Faith that goes beyond boundaries

The evangelic episode of Jesus’ encounter with the Syro-Phoenician woman has been widely discussed. Feminist exegesis has particularly championed it. In fact, compared to the numerous Gospel accounts of Jesus’ encounters with other women, this one has a special appeal. In this encounter, the woman emerges victorious because Jesus had to yield not to her persistence but to her argumentation.

This is not the only case, as female characters in the Gospels often defy the stereotype of the weak woman in need of help. From miracle stories to parables, there frequently emerges an image of women who know what to do, such as the woman afflicted by bleeding or the one who lost the coin, and especially know what to say, like the Samaritan woman or the persistent widow. The Syro-Phoenician woman, doubly alien to him because she is a foreigner and a woman, addresses the Galilean prophet in a language that is not his and confronts him with surprising pride. Certainly, a mother is capable of anything if she has a sick daughter, but what is striking is that, in the face of Jesus’ refusal, this woman does not add more tears to her pleas but challenges and overcomes him. With the dialectic, “For this saying, go your way; the demon has gone out of your daughter”. For the Evangelist Mark (7:24-30), unlike Matthew (15:21-28), it is not the woman’s imploring that convinces Jesus, nor the annoyed requests of the disciples who want him to send her away, nor even her faith, but rather her “word”. The woman remains a foreigner, returns to her pagan world, and does not convert.

It was inevitable that this woman, once believing women were finally able to read the Gospel pages with their own eyes and interpret them with their own intelligence, would become an icon. In addition, it must be said, that this has done justice to the text, where the emphasis certainly falls more on the protagonism of the foreigner than on Jesus’ miraculous action, who, perhaps for the first time, agrees to comply with the circumstances.

Without detracting from this interpretation, which is quite evident from the text itself, it is impossible to deny that in the background of the scene, one can glimpse a third protagonist who, though implicit, actually adds an additional level of meaning to the whole. This third protagonist is not a character but a geographical and theological situation. It is the boundary.

The entire account emphasizes that Jesus encounters the foreign woman because he had crossed the boundary that separated the land of Israel from the territory of Tyre and Sidon, which are, pagan regions.

According to Mark, the significance of this narrative element remains implicit, but Matthew gives it a weighty connotation. The Evangelist makes the value of the dialogue between Jesus and the woman about the bread meant for the children and not for the dogs under the table completely explicit by adding to Jesus’ refusal to perform the miracle a very important theological statement. What is at stake is not only the miraculous power of the Messiah, but also the very sense of his messianism. Was the Messiah sent to all humanity or only “to the lost sheep of the house of Israel”? To whom should the Gospel message be directed? Only to the Jews or also to the pagans? From Apostle Paul’s experience, we know that this was the major issue for the first two generations of Christians. Mark also hints at the universalism that Paul pursues with all his might, which both Matthew and Luke present as a specific mandate from the Risen Lord to the disciples, in the episode of the foreign woman. Bringing the Gospel to the ends of the earth was not an arbitrary choice made by Jesus’ disciples after his death, nor was it the result of faith in the resurrection and the Paschal exaltation. Even Jesus himself had crossed boundaries, both geographical and theological. He, who had understood his messianism solely in terms of the restoration of the people of Israel, accepted that not only the children but also the dogs were hungry for bread. He had to learn to be the Messiah for all; it was the encounter with this woman that taught him this.

By Marinella Perroni

A pagan woman’s faith

From there he went to the region of Tyre and Sidon. Upon entering a house, which he did not want anyone to know about, but he could not be hidden. At that instance, a woman whose little daughter was possessed by an unclean spirit who had heard about him, came and fell at his feet. Then the woman, who was Greek of Syro-Phoenician origin, begged him to cast the demon out of her daughter. He said to her, “Let the children be fed first; it is not good to take the children’s bread and throw it to the dogs”. However, she answered and said to him, “Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs under the table eat from the children’s crumbs”. Then he said to her, “For this saying, go your way; the demon has gone out of your daughter”.

Then, when she arrived home, she found the demon had gone and her daughter lying on the bed.

Mark 7:24-30