What did Jesus mean when when he said, "Let the children be fed first, it isn't right to take the children's bread and throw it to the dogs." And what was the Syrophoenician woman referring to when she talked about the dogs eating children's crumbs under the table? And how do the disciples fit into it all, the same disciples who earlier didn't understand about the loaves? Follow the trail of breadcrumbs and see if you can solve the mystery before Encyclopedia does.
Come, Holy
Spirit, and kindle the fire that is in us.
Take our
lips and speak through them.
Take our
hearts and see through them.
Take our
souls and set them on fire. Amen.
Encyclopedia Brown and the Mystery of the Kingdom
In the evenings, I like to read to the kids while they are
eating at the dinner table. Recently, I have been reading them stories from the
Encyclopedia Brown series. If you don’t know these stories, Encyclopedia Brown
is a boy detective. His real name is Leroy, but most people call him
Encyclopedia because he is so smart. His dad is the police chief in fictional Idaville,
and so sometimes Encyclopedia helps him solve crimes that have stumped the
police. But mostly, he solves cases around his neighborhood. There are two
things I like about these stories. First, they are short. And second, each
story provides all of the clues that readers need to solve the mystery on their
own. Sometimes the clues are obvious. But sometimes you have to reread the
story a couple of times before you figure it out. And sometimes, you just have
to look up the answers in the back of the book. This technique makes the reader
more active, more engaged, more involved in the story.
The Gospel of Mark does something quite similar. Mark is also
a mystery story. It is a mystery about the kingdom of God, set in the small backwater
region of Galilee on the outskirts of the great Roman Empire. At the center of
this mystery is an obscure Jew, named Jesus. And everybody in the story is
trying to figure out who he is and where he gets his power and authority to
preach, to exorcise demons, to pronounce forgiveness, to heal the sick, and to
do a host of other things. Now Mark has left his readers clues to help them
discover for themselves the true nature of Jesus’ identity and mission. Some of
the clues are obvious; others not so much. Sometimes Mark’s stories about Jesus
make sense to us on the first reading, and sometimes we have to go back and
read them over and over again, pondering them in our hearts and minds. And sometimes we wish we could just look up the
answers in the back of the book.[1]
Jesus’s Response to the Syrophoenician Woman… Gentile
Prejudice?
Take today’s episode with Jesus and the Syrophoenician
woman.
