One of the most traumatic practices of some churches of the past (and sadly, in some cases, the present) is shunning. In fact, shunning today might be considered a form of emotional abuse. Shunning occurs when someone is labeled as having transgressed the rules and guidelines of the church in some way. When someone in the church is “shunned,” they are stamped as a sinner and dismembered from the body. Until he or she repents (if at all), he or she is thrust out of the faith community and essentially “disowned” by family and friends alike.
By disowned, I mean, banned by one’s entire community: family, friends, relatives –everyone. It’s a severe form of punitive judgment sentenced by the elders of the church or pastor. It’s usually based in a view of scripture that puts punishment and a lot of rules and regulations (often created by the church ordering council) before forgiveness and grace.
If you know “shunning” from personal experience, you know the kind of emotional torture this kind of punitive action bestows.
No one talks to you.
No one eats with you.
No one lets you into their home.
No one will even acknowledge you on the street.
It’s an exclusionary practice that elevates some to a false level of purity and other unfortunates to an equally false level of impiety and impurity.
While we often think of this practice as an old-fashioned residue of a more rigid time and clime, it’s actually very similar to the custom practiced by the Pharisees in Jesus’ day in regard to gentiles and others. Obsessed with laws of “purity,” they would ritually exclude people not just for assumed sins but for illnesses, affiliations, and even cultural differences. Gentiles bore the brunt of these “rules” as they didn’t follow the same customs regarding food and purification. Gentiles didn’t live in the right place or visit the right Temple. If they married a Jewish person, that person too would be excluded from the Passover redemption and remission of sins.
Often gentiles came from regions that practiced other religions, worshipped other gods, or lived in different cultures. But some, like those from Tyre and Sidon, the Syrophoenicians (and their ancestors the Canaanites), were regarded with downright contempt. Daughters and sons of “Jezebel,” they were considered as low as “dogs.” Not your pet puppies either –but the feral dogs that ran the streets, the kind that consumed the flesh of the real Jezebel after Jehu took the throne of northern Israel.
[You may want to explain some history here.]
Enter Jesus.
In our gospel for today, we see Jesus sparring again with the Pharisees about purity laws. In one of Jesus’ more forceful moments, he in no uncertain terms redefines what “pure” means and relegates these “laws and regulations” to human-made means of control and power. “What goes into a person is not impure. No food is impure. No culture is impure. Only what comes out of a person’s heart can be impure. The heart is the source of all impurities.” This is a pointed jab directly at the Pharisees and their exclusionary practices.
It is likely that Jesus’ disciples were also confused, as they too were upright Jews, accustomed to following the purity customs and used to excluding gentiles that didn’t fit their Jewish lifestyle. So Jesus …and who doesn’t love this part…. in one of his greater “teaching moments,” takes his disciples on a field trip. He takes them outside of Israel and into gentile land –the coastal region of Syro-Phoenicia, to the city of Tyre –the former home of Israel’s most hated and notorious gentile –Jezebel. By the way, this is true discipleship, real-life experience at the side of the master.
There Jesus encounters a Syro-Phoenician woman who begs him to strike a demon from her suffering daughter.
Now, to really understand what happens next, I’m going to need a few volunteers! [Call up a group of people and have them bring their Bibles.] Ok, let’s turn to Mark 7.
[Assign one person to be Jesus. Another to be the Syro-Phoenician woman. And a group to be disciples. Huddle together and give them roles and explain what they need to act out.]
Jesus begins the encounter by responding in the way he knows his disciples would expect him to as a good “Jew.” He challenges her character and her ethnicity.
But pay attention. Jesus just had this argument with the Pharisees and his disciples in Israel. He has no intention of meaning this phrase. Jesus has something else in mind that will shock the living daylights out of his disciples.
When Jesus challenges the woman, his disciples look pleased, smugly satisfied and self-righteous. But when Jesus suddenly does an about face and commends her faith, celebrates her presence, and heals her daughter, watch the disciples’ reaction!
What do you see?
That’s the lesson Jesus wants to teach. Radical forgiveness. Radical inclusion. Radical humanity. Radical dissing of the “rules and regulations” in favor of boundless mercy and relentless kindness no matter what ethnicity, religion, culture, or gender. Imagine their surprise!
The significance of this healing is so powerful that it’s hard to describe. This is no ordinary gentile. Jesus chooses a daughter of Jezebel, and heals not only her daughter, but her legacy.
Who is Jezebel? Jezebel was the wife of Israel’s northern King Ahab in the 9th century BCE. Known to be powerful, shrewd, and vicious, she not only turned Baalism into a national religion in Israel, but she put Israel’s prophets to death. But after a battle of gods between Elijah and the Baal priests, YHWH wins, and Jezebel is defeated. Later, she will be thrown from her balcony by eunuchs upon the command of the new king Jehu, established by Elijah to rule Israel after Ahab’s death. Jezebel’s body, as per Elijah’s prophecy, would be consumed by dogs.
Yet this very area is also the same area where Elijah encounters a widow who shares with him her bread. This very area is where God created another miracle. God is not only all powerful, but all merciful.
For years, Israel has hated the Syro-Phoenicians and their ancestors, the Samaritans, where Jezebel ruled, and all those from the coastal, gentile cities of Tyre and Sidon.
When Jesus chooses to take his disciples to that very place, he is sending a powerful message about who God is and how God sees human beings-–all as children of God.
No matter who may have shunned this woman in the past, no matter what her sin or the sins of her ancestors, no matter who disowned her or excluded her, Jesus reaffirms her faith and her humanity as one of God’s own.
And that is a message for all of us.
God will always claim parentage of you. No matter what mistakes you’ve made. No matter where you are from, what your background, or what your ancestors or family may have been labeled by their community or neighbors in the past, Jesus will always rectify, forgive, and redeem you. Jesus will always shower mercy and grace upon you, all the days of your life.
If Jesus can forgive the ancestors of even the notorious Jezebel, how much more will Jesus take you into his arms and comfort you in your darkest and most exclusionary moments.
No one is ever excluded from the House of God or the kingdom of heaven. We may exclude ourselves, but all we need to do is come to Jesus in prayer, acknowledging Him as Lord and Savior, and He will create a place for us in God’s heavenly kingdom.
Now that’s radical mercy. That’s radical justice. That’s radical inclusion.
You see, justice is not meted out by exclusions and shunnings, by rules and regulations. God’s justice is the outlandishly shocking mercy that teaches us how truly to be human.
For as Jesus reminds us, it is not what is on the outside that makes us who we are, but the love that comes from our hearts.
How pure is your heart? How many people in your life have you blocked or shunned or banned? And not just on Facebook or Instagram. How many people can you now forgive that in the past you have disowned, or excluded, or derided, or shunned?
Let us pray right now for ourselves, that we might have the heart of Jesus, not just for our friends and family, but for our worst enemies, the people we have blocked and shunned, that they be shown the mercy and love of God, even as they come to know God, the true God of Israel, the One True God of us all.
Based on the Story Lectionary
Major Text
Jesus Heals a Syrophoenician Woman’s Daughter in Tyre (Mark 7:24-30)
The Story of Jezebel (of Phoenicia, Daughter of the King of Tyre), Ahab, and Elijah (1 Kings 9:16-21)
Minor Text
The Story of Tamar: Loyalty is Not as it May Appear (Genesis 38)
A Raining Down of Manna (Exodus 16 and Numbers 11)
Elijah’s Healing / Raising of a Phoenician Woman’s Son and a Gift of Bread (2 Kings 17)
Elisha’s Healing / Raising of a Shuunamite Woman’s Son (2 Kings 4)
The Story of Ruth: A Story of Faith from the Heart
Psalm 19: The Lord’s Salvation
Jesus Heals a Canaanite Woman’s Daughter in Tyre (Matthew 15:21-28)
The Parable of the Great Dinner (Luke 14:15-24)
Salvation is for All Who Believe with the Heart Reminds Paul (Letter to the Romans, Chapter 10)