Pentecost 15B/lectionary 23; Text: Mark 7:24-37
sermon by Rev. Robert Klonowski
Faith Lutheran Church, Homewood, IL
September 5, 2021
Jesus, the Teacher, Gets Schooled
In the gospel lesson this morning Jesus takes a little trip. He leaves his Jewish homeland and travels to the region of Tyre, which is a Gentile area. In the region of Tyre he encounters a woman, and this Gentile woman takes Jesus to school.
In a certain way this should not surprise us, for Jesus is a teacher, and where else would we find a teacher but in school? Many, many times in the gospels Jesus is addressed as “Rabbi,” the Hebrew word for teacher. Remember that one of those times is the appearance of the resurrected Jesus in the gospel of John, where Mary Magdalene finds Jesus in the garden and the very first word that she says to him when she recognizes her resurrected Lord is Rabbouni, teacher. Those of you who are teachers, whether Sunday School teachers or teachers in our community schools or preschools or colleges, remember always that this ennobles your calling. If you are a teacher you are nothing less than a reflection and an embodiment of the resurrected new life of Christ to us.
But when I say that in this morning’s gospel lesson this Gentile woman takes Jesus to school, well, who’s the teacher in this story? The woman comes to Jesus and begs him to cast out the demon from her sick daughter. And Jesus brushes her off: “The children of Israel will be fed first, I’ve got to make the message clear to them first, and then I’ll get around to the Gentile dogs.” It’s a rough, rough line coming here from the mouth of our Lord; a rough line that is rude and refusing. And Jesus tries that line … on a mother bear with a wounded cub.
He tries that line on a woman of persevering and magnificent spirit.
He tries that line on a woman who has deep faith in the promise he’s made, that the Kingdom of God has now come near.
He tries that line on the wrong woman!
And, boy, she takes Jesus to school. “Sir,” she challenges him, “even the dogs under the table get the children’s crumbs.”
Sir, she challenges him, isn’t it true that the abundance of what God provides is such that the table you’re talking about can’t hold it all; isn’t it true that there is plenty for all, for children of Israel and for all the other children of God?
Sir, she challenges him, isn’t it true that the food of God is such that even a crumb, even the merest little round poker chip of a wafer that comes to us from the table of God, isn’t it true that that little crumb suffices to bring us everlasting, eternal new life?
Sir, she challenges him, isn’t it true that just three or four verses ago in this chapter of Mark, earlier in this very chapter where now my story meets yours, isn’t it true that you just said that nothing from the outside, no human distinction, nothing about Gentile versus Jew can ever make us unclean?
Sir, she challenges him, isn’t it true that the Kingdom of God has come near? And if that’s true, Rabbi, teacher, then let me ask you: Has the Kingdom of God come near … to me? Has the Kingdom of God come near – to me? She looks him in the eye with all this and slowly shakes her head at him. I may be Gentile dog to you – I’m not going to argue with you about that – but I’m saying, whether I’m dog or not: You just heal my daughter – because that’s who you are.
And Jesus? Jesus concedes the point, and loses the argument. “For saying that,” he finally replies, “you may go, the demon has left your daughter.” The woman takes Jesus to school, and Jesus learns his lesson. Not only that, but Jesus learns his lesson so well that the next thing he does, the second half of our gospel lesson this morning, we are told that Jesus goes to the region of the Decapolis – another Gentile region! – and there he heals a deaf man. With the deaf man you notice Jesus doesn’t try again that line about Gentile dogs; as I say, Jesus has learned his lesson! And from there, still in the Decapolis, he feeds 4000 people, presumably mostly Gentiles. As he feeds the 4000 I’m imagining Jesus remembering that Gentile woman: Yeah, thinking to himself: just like she said, the table can’t contain all the food, the blessing, that God provides. The excess spills over—do you remember the story of the feeding of the multitude? Baskets and baskets of leftovers! – the excess spills over for all, even now.
Now I’ve got to tell you that while what I’ve described here is indeed what the story says, I am very uncomfortable with this idea of Jesus being taken to school. I mean, if we say that Jesus is God, then how can we say that he’s learning on the job? Wouldn’t someone who is God himself be as unchangeable as God?
But I came to some resolution of this when I spoke about it this story with a couple of people in my life who are teachers. See, I did extensive research for the sermon this week!
The first person, who teaches at the college level, I talked to over dinner on Friday evening. He told me, you can’t be a good teacher if the teacher/student relationship is adversarial, as all to often it is these days. No; teaching is a mutual endeavor; it works best if the teacher and the student are learning, together. The best teaching takes place not when I’m lecturing or grading, he said, but when I’m in dialog with my students, when they engage me in authentic give-and-take. I think that means that if Jesus is going to be for us the perfect rabbi, teacher, then he has to show us he’s going to learn. Jesus changing his mind on this question is not imperfection on his part; that’s what it means to be a good teacher!
The second person I talked to, a retired elementary school teacher, also thought I am way off base with my discomfort and concern about Jesus being taken to school. “Are you kidding me?” she said to me, in way that let me know that, just like Jesus!, I had tried my line on the wrong woman. “I used to love it,” she said, “when the kids came to me with something I didn’t know, or brought me to see something in a different way. That’s when I knew that I’d taught them to be full members of the learning community.
“That’s what a good teacher does, Bob. A kid is not just somebody we’re teaching at, and not just somebody, in spite of the way those school regulations are moving, not just somebody who would produce numerical results on some standardized test. A good teacher is teaching them to be full members of the community.”
And listening to that it came to my mind, that is exactly what the woman in our gospel story is teaching to Jesus: she teaches him that Gentile though she is, dog he may call her, but she claims her place as full member of the community of the Kingdom of God. Jesus learns his lesson, but that does not make him an imperfect teacher; not by any means! Quite the opposite; it proves what a good teacher he is, for one good teacher will recognize another, when he sees her. A good teacher will always learn his lesson.