Mark, Day Eleven

Mark 7:24-37

• Oh no - this is the passage where Jesus seems horribly rude, and I just can't explain that away.  He enters a house, hoping to escape the crowd's notice, but of course, he doesn't escape.  Maybe that explains some of his snippiness - he's just plain tired and wants to be alone for a while.  Instead, a Gentile woman comes to him to ask him to heal (cast out a demon, actually) her daughter.  As far as I know, this is the first definitely Gentile (rather than Jewish) person who has requested Jesus' help.  And Jesus does not respond nicely, instead calling her a dog (because she's not Jewish).  Really, Jesus?  Really?!? 
• But the woman doesn't run from him.  She persists, saying "even the dogs under the table eat the children's crumbs" (v. 28, NRSV).  So even dogs can claim some small help, some small blessing.  Though she's not asking for a small blessing.  And because of her words, Jesus heals her daughter.
• Now, I've heard people try to explain this as Jesus testing the woman or trying to prove some point to the people he's with.  But it seems unnecessarily harsh and insulting just to prove a point.  From a man whose life is one of love, whose harsh words are usually reserved for the hypocritical religious elite.  It just seems rude and hurtful.  The only way this makes sense to me is to remember that Jesus is a man.  A God-man, yes, but still a man.  A man who wasn't born knowing all the secrets of the world (because he's a man with a man's brain so he couldn't hold all those secrets in his head).  A man who was raised in a particular family in a particular community in a particular culture.  And even though he challenges many of the ideas of his community, it still played a part in forming him.  So Jesus is learning as he grows and goes.  And maybe he needed this woman to challenge him to help him see that God's blessing is even for Gentiles.  What strikes me now is that Jesus listened to this woman.  He didn't just dismiss her from his presence.  He listened and learned.  Even when he was tired and didn't feel like it. 
• And then after healing the Gentile woman's daughter, he travels to another town and heals a man who couldn't talk (and maybe couldn't hear well).  And the more he tells people not to talk about this stuff, the more they do.