For many years my family lived in Swaziland, a small southern African country, working at a school with individuals representing over fifty nationalities and most of the world's major faith traditions. I followed this with three years of education toward a degree in Biblical studies in a community of nine seminaries. I entered these experiences in the same frame of mind that most enter Bible study—with highly trained habits of seeing the Bible from one perspective. I came to feel like a traveler who finds that some of the "vestments" originally packed are not so useful in a new climate. But this was not altogether bad, because after putting those aside, I found that what remained were the true essentials, complemented by the discovery of new resources both in myself and in the new community.
A vital step toward caring for others is coming to "see" and include them.
I brought to my international and seminary experiences the essentials—the truths that I had learned in Christian Science. My discovery of new resources came as I witnessed how divine Love is working in lives very different from my own. Recognizing this and appreciating it required of me a process involving self-immolation, love of mercy, tolerance, patience, and dependency on and trust in God. What was awakened in me was new in my "suitcase"—a much deeper understanding of the inclusiveness inherent in the "Christian" nature of my religion and how it functions in relation to the "Science."
A simple passage in Matthew (14:14) has elements of this same process. "And Jesus went forth, and saw a great multitude, and was moved with compassion toward them, and he healed their sick." First he ventures forth. As he does so, he sees people; they come into his view. That's a vital step toward caring for others—coming to "see" and include them.
Before we examine what happens next, though, let's have a look at a significant encounter Jesus had that helps us understand more deeply the transformational process that occurs as others come into fuller view for us. It's a story in which we find Jesus withdrawing from the public for a while in a Canaanite area near Tyre and Sidon, "but he could not be hid." See Mark 7:24-30 and Matt. 15:21-28. Passages are quoted from the king James Version (KJV) or the New revised Standard Version (NRSV). A Syrophoenician "Greek" woman, learning that Jesus was near, sought him out, fell at his feet, and begged help for her child. What followed meant so much to certain early Christian communities that they preserved this story long enough for it to become a permanent part of two of our gospels.
To all those present, the woman behaved scandalously. A strange woman from an idolatrous household, she had found her way into a private setting and had spoken without invitation. Custom would declare her "unclean," as she was affected by the unclean spirit" of her child. According to Matthew, the disciples wish to send her away. What really catches our attention, though, is that Jesus seems to agree! In words that sound severe even today, he says, "Let the children be fed first, for it is not fair to take the children's food and throw it to the dogs."
Why was Jesus remembered as having spoken with this particular choice of words? It is hard for us to imagine 2000 years later just how deep was the cultural chasm between a Gentile woman and a teacher of Israel, whose prophet Joel had cried: "What are you to me, O Tyre and Sidon, and all the regions of Philistia? . . . You have sold the people of Judah and Jerusalem to the Greeks." Joel 3:4, 6 ; also see Ex. 22:31 (NRSV). Yet driven by her need and breaking very strong social boundaries, this woman crossed that gulf by restructuring the derogatory image handed her by Jesus' words. "Sir, even the dogs under the table eat the children's crumbs."
Jesus told her to go home, where she would find her daughter well. Why was her little one healed? "For this saying go thy way . . . ." Today's feminist scholars would say she had offered Jesus a "counter text." Using the same words as Jesus, she had presented him with a clear indication of her faith and willingness to be taught, and Jesus acknowledged the validity of this.
To some degree, Jesus' ministry was framed by his own Jewish community. His first need was for the revitalization of the "revolutionary" spiritual ideas rooted within their own long-held tradition. But this outsider had a deeply felt need of her own that compelled her to give Jesus a worthwhile reason to listen to her plea. And that worthwhile reason seems somehow intimately connected with a need that exists even today to acknowledge for women, and others outside our traditional religious boundaries, the legitimacy of the direct, visible engagement that they seek with Christ.
In speaking of the woman, one Biblical scholar writes: "Her gift was not the submission or obedience seen as appropriate for women in her society, but rather the gift of sharp insight—the particular insight of the poor and outcast who can see through a situation because they have few illusions to defend. Her gift was also the gift of courage—the courage of those who have little more to lose and therefore can act in commitment and from faith on behalf of others, for the sake of life, wholeness, and liberation." Sharon H. Ringe, "A Gentile Woman's Story," Feminist interpretation of the Bible, Letty M. Russell, ed. (Philadelphia: The Westminiser Press, 1985), pp. 71-72 . It seems to me that Mary Baker Eddy would have understood this woman, considering the depths that she sometimes plumbed as she sought spiritually derived solutions by turning alone, humbly and tenaciously, to the healing and leading Christ she found in the Bible.
Jesus himself had a precedent going all the way back to Abraham that worked in the Greek woman's favor. When God called Abraham to venture forth to a land still unknown, God promised to make him a great people. Why? ". . .so that you will effect blessing. . . . So, then, all the families of the earth can gain a blessing in you." Gen. 12:2,3. This is a translation by German scholar Hans Walter Wolff in Walter Brueggemann and Hans Walter Wolff, "The Kerygma of the Yahwist," The Vitality of Old Testament Traditions, 2nd ed. (Atlanta: John Knox Press, 1982), p. 46. The prophet Isaiah beautifully encapsulates this vision of God's plan of salvation for all humanity: "I will give you as a light to the nations, that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth." Isa. 49:6 (NRSV). The Apostle Paul would refer back to the universal nature of Abraham's calling when making the case for equal citizenship of the Gentiles within the new Jesus Movement (a description some present-day scholars use for Jesus' early followers). Paul was recognizing the faith of his new converts as a direct fulfillment of Abraham's legacy. see Gal. 3:6-9 ; Rom., chap. 4.
One could say that there was yet another reason why Jesus came equipped that day in Tyre to respond to the Greek woman. Throughout Jewish history, there had been the simultaneous passing on of tradition and the development of new and conflicting influences. Prophets like Isaiah and Jeremiah became teachers who wrote down new texts of their own. Frequently these texts would break with tradition rather than preserve it.
The woman presented Jesus with a clear indication of her faith.
The religious learning environment of Jewish antiquity was an arena for revelation of new as well as preservation of old. Needless to say, this did not encourage a tidy sense of order or peace. Sometimes a prophet would write down or teach something that surprised even himself. Could this be what happened to Jesus? The Greek woman's "rereading" of Jesus' response must have had a profound effect. Not only was the result the healing of her daughter, but the exchange is said "in the long run to have opened the way for Jesus' (and the church's) mission beyond the Jewish community." Ringe, p. 65 . Just a generation later, by the time of the Gospel writers, an influx of Gentile converts had become engrafted See Paul's commentary in Rom. 11:13-24 onto the Jewish roots of early Christianity.
In our own era, as we enter a new millennium, there is again emerging a wide diversity of individuals and communities seeking to "sit down at the table" and share their approaches with the more mainline Bible scholars and churches. These less-established or long silenced voices of Biblical interpretation, including the feminist, "liberation theology" and non-Western approaches have often had the same indomitable spirit of Jesus' Greek visitor—arriving at the door the Christian story, vigorously offering a fresh view to the more traditional Bible-based communities.
Perhaps our response can be just like Jesus' when he "went forth, and saw a great multitude, and was moved with compassion toward them, and he healed their sick." Jesus sees the multitude, and there is something in him that moves him "toward them." Compassion happens. Transformation is taking place on both sides of the exchange. The word translated Compassion comes from Hebrew root associated with womb. phyllis A. Bird, "Women (OT)," The Anchor Bible Dictionary, Vol. 6, David Noel Freedman, ed. (NY: Doubleday, 1992), p. 954 . It is deeply feminine, connected with the roles of Biblical women who cared for the weak and young, who were traditionally present at births and deaths, such as those mourning at the foot of Jesus' cross. Perhaps it is no accident that in the Gospel of John, Jesus reveals himself after his resurrection first to Mary Magdalene through her flood of tears. See John 20:11-18 .
Perhaps it is also no coincidence that Mrs. Eddy begins her chapter on "Christian Science Practice" in Science and Health with the story of the woman who comes to Jesus to perfume his feet while he is a guest of Simon the Pharisee. Could we infer that this posture of "on-your-knees" ministering love, arising from fierce caring—the way a mother cares for her child—must inform, if not call forth, our practice of religion?
On page I of Science and Health, Mrs. Eddy has a kind of summary: "Prayer, watching, and working, combined with self-immolation, are God's gracious means for accomplishing whatever has been successfully done for the Christianization and health of mankind." As I look at the book, I see "Prayer" (the first chapter) combined with self-immolation (which is well represented in the second chapter, "Atonement and Eucharist," and with themes in the third chapter, "Marriage"), as her literary way of preparing the reader for the Science that she is introducing. Mrs. Eddy named what she discovered "Christian Science," suggesting the constant need to keep in tandem the "Christian" and "Science" parts, each informing the other. In the chapter on marriage, she writes, "Every valley of sin must be exalted, and every mountain of selfishness be brought low, that the highway of our God may be prepared in Science." Science and Health, p. 61.
It is this process of self-immolation in our own lives, in the life of our churches—as perhaps in Jesus' Tyre and wilderness and Gethsemane experiences—that prepares us to be instruments of God's will. One writer observes, "The word of the cross—self-transcending love for the other to the point of death—is the very Word by which God chooses to reveal the divine love for the world." Donald Senior, C.P., The Passion of Jesus in the Gospel of John (Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press, 1991), p. 18 .
The word translated compassion is deeply feminine.
The Greek woman from Tyre somehow understood some of the essence of Jesus' mission and trusted his closeness with God to open a response to her need. We today have a chance not to be like the disciples in this story, or like Simon the Pharisee, See Luke 7:36-50 . wanting to send the women away. Jesus himself prayed, "I ask not only on behalf of these, but also on behalf of those who will believe in me through their word, . . . I in them and you in me, that they may become completely one, so that the world may know that you have sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me." John 17:20, 23 (NRSV).
