Dog food
Monday, Dec. 2
Mark 7:24 – 8:26 Click here to read
There is a difference between “nice” and “good.”
It’s like the famous quotation from C.S. Lewis in “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.” Speaking of Aslan the lion, one of the characters says, “‘Course he isn’t safe. But he’s good. He’s the king, I tell you.”
In the Chronicles of Narnia series, Aslan is a symbol for Jesus, and this quotation reveals much about Lewis’s theology, which is written about more directly in several of his nonfiction books.
A “good” person (or lion or messiah) is not safe to be around if you are evil or disobedient, as Aslan, like Jesus, is a destroyer of wickedness.
“Goodness” and “niceness” also don’t always go together. The nicest people can be those who are flatterers who seek to deceive and take advantage. A good person will not deceive simply in order to avoid offense or hurt.
Today’s reading has one of the harshest things Jesus is recorded as saying—something that can sound even mean and petty.
When a foreign woman asks Jesus to heal her daughter, Jesus responds, “First let the children eat all they want, for it is not right to take the children’s bread and toss it to the dogs.”
The woman perceives (quite correctly) that Jesus is dismissing her as a dog because of her non-Jewish origins—remember this was a day when dogs were viewed as dirty scavengers, not pets or members of the family as in our day. This isn’t the preferred Sunday-school picture of Jesus.
She neatly turns his dismissal into a compelling claim: if she is nothing more than a dog, shouldn’t she be able to do what dogs do and clean up the scraps the children have rejected. (You weren’t the first kid to slip broccoli to the family dog during a meal, you know!)
This sounds like banter, but reveals a surprisingly deep understanding of Jesus’s message. His message is about the overwhelming abundance of God’s love and mercy. Maybe the chosen people are God’s favored group, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t plenty left over for everyone else.
God’s provision, like his love, doesn’t have to be rationed. Spreading his love to a wider and wider circle doesn’t mean there’s less left for the first recipients. And this Greek woman from the part of Phoenicia controlled by Syria understands that better than most of the Jews Jesus is trying to reach.
This love may come with no preconditions, but it has consequences. In 8:15, Jesus warns of the yeast of the Pharisees and of Herod—looking in the wrong place for truth can lead to bad consequences. His words are sometimes harsh, but his grace is boundless.
Most of us are not from among God’s chosen people by ancestry, but by faith. All of us would fail any admission test based on merit. Before we dare to consider anyone as deserving to be outside of God’s family, we need to remember that we also don’t deserve to be here—only his grace let us in.