OK which is it? First we hear from James' epistle criticism for favoring one person over another. My brothers and sisters, James asks, do you really think your conduct of making distinctions among yourselves, your treating one person differently than another because they are rich, do you really believe your behavior glorifies our Lord Jesus Christ? James goes on to proclaim: “you do well if you really fulfill scripture: “you shall love your neighbor as yourself.”

So what then are we to make of this morning's gospel reading? Here Jesus seems to be engaging in the very kind of favoritism James' says is wrong—refusing to help a very sick child simply because she and her mother are not Jewish.

It's no wonder we often find scripture confusing and contradictory. On the one hand, James' is uncompromising in his assertion that making distinctions between people on the basis of their wealth violates the commandment on which all other commandments are based: “you shall love your neighbor as yourself.” And yet in the gospel story Jesus initially refuses to heal the child of a syro-phoenician woman because she is not one of the children of Israel . In all other respects her daughter is precisely the kind of person Jesus normally delights in healing.

The mother comes to Jesus begging him to do for her what he has done for so many others—cast a single demon from her daughter. Jesus' initial response is not the answer we like to think about God giving. Not only does Jesus refuse to help her, he calls the mother and her daughter by a name that is just as insulting as derogatory today as it was when he said it. Jesus calls the mother and her daughter, dogs.

I don't know about you, but I find a kind of strange comfort in the fact that Jesus' human nature shows through in this story. I also think Mark gives us an important clue in the first sentence that might give us some insight into Jesus' state of being. Mark writes: From there—there being Galilee —Jesus set out and went away to the region of Tyre .

Now if you go back a few pages in Mark's gospel you will read that Jesus has been busy healing and teaching. He fed the 5,000 walked most of the way across the sea of Galilee arriving in Gennesaret on the northwest shore where folks immediately recognize him and start bringing the sick to Jesus to heal. “Wherever he went into villages or cities or farms, they laid the sick in the marketplaces and begged Jesus to heal them” reads verse 56. In addition to all this healing, we read of Jesus keeping up a full schedule of teaching. He spars with the Pharisees ands scribes who have come from Jerusalem to check him out.

So what do you think Jesus was trying to do when he leaves Galilee and goes to the region of Tyre ? Tyre was a Phoenician seaport on the Mediterranean sea—home today of the resort city of Sour , Lebanon . You can go on the web and find beautiful pictures of the city before the last Israeli invasion. It's a resort city! A vacation city, which then and now, was an area of few Jews.

So Jesus travels to an area where there shouldn't be too many people who've heard about him, a pagan region, a place of mostly foreigners. He enters a house and does not what anyone to know he is there. Sounds to me like Jesus needed a little R & R, rest and relaxation. A little down time to recoup from the never ending demands of ministry. A little time away from it all. But what happens?

Folks find out about him. A desperate mother comes to Jesus. We know how desperate she is from Matthew's more expanded account of this story told in Matthew chapter 15. This mother is an outsider. A member of a race hated by Jews—just read the prophets Ezekiel and Joel, and you will get a taste of the bad blood between her people and Jews. The mother bows at Jesus feet and begs him to heal her daughter, and Jesus replies: “let the children, meaning the Jews, be fed first by me. For it is not fair to take what belongs to them and give it to dogs.”

Now I know the usual interpretation of these harsh words. Jesus is testing the woman's faith. He really didn't mean what he said. But I don't find that a very plausible explanation. I've been unsuccessful in finding another instance in the New Testament where Jesus puts people's faith to some kind of test before healing them. Jesus doesn't play with people. God, Jesus, doesn't toy with us. I think Jesus meant what he said, and having recently been on vacation myself after some intense weeks of pastoring, I can understand why he said what he did. You probably do too! To be constantly confronted with people who want part of you—whether it's your time, your expertise, your help, or your money. Heck you can just come here any Sunday morning and discover that out! We all have to draw the line somewhere of what we can give and what we can't. Who we can help and who we can't. And like Jesus, we may get a little testy and irritable when folks try to cross our line. Why should we think we can always respond better than Jesus?

But the woman, like a lot of mothers, isn't put off so easily. She comes right back at Jesus. She is, in the words of one commentator, pushy and determined, to claim, to get what her daughter so desperately needs. She is the only person in Mark's gospel to go toe to toe with Jesus in an argument and win. “Sir,” she says, “even the dogs under the table eat the children's crumbs.” You may think I'm a dog. You may think I'm not worthy to sit at the table with you Jews, but you can spare enough of the life you give your people to help my daughter. This mother reminds Jesus that there is more to him than he is feeling right now. That there is more to his ministry and mission, than where he might like to draw the line. Some scholars credit this pushy woman with giving Jesus the insight, the realization that he is a Messiah not just to the lost sheep of Israel , but to Jews and gentiles alike—beginning with this woman.

Now notice that Jesus doesn't respond, “you know I've seen some pretty desperate people and you take the cake.” Or, “okay, I'll do what you want, just leave me alone and let me get back to claiming a little R & R.”

In Matthew's account of this story Jesus says, “Woman, great is your faith!” Mark adds, “for saying that, you may go—the demon has left your daughter.”

Here a woman not of “the faith” the Jewish faith, has shown, in Jesus' opinion, great faith. How does she move from being outside the faith, a dog, to a woman recognized by Jesus as having great faith?

When you or I talk about the Christian faith, we talk in terms of what is Christians believe, what we practice, what sets us apart from other religions, from worshipping other gods. But if this syro-phoenician woman practiced any kind of “faith” in the way we normally define it, it was offering sacrifices to gods of her city of Tyre , a pagan faith.

The kind of faith Jesus credits the mother with having is the kind of faith you or I have when we are desperate, at the end of our ropes, frantic for the healing of someone we fiercely love. It is the kind of faith we don't truly know whether we have or not until we are there standing in this woman's shoes. Someday, maybe even today, you need a miracle in the worst sort of way. Maybe is seems God is off on vacation, not answering or hearing your prayer. The syro-phoenician woman reminds us not to take no, not to take “not now, for an answer. To call on God to do more than we can possibly hope or imagine in the situation.

This story tells us that for Jesus faith is less about customs and practices, dogma and doctrine, and more about trust, calling us and God to do more than we thought we could do, or wanted to do. It's the kind of faith that is alive, that is embodied in how we live our life, in our works as James would say. It is the kind of faith that calls us to venture into unknown, unfamiliar territory, among people who are different than us, pushing back tradition's boundaries of who is in, and who is out. Who is my neighbor and who isn't. It's the kind of faith where, like Jesus, our minds can be changed because of the need staring us in the face. Trusting as the woman did, in a power greater than our self.

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