The Gospel lesson for this Sunday, Mark 10:1-12, contains this potent word from Jesus concerning marriage:

At the beginning of creation,  God made them male and female. [see Gen 1:27]  Because of this a man should leave his father and mother and be joined together with his wife, and the two will be one flesh.’ [see Gen 2:24]   So they are no longer two but one flesh.  Therefore, humans must not pull apart what God has put together (Mark 10:6-9).

Let me be very, very clear, friends: this passage has nothing to do with same-sex marriage.  Nor does its parallel, Matthew 19:3-9 (see also Luke 16:18 and  Matt 5:31-32).  Now how can I, a self-avowed Bible Guy, say that?  After all, doesn’t Jesus explicitly say here that marriage is between a man and a woman?

Actually, friends, this passage is not so much about “biblical marriage”  as it is about biblical divorce.  That is the question the Pharisees ask (“Does the Law allow a man to divorce his wife?”, Mark 10:2), and that is the subject of Jesus’ private discussion with his disciples afterwards (Mark 10:10-12).  Jesus’ opposition to divorce is grounded in his high view of marriage: he vigorously affirms the goodness of marriage between women and men. Jesus’ words in context, however, are not restrictive and prohibitive (only this), but permissive and affirmative (yes to this). Jesus’ affirmation does not imply a prohibition: it is Jesus’ stated intent here to bolster marriage, not to define it by restriction to “one man and one woman.”  After all, Jesus does not make this statement in response to a question about homosexuality, or polygamy, or sexual practice generally, but specifically in response to a question about divorce.

To understand this biblical conversation, and its relevance to our contemporary world, we first must understand the debate concerning divorce in Scripture and in Jewish tradition, and what Jesus’ response to this debate tells us about his approach to Scripture and tradition–and yes, to marriage and divorce.

The Old Testament takes marriage very seriously: after all, according to Gen 2:24, man and woman were created for one another, and are drawn to become “one flesh.”  Still, in the Hebrew Bible, divorce is accepted, with no shame implied to the woman who is divorced (in that patriarchal culture, nothing is ever said of wives divorcing their husbands).  The divorced daughter of a priest can return to her father’s house and eat from the offerings restricted to the priests and their families (Lev 22:13), and oaths sworn by divorced women have legal standing (Num 30:9). True, according to Leviticus 21:7, 13-14, no priest may marry a divorced woman. But this restriction on priestly marriages clearly implies that other Israelite men could marry divorced women.  The law concerning divorce (Deuteronomy 24:1-4) assumes this, although it places a restriction on remarriage:

Again, in the Hebrew Bible, divorce is an accepted practice.  The exception that proves the rule is Malachi 2:15-16:

Don’t cheat on the wife of your youth
because he hates divorce,
says the LORD God of Israel

The Hebrew of the Masoretic Text (or MT, the text used in the synagogue, on which our Old Testament is based) reads ki-sane’ shalakh (“For he [God] hates divorce”).   But the oldest Hebrew text of Malachi extant, from the Dead Sea scrolls at Qumran, reads instead ky ‘m snth shlkh: “But if you hate her, then divorce” (4QXIIa)!  That alternate reading is also reflected in many ancient translations from the Hebrew (called, in scholarly shorthand, “the versions”). Targum Nebi’im, the Aramaic translation of the Prophets for use in the synagogue, reads ’arey ‘im senet lah patrah (“For if you hate her, you shall divorce her”).  Similarly, the Greek of the Septuagint reads alla ean misesas exaposteiles (“if, since you hate her, you send her away”), and the Latin Vulgate reads cum odio habueris dimitte (“when you hate her, put her away”).

Usually, such broad attestation for a different reading would call the MT into question.  However, the alternate reading is here unlikely to be the original, as it conflicts with the emphasis on faithfulness and commitment in both the broader context of Malachi 2:10-16 and in the remainder of the verse in which it appears. Further, it is far more likely that this alternate reading attempts to deal with the difficult text in the MT of Malachi 2:16 than that the MT resulted from deliberate alteration or scribal error.

What makes Malachi 2:16 difficult isn’t any problem with its wording, grammar, or syntax, which are all clear, but rather the problem is its meaning. The alternate reading represented in 4QXIIa and the versions is more in keeping with the whole of Scripture.  Everywhere else in the Hebrew Bible, as we have seen, divorce is accepted.  So in its biblical context, Malachi 2:16 is an anomaly–if it applies to actual divorce.

But if this verse concerns metaphorical divorce, then there is no anomaly. The point of the passage then would be that God calls Judah to covenant faithfulness, without wavering.  With Julia O’Brien (Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Haggai, Zechariah, Malachi, AOTC [Nashville: Abingdon, 2004], 299-303), I would argue that in Malachi 2:10-16, as in Hosea 1–2, marriage is understood symbolically, as faithfulness to the LORD.  “The wife of your youth” would then be the life of faith and commitment abandoned by Judah in its idolatry (see Mal 2:5-7; 3:5), a life that was expected to bear fruit in righteousness (“divine seed” [Hebrew zera’ ‘elohim] in Mal 2:15; still thinking of actual marriages, CEB has “godly offspring”). Like other prophets (see Isa 50:1; Jer 3:1, 8), Malachi uses the law concerning divorce in Deuteronomy 24 metaphorically, to condemn Israel for worshipping other gods, then thinking that they can return to the LORD as though nothing had happened .

While we can imagine that divorce was intended to be rare, no statement of the acceptable grounds for divorce is ever given in the Old Testament. Deuteronomy 24:1 only says that a man can divorce his wife (again, no provision is made for a woman divorcing her husband!) if he finds “something inappropriate about her.”  The Hebrew word translated “something inappropriate” is ‘erwah: literally “nakedness;” or “something shameful.”  But what does that mean?  Since the Hebrew Bible doesn’t clearly specify the conditions under which divorce is permissible, the rabbis debated the issue intensely.

The alternate reading for Malachi 2:16 in 4QXIIa, reflected in all the versions of this passage, sounds very like the teaching of Jewish sage Jesus ben Sirach:

Do you have a wife who is a soul mate?
    Don’t divorce her,
    and don’t trust yourself to a woman
    whom you hate (Sir 7:26).

Ben Sirach believed that a good marriage was cause for celebration and lifelong commitment. But he implies that divorce could be pursued for incompatibility.

Two Jewish teachers who lived at roughly the same time as Jesus, Hillel and Shammai, were famous for their disputations.  According to the Mishnah (b Gittin 9.10), Rabbi Shammai argued that divorce could be permitted only in the case of adultery, where the commitment had already been broken by unfaithfulness.  But Rabbi Hillel taught that bad cooking is sufficient grounds for divorce! In Hillel’s view, as a human contract, marriage could be dissolved for any reason at all.

In contrast, Jesus’ teaching rejects the law in Deuteronomy, and so rejects divorce and remarriage, altogether: “Any man who divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery, and a man who marries a woman divorced from her husband commits adultery” (Luke 16:18; compare Matt 5:31-32).  To understand Jesus’ teaching, we should note that in Palestine in Jesus’ day, women could not independently own property.  Divorce meant that the woman would be dependent upon the chancy charity of her family or her community to support her.  She could be rendered homeless and destitute by her husband’s rejection.

The law regarding divorce, in Jesus’ view, reflects not God’s good will, but rather a concession to human failing.  “Moses allowed you to divorce your wives,” Jesus says, “because your hearts are unyielding. But it wasn’t that way from the beginning” (Matt 19:8; compare Mark 10:5).  Jesus sets the law in Deuteronomy 24 aside and rejects divorce in order to protect women from being cast out at their husbands’ whims.  He bases this action on an earlier passage in Torah: Genesis 2:24.  God’s original intention for women and men expressed in Genesis is a higher principle than Deuteronomy’s permission for men and women to divorce.  Jesus’ opposition to remarriage shows that he understood marriage to be a permanent commitment.

The varying forms and contexts in which Jesus’ teaching on divorce and remarriage is found across the New Testament indicate that the debate about that teaching continued in the earliest church.  Indeed, Matthew 19:10-12 describes the high standard Jesus sets for marriage as an ideal, not as a law: “Not everybody can accept this teaching, but only those who have received the ability to accept it. . . . Those who can accept it should accept it.”  In Matthew 19:9 and 5:31-32, divorce is permitted in cases of adultery, just as Shammai had argued–although remarriage is still rejected.   In the gospel of Mark, which may have been written in Rome, the saying reads, “Whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery against her;   and if a wife divorces her husband and marries another, she commits adultery” (Mark 10:11-12). This differs from the Old Testament and traditional Jewish position, and places Jesus’ teaching in the context of Roman law, which permitted a woman to initiate a divorce. Likewise Paul (see 1 Cor 7:10-16), who cites Jesus’ teaching on divorce (one of the few places where the words of Jesus are cited in Paul’s letters), recognizes that in the Roman world a wife could divorce her husband.

Paul also forbade divorce because he was convinced that the world would end soon, making any attempt to change one’s present status a waste of time:

The Psalm for this Sunday in the lectionary is Psalm 1.  The first Psalm was not placed at the opening of the Psalter by accident: indeed, this poem may have been composed to introduce the book. In the Leningrad Codex, on which the standard critical edition of the Hebrew Bible is based, the first psalm is unnumbered, suggesting that it stands as a heading to the psalms that follow.

Psalm 1 affirms that God’s torah  (traditionally translated “law”) is the source and ground of blessing (Ps 1:1-2). This emphasis on Torah reflects the structure of the Psalter, which is divided by four doxologies (Pss 41:13; 72:18-19; 89:52; and 106:48) into five books, reminiscent of the Five Books of Moses–called, in Judaism, the Torah.

Still, Psalm 1 seems an odd place for this book to begin. In Hebrew, the book of Psalms is called Tehillim, or “praises;” yet, the first psalm is not a song of praise! Numerically, the book of Psalms is dominated by prayers for help, and yet Psalm 1 is not a prayer.  As James Luther Mays observes, “The Book of Psalms begins with a beatitude. Not a prayer or a hymn, but a statement about human existence” (Psalms, Interpretation [Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1994], p. 40).

But perhaps this is not such a strange beginning, after all. For while the Psalter certainly gives expression to Israel’s theology, this is not so much a book about God as it is a book about us: the community of faith. As St. Athanasius wrote,

Within [the Psalter] are represented and portrayed in all their great variety the movements of the human soul.  It is like a picture, in which you see yourself portrayed and, seeing, may understand and consequently form yourself upon the pattern given.       . . . In the Psalter you learn about yourself (from “To Marcellinus on the Interpretation of the Psalms”).

So, what does this psalm teach us about ourselves, as we are and as we might become? Psalm 1 contrasts the wicked (Hebrew resha’im) and the righteous (tsadiqim). The wicked are defined only in negative terms: by their opposition to the righteous, who do not follow their way, or sit in their councils (1:1), just as the wicked themselves

Certainly, the language of Psalm 1 does not permit a legalistic understanding of righteousness. Contrast this psalm’s approach to Torah with, say, Deuteronomy.  In Deuteronomy 15:5, for example, Israel is enjoined to “carefully obey the Lord your God’s voice [Hebrew shama’ beqol; literally, “hear the voice”]  by carefully doing [Hebrew shamar; “keep” or “observe”] every bit of this commandment  [Hebrew mitswah] that I’m giving you right now” (see also Lev 26:14).

None of this legal vocabulary appears in Psalm 1. Instead, the righteous are here said to “love (Hebrew chapets, “desire;” rendered “delight in” in the NRSV) the LORD’s Instruction” and to “recite (the verb hagah actually means “murmur,” implying constant, repetitive study and recitation; the NRSV has “meditate”) God’s Instruction day and night” (Ps 1:2).

The same verb is used in Joshua 1:7-9:

“Be very brave and strong as you carefully obey all of the Instruction that Moses my servant commanded you. Don’t deviate even a bit from it, either to the right or left. Then you will have success wherever you go. Never stop speaking about this Instruction scroll. Recite it day and night so you can carefully obey everything written in it. Then you will accomplish your objectives and you will succeed.  I’ve commanded you to be brave and strong, haven’t I? Don’t be alarmed or terrified, because the Lord your God is with you wherever you go.”

As the CEB recognizes, Hebrew torah may be better rendered as “instruction” than by the traditional translation “law.”

Focus on divine instruction yields for the righteous happiness and security (Ps 1:3; again, compare Josh 1:8). The Psalmist avows,

They are like a tree replanted by streams of water,
    which bears fruit at just the right time
    and whose leaves don’t fade.
        Whatever they do succeeds.

This arboreal imagery emphasizes both the stability and fruitfulness of the righteous.

In sharp contrast, the wicked “are like chaff that the wind drives away” (1:4, NRSV): empty husks–dry, lifeless, fruitless, and rootless.

But the image of “trees planted by streams of water” also calls to mind other biblical connections. The reader may think of Eden, the well-watered garden of God (Gen 2:8-14), in which grew “every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food” (Gen 2:9, NRSV), or of the river in Ezekiel 47:1-12, along whose banks

will grow up all kinds of fruit-bearing trees. Their leaves won’t wither, and their fruitfulness won’t wane. They will produce fruit in every month, because their water comes from the sanctuary. Their fruit will be for eating, their leaves for healing (Ezek 47:12; compare Rev 22:1-2).

These passages in turn evoke the image of Zion: center of the world, source of life and meaning, and site of the temple (for example, Isa 2:2-4//Mic 4:1-3; Ezek 28:13-14; Ps 46:4-6).

The Zion link is particularly intriguing, as other features of Psalm 1 connect this Torah psalm to Psalm 2, a royal psalm celebrating the coronation of the king “on Zion, my holy mountain” (Ps 2:6).  Most of the psalms in Book 1 of the Psalter (Pss 1–41) have superscriptions connecting them to David.  But neither of the two opening psalms of the Psalter is given a title (apart from these two, only Pss 10 and 33 lack such superscriptions). Further, Psalms 1 and 2 are bracketed by the Hebrew expression ’ashre (“happy;” compare Pss 1:1 and 2:11). In this way, the book of Psalms opens with the two major themes of the Hebrew Bible conjoined: law and kingship, conditional covenant and unconditional promise, Sinai and Zion (cf. Jon Levenson, Sinai and Zion: An Entry Into the Jewish Bible [New York: Winston Press, 1985], 217).

Jerome Creach argues that in Psalm 1, Torah has replaced Zion as the means of access to God’s presence and blessing (The Destiny of the Righteous in the Psalms, 145). Curiously, in our New Testament, it often seems that the opposite shift has taken place.  Zion themes, particularly those promises linked to the Davidic line, have displaced Sinai themes–or, as Christians so often phrase it, the Law has been displaced by the Gospel. So, Paul can describe Sinai allegorically as Hagar, Abraham’s slave wife whose children remain in bondage (Gal 4:24-25), while his free wife Sarah “corresponds to the Jerusalem above; she is free, and she is our mother” (Gal 4:26, NRSV).

But the relationship between Sinai and Zion is in both testaments more complex than at first appears. The book of Psalms does not simply set Zion aside, but makes frequent reference to temple worship; further, the attribution of many of its poems to David leads, ultimately, to the traditional ascription of the Psalter as a whole to that paradigmatic king (See, for example, Mark 12:36-37//Matt 22:43-45; Rom 4:6). Although Paul asserts that “a person isn’t made righteous by the works of the Law but rather through the faithfulness of Jesus Christ” (Gal 2:16), he opposes simple antinomianism: for example, Paul recognizes the command to love the neighbor (Lev 19:18) as the fulfillment of the law (Rom 13:8-10).

In the New Testament as in the Old, then, Sinai and Zion are held in unresolved tension. Insofar as faith involves the relationship of the believer with God, all of Scripture affirms that God’s grace alone makes that relationship possible: the unconditional promise of Zion reassures us. Insofar as faith involves life in the world, all Scripture insists upon God’s will as an imperative: the conditional covenant on Sinai challenges and compels us.

To return then to the question with which we began, what does Psalm 1 teach us about God and ourselves? Although the poem appears to describe two different groups of people, it is apparent that the Psalmist actually has no interest in the wicked; like chaff, they have no real substance. The righteous alone are defined positively and concretely, by their relentless pursuit of Torah. Therefore, the righteous alone have purpose and destiny:

The Lord is intimately acquainted
    with the way of the righteous,
    but the way of the wicked is destroyed (Ps 1:6).

The NRSV, like the old KJV, has “for the LORD watches over the way of the righteous” (Ps 1:6). But the verb here is yada’, that is, “know.” In Hebrew, “knowing” has to do not simply with intellectual grasp, but with relationship. Those who desire to know God, who seek out and meditate upon God’s instruction, are in turn known by God: as the CEB has it, the LORD is “intimately acquainted” with them!

Psalm 1 says of the righteous, “Whatever they do succeeds” (Ps 1:3). But this psalm is not about how to be successful.   The righteous are described in the opening verse of this psalm as happy, but Psalm 1 is not about how to be happy. Just as Jesus’ beatitudes (Matt 5:3-12) are descriptive rather than prescriptive, so the beatitude pronounced upon the righteous in Psalm 1 describes rather than defines them.

The destiny of the righteous in this psalm is to know, and be known, by God—to enter into a relationship with the Divine; to become like trees in the temple garden, drawing life from God and bearing fruit for God. The means to that end set forth in this psalm is immersion in Scripture: in God’s Torah. Such seekers will not seek in vain!  As Jesus promises in the Sermon on the Mount, “Ask, and you will receive. Search, and you will find. Knock, and the door will be opened to you” (Matt 7:7).

AFTERWORD:  The odd map above, with Jerusalem at the center of the world, is the Bünting Clover Leaf Map (the German title reads Die ganze Welt in einem Kleberblat/Welches ist der Stadt Hannover meines lieben Vaterlandes Wapen; “The entire world in a cloverleaf, which is the coat of arms of my dear Fatherland, the city of Hanover”).  It was drawn by the German pastor, theologian, and cartographer Heinrich Bünting, and published in his book Itinerarium Sacrae Scripturae (“Travel through Holy Scripture”) in 1581.  See if you can find America on this map!

On September 11, 2001, I was teaching at Randolph-Macon College in Ashland, Virginia, just north of Richmond. I well remember the shock and horror that seized our little college town as news trickled in that Tuesday morning. First, we learned of a bizarre and horrible accident involving a plane colliding with one of the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center.  Then swiftly came the unthinkable revelation that this was not an accident, but a terrorist attack, involving two airliners deliberately targeted on the Towers. We later learned that another plane had been targeted on the Pentagon, and that still another, intended to crash into either the Capitol or the White House, was forced down near Shanksville, Pennsylvania by its heroic passengers and crew – saving the lives of others at the cost of their own.

On Thursday of the week following this assault, Ashland held a memorial service on the town square.  I was among those asked to speak.  As I wrestled with what word to bring, indeed with how to speak a word of the Lord to this horrible event, I was led to Habakkuk 3.16-19.  Habakkuk saw his homeland destroyed by the Babylonians.  He knew what it was to suffer attack, to lose family and friends to a remorseless enemy.  The shock and horror we felt that day, Habakkuk knew well.

Nearly every year since beginning this blog, on or around September 11, I have reprinted the sermon I preached on that day.  Last year, I posted my heartbreak, to realize how fully the fears I had expressed back then in this sermon were realized.  Today, twenty years later, we continue in our fear and mistrust to give ground to racism and xenophobia.  Yet there are many hopeful signs that we are at last ready to confront our national sins, to repent, and to allow God’s spirit of justice to move us, following what Abraham Lincoln called “the better angels of our nature.” It is my prayer, today as back then, that Habakkuk’s ancient words will speak to us all, of honest grief, and hope, and healing.

            What do you do when the worst thing that can happen, happens?  That question weighs most heavily this morning on the hearts of those who have themselves been injured, and those who grieve for loved ones, torn from them or suffering grievous harm in this attack.  But surely, it is asked by all of us here today.

            What do you do when the worst thing that can happen, happens?  While this question was brought home to us powerfully and poignantly in the events of this past week, it is certainly not a new question.  The prophet Habakkuk saw his world destroyed.  He saw advancing Babylonian armies swallow up town after town, village after village.  He saw homes in flames.  He saw his friends and family slaughtered or taken away in chains to Babylon.  Habakkuk cried out, “Are you from of old, O LORD my God, my Holy One?  We shall not die.” (Hab. 1:12)  Surely, surely, you will not let us die.  “Your eyes are too pure and you cannot look on wrongdoing; why do you look on the treacherous, and are silent when the wicked swallow those more righteous than they?” (Hab 1:13)  Habakkuk is in shock.  He can’t accept what he sees and hears.  “I hear, and I tremble within.  My lips quiver at the sound.  Rottenness enters into my bones, my steps tremble beneath me.” (Hab 3:16)  We know how that feels, don’t we?  Seeing on the television screen, or reading the newspaper, or hearing on the radio the news of what happened Tuesday morning in Washington and New York and Pennsylvania—surely, we know how the prophet feels.  Who could believe it?  Who can believe it now?

From shock, Habakkuk moves to anger.  “I wait quietly for the day of calamity to come upon the people who attack us.” (Hab 3:17)  We know how that feels too, don’t we?  Our hearts cry out for vengeance against those who have brought this horror and devastation to our land.  We are dishonest to ourselves and dishonest to God if we do not own that anger.  But, Habakkuk didn’t stay with the anger, and neither can we.  If we stay with the anger, the desire for vengeance, then we will never heal.  We will never move on to wholeness and new life.

Sisters and brothers, God forbid that the horrific assault that our nation suffered on Tuesday should cause us to forget who we are!  We are a nation founded upon fundamental human rights and freedom for all people, affirming the essential dignity of every woman and man.  If this assault makes us forget that, then the terrorists will have won.  They will have destroyed, not just stone and mortar and steel and flesh, but the dream that makes us who we are.

A former student of mine is working as a missionary in Egypt, helping to settle Sudanese refugees.  He told me that Egyptians have been coming up to him since September 11, telling him how horrified they are by what happened and how deeply sorry they are that this has taken place.  Even the Sudanese refugees with whom he works, people who have lost everything, who have nothing, have been comforting him, telling him how sorry they are about all that has happened.  Friends, the people who committed this atrocity may have been Arabs, but the Arab people did not do this.  Those who brought this horror to us may have called themselves Muslims, but Islam did not do this.  In the difficult days ahead, should the call that justice be brought to the criminals who perpetrated this act transform itself into a cry of vengeance against a race or religion, we must recognize that prejudice for the evil that it is, repudiate it, and root it out of our midst.

So what do you do when the worst thing that can happen, happens?  Habakkuk says, “Though the fig tree does not blossom, and no fruit is on the vines; though the produce of the olive fails and the fields yield no food; though the flock is cut off from the fold and there is no herd in the stalls, yet I will rejoice in the LORD; I will exult in the God of my salvation.”(Hab 3:17-18)  Oh God, this is as bad as it gets!  How can we get through this? Habakkuk says, Though I cannot see your face, Lord, though I cannot feel your hand, I know you are with me: “I will rejoice in the LORD; I will exult in the God of my salvation.” (Hab 3:18).

The attacks Tuesday morning robbed us of a sense of security, of safety, of invulnerability that many of us had come to accept as our birthright.  Such things happen over there, sure, in foreign places, but they can never happen here.  We were wrong.  But then, our security never was in the strength of our military, much as we respect and honor those who serve us all in that noble calling.  Our security lies this morning where it has ever lain, in the confidence that God’s peace enfolds us, and that nothing can wrest us from God’s hand.

The apostle Paul wrote to the church at Rome, “For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Romans 8:38-39)  That’s security, sisters and brothers–the only security we can have; the only security we truly need.

“GOD, the Lord, is my strength,” Habakkuk says; “He makes my feet like the feet of a deer, and makes me tread upon the heights.” (Hab 3:19)  A deer can make its way over seemingly impassible terrain.  It can mount up impossible precipices.  The prophet is saying, “Lord, I don’t see how I can get through this!  But I know that you have given me feet like the feet of a deer, to leap over the obstacles that lie before me, to mount up the precipices that rise to cover me.”  May that be our prayer today: that God will give us feet like a deer, to carry us through these times!  God can give us, and will give us in these coming days, the courage to meet whatever obstacles lie ahead, and the resolve to make our way through.

We’ve already begun well, by coming here to pray together, lifting ourselves and our nation up to the Lord.  We’ve already begun well, by involving ourselves in ministries of kindness and service.  God will show us, in coming days, ways that we may demonstrate God’s love and kindness to a hurting world.  But most of all, as we turn to the Lord, God will give us in these days to come the confident assurance that we are in God’s hands.  No one and nothing can take us from the hand of God—not even when the worst thing that can happen, happens.  Thanks be to God.  Amen.

This Sunday’s Gospel (Mark 7:24-37) is one of the most difficult passages in the New Testament.  First, Jesus treats a Gentile woman, pleading for her daughter’s exorcism, with what certainly sounds like contempt: “The children have to be fed first. It isn’t right to take the children’s bread and toss it to the dogs” (Mark 7:27).  Then, he heals a deaf and mute man by what certainly looks like magical means. Jesus spits on the man’s tongue (!), puts his fingers in the man’s ears, and then says what seems in context a magic word: Ephphatha (“[let it] be opened” in Aramaic; the Greek of the Gospel translates it in an imperative form: dianoichtheti, “be opened”). 

It may be some comfort to know that the Gospel writers struggled with these strange stories, too.  Only Matthew also has the story of the Syro-Phoenician woman (Matt 15:21-28), and the healing of the deaf and mute man appears nowhere else.  But while that second account is merely odd (rather like the healing of the blind man at Bethsaida [Mark 8:22-26], also found only in Mark), the first is downright offensive.  How could Jesus treat someone this way?

In Matthew’s account, the exchange with the woman is somewhat softened.  Despite his disciples’ insistence that the woman be sent away, Jesus enters into a conversation with her, explaining, “I’ve been sent only to the lost sheep, the people of Israel” (Matt 15:24).  Additionally, Jesus himself praises the distraught mother:

Jesus answered, “Woman, you have great faith. It will be just as you wish.” And right then her daughter was healed (Matt 15:28).

This exchange comes at a pivotal point in Matthew’s Gospel.  For this most Jewish of the evangelists, Jesus had first come, as he explains to the Syro-Phoenician woman, to his own people (Matt 10:5-6).  Only after being rejected by the Jewish religious leadership (see Matt 16) does he broaden his focus to include the Gentile world.

But Mark’s presentation lacks any such moderation.  Although her daughter is granted the deliverance the Syro-Phoenician woman had come seeking, there is no hint of either apology or of praise.  As is typical of this generally terse Gospel, the accent falls on actions rather than words.

That said, the conversation is remarkable!  For Jesus to speak in public with a Gentile woman would have seemed to many scandalous.  But then, far from being submissive, this woman talks back!  When Jesus says, “It isn’t right to take the children’s bread and toss it to the dogs,” she retorts, “Lord, even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs” (Mark 7:27-28).

Jesus recognizes that she has won the point–the only place in any of the Gospels where anyone wins an argument with Jesus!  Still, the matter-of-fact acknowledgement in the NRSV (“For saying that, you may go”) and the KJV (“For this saying, go thy way”) is a better rendering of the Greek than the CEB, with its implicit praise:

“Good answer!” he said. “Go on home. The demon has already left your daughter.”

What are we to do with this?  It takes extraordinary eisegetical gymnastics to avoid the clear implication of this story, in Matthew as well as in Mark.  As Wil Gafney puts it, “In that moment, something happened to and in Jesus.”  Jesus, acknowledging that he was wrong, changes his mind!  This Gentile woman has become “The Woman Who Changed Jesus.”

To us, this may seem offensive–perhaps, even more offensive than Jesus’ words to the Syro-Phoenician woman.  How could Jesus, who is God, change his mind?  Similarly, when I have questioned Moses’ authorship of the Torah, or David’s of the Psalms, some students have angrily noted that Jesus himself in the Gospels ascribed these works to their traditional authors–and Jesus, certainly, could not have been wrong!  Perhaps the best response to such questions is another question: do we believe–really believe–in the Incarnation?  Do we somehow imagine that Jesus did not, after all, learn or change or grow?  If so, then his “humanity” was a mere pretense–and we are in serious trouble!

St. Gregory of Nazianzus put it very well: “That which was not assumed is not healed; but that which is united to God is saved” (to gar aproslepton, atherapeuton; ho de henotai to theo, touto kai sozetai; Ep. 101).  In short, if Jesus is truly to atone for us, reconciling us to God, then he must really be one of us–not just seeming to be human, but actually being human.  Debi Thomas writes:

The Jesus who appears in the Gospels is not half-incarnate.  He is as fully human as he is fully God.  Which is to say, he struggles, he snaps, he discovers, he grows, he falters, he learns, he fears, and he overcomes.  He’s real, he’s approachable, and he’s authentically one of us.  The “Good News” is not that we serve a shiny, inaccessible deity who floats five feet above the ground.  It is that Jesus shows us — in real time, in the flesh — what it means to grow as a child of God.  He embodies what it looks like to stretch into a deeper, truer, and fuller comprehension of God’s love.

In Sunday’s Gospel, Jesus comes to understand that this Canaanite woman is not after all outside of the community he has come to save.  For the first time, he knows that he has been given by God his Father to and for all the world.  We Gentiles owe her an enormous debt of gratitude.