Asking Questions

One of the hardest things a woman can do is ask questions when she doesn’t like the answers she’s hearing.  It’s even harder if she is from a different ethnic background than who she is talking too.  If she’s poor or desperate, or not fashionable or not pretty, it’s even worse.  Women are not supposed to be uppity, they are not supposed to be loud, and they are definitely not supposed to be demanding or insistent on their rights. 

The Syrophoenician woman was everything she was not supposed to be.  Wrong race, wrong gender.  Brazenly talking to a man without her husband present, which meant that she probably didn’t have one.  Advocating for a child who also was female.  Bold enough to not take Jesus’ refusal personally, and to keep asking for what she wanted. 

This is a hard scripture, and it is one that many people struggle with.  Why did Jesus sound so sexist and racist?  We don’t need that in our fragmented world.  We don’t need women’s voices being shut down, we don’t need women’s opinions being treated with disrespect, we don’t need women’s requests for health care being dismissed or disregarded.

Right now, in this world, women who are working in politics or who are environmental scientists, or who are elite athletes that don’t look stereotypically female are getting attacked through comments, social media posts, and even murdered as seen in the case of the doctor in India, the Olympic marathoner in Uganda or the Turkish-American woman shot by Israeli soldiers. Indigenous women are still disappearing in Canada. Teenagers are at risk of losing their access to sex education in Alberta while cases of sexually transmitted diseases are growing, not to mention what might happen if Covenant Health takes over all hospitals.

We could go on and on with examples, but where is the Good News for us in this scripture?  It does not appear to be supportive of a woman’s right to ask for help without getting push back.  Except that the Syrophoenician did, and she got results.  She challenged the status quo and got what she needed for herself and her daughter.  She got the attention that made for real change. 

Her story was unusual and no wonder it was recorded.  And maybe just maybe she knew Jesus’ story.  Somehow, despite not having an instagram account or a snap chat or facebook or tictoc, she knew about Jesus and even though he was hiding out in a city outside his home country, she reacted the same as some folks here might react if they found out Taylor Swift was visiting next door.  She barged in without permission.  Not to get an autograph, but to get a healing.  Maybe she knew the same scriptures that Jesus did.  His bible had many stories of the importance of taking care of widows and orphans and even foreign women.  Maybe she knew the stories about Elijah healing a foreign widow’s child, or Elisha who saved a widow’s children from being sold into slavery because of debts.  Maybe she had read the teachings of Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Malachi and others about how the God of Israel taught that children and widows were to be protected and treated with respect and hospitality.

Jesus pushed back.  Why, we don’t know.  Was Jesus grumpy?  Was he tired and here was someone interrupting him on his holiday? Was he racist?  We don’t know his thinking.  Or maybe this was an opportunity to show his disciples how to go beyond racism.  This event became a lesson of radical inclusion that stuck, and the disciples changed and got over their stereotypical assumptions and chauvinist attitudes.  God was not just for the Jewish people, and God certainly was not just for men or priests or scholars.  God was for everyone!  Everyone deserved to hear the good news that God was ready to change the world for the better.

Our bible states right in the first book that God created all humankind, male and female both in God’s own image.  All humans are.  And there is a thread of women empowered by God to make a difference.  Eve chose knowledge over ignorance, Miriam lead worship with her brother Moses, Deborah was a Judge of the Israelites before there were kings.  There’s Ruth and Ester and Mary who were leaders that spoke out against the status quo.  Women have been speaking out ever since.

Who are the voices we are not hearing from?  Who are the people wanting to be included in God’s community?  There are many who feel isolated or depressed.  News articles abound about the epidemic of mental illness.  One of the prescriptions given is to find a community, but people are reluctant to look for one.  One woman said, “I’d come to church if I knew there was a church that wouldn’t mind me asking questions.  Another person said they didn’t dare come to a church because they knew they would be judged.  Someone else said they were badly hurt by a congregation’s power struggle, or a priest’s cruel remark.  They expect a church will judge them because they have had that experience in the past.  They have been hurt badly.

Our job, like Jesus with the Syrophoenician woman, is to listen and encourage.  When we understand where people are coming from, we can be an agent of healing for them.  It makes a difference.  It made a difference for the Syrophoenician woman.  Tyre developed a congregation that was strong and proud to associate with Paul and the other disciples, and in Acts was mentioned as one of the earliest churches founded by Jesus.

When we, like Jesus, listen with curiosity and let go of our prejudices, amazing acts of healing occur.  God is still healing the ones that are hurting, God is still loving those who are full of despair and God is still speaking to those who are questioning.  Thanks be for a God who loves questioners! Amen.