In Tobit, one of the books of the Apocrypha, the hero Tobias sets out on a journey to call in a loan owed to his father, who has gone blind. He will return with a bride and a cure for his father’s blindness. But he sets out on the journey with a young man — who he does not recognize as an angel — and a faithful dog.

Well, sort of. There are several versions of this apocryphal book. In the version that was current among Greek-speaking Jews, there is a dog. In the versions that circulated among Jews closer to Jerusalem, there is no dog. That’s because in many of the nations in ancient times, as well as Jews who had become acculturated to the Greek speaking world, dogs were acceptable as pets and companions.

It’s hard to say just when dogs and humans became boon companions. Archaeologists who examine the campfires of human settlements notice that around ten thousand years ago dogs found a place around the fire. Some of the bones of the animals found in ancient trash heaps have bite marks that fit the mouth of a dog, not a human.

So at some point dogs and humans began to share their lives together. It’s not clear if humans invited the dogs into their homes, or if some dogs invited themselves, providing protection and help with hunting. But it’s thought that those dogs that were less feral and found a way to work with people ate better and were more successful than wild dogs, and so the genes for domesticity were passed on. And the partnership has been good both ways. Studies show, for instance, that infants that grow up around dogs have more immunities. And there’s nothing like the loyalty of a dog when it comes to protection.

When people became less nomadic and began to live in one place, with domesticated cattle, sheep, and other creatures, dogs still worked, but for some people they became more like pets. Then again some cultures had no use for them.

But in the Palestinian region, including Galilee and Jerusalem, dogs were scavengers, diseased ridden animals that were despised by the local population. And that continued through the time of Jesus. So when Jesus, in today’s story, compared the children of a Gentile woman to dogs, it was not a compliment.

Today’s gospel passage can make us cringe. It comes after we see Jesus at his best, and then it seems to show Jesus at his worst, echoing the prejudices of his contemporaries, comparing outsiders to a scavenging animals.

The passage follows the question of clean and unclean. Jesus had stated we’re made unclean not by what is outside of us, but what comes from within.

Now every culture has its own “cooties,” a code of cleanliness that has little to do with actually killing germs. But by drawing boundaries, outsiders give insiders the heebie jeebies, and the outsiders have their own boundaries about whether they’ll eat horses, cheese, corn, dogs, or corn dogs. It doesn’t have to make sense, but it’s very real to the culture.

Now in the verses that precede this story Jesus redefined clean and unclean. It wasn’t what rituals people observed, Jesus taught, that made you clean or unclean, it’s what we say and do. It’s not what goes in our mouths, but what comes out of our mouths.

So it’s ironic that having talked about how definitions of insiders and outsiders have been changed under the new covenant, Jesus seems to get put to the clean/unclean test. And at first he doesn’t come out looking so good.

Having traveled to the Gentile region of Tyre, Jesus encounters a Syro-Phoenician woman whose daughter is very, very ill. The woman pleads for Jesus to heal her.

What we’d like to see is a repeat of what happens in John’s gospel, where Jesus asks the Samaritan woman at the well to drink out of her drinking cup. No, no, no, no, no, Jesus wasn’t supposed to talk to a woman. Jesus wasn’t supposed to talk to a Samaritan woman. Jesus wasn’t supposed to drink out of the same cup as a Samaritan. He definitely wasn’t supposed to share a cup with a Samaritan woman, especially one who has been married five times before and is now living with her current beaux. But Jesus ignores all these boundaries with the result that a whole Samaritan village comes to believe in the Lord.

And when hypocrites criticize him for a letting a woman throw herself at his feet, wipe his feet with her hair and her tears, breaking clean/unclean boundaries left and right, Jesus scolds his critics for not recognizing what this woman has done.

Also, earlier in this gospel Jesus had cured the daughter of the president of the synagogue. Shouldn’t he do the same for the daughter of the Syro-Phoenician woman?

Instead, he replies to her urgent request, “Let the children be fed first, for it is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs (7:27).” He compares the Gentile daughter to a dog.

One wonders, perhaps, if Jesus, fully human and fully divine, was simply exhausted. It’s kind of like those commercials where nice people become rude and abusive, no longer looking like themselves but transformed into a celebrity with a reputation for behaving badly — at least until someone offers them a candy bar, saying, “You’re not yourself when you’re hungry.” The person then returns to normal. Do you think Jesus temporarily had low blood sugar?

He had, after all, been seeking a place where he could pray by himself when the demands of ministry called him into action. Maybe he thought he would be unrecognized in Gentile territory.

The ancient church fathers wanted to, like the hymn, “Stand up, stand up for Jesus,” making excuses for his seeming bad behavior.

Maybe that’s why Ambrose said, “If God invariably listened to every supplicant equally, he might appear to us to act from some necessity rather than from his own free will.” (Concerning the Mysteries, 1.3) In other words, Jesus can’t grant everyone their prayer because it would like he had to do something, rather than chose to do something.

Augustine goes so far as to tell us not to do what Jesus said, when he wrote: “Some people, intent on severe disciplinary precepts, admonish us to rebuke the restless and not to give what is holy to dogs, to consider a despiser of the church as a heathen, to cut off from the unified structure of the body the member who causes scandal. These may so disturb the peace of the church that they try prematurely to separate out the wheat from the chaff before the proper time, and blinded by this pretext they themselves become separated from the unity of Christ.” (Faith and Works 4.6)

The good thing is that the Syro-Phoenician woman did not slink away. She challenged Jesus with regards to his society’s notions of clean and unclean. Her response was gentle, even funny, but to the point. “Sir, even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs (7:28).”

I like the way the Common English Bible opens his reply: “Good answer!” Jesus responds by immediately healing her daughter.

Whether Jesus meant his first response as an object lesson for his disciples — and for us! — the fact remains that when the Syro-Phoenician woman called him on it, he did not stick with a position that sounds racist. 

God invites tough dialogue. Abraham argued with God over the number of righteous people who, if found in Sodom and Gomorrah, would save the cities of the plain. Moses talks God out of a resolution to destroy the chosen people in the desert and start all over with Moses’ descendants. Job rails against all that has occurred to him and complains that he cannot get a fair hearing before God about his laments! The prophet Habakkuk takes God to task not once, but twice, for the unpunished injustice in his society. Jonah argued with God. The woman at the well didn’t back down from challenging Jesus. The psalms and the book of Lamentations call into question God’s actions or inaction.

When we talk back to God we show we take God personally, as we should a personal God.

Far from being satisfied with things as they were, the evangelist Mark seemed to encourage his readers to question situations of injustice. Again and again outsiders recognize Jesus’ healing presence while his own people miss the point entirely. It’s a consistent theme in Mark and the other gospels. Insiders don’t get it. Outsiders recognize Jesus for who he is.

The Syro-Phoenician woman called it like she saw it — even though it was Jesus she confronted. Daring — yet she was not condemned. What does this mean for us?

We sometimes find ourselves in the uncomfortable position of hearing people in power, and people who we thought we knew well, say outrageous things about other people. They may repeat racist jokes. They may repeat racial stereotypes. They may condemn an entire people, or religion, or nation.

We are also to call things as we see them. Confront racism, ignorance, and prejudice in the church. Avoid making excuses. And examine as well what we are saying or doing to perpetuate racial stereotypes or misinformation.

Most of us don’t like confrontation. We’d rather just let it go. But we can’t.

The Syro-Phoenician woman didn’t respond by spouting hatred at Jesus. She made that clever remark about dog, tables, and children. We too can open a dialogue that is less condemnatory and more conciliatory. Revelation 7:9 gives us a picture of  “…a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb….” Jesus challenges us to be better than we are, and to challenge each other to do the same.

Call it like you see it. Respond -  respond gently at first if you have to, but firmly.

Today’s passage continues with another story of healing, this one involving the ministry of touch. Jesus took the long way to Galilee and the Decapolis, traveling from Sidon through Tyre which is 22 miles north, and the opposite direction from where he ended up. There he met a deaf man who is brought by his friends to Jesus.

Illness in biblical times meant quarantine from loved ones and from the circles of support that most of us take for granted. These friends were ignoring the custom of the time of isolating the sick by taking his part and bringing him before the great healer.

The scriptures say, “Then looking up to heaven, he sighed and said to him, “Ephphatha,” that is, “Be opened.” (7:34). The word for sigh makes it clear that Jesus shared the suffering, for he expressed deep distress.

Mark focused on the physical description of what happened, outlining how Jesus made the healing poultice. This is a story about touching the sick, touching without fear.

One sees that in both stories words change perception — the daughter of a Gentile, and a person who was unable to hear, both of them in their own way untouchable, are not only healed, they are included. Those who were present and witnessed, and we who watch from the distance of two thousand years, are transformed.

As the church we are to minister to outsiders, to the untouchable. Being the church is more than ministering to ourselves, caring that the budget is met, and supporting those within the church. These are important things, but the real ministering for Jesus is outside our doors and our comfort zone.

At the beginning of this sequence of events, Jesus attempted to retreat from the world but active ministry brought him back into the midst of the suffering. Rest assured he will again set aside time to be alone in prayer, but when we are called into the fray, we must go forward in faith that we will be equipped by God to do great things.

This is an uncomfortable passage, but sometimes we need to be pushed out of our comfort zone and into the ministry of Jesus. We can always hope it doesn’t happen too often, but we can also pray that in God’s time and with God’s encouragement, we will be pushed to be better than we think we are, and to do greater things than we have done before, to the glory of God and our neighbor’s good.

Amen.