The Right Demographic

Scripture: Mark 7.24-37; James 2.1-10, 14-17


As a young minister I was asked by a funeral director to hold a graveside service for a homeless man, with no family or friends. The funeral was to be held at a cemetery way back in the country, and this man would be the first to be laid to rest there. I was not familiar with this area and quickly became lost.

I finally arrived, but I was an hour late! I saw the backhoe and the crew, who were eating lunch, but there was no hearse or funeral director in sight. I apologized to the workers for being so late and stepped up to the side of the open grave where I saw a vault already in place. I assured the workers I would not hold them up for long but that this was the proper thing to do. The workers gathered around, still eating their lunches, when I began my graveside sermon. I poured out my heart and soul. I preached and I preached. I even got a few “Amens” and “Praise Gods” from my “congregation.” I closed the lengthy service with a prayer and began walking to my car when I overheard one of the workers say to another, “I’ve never seen anything like that before, and I’ve been putting in septic tanks for twenty years.”

It was a case of mistaken identity. Obviously that was not the constituency I had come to serve. It was sort of like that when Jesus came into the region of Tyre. It was one of the few times Jesus ventured outside of Israel in his ministry. It was one of the few the majority of the people in the area were not Jews. Matthew’s account of this story says he was approached by a Canaanite woman. Mark calls her a “Syrophoenician woman.”
Scholars tell us there was some underlying enmity between the Gentile inhabitants and their Jewish neighbors.

It was also one of those times that Jesus is seeking to get away by himself for rest and meditation. He needs a break from the constant demands of his ministry. But the scripture says, “He could not escape notice.” This gentile woman has a daughter who is demon-possessed. The woman begs Jesus to come and cast out the demon from her daughter. Jesus answers her, “Let the children be fed first, for it is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.”

He just called her a dog. That was, then, not a hip way to address your friend, nor was it evocative of a cute and loyal companion. In that culture a dog was just one step up from a hog. Dogs roamed the streets in packs looking for garbage to steal. Jesus called her a dog. He was being rude, mean even.





This cuts against the common view we have of the Lord. We picture him as gentle and kind always – always smiling, always ready to come in time of need. We want Katie Couric to be perky and we want Jesus to be kind and gentle. We also picture Jesus as this Francis of Assisi type, wandering around helping the birds and the beasts and the people. That’s pretty much all he had in mind to do, right? But we also know that he never journeyed outside of Palestine, rarely outside of the borders of Israel. He didn’t go to Rome like Paul and Peter would later do. Though he could have. And contrary to what you may have heard, Jesus didn’t journey to Asia or India. Though he could have. He could have spent his ministry traveling the civilized world, getting his message and name out to as many people as he could. But he didn’t. He stayed in Israel.

He did this because he had a plan. Jesus ministered with a purpose. He had the first “purpose-driven” ministry, if you will. That was his idea. The purpose was that he would call a remnant of Israel to come to him and declare His kingdom message. Through him and his disciples they were declare this first to Israel and then to surrounding Gentile nations.

What Jesus is saying to this Gentile woman is, in effect, this is not part of the plan. I am here for Israel, God’s chosen people. It is not my purpose to go beyond that. It is not yet time. You are not the kind of person I am supposed to minister to. You don’t fit the demographic.

It’s interesting how wrong this sounds and feels when it comes from Jesus. Of course, we think this way all the time. We are very comfortable with dividing people into groups and demographics from most to least promising. We began meeting last Spring to make plans for our Saturday evening worship service. Right up front we said we wanted to reach unchurched people with this service. We took stock of our assets and talents, our creative ideas. We thought about the name of the service and thought it would be cool if it was in Aramaic, since that was the primary language of the New Testament. We had a piano player, but his specialty is ragtime. So we thought if, in Altoona, there are rag-time lovers who speak Aramaic, well, we’ve got’em hooked. That’s our demographic.

It’s easy to lose sight of real people when we look at groups of people as the object of our marketing, the fodder for our plans. What is amazing about Jesus is that he always keeps his priorities straight. He never puts plans before people. He never forgets to do His Father’s business; and yet he is never in too much of a hurry to be a little delayed by some stranger’s need. Maybe the delay is his Father’s business.

There was once a missionary sent to preach the gospel in India near the end of WWII. After many months it came time for his furlough back home, so his church wired him money for passage on a steamer. But when he got to the port city he discovered a boatload of Jews had been allowed to land temporarily. These were the days when European Jews were sailing all over the world looking for a place to live, and these particular Jews were now staying in attics and warehouses all over that port city.

It happened to be Christmas so the missionary went to one of the attics where many Jews were staying. He walked in and said, “Merry Christmas.”

The people looked at him curiously and said, “We’re Jews.”

“I know that,” said the missionary, “What would you like for Christmas?”

In amazement they responded, “Why, we’d like pastries, good pastries like the ones we used to have in Germany.”

So the missionary went out and used the money for his ticket home to buy pastries for all the Jews he could find staying in the port. Of course, he then had to wire home asking for more money to book his passage back to the States. Not surprisingly, his superiors wired back asking what happened to the money they had already sent.

He wired that he had used it to buy Christmas pastries for some Jews.

His superiors wired back, “Why did you do that? They don’t even believe in Jesus.”

He wired back, “Yes, but I do.”

The Book of James exhorts us to not show partiality to the rich and the powerful, that to do so shows a lack of faith and belief in Jesus. We are instead to show our faith by good works done for the poor, the undesirable, the desperate. This is not easy to do, certainly not in our culture and country today. But we must be about our Lord’s business.

There is song by the group U2 that has this lyric:

Well, you speak of signs and wonders but I need something other. I would believe, if I was able. But I’m waiting on the crumbs from your table.”

The strength of our witness – the strength of the church resides not in our buildings, our programs or our plans, but in the acts of mercy and justice we share with rich and poor alike, satisfied and desperate alike, in Jesus’ name.

“Sir,” she said, “even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs.” And he said to her, “Woman, great is your faith! May it be done for you as you wish.”

May we be sidetracked by the things and people Jesus’ was sidetracked by. May we do our best to give honor and praise to “the One who does all things well.”