Shall we be merciful? [A sermon preview]

“Now the woman was a Gentile, a Syrophoenician by birth. And she begged him to cast the demon out of her daughter.And he said to her, “Let the children be fed first, for it is not right to take the children’s bread and throw it to the dogs.”” (Mark 7:26–27)

As they are traveling to a home in Tyre, a woman begins to follow them, begging Jesus to help her poor daughter who is under the oppression of an evil spirit. Jesus, though, does not answer her. She continues to ask even as they make camp at a home in the region. Matthew's account of this healing includes Jesus' silence at her first request (she asked repeatedly). And Matthew also includes the disciples' desire to send her away, just as they desired to send away the crowds of five thousand. The disciples of Jesus do not seem to much understand his ministry. In the feeding of the thousands, the calming of the winds, the food cleanliness rules, and now this woman's neediness--the disciples are confused about what Jesus is doing. The need for the disciples to be taught may account for the reason Jesus was trying to find a place away from the crowds by going to a region well known for its pagan worship. Their dismissal of this woman provides the proper moment for Jesus to speak. And he says something that Bible readers and Bible scholars have wrestled to understand: I cannot take food for the children and give it to dogs. It is a shocking thing to read. Shocking in part because there is really no way to make "dog" a flattering way to refer to a woman. But more shocking because this woman is looking for God's mercy and we've learned that Jesus is the only one we can count on in our world, who meets the need for mercy with mercy.

There's no evidence of social transformation for this woman. Jesus does not publicly elevate her as he regularly does with poor, disenfranchised, outsiders. The woman is not invited to be a disciple. Mercy received from God is, itself, enough of a transformative movement. That's because mercy in our world either in-debts the recipient or wounds the giver. It creates an imbalance that must be corrected: I give and now you must somehow even my scale. It is exactly this dynamic, of how to manage the accounting, that helps us understand Jesus' words to this desperate woman.

He calls her a dog, but the word Jesus uses is not the street mongrel which is abused and dangerous, but rather one which is a pet of the household. This, of course, does not remove our modern objections! But this is merely the beginning of the discussion. The woman catches Jesus' point and expands on his language. Now she changes Jesus' word for children. Her word is broader, speaking of child as one growing up, a disciple, a child, a family member of a kingdom. She picks up the household language and expands it to include people who receive the blessing of the household. Her point was to emphasize not the privilege of the biological children but the generosity of a home where all members are little and in need of the blessing of the master. Her point is that whether sitting at the table or under it, we are, all of us, house dogs eating under the table. There are none who deserve to be fed from the mercy of God. And so it is the unmerited faithfulness of God to his own promise that will gather house dogs to flourish beneath his covenant with Israel. When mercy is so abundant to the undeserving, there will be leftovers.

Erica Kirk spoke at her husband's memorial before ninety thousand last Sunday. Her husband, Charlie Kirk, was murdered in the middle of a speaking tour where he sought to engage college students in debate often using biblical principles to defend his position. She publicly forgave his killer. Some I'm sure were unaffected by it, being so hardened by their politics that even the most powerful moments are harvested for votes. But one thing is unmistakably true, whether you believe in the power of forgiveness or not: It is beyond question that by forgiving this man publicly she risked comforting her husband's killer. A moment like this is bewildering for the world. I can imagine the words, I forgave him, would have been stuck in my throat. I'd like to think they would have made it out of my mouth but I may have hated every minute. It was a moment of great public faith. It was an extraordinary act of humanity, but also a fairly ordinary act of Christian mercy.

The difficulty of mercy is the reason for Jesus' difficult parable. We cannot extend mercy because we do not have the internal resources that keep mercy from destroying us or indebting others. So we choose an alternative. Instead of forgiving the thoughtless spouse we tell them its okay but freeze them out. Instead of visiting the grieving friend we send a text. Instead of welcoming the outsider of any kind, the person from the wrong place with the wrong beliefs or the wrong point of view, we seek to destroy or defeat instead of persuade. We give nothing at all to the little dogs, if we can help it. If we are not challenged regularly by the demand of mercy for the undeserving then we may be no more in line with Christianity than the disciples were as they tried to send away the inconveniently needy. Still, in fairness, a person cannot give what they have not received. Our distaste for mercy may be because we've never known the mercy of God. Jesus must first widen his mercy before we can extend it ourselves.

This woman, Jesus, and the disciples, explored the depths of the mercy of God together. The woman confirms that it is Jesus' faithfulness to his own promise, to deliver his people from sin and death, that compels his mercy toward her and the world. She came to Jesus having lost her daughter. She was looking for a healing, but she left with a daughter restored and a place in God's family. What she may or may not have known was that the bread which would be given to the children and thrown to the dogs, was Jesus himself. It's the atonement which provides for every debt heaped up by human mercy to be paid by divine mercy. The Cross must kill that debt, or mercy will kill us instead.  

Jimmy Kimmel, the late-night talk show host who was at the center of controversy for his response to the news of Charlie Kirk's murder and the politicization of it, was temporarily suspended from his show. Upon his return he mentioned Erika Kirk's forgiveness of Charlie's murderer. A move Kimmel called central to the teaching of Jesus Christ. Kimmel praised Erika's example. And in doing so he risked comforting those who tried to have him fired. The key in this of course is that Jimmy did not have to comfort his critics directly. And Erika did not have to share the room of her killer when she forgave him. As the Syrian woman asked for Jesus to feed the dogs by the children's bread she was speaking to the one directly who would be the bread for her, and cast out and spread around for a hungry world.

For this Syrian he became Syrian. For the dogs he became a dog, but the harder one, the street dog, the one who must be put down. There were many speaking the name of Christ in that memorial. Some honestly, perhaps others with an aim, a policy change, an opportunity. Only Erika could speak to the name of Christ mercifully, because she was the only one who was risking further loss from a place of loss. She spoke it with the life and breath of Jesus himself, who having emptied himself in the incarnation, became rejected and cursed on the Cross. It is this alone which provides a way for Erika to say to the one who made her a widow and her children orphans: the crumbs have fallen to the floor, and me with it, but the crumbs are enough for me and I believe if you will sit under that same table, there will be food enough for you too. 

The need of mercy is not always the high profile thing. Mercy is for the struggles even in our own homes, to deal kindly with the person who can give us nothing but their culpability. Who cannot make us well for what they've done. It's for the locker room, the court room, the hospital room. It's for the arena where the world has long given up on any outcome but winning and losing. Without the mercy of God we cannot love the unlovely without indebting them or embittering us. Without the mercy of God every relationship has strings attached; scorekeeping is inevitable and the world is divided into those who cost us and those who benefit us, and the accounting will keep us up at night. There's a living and a dying that happens every time a victim forgives her victimizer or whenever you refuse to even the score. Jesus will you be merciful? If the food cast to the children of Israel will be enough for the whole world, for the little dogs, Jesus will have to be the bread cast out for it to happen. Shall we be merciful? We will have to go eat the mercy of God to see.

Oh Lord be merciful to us. In our daily conflicts and the accounts we keep, would you remind us that the greater debt is paid? It is one thing to hear it and agree with it, but the work of mercy has a bitter taste. Be near to us in our struggle to believe and in the fear that you will not even the score in your time. Free us from pride that would let us forget how mercy is undeserved, ours above all. And may we rest in the arms of a God who calls the undeserving his very own beloved daughter, and his very own beloved son. May our repentance lead others to see you by the way we forgive, love, heal, say we're sorry, give of what we have, and share our tables.