Is Jesus Racist? (Mark 7:24-30)

 

‘Jesus loves the little children, all the children of the world.  Red and yellow, black and white they are precious in his sight.  Jesus loves the little children of the world.’

Jesus’ religious opponents, the Pharisees, would not have approved of those words.  The Pharisees, like all men in those days, weren’t particularly sentimental about children, they were dismissive of girls and they did not believe God should love people other than their own.

However, in this morning’s passage, Jesus calls a Canaanite woman a dog.  What is he at?  Is he also racist and sexist?

1.       1. Jesus is the only one who can make us clean

It is worth seeing this passage in context.  Last time we looked at Mark we saw that the conversation was about cleanliness.  Jesus pointed out that our hearts are unclean.  He also declared all foods to be clean.  Food had been a boundary marker in the Old Testament.  It reminded people that they were to be different from the people around them.  Now what makes people different is the influence Jesus has on our eyes.

It has been a year since the Herodians and the Pharisees had formed an unlikely alliance to get rid of Jesus (3:6).  The heat has turned up and Jesus is no longer safe in Galilee.  For the next six months Jesus and the twelve will be based in the Gentile (non-Jewish) regions around Galilee.  He is there among those his people considered unclean.

Jesus goes into a house, wanting no-one to know he is there.  A Canaanite woman finds out where he is, falls down before him and pleads for her daughter.  Her daughter literally has an ‘unclean’ spirit.  Jesus responds to that woman’s humble faith and frees her daughter from her uncleanliness.  Jesus is God’s answer to our being unclean.

My heart was unclean when I encountered Jesus, but Jesus is the one with authority to forgive sin (2:10).  Jesus’ ministry centres upon the cross where he pays the ransom for our guilt (10:45).  We still struggle with impure motives and vile attitudes, but Jesus’ presence with us should be changing us.

2.        2. Jesus commends faith wherever he finds it

But what about the fact that he calls this gentile woman a dog?  There might be some significance that he uses the word for a household pet rather than the word for a stray and despised street dog.  Nevertheless, it is still uncomfortable that he calls his fellows Jews children and the rest of us dogs!

This conversation would have shocked a group like the Pharisees in a very different way than it does us.  Religious Jewish men would not have spoken to a Gentile in the first place.  Neither would they have spoken to a woman in public.  Jesus broke down the social taboos of his day.

The key is to see the word ‘first’.  ‘First let the children eat all that they want …’  Here is a principle that goes all the way back to God’s promise to Abraham.  First of all, God made a promise to bless Abraham and his people, but God’s blessing was never to stop with them.  God declared that ‘in you all the families of the world will be blessed’ (Genesis 12:3).

Jesus’ earthly ministry was primarily to his fellow Jews.  But that was only the first part of his mission.  By the end of Mark’s gospel, we will see that it is a Roman centurion who declares, ‘surely this is the Son of God’ (15:39).  The reason I am certain that Jesus is no sexist or racist man is that while in the previous passage he calls out the spiritual dullness of his male Jewish disciples (7:18), here he commends the faith of a gentile woman for Tyre.

3.       3. The faith that leads to cleansing is marked by racial and personal humility

The thing that is most striking in the faith of this woman is its sheer humility.  I think that she is the only person in Mark’s gospel recorded as calling Jesus ‘Lord.’  ‘Lord, even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs’ (28).

How would you reply to you and your people being referred to as dogs?  How would you respond to the suggestion that your people might not be first in line for God’s blessing?  She neither sees the need to defend her people or defend herself.  

Nothing wrong with loving your country, but if you think that your nationality makes you somehow superior to others you are sadly mistaken.  As for us, Jesus has said that he has not come for the self-righteous but those who know they are sinners (Mark 2:17).  The Jewish 'children' and the Gentile 'dogs' were equally undeserving.  Those who think they are clean will never seek to be washed.

These words are echoed in what has traditionally been referred to as the Prayer of Humble Access.  In the church I grew up in, when the Lord’s Supper was being celebrated, we said together. ‘We do not presume to come to this your table, merciful Lord, trusting in any goodness of our own, but in your manifold grace and mercy.  We are not worthy even to gather up the crumbs under this your table. But it is in your nature always to have mercy, and on this we depend.’

That attitude of humble faith should not be reserved for when we share the communion, it should be our continuous stance before Jesus.  We are not worthy, but we can trust him to be gracious.  Knowing ourselves should keep us from pride, knowing him should fill us with confidence.

Conclusion

Philip Yancy writes about growing up as a white person in the American south in the 1950s and 60s.  He said that it led him quite naturally into racism.  That racism was seen in the fundamentalist churches he attended.  In one of those churches a black family began to attend.  The father was the respected dean of a local seminary.  But when the man applied to have his child enrolled in the church’s kindergarten his application was denied. 

When a well-meaning member asked at the next open meeting if it was the policy of the church to exclude from membership and from its school Black brothers and sisters in Christ, the question was met with embarrassed silence, and finally the red-faced chair brought the meeting to a close.  The church didn’t mind a few well-behaved Black people attending.  They just couldn’t become members or enrol in the school.  Unfortunately, the Christian church has often failed on both race and its treatment of women.  But we have seen that Jesus is different.

We have an opportunity to show the world that Jesus is making us different.  In the eleven years that I have had the privilege to serve this church as pastor we have had people from over forty-two nationalities in attendance (and from within those nationalities have been some differing people groups).  In a world marked by tribalism we can live as a family of brothers and sisters from everywhere, cleansed and united by Jesus.

Be humble about your own people.   Many years ago, one author said that the problem with the Irish is that we are not good at forgiving.  I think that is true.  But I think that particular fault does not belong to us alone.   But most importantly be humble about yourself. 

We come before our merciful God and declare simply declare with Isaiah, ‘I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips’ (Isaiah 6:6).  And he responds to those who call on him with such humble hearts, ‘though your sins be as red as scarlet, I shall make them as white as snow’ (Isaiah 1:18).  Be clean!