September 10, 2006

Give the Dogs the Crumbs

by Rev. Dr. Jim Carlson

Mark 7:24-30

Opening Illustration

Story in Mark follows feeding of 5,000 and confrontation with Pharisees.

Irony set up – Jesus should be easy to identify as Son of God because he fed 5,000. Pharisees ignore miraculous feeding and quibble about whether or not hands were washed.

Irony is that Jesus is recognized as healer by gentiles even though Jewish authorities misunderstand him.

Jesus goes out of Jewish territory, into Tyre and Sidon. Wanted to get quiet time to instruct disciples. Retreat from conflict with the Pharisees.

Jesus would have been well known in Tyre and Sidon. He visited in chapter 3 and cast out demon.

Jesus tried to keep his whereabouts quiet, but word got out. Gentile woman comes to the house where he stayed and falls at his feet.

Pleads for Jesus to cast out demon from her daughter. Jesus had cast out many demons in Mark.

Jesus tells her it is not right to take children’s food and throw it to the puppies. Refers to woman as a puppy because she is gentile.

Jesus’ sense of his ministry – minister to Jews, let disciples go out into gentile territory. In Matthew he says he was only sent to save the lost sheep of Israel. Wasn’t his role in salvation of the world.

Woman undaunted by his metaphor. Could have been rightfully offended. She tries to convince him to rethink his role in salvation by pointing out that in Jesus’ metaphor the puppies get the crumbs that fall from the children’s table.

She says there’s a little ministry left over gentiles, and she just wants a crumb.

Roadblocks in healing stories (slide). Heightens sense that Jesus is Son of God.

Irony of this story is that the roadblock is Jesus himself.

Because of woman’s persistence, Jesus tells her the demon has left her daughter. Woman returns home, finds daughter sprawled out on bed. Violent exit of demon.

Very interesting story. Want to focus on application to today’s world. Church is in the role of acting on God’s behalf in the world.

Who is the Syrophonecian woman in our situation? Whose needs do we consider less important? Who do we ignore? Who gets little more than crumbs from the church?

I put the question to the Bible study folks. They said women in ministry.

Most in the ABC consider the question of women in ministry to be settled. (slide) It’s not.

The First Baptist Church dismissed Mary Lambert on August 9 with a letter explaining that the church had adopted an interpretation that prohibits women from teaching men. She had taught there for 54 years.

The letter quoted the first epistle to Timothy: "I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she must be silent."

Mary Lambert, 81, has been a member of the First Baptist Church in Watertown, N.Y., for 60 years. She had her wedding on the premises, raised her kids in its halls and taught Sunday school at First Baptist for more than five decades.

"I believe that God has a very special role for men and women within the church setting and many people look at it as exclusionary, but I don't view at it that way," Tim LaBouf, First Baptist's pastor, said.

LaBouf added Lambert's gender was only one reason she was fired, and that "Christian courtesy" prevents him from saying any more than that.

Helen Barrett was born on July 31, 1861 in Kingsville, Ohio. She was the oldest of three children born to Adoniram Judson and Emily Barrows Barrett. Both of her parents were teachers.

As a child her father moved the family to Rochester, New York so that he might attend the Rochester Theological Seminary. Upon his graduation in 1876, he became pastor of the Lake Avenue Baptist Church, in Rochester, a position he held until his death in 1889.

Helen Barrett graduated from Wellesley College in 1884 and became a teacher, first at the Rochester Free Academy and then for two years at the Wellesley Preparatory School in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

She then returned to Rochester, where she married William A. Montgomery, a businessman, on September 6, 1887. Mr. Montgomery’s business, North East Electric Company, would later become the Rochester Products Division of General Motors.

Montgomery organized a women’s Bible class at the Lake Avenue Baptist Church, which she taught for forty-four years. In 1892, the same church licensed her to preach.

Montgomery became increasingly involved in the women’s missionary movement, as she grew older. In this work too, her activities were often closely linked to furthering the rights of women. In 1910, she published Western Women in Eastern Lands (1910), a study that surveyed the status of women in Asia.

Montgomery also served as the president of the Woman’s American Baptist Foreign Mission Society (1914 - 1924). In this position, she sought to increase access to education and health care for women and children.

In 1915 she, along with two other prominent women of faith, founded the World Wide Guild, the purpose of which was to encourage young women to pursue missionary work. She presided over the National Federation of Women’s Boards of Foreign Missions (1917 - 1918), and in 1921 became the first woman to be elected president of the Northern Baptist Convention.

In 1924, Montgomery published The Centenary Translation of the New Testament. In this translation, the first by a woman scholar, she sought to make the Greek New Testament more accessible to the "ordinary reader" by using "everyday" language.

Look what Helen did with the crumbs that our denomination. I hope my point is made readily clear: For too long in the church we have treated women who wanted to go into ministry like the pets who sit under the table waiting for crumbs.

The obstacles that seem to get in the way in the healing stories of Jesus should serve as a signal to us that God can and will overcome every obstacle to the kingdom of God, even the ones we put in the way.

The story asks us to rethink the things we thought were outside the realm of possibility. It challenges us to expand the circle of what we consider to be our ministry. It dares us to dig deep and ask ourselves, “Can you do a little more than you planned? The need is greater than you expected it to be.

The irony this story is this, if the feeding of the 5000 demonstrated that there is plenty for everyone in the kingdom of God, then this woman should expect a lot more then crumbs. She should expect to eat until she is full.

For us to affirm women’s role and importance in ministry, we have to give them more than just crumbs. We have to Give them and equal portion. We have to encourage women to examine God’s calling on their lives. We have to support seminaries and other programs that take the ministry of women seriously. We have to support women as they go through seminary, morally, financially, and congregationally.

If you are a women asking yourself about what God might be calling to do in your life, know that in this congregation you won’t have to sit under the table and wait for crumbs to fall. You’re welcome to eat until you’re full. And we even expect to have a few baskets left over when everyone’s done.