Say What?
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SAY WHAT?
The Rev. J. Donald Waring
Grace Church in New York
The Sixteenth Sunday after Pentecost
September 8, 2024
And (Jesus) said to her, “Let the children first be fed, for it is not right to take the children’s bread and throw it to the dogs.” (Mark 7:27)
Last month I read in the news that Jack Palmer, from the state of Maine, had died at the age of 86. Who was Jack Palmer? Well, back in 2012, Palmer’s favorite local restaurant hired him and his wife to help them film a TV commercial. All they had to do was enthuse over the tasty chicken pot pie, and attest that it was “baked in a buttery, flaky, crust.” But Jack Palmer simply could not nail the phrase. He flubbed the line again and again, saying “buttery, crispy, crust,” and “buttery flavored crust,” When his wife tried it she said, “Baked in a buttery, crispy, fight.” Apparently, it took forty takes before they finally got it right. The restaurant posted the outtakes on the internet, and the video went viral, chalking up millions of views and turning Jack Palmer into a minor celebrity. Even Saturday Night Live did a parody of it, starring the comedians Will Ferrell and Kate McKinnon.
A similar sort of thing may have happened to President John F. Kennedy. This time it involved not a chicken pot pie, but a jelly doughnut. In June of 1963, relations between the Russians and the Americans were especially frigid. Kennedy was speaking at the Berlin Wall to assure the West Berliners that we would not abandon them if the Russians were to invade. The speech has gone down in history as one of Kennedy’s finest moments, in which he declared to a gathering of 450,000 people, “Today, in the world of freedom, the proudest boast is ‘Ich bin ein Berliner!’” “Ich bin ein Berliner” is a German sentence by which Kennedy meant to say, “I am a Berliner; I am one of you.” But some attest that Kennedy flubbed the line. Kennedy should have said, “Ich bin Berliner,” which would have been a more accurate translation for “I am a person of Berlin,” or, “I am a citizen of Berlin.”
Apparently, in the city of Berlin the word “Berliner” can refer to a citizen of Berlin, or a type of jelly-filled German pastry. The distinguishing factor is the presence or not of the indefinite article. A Berliner is the pastry, while Berliner alone refers to the person. Linguists are still arguing over this one, but the legend persists that at a critical moment of the cold war, the leader of the free world stood at the Berlin Wall, stared down the Russians, and declared, “I am a jelly doughnut!”
Some say that a similar sort of thing may have happened to Jesus of Nazareth in the region of Tyre and Sidon. Jesus had retreated into Gentile territory because relations between himself and the scribes and the Pharisees of his own Jewish people had grown especially frigid. Jesus needed some time away from the tension, so he made arrangements for a house where no one could find him. Unfortunately, his reputation preceded him. A Gentile woman entered the house unannounced and told him of her little daughter, who was so ill, so emotionally disturbed, that the only possible explanation was demon possession. She begged Jesus to heal the girl. What Jesus said in repy puzzles and shocks us: “Let the children first be fed, for it is not right to take the children’s bread and throw it to the dogs.”
Say what? Did gentle Jesus, meek and mild, really call the poor woman a dog? What on earth could he have meant? Biblical scholars and commentators have been arguing over this one for two-thousand years. Some say the problem is in the translation from the Aramaic that Jesus spoke, to the Greek that Mark wrote, to the English that we read. They say that the Greek word Mark uses for dog actually means puppy (as if that’s actually going to get Jesus off the hook). What is more, Jesus said “throw it to the puppies,” not, “throw it to dogs.” What’s the difference? As you can plainly see, the inclusion of the definite article the means that it was a known and loved set of puppies. Thus, Jesus was implying that the Gentiles were members of God’s household as well as the Jews. He was actually complimenting the woman. Do the verbal gymnastics and the tortured reasoning persuade you? They don’t convince me, and I don’t imagine you buy into them either. So others speculate that Jesus must have said what he did with a loving tone to his voice, and a twinkle in his eye. He was having a humorous dialogue with the woman.
Not so, say others. Enough with the whitewashing and spinning of Jesus’ unenlightened comment. The kindest thing we can say is that he flubbed the line. He was simply caught off guard when he was overtired and he misspoke. It was like the late-night email you sent that you wish you could take back, or the voice mail you left that in retrospect you’d like now to erase. Here we are, late in a presidential election year, and you can be sure that in preparation for Tuesday’s debate, both teams have been scouring the records for any politically suspect or personally compromising words from the opposing candidate. The candidates themselves may be wishing they could take back something they said, or claiming that they never said it at all. I don’t believe that Yogi Berra, the famous Yankee catcher, ever ran for office. But one time, later in his life, when he was presented with the great volume of humorous misquotes he was known to utter, he replied, “I never said half the things I said.”
Likewise, some Biblical scholars argue that Jesus would have looked at those words in red in your New Testament and declared, “I never said half the things I said.” Or, he simply would have wished he could take back certain statements, like today’s regrettable quote. But it was here, say the commentators, that the Gentile woman whom Jesus had just called a dog, came to the rescue. She replied, “Yes, Lord; yet even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs.” What happened, some say, is that the woman’s witness changed Jesus. She saved him. She redeemed him. Whereas before Jesus was perfectly willing to write off and keep out everything and everyone judged as unclean by the thousand little laws of Jewish ritual purity, now after being taken to school by the woman, he was on a new, more enlightened path.
I believe it’s possible to take a different, perhaps more realistic and helpful look at this puzzling incident in the ministry of Jesus. It is true that the walls of hostility between Jews and Gentiles were firmly built. Also, I have no reason to doubt that the Gentile woman’s entry into the house took Jesus by surprise. But the problem with the theory that she somehow opened Jesus’ eyes to a new way is this: according to the chronology of the Gospels, he was already on that new way, and forcefully teaching it. Immediately before today’s passage, Mark tells us how Jesus challenged the absurdity of the notion that certain foods were unclean and would defile the person who ate them. It’s not what goes into the stomach that defiles a person, be it a chicken-pot pie or a jelly doughnut. Rather, it’s what resides in the heart and comes from within that defiles. Today it’s not Gentile food going into the stomach but a Gentile woman coming into the house. Are we seriously to believe that Jesus relaxed the laws of ritual purity regarding food, but tightened them when it came to people? Either Jesus was a hypocrite, or he had another agenda in mind. Obviously, I believe the latter is the case. Something else was going on there.
I ask you: who else might have been in the house? Who was there to witness the scene, and hear what Jesus said so that Mark could later record it? The answer is obvious: the disciples were there. The twelve whom he had been teaching about what and who were clean and unclean were there. It seems plausible that when the Gentile woman surprised them all by entering the house, Jesus seized on the opportunity to further the lesson he’d already been teaching. It’s as if he were thinking, “O.K. boys, it’s time for an evening at the improv. Let’s put our Jewish laws of ritual purity on the stage. Let’s treat this Gentile woman as the scribes and the Pharisees would have us treat her and experience in real time how that works out for all of us. Let’s see what really defiles: this Gentile woman begging for her daughter’s healing, or these words coming out of my mouth that I know are on your hearts.” And so, taking on the character of a ritually pure Jewish male, Jesus said in reply to her plea, “Let the children first be fed, for it is not right to take the children’s bread and throw it to the dogs.”
How would the woman respond? I don’t think Jesus knew for sure. Such is the nature of improvisation. But the disciples – the primary, intended audience of the exchange – heard her say, “Yes, Lord; yet even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs.” I have no doubt that Jesus was impressed with her answer. She nailed the line. But I also think Jesus was inclined to heal her daughter no matter what she said. Was it fair to draft the woman into the drama, unsuspecting as she was? My guess is that she would have declared that the means absolutely justified the end. At the end of the day, her daughter was healed.
Where do you find yourself in the story? If you take the Bible to be God’s inspired Word, and thirst for the riches it has to impart, then one way to drink deeply is to step into its scenes. Usually, the safest bet as to where we’re supposed to find ourselves in the Gospels is in the role of the disciples themselves: the ones receiving the teachings of Jesus, and then going out in the world to put them in practice. The clear context of today’s reading is the hostility between Jew and Gentile, between races and peoples, between rich and poor. When the woman entered the house, Jesus already had been hammering away at his disciples – trying to pound into their heads the teaching that the dividing walls we build between us and the distinctions we draw are not of God. It is always time for these walls to come down. So the question for you and me is: what small steps toward reconciliation should we be taking? And with whom?
On the other hand, perhaps you dare to take on the role of the Gentile woman in today’s reading. If so, be prepared for God to use you in strange ways. God’s calling is unpredictable, and comes without explanation. As with the woman, you enter a scene for your own purposes, and you find yourself drafted into another drama entirely, with no script to follow. “Stand there,” somebody says. “Sit at my feet,” says somebody else. How will you respond? Life in Christ is like a night at the improv, and God wants to use the decisions you make and the lines you deliver for his own good purposes. What shall we say of God’s purposes? The Gentile woman, who played her part with humility and grace, and went home to find her daughter healed – she would be the first to tell us that God’s purposes include all the blessings of heaven: blessings that surpass all that we can ask for or imagine.
In today’s Old Testament reading, the prophet Isaiah (35:4-7), filled with the Spirit of God, tried to imagine heaven. The blind shall see, the deaf shall hear, the lame shall leap like a deer, and the mute shall sing for joy. Also, he described heaven as a feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wines, of rich food filled with marrow, of well aged wines strained clear. Jesus will be at the head of the table, and I can imagine the one who said “I am the bread of life,” saying, “I am a jelly doughnut.” Say what? Think about it. I am one with you.
As for Jack Palmer, in one of his many outtakes, he declared, “I have faith God serves chicken pot pie in heaven.” If so, you can be sure that the heavenly chicken-pot pie will be baked in a buttery, flaky, crust.