I’ve been reflecting on Jesus’ encounter with the Syrophoenician women. It turns all my expectations on their heads, and each time I revisit it it offers me a new challenge to reflect on. I expect Jesus to be kind loving and accepting of those who ask his help regardless of their backgrounds, to welcome the outsider and the stranger. In this passage Mark presents a different Jesus, at least at its beginning. When the woman, clearly a foreigner, first approaches him his reaction is to turn her away in a manner that must have caused offence, saying to her:
“It is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the house-dogs.”
The woman could have gone away at that point, hurt and rejected, but she didn’t. Courage or desperation compelled her. She stayed and argued with Jesus until she changed his mind:
“‘Ah yes, Sir, she replied, ‘but the house-dogs under the table can eat the children’s scraps.'”
Her courage in standing her ground and arguing her case is transforming for her and for Jesus. She makes him see things from a new perspective and he changes his mind, saying to her:
‘For saying this, you may go home happy: the devil has gone of of your daughter.’
It’s left me reflecting on how we respond to people who we perceive as “other”. Our temptation is generally to turn away, to block them or disregard their opinions and experience. This gospel suggests another way, that we take the time to bridge the gap between us, to listen to their perspective, and to risk allowing that to change us.
Where are you being challenged to listen to another’s perspective today?