Today's Daily Lesson is from Mark 7:
" 25 But immediately a woman whose little daughter had an unclean spirit heard of [Jesus] and came and fell down at his feet. 26 Now the woman was a Gentile, a Syrophoenician by birth. And she begged him to cast the demon out of her daughter. 27 And he said to her, “Let the children be fed first, for it is not right to take the children's bread and throw it to the dogs.” 28 But she answered him, “Yes, Lord; yet even the dogs under the table eat the children's crumbs.”
This past weekend our church hosted a family conference and I attended two parenting sessions presented by educators from around the city. In each session the educators talked about what it means for a parent to be a good advocate for their children in the school system. They each said parenting means knowing your child's rights and sticking up for those rights, but also knowing that no one is perfect - neither the teachers not the administrators nor even your kids.
Today's lesson is a great example of a woman being a good advocate for her child. First off, the child has a demon (imagine being her teacher) and her mother recognizes this. The mother is not in denial about the well being of her child. Nor is she too busy too or lazy to care. She is proactive. She has heard there is a Jewish man who can do something to help has come into her foreign city and so she goes to find him.
And here is where things get interesting. When the mother finds Jesus, Jesus says something I struggle with; it is something racially and ethnically charged. People in Jesus' day would sometimes call people of other races "dogs". It was an ugly and pejorative term and there were many proverbial sayings that included it - just as there are many proverbial sayings today which speak uglily of other races and cultures. "It is not right to take the food that belongs to the children and give it to the dogs," Jesus said.
Why did Jesus say this? It seems so very un-Jesus. Apparently, he was trying to make the point that he had not come to do ministry with foreigners - not yet anyway, not until his ministry was brought to his own Jewish people first. But did he not know how ugly it is to call someone a dog? Was he just kidding? Was he a racist? These questions trouble me.
But apparently they trouble me more than they troubled the mother. Instead of taking offense at Jesus' words, she actually uses them to her advantage. "Yes," she says, "we may be dogs - but even dogs get the scraps which belong to their master's table."
I love that. She is the perfect advocate for her child. Honest about her child's imperfections. Involved. Gracious toward others - even to the point of be willing to suffer a slight indignity. And absolutely aware of her rights as a parent and those of her baby.
We need more parents like her.
No comments:
Post a Comment