Jesus is mean.  We don’t like mean Jesus.  Mean Jesus is too much for us.  Can you imagine Jesus insulting someone or treating anyone like a second-class person?  You don’t have to: he does it right here, in what we heard today.  But is that what he’s really doing?  Well, it sure sounds like it, and we don’t like it.  A few months back, I was in a Zoom conversation with some pastors.  One spoke of the trouble he had with this account of the Syro-Phoenician woman.  He didn’t much like the Jesus he encountered here, didn’t understand.  This isn’t how Jesus should be.  Cruel Jesus?  Cold Jesus?  Mean Jesus?  That’s not how Jesus should be!  That can’t be Jesus.  That’s not my Jesus.  My Jesus would never.  We’re so fond of our imaginary Jesuses.  They’re wonderfully convenient, never cause us the least trouble, see things just the way we do—it’s wonderful!  Beloved, Jacob wrestled with God all through the night, but don’t think of this as some WWE spectacular; wrestled—struggled, strained, fought, sweat, bled.  He came away in the new day’s light broken, limping, and with a new name, a God-given name, like a . . . like a rite of passage.

We’re never at our best when we’re feeling peeved, irritated, frustrated.  I’ve got to tell you, as you read Scripture over and over, I think it’ll become clearer to you, too, that God is often irritated and frustrated with His people.  Jesus feels it, also.  We read that Jesus “went to the vicinity of Tyre” (7:24).  That’s Gentile territory, pagan territory.  If there was anyplace he might go to have some down time without crowds pressing in on every side, like in Judea, Tyre was sure to be that place.  But no.  We read that Jesus “entered a house and did not want anyone to know it; yet he could not keep his presence secret” (7:24).  No relief, no rest, no time.  Demand to the left and right, and need on every side.  How long would you last?  Is that an environment for thriving, joy, and peace?  Such is the world in which we live; such the world into which Christ came, knowingly, willingly.  He came to be God-with-us Immanuel; he came as a man, fully man, fully human.  The body grows tired, the nerves get frayed, and patience, be it ever so great, can wear thin.

No time to be alone.  We’ve got to remember how often Jesus sought that time: recharge time, prayer time.  The extroverts here today may well visualize Jesus as an extrovert: always in the crowd, at the party, laughing, talking, in the energy.  You may well be right.  Introvert as I am, I usually see Jesus as an introvert—oh, he was comfortable enough in the crowds, in the surge—so long as he also had time to himself, away, in the quiet, the quiet place.

“Yet he could not keep his presence secret.”  “[A]s soon as she heard about him, a woman whose little daughter was possessed by an impure spirit came and fell at his feet” (7:25).  She sought Jesus.  Beautiful!  From the way Mark records it, it seems as if maybe she’s the only one, of all those in Tyre, which was not some little burg.  Jesus couldn’t keep his presence secret.  Should we?  The woman heard about Jesus—from whom, in that Gentile city?  How?  She heard about him and came right away.  He was help.  He was the help she needed.  He was the only real help there was.  My child.  My little child.  We feel it.  We would, too.  Maybe that woman would never have thought to go to Jesus for herself—sorrowful thought!—but for her daughter?  Anything!

There’s one problem, though, and Mark tells us what it is right away: “The woman was a Greek, born in Syrian Phoenicia” (7:26).  She wasn’t a Jew.  Wrong people, wrong language, wrong culture, wrong religion.  She wasn’t of the Chosen People; she was outside the covenant, with no claim on Jesus.  Well, that hadn’t stopped Jesus before!  He had cleansed a possessed man on the other side of the lake, the Gentile side.  But that was one time, and that one man had been possessed by a legion of impurity: what an opportunity to show the power of God, and the glory!  But this, this was just one little girl with an impure spirit.  Just a little mess.

Not to that mother, though.  “She begged Jesus to drive the demon out of her daughter” (7:26).  Can you hear her?  Should she have to plead with Jesus?  Why is Jesus acting like he isn’t listening or can’t be bothered, if that’s what he is doing?  Haven’t you ever pled with Jesus, even on your knees, with tears?  Don’t we hear all through Scripture, people of faith pleading with God: in the psalms, all through the prophets?  It’d be such a small thing for you, Jesus, and such a big thing for me: you get the power, you get the glory.

Does she want or even know what Jesus is truly offering?  Does she love Jesus?  Does she have genuine faith?  She wants something from Jesus, something she believes he can do for her.  Do we want Jesus for what he can do for us—is that his worth and value for us?  He’s a great vendor, a great service provider?  He can do something for me, so he is valuable to me?  My refrigerator is valuable to me: oh, so valuable, like my favorite appliance; it keeps my water so cold and my ice so frozen.  My car is valuable to me (though Kelly Blue Book tells me it isn’t worth squat): it gets me where I want to go.  But is life about where I want to go or about where God wants me to go, and what He wants me to do there?

But that woman, she’s begging.  I’m sure she’s in tears—it’s her child, maybe her only child, her well-beloved child.  Why doesn’t the father come, too?  Maybe the father isn’t around.  Maybe it’s just the woman and her child.  Would God take her child?  Would God leave her alone, with nothing and no one, like that?  Oh beloved, all that God has taken, over the years.  You can tell me, if you would.  Does He leave us with nothing?  “[A] hard man, harvesting where [He has] not sown and gathering where [He has] not scattered seed” (Mt 25:24)?

But Jesus is mean.  We don’t like mean Jesus.  Mean Jesus is too much for us.  “First let the children eat all they want,” he told her, “for it is not right to take the children’s bread and toss it to the dogs” (7:27).  Excuse me?!  Say what!?  Well, I mean, he’s not telling her no.  Later, not now.  First the children eat, all they want.  Then, later, after (if there’s something left, anything), maybe there’ll be something for you; maybe not.  Food for the children, what’s left afterwards tossed to the dogs.  You’ll just have to wait, you see?

Why insult her, if that’s what he’s doing?  She’s hurting, in need, pleading.  He could do it.  It would be so simple.  Make fun of me as much as you want.  I’m not important, but my child . . . “‘Lord,’ she replied, ‘even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs’” (7:28).  Yes, that’s true.  That’s how a family meal at home works, isn’t it?  Those messy kids!  Thank God for the dog—I’d be wiping up, sweeping up, vacuuming up, mopping up every day, if it weren’t for the dog, blap, blap, blapping that floor all through meal time, and after.  Dogs don’t even mind broccoli.  Whatever, anything, just let them have something!  I guess that’s part of how they know they’re also part of the pack, that they matter, that they count, too.  A dog doesn’t care it’s a dog; it just wants a little food . . . a little love, that’s all.  “I would rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God than dwell in the tents of the wicked” (Ps 84:10).  The outermost, least servant is still a servant.  The outermost is still within, not beyond, not shut out.

We claim what we value, what matters to us, what we don’t want to do without.  That woman, Gentile though she was, Greek though she was, was asking, begging, to be part of the family, too.  She didn’t know everything about God or God’s Word, but she claimed to trust God, the only and true God, and she came to Jesus to stake everything that mattered to her on this one claim: I, I am nothing, but You, You are everything and without You there is nothing.  You are help.  You are love, even when you say things that can feel hard, hard to accept and hard to understand.  Won’t You claim me?  Won’t You help me?

“Then he told her, ‘For such a reply, you may go; the demon has left your daughter.’  She went home and found her child lying on the bed, and the demon gone” (7:29-30).  And what do you suppose that woman, that mother, did, then?