Tuesday: In Tyre and Sidon
Daily Lesson for Tuesday 12th of December 2023
Bible scholars believe that the Gospel of Matthew had been written specifically for a Jewish audience, and that Mark was written with primarily a Gentile audience in mind. It is helpful to keep this distinction before us as we study the Gospels.
Read Matthew 15:1-39:22-28 and Mark 7:1-37:24-30. What differences do you see in how the woman was depicted?
Notice how Matthew describes this mother using her nationality or race: Canaanite. Mark is led by the Holy Spirit to use additional terms to describe this mother as “a Greek” or “a Gentile” and then gives additional information: “a Syro-Phoenician by birth” or “a Syrian of Phoenicia”—the only time that this term is used in the Bible.
Consider how this story in Matthew 15:1-39 would impact the intended primary audience with their background and worldview. Matthew’s audience would see this mother as a despised heathen. This comes from the Jewish people’s historical experience with the Canaanites as an idol-worshiping people group whose evil lifestyle and practices had long been a stumbling block to their nation. Even Christ’s disciples did not consider the possibility that this woman had faith and was part of the kingdom of God!
In Mark 7:1-37, Mark’s audience of Gentiles would have a different response from that of Matthew’s. The Gentiles did not have the same experience as the Jews did with the Canaanites. Instead, the Gentiles would identify with this woman, “a Greek, a Syro-Phoenician by birth” (NKJV). Jesus healed one of their own! For the Gentiles, this woman would be regarded as a beloved mother who was concerned about the fate of her daughter and wanted the Master to heal her, regardless of this mother’s ethnic and national background.
“Christ did not immediately reply to the woman’s request. He received this representative of a despised race as the Jews would have done. In this He designed that His disciples should be impressed with the cold and heartless manner in which the Jews would treat such a case, as evinced by His reception of the woman, and the compassionate manner in which He would have them deal with such distress, as manifested by His subsequent granting of her petition.”—Ellen G. White, The Desire of Ages, p. 400.
Read 1 John 2:2. What should this text tell us about how we are all the same before God?
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Today's lesson is about "them and us". Someone sent me an unattributed meme a few days ago that I have referred to before in my comments. This morning I found it.
And that about sums up what today's lesson is all about. There are walls between us and them that need to be broken down. And that may make us feel uncomfortable at times.
Nadia Bolz-Weber is the pastor of a church she calls the House of Saints and Sinners. I love that name. It has a sense of interaction rather than a fortress to keep the bad out.
She also had something to say about our fitness to spread the Gospel:
I suspect we still have a lot to learn about spreading the Gospel to "all" the world.
Interesting reference here. (I’ve read and enjoyed both of these books.)
Nadia Bolz-Weber also admits in her narratives of trying to build her own walls to keep out the well-heeled and pristine. That’s more or less the context of that first quote. Those who are despised can turn around and also despise. She wanted a closed community of folks who looked, acted, and spoke like they’d been through the wringer. The ones who she deemed ‘stumblers and sinners’. What I’m trying to say is that we have to be careful of ‘othering’ no matter what group we belong to because at the end of the day, we are all stumblers and sinners in desperate need of God’s grace and salvation.
Thank you Maurice. I have ordered Nadia Bolz-Weber's books. She is a very colorful human being. I am anxious to read her story.
So true Maurice. Zaccheus must have been an accidental saint. The king James version of Luke 19:8 says And Zacchaeus stood, and said unto the Lord: Behold, Lord, the half of my goods I give to the poor; and if I have taken any thing from any man by false accusation, I restore him fourfold. Present tense. The original rendition of the Greek. The crowd thought he was a dirty scoundrel, a nasty chap. But he tells Jesus, Lord they got it wrong.
Are we like the crowd, making assumptions about others?
I consider the ability to have FAITH in God to be the greatest, most unique, most unassailable gift given to man to enable him to have fellowship with his Creator. It eliminates all man-made barriers and so becomes the gateway for all man to become equal in the family of God.
Jesus declared that the Covenant of Faith in God and His Son was now universally available, but the Jewish people’s religious leadership still wanted to hang on to their privileged status as governing leaders of their people; it became their stumbling block.
I see prejudice based on race, ethnicity, or religion as one of the greatest evils plaguing mankind. If not dealt with in the churches successfully, it remains a great hinderance to the coming together as members of the family of God. If one considers themselves better – more elevated in any respect – then others, this disposition needs to be replaced by humbleness when representing the Lord through service.
The Canaanite women not only showed great love for her daughter when asking help from one of those she expected to despise her as ‘heathen’, she also demonstrated that her faith in the God who had given Jesus His power to heal overcame her fear of being rebuked. Israel’s children needed the faith the Canaanite women showed, but their racial and religious prejudices eventually became the stumbling block to their own faith.
We shouldn't laugh at how the Jews considered the gentiles and even refused to minister to them, this is the solitude of humans. We've all built walls of separation and consider us better than them. Faith can come even from those whom we despise and see as not having the Truth of God. Let's embrace them and let them know what we believe.
We are caught up in the differences! We try to justify our "better state" simply by pointing to genetic origin as being a birthright. Could anyone here have chosen where or from whom to be born? We are what we are; the most genius thing is that God loves us just like that! Prejudice is an excuse to hide my defects.