Californiana, one whose identity has been shaped by abuelos and abuelas, tíos and tías telling stories at innumerable family gatherings that form my own social memory.”
So before we come to this week’s gospel story, join me in contemplating which assumptions we’re bringing to it.
Here’s what kept coming to my mind…
This particular version of Warner Sallman’s Head of Christ hangs in the Covenant church that I attended for fifteen years, painted when he was visiting Salem’s old building in Northeast Minneapolis during World War II. But I saw many other versions of it growing up, in churches and homes alike. It reminds me of the Swedish-American Pietist upbringing that I share with Sallman,1 of Sunday School lessons at Covenant churches2 and conversations with my Grandma Peterson.
And its blue-eyed, blonde-haired Jesus reminds me of my whiteness, that I belong to the majority culture that is responsible for the “disenfranchisement, loss of land and properties, and inexorable efforts by Anglo-Europeans to reshape the geography, landscape, and history” of Smith’s ancestors.3 Unfortunately, Sallman’s painting helped raise me to assume what one Korean-American Covenant pastor lamented about such images, that “God is a white man who rules both heaven and earth. This indirectly affirmed the messages of who has access to power, who is called and gifted to lead, and who is not.”
And that can blind Christians like me to the way that, as Smith puts it, “Mark’s Jesus defies these hierarchies and turns them virtually on their heads.” So it’s an assumption I’ve spent my life unlearning… but one that I think Smith would want me to bear in mind, since she advises contemporary readers of Mark “to be open to critiquing institutional readings that we have inherited that in themselves reinforce dominance of one group over others or the silencing of voices outside the social center.”
But as I explained in a 2016 post for Patheos, Sallman’s painting also fixed other, more enduring assumptions for me. “The same gentleness that inspired some critics to ridicule Sallman’s Jesus as ‘effeminate,’” I wrote, “has done much to confirm my own idea of ‘biblical manhood’ — not violent, aggressive, or coercive, but kenotic.” And Sallman’s image helped make it possible for me to relate to the idea of a “personal relationship with Christ… If I can claim such a friendship with the Son of Man, it’s partly because my mind so easily conjures an image that my heart so easily suffuses with feelings of love and affection.”
Which is why I instinctively recoil from the Jesus we meet in today’s reading, who seems anything but gentle or loving.
While Jesus is in the region of Tyre (part of present-day Lebanon), a Gentile woman “of Syrophoenician origin” begs him to cast a demon out of her daughter.
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.” But she answered him, “Sir, even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs.” Then he said to her, “For saying that, you may go—the demon has left your daughter.” And when she went home, she found the child lying on the bed and the demon gone.
Mark 7:27-30
In the end, Jesus performs yet another miracle that alleviates suffering; it’s yet one more proclamation that “the time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near” (1:15). But only after first refusing the woman, implying in a particularly offensive way that Gentiles like her must wait their turn after Israel.
“Contemporary women often flinch at such stories,” acknowledges Smith. “How often have we had to overlook microaggressions and efforts to shame, discredit, or belittle us in order to make our claims for legitimacy?” For that matter, I flinch at it as a man who likes to think of Jesus as a model of healthy masculinity, and more broadly, a model of empathy and kindness in his dealing with people of all backgrounds.
So what’s going on?
In part, Smith places the episode in the context of a “gendered honor/shame system” that is typical of Mark’s context, but alien to our own. The Syrophoenician woman “must put up with the shame of being called a ‘dog’ and respond in a way that restores her honor.”
But there’s more. Smith describes Mark 7:27-30 as one more example of a recurring theme in that gospel: “challenge-and-response.” In a world where “The challenge-and-response pattern was a rhetorical approach used to make status claims over against an opponent,” Jesus “challenges the honor/shame system entirely, turning it on its head and claiming honor for those the dominant culture attempted to shame, and shame for those it attempted to honor.” Again and again in earlier chapters, “Each healing, exorcism, or rhetorical challenge takes aim at the central identifying social systems of the Herodian temple system….”
What makes the case of the Syrophoenician woman stand out is that the challenge is aimed at Jesus himself, a challenge he concedes to “an outsider who solicits access to the benefits of Israel” and “so insightfully responds to Jesus’ challenge that it results in her convincing him to heal her daughter.” In effect, Jesus allows himself to be challenged so that his response can proclaim the good news that the coming kingdom (basileia) — “an alternate way of being human in the world” — does not limit its honor and power to any one person or group:
By presenting a woman from the nations prevailing in this challenge-and-response, Mark is also making claims not only about access but also agency in the basileia. It will not be male Israelites only who will have access and agency. People from the nations, including women, will also be enfranchised and have access to honor and agency in this divine system.
Next week’s lectionary readings: Psalm 19; Proverbs 1:20-33; Mark 8:27-38; James 3:1-12.
Sallman belonged to Edgewater Covenant Church in Chicago and sketched his version of the “Head of Christ” as the cover image for a 1924 issue of The Covenant Companion, which marked that centenary this summer with a thoughtful article by Cathy Norman Peterson.
One of them pastored by Rev. LeRoy Carlson; after retiring, he founded the Warner E. Sallman Art Collection.
“My abuela was philosophical,” Smith adds. “‘We did it to the Native Americans; now the gringos are doing it to us,’ she would say.”